Fables of the Reconstruction
Saw this movie C.S.A., a mock documentary based on ye olde “what if the South had won the Civil War?” alternate-reality premise. The idea is that to this day slavery continues in the “Confederate States of America,” which is a military superpower but a cultural and social backwater. (All the good & interesting folks live up here in Canada.) The film is presented as a controversial British documentary that’s airing on an American TV station, broken up by phony commercials about controlling runaway slaves and the like.
Sounds thought-provoking & potentially sharp, but I was quickly irritated by the movie. I’m no military expert, but I have to think that for the vastly outgunned & outnumbered South, “winning” the Civil War would have meant fending off the armies of the North long enough and discouraging them with enough casualties that eventually the Union would lose its appetite for battle and decide to leave its former states alone. At which point, it seems likely, more states would have begun seceding in turn from both the CSA and USA. Which, you would assume, would quickly lead to a collection of tiny feuding nations and a fragmented, anarchic, manifestless destiny.
Which is kind of interesting to think about.
But no, C.S.A. has it that with the teamed-up help of both Britain and France, the Rebs rout the Yanks at Gettysburg and in short order subdue the entire Union territory, sacking Boston and New York and pulling the whole country into the Confederacy. I suspect that would have required rather a lot of help from those European allies. (And after the Confederacy crushes the Union – with the help of Britain, remember – Abraham Lincoln flees and nearly escapes to … Canada. Or, as it would have been more commonly thought of at the time, “Britain.”)
I should acknowledge again that the movie is a political satire, which means that complaining about its historical implausibility is admittedly akin to griping that there’s no scientific basis for the light-speed properties of the dilithium crystals on Star Trek.
But my irritation would have faded quickly if the jokes had been more than just a succession of broadly overplayed clangers & thudders. (Haw-haw! The woman on that mock commercial just said “It’s a good thing!” Like Martha Stewart!) The jokes don’t hold up as comedy or as satire, and whenever they do threaten to actually draw some blood – as when CSA president Jefferson Davis restores slavery to the northern states, the citizens of which are in fact not all that displeased – you’re quickly brought back around to the film’s slapdash ahistoricism.
Ah, well. Here’s a thought-provoking & visceral Matmos piece from their 2003 album The Civil War (which I think refers in its title to conflicts both British and American, though obviously the latter was on their minds for this track).
Sounds thought-provoking & potentially sharp, but I was quickly irritated by the movie. I’m no military expert, but I have to think that for the vastly outgunned & outnumbered South, “winning” the Civil War would have meant fending off the armies of the North long enough and discouraging them with enough casualties that eventually the Union would lose its appetite for battle and decide to leave its former states alone. At which point, it seems likely, more states would have begun seceding in turn from both the CSA and USA. Which, you would assume, would quickly lead to a collection of tiny feuding nations and a fragmented, anarchic, manifestless destiny.
Which is kind of interesting to think about.
But no, C.S.A. has it that with the teamed-up help of both Britain and France, the Rebs rout the Yanks at Gettysburg and in short order subdue the entire Union territory, sacking Boston and New York and pulling the whole country into the Confederacy. I suspect that would have required rather a lot of help from those European allies. (And after the Confederacy crushes the Union – with the help of Britain, remember – Abraham Lincoln flees and nearly escapes to … Canada. Or, as it would have been more commonly thought of at the time, “Britain.”)
I should acknowledge again that the movie is a political satire, which means that complaining about its historical implausibility is admittedly akin to griping that there’s no scientific basis for the light-speed properties of the dilithium crystals on Star Trek.
But my irritation would have faded quickly if the jokes had been more than just a succession of broadly overplayed clangers & thudders. (Haw-haw! The woman on that mock commercial just said “It’s a good thing!” Like Martha Stewart!) The jokes don’t hold up as comedy or as satire, and whenever they do threaten to actually draw some blood – as when CSA president Jefferson Davis restores slavery to the northern states, the citizens of which are in fact not all that displeased – you’re quickly brought back around to the film’s slapdash ahistoricism.
Ah, well. Here’s a thought-provoking & visceral Matmos piece from their 2003 album The Civil War (which I think refers in its title to conflicts both British and American, though obviously the latter was on their minds for this track).
- Matmos, “Reconstruction” (buy The Civil War here)
posted by DW | 23.6.06
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