Posted on 02/26/2006 1:56:28 PM PST by pabianice
Kevin Willmott's ersatz documentary "CSA: The Confederate States of America" is an act of provocation that's sheer genius in its conceptual simplicity. Fairly unoriginal, too. Writers and historians have been penning "what-if" scenarios predicated on the War Between the States going the other way for decades; I recall MacKinley Kantor's "If the South Had Won the Civil War" on my elementary school reading list years ago, and more recent authors such as Harry Turtledove and Roger L. Ransom have addressed the matter as well.
Willmott isn't interested in academic niceties. He wants to make you laugh and hurt at the same time, and then he wants you to think. So his film -- ostensibly a British documentary being aired on a local San Francisco station -- opens with an ad for Confederate Family Insurance, complete with a happy white family, soothing banjo music, and a smiling young African-American slave tending the garden. What follows is nothing less than a satiric takedown of our assumptions about racial progress.
Presented by Spike Lee and constructed as a finely tuned parody of the Ken Burns school of filmmaking (period music, old photos, talking-head experts), "CSA" sketches out a disquieting alternative history of the United States. It begins with the South winning Gettysburg thanks to the appearance of French and British troops alongside the Confederate Army, Europe's intervention having been won with the assistance of diplomat Judah Benjamin. (This prompts Jefferson Davis to later say, "Don't you evah forget, suh, that it was a blood-sucking Jew who saved this country.")
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The movie's actually been around for a while. I saw it a year or so ago over in Lawrence. I understand it's been re-edited a bit. I'll have to go see it again.
Ewww, I gotta think about what I'd like to say about Spike Lee before posting.
Did you watch the Trailer?
It's satire.
If the South won, Spike Lee wouldn't exist !
Of course its satire. It's also revolting.
The question now and always will be; Why didn't Lincoln let the Southerners go? The "Yankee" thinks all Southerners are stupid, why keep them around when they don't want to have anything to do with you? Lincoln "killed" 600,000 Americans to keep the South in the Union. Today the South is ridiculed and berated by the Likes of a Joe Conason. Joe, why don't you go to hell and let the South go?
it would be interesting to see what would come of someone doing this question right ,instead of stooping to stupid lowlife stereotypes
Cuz they done went and shot up that thar fort?
I'm Black, Brown or whatever the statuis quo is today and the trailer made me sick and very disgusted it was a slap in the face. I guess their idea of satire is to cause hurt with hate!
That's one of the many reasons I'm an Ex-Masshole
Harry Turtledove is nine volumes into God knows how many books on an alternate history of the Civil War. In his series the south wins the Civil War and wins a rematch in 1881. Then it allies with the British and French in the Great War while the United States allies iteself with Imperial Germany. To make a long story short, the south loses that war and then goes through a period mirroring Nazi Germany. Hyper inflation, the rise to power of a disgruntled former NCO who heads a Nazi-like party, and then the beginning of a second world war. Presently the confederates have just lost an entire army in Pittsburg, and the confederates are rounding up all blacks and exterminating them in concentration camps.
That done right enough for you?
Conason is a bitter and nasty Leftie (sorry for the redundancy...lol) but Conason can't stop berating the South, because we are saving the Union from the democrats.
That "Fort" was still SC state property not yet transfered to the Federal Government when "OCCUPIED" by union troops from Fort Moultrie.. I'd say the "Invasion " started there "
I haven't seen the movie, but I found myself laughing out loud at some of the lines in the article. There's nothing like satire to make a point. I love the way the jokes in the article ransack political correctness.
Try again. The federal government was building the fort, not the state of South Carolina. And it was built on land deeded to the government free and clear by the South Carolina legislature. It was, in every respect, the property of the federal government and the U.S. Army.
Revisionist bump. Spike Lee and Ken Burns? May as well have gotten Howdy Doody to write it. It would be about as truthful and factual...
This prompts Jefferson Davis to later say, "Don't you evah forget, suh, that it was a blood-sucking Jew...
I have not seen this movie but 'blood-sucking Jew' sounds a bit more yankee to me. Perhaps those bastions of inclusion Sherman or Grant....
And yet it had taken posession of it. The fort was being built under the supervision of an army officer. It was being paid for by the federal government. It was, in every resepect, an army project and South Carolina had no say in the matter.
This can be ascertained by documents in the Confederate Relic Room in Columbia SC, as well as remarks (in writing)by Maj. Anderson himself questioning the legitimacy of move to Sumter.
Well I can't speak for the the Confederate Relic Room, but in all my reading on the Southern rebellion, including Sumter, I've never come across anything by Anderson questioning the legitimacy of his move to Sumter. He was, in fact, the person who decided to make the move once Major Buell had told him to act at his own discretion to protect his garrison.
No, in the movie it's sort of an outshoot from the confederate alliance with Adolph Hitler. All the Jews are locked up on Long Island and all the Blacks are property. Each side got what it wanted.
The war was going to happen, one way or another. Lincoln was not going to let the rebellion happen on his watch.
Fort Sumter provided the spark old Abe needed. I'm of southern descent and my people fought for the CSA. Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan, fought a total war for victory against our people. It could not have been otherwise.
