It'll be a hack job. Hollywood is not going to be able to say anything nice about the south. Especially after the election.
Southern Mississippi Ping (not USM)
As a historian, I find counterfactuals (alternate histories) fun to play with but the danger is maintaining any sort of REAL objectivity is impossible.
I suspect this will be an opportunity for the left to rant about how evil the south (and thus red-staters) are.
Slavery was not the primary reason that the vast majority of people fought for the Confederacy. Very few people even owned slaves, perhaps 5% or less. Back 140 years ago people were MUCH more dedicated to their state and region than now. The heavily populated and insudtrialized northern states were doing MANY different things that were intended to enrich the northern states at the expense of the southern ones, such as putting high tarrifs on imported machinery so that Southern states would be forced to buy inferior northern machinery.
The issue is much as it is today with liberals; they continually try to spin every issue to make it something that it is not. BTW, if slavery was the issue, why did Lincoln wait two years to sign the Emancipation Proclamation (which did not free a single slave)?
That's a refreshing idea on this subject. Too often people forget that what we currently accept as being obvious, in an ethical sense, only became the standard response after much thought, blood, and change. I loathe Hollywood's incessant anti-South position, but I equally loathe some of the sentiments of some southerners on this issue, too. People today have the benefit of hindsight, but also of not having their entire lives ripped up--something Hollywoodies should think about re: Southern society and individual lives and property, and Southerners should think about the slaves whose lives we all know about.
Churchill wrote such an account, I wonder if they'll borrow from him. As I recall, it all ended up pretty much the same anyways, after all was said and done.
Executive Producer: Spike Lee
aka Shelton J. Lee
March 20, 1957
ATLANTA GA
Full blown hatred of white people packaged as introspection.
Harry Turtledove has a whole set of novels with this premise.
What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?
I love The South as much as the next guy, but this picture is a slap to the US Marines. The original is of the United States Marines, not the Confederate States Marines.
In any scenario that sees the South as the victor one has to ask what was the purpose of its army before it was engaged by the Union army?
If it was an army mainly for the defense of the southern states its "victory" would be limited to the security of the borders of the Confederacy, and it would have gone no further north unless attacked by the Union army.
If it was an army of expansion of southern ideals then it would be an army of invaders pushing north. It would have preemptively attacked the Union army along a broad front, and its "victory" would only be complete when it took the New England states.
So, the question comes back to: What was the purpose of the Confederate army?
Can you understand his anger at such self-serving excuses and evasions, at the waving away of a century of conflicts and problems like they didn't exist? Can you see that he might have some reason to be angered or saddened by such a brushing under the carpet of some of the hard realities of American history?
Of course, we don't know what America would have looked like had the Confederates won. And the filmmakers do exaggerate things for effect. They're not writing a thesis or making some mathematical model of an alternative universe. They're not trying to be fair-minded above all else. They're using a certain amount of absurdity to point out the absurdities in another point of view.
Most people who know the history will likely leave the theatre recognizing that the movie exaggerates and isn't entirely fair, but perhaps they'll question some of the assumptions of the neoconfederate propaganda of recent years. We can recognize the absurdity and exaggeration, but also see the point. By contrast, some of today's Confederate propaganda is absurd, but pretends to be true. I don't know if the film works or not, but good satire can have a cleansing effect, but deflating some of the bad arguments that come to predominate in public controversies.
I love the South and my heritage ...all of it.
I have never insisted others feel the same way.
Lincoln? I'm ambivalent....he was a damn sight better than his radical republican brethren but I often wonder if he couldn't have done better at putting the flames out.
As for lampooning him or anyone.....I can think of anyone but Spike Lee who I would rather do that.
Spike is still sore his daddy went all "jungle fever" with a white broad.
I've seen it. It was done by a Kansas University professor and has had a limited run at film festivals and the like here in the Kansas City/Lawrence area. It's a satire, not too bad but you can tell it was made on a small budget. Still, I pretty much guarantee that the southron contingent will get their shorts in a twist over it.
ping
I was born in the South, raised overseas, and then raised in Ohio. I now live in the South again.
Just a few observations:
I wonder what America would be like without such Southerners such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? I wouldn't want to know.
I wonder what America would be like without Benjamin Franklin or John Quincy Adams? I wouldn't want to know.
We have such a rich history in this country. Why we fret about these things is beyond me.
I don't exist to re-fight wars that this country has already fought. We have better things to do.
I'm sure many of you have noticed, but there are terrorists who aren't going to take a roll call on who is from the South or North. Nope! They'll kill us all in the same manner. I'd rather go out free with other freedom loving Americans than to die in bondage for somebody else's god.
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Actually, wasn't the official Confederate flag the Bonnie Blue flag? The flag usually associated with the Confederacy is the Tennessee Battle Flag in reality, the Stars and Bars.
It's funny, though. Southern as I am, seeing the modern photos, Iwo Jima, the astronaut on the moon; I realize my flag is the American flag. My g.g. grandfather was a Confederate soldier. My father was a WWII American soldier. He fought for this entire country under that flag.