The only hope for southern victory was a fast campaign. Lee refused to march on Washington after Bull Run. It was open and undefended. That decision ended southern prospects. You cannot fight a gentleman's war.
This portraying us as Nazis and bigot slaveowners is preposterous. Without the south, Albert Gore would be president. Tennessee kept him from the presidency, his own state. Try winning a presidential election without us. The north is basically communist.
Southern boys are fighting in Iraq now, and have given themselves for the USA in how many wars and how many generations? It's the most patriotic, freedom loving, God fearing, and best integrated area of the country. Spike Lee is a bigot and a fool.
I left Turtledove's books in the middle of WWI. It was quite evident by then where he was going and where his sympathies lay. Quite sad really. Really could have delved much deeper into the 16th President's Socialist leanings and where that would have taken the north. But he had to go off the deep end to demonize good Southern men didn't he?
He probably found the Nazi Confederacy concept more likely.
But he had to go off the deep end to demonize good Southern men didn't he?
If he had demonized Northern men you would have lapped it up huh?
LOL - I am married to a native Texan. Down here they still don't like Yankees. I mean *really don't*. We brought bad manners, hateful driving, nasty accents, and forgot all about how to say 'maam' and 'sir'.
And after 20+ years here, I am beginning to think like her....
With virtually all of his garrison in Fort Moultrie, totally indefensible from the landward side, in a city filled with rumors of an impending attack on his garrison, what choice did Anderson have but to shift his forces to the most defensible post under his command?
...it's by Spike Lee?
I think I'll pass...
I'm guessing that he fails to include the part about the first legal slave-owner in America was A BLACK MAN????
It ain't just yew sutherners fightin in that there desert war over in Iraq by the way.
I recently met a young Army officer from the Bayou area, and he was just about one of the brightest people I have ever known. .......Non sequitor.
I probably agree with you concerning Spike Lee, but I still think that trailer was funny, and I'd actually like to see that movie now.
I guessing that considering that the Spain was in North America for quite a bit longer than the British the first legal slave-owner in America was A SPANIARD!!!
Someone needs to point out to Mr. Lee that all those that fled to "Red Canada" (Red Canada = Red States, get it?) to be with Lincoln were Republicans and all those that were victorous in his film were Democrats.
Don't really see how, as the Nazi goals fit more along the same lines as General Order 11
If he had demonized Northern men you would have lapped it up huh?
Of course not. I can't stand revisionist history passed off as factual. He wouldn't have had to demonize them, just take the next logical step from the reports of union actions in the Official Records. Of course maybe delve a bit more into General Grant's propensity for political corruption, if not outright organized crime, as well. As it was, at least he did portray Custer as a doddering old fool for awhile.
I agree with Garvin. I saw the trailer, and think that it is childish, stupid, vicious, and non-historical. That is, it is not at all what would have happened had the South won.
I do not think that slavery can coexist well with a modern, capitalist society. Where it does exist today is in places like Cuba, where a whole country is enslaved, and wouldn't you know it: Spike Lee loves Castro. Slavery is also a specialty of the Islamic world, which makes it very odd that people will become Black Moslems.
A most prudent military move indeed, however he WAS NOT UNDER ATTACK, and moved into the most provocative position in the area. Maybe he should have folded his banners and moved his Garrison elsewhere, Or was that a not so honorable move and that macho-ism prevailed?
I saw the trailer, and it seemed like an old, played-out stereotype. If the South is so bad, why are so many people moving down here?
Secondly, this is very clearly a liberal piece of garbage. They are angry because the Southern and some Midwestern states are the only ones who keep this country from voting Socialist. How well do you think a "satire" of Massachusetts in which everybody was gay would go over with the MSM? Probably not very well.
But the whole master race concept fit the view of blacks as fit only for slavery as espoused by Lee, Davis, Jackson, etc., etc.
If he waited for an attack then he would have been stuck in a fort that could not be defended from the landward side. The reports of plans to seize the fort were well known, Charleston citizens had warned him of them. He actually moved to the least provocative, albeit most easily defended post. He moved his men away from the civilian population.
Maybe he should have folded his banners and moved his Garrison elsewhere...
You mean surrender and turn his posts over to the forces of the rebellion without orders from Washington to do so? What is prudent about that?
Seen it, but haven't tried it yet. Have you read Newt Gingrich's alternate history about Gettysburg and its aftermath?
Come now, more revisionism? We know Lee's beliefs on slavery (against), we know Jackson's belief on relations with blacks (taught a Sunday school for blacks prior to the war), and the loyalty his former slaves held for President Davis.
Surely you don't want to compare racial attitudes of these men to Grant, Sherman, and the union president do you? The Southerners could be said to have attitudes of enlightened men of the day (while we disagree with them now), while the other three were just outright racists, then and now.
'Days of Infamy' drags. And I mean drags. It took me two weeks to finish that book. Good premise, and I hate to say it, but Turtledove may be running out of things to write about. The 'World in the Balance' series was even good, for about 5-6 of the books, but this latest one was too predictable
Please Non, you are not going to defend Spike Lee's vision of American history are you?
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