Confederate: DOA?
Confederate is a proposed HBO series that takes place in an alternate history in which the Civil War didn’t happen and slavery in the South continued into the present.
This sounds DOA. You can’t do a show like this, and have it be in any way deep or interesting, unless you show white slaveholders who earnestly make the case that slavery is just, and there are some slaves who are accepting of their servitude. And both of these things are huge racist no-nos.
Without that, you wind up with something like the horrible movie version of Starship Troopers in which the director purposely made the movie into a dumb satire because he couldn’t present Heinlein’s original intent in a serious manner because he decided that the book was evil and fascist without even bothering to read the book.
Or it becomes like Star War. The bad guys are just assumed to be bad, and there’s no attempt to portray the bad guys in any sort of nuanced way. You have a few scenes with Darth Vader using the Force to kill people or Storm Troopers shooting up some innocent civilians, then cut back to the good guys.
The only thing they might be able to do is have the president of the Confederacy to be like Darth Vader, just pure evil, but have the nuance be that the supposed good guys from the North are also not that good. But I think that DOA is more likely.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
OT: Mooch fired.
I have to say all this turmoil in the administration does not inspire confidence.
snorlaxwp
July 31, 2017 at 2:53 PM
I wrote about this show last week. Done right, this might have been an interesting show, but agree that HBO is not going to brave the SJW twitterstorm to put this show on the air. After the Sansa rape scene backlash from last season’s GoT, they vowed no more rapes. The castrations and decapitations will continue I assume.
Why this show is a bridge to far but The Man in the High Castle, a show about an alternate America in which the Nazi’s won WW II is OK; I don’t have a clue. I mean that show is about literally Hitler…LITERALLY!
Mike Street Station
July 31, 2017 at 3:06 PM
“Why this show is a bridge to far but The Man in the High Castle, a show about an alternate America in which the Nazi’s won WW II is OK; I don’t have a clue.”
Three words: Before Trump Won.
IHTG
August 2, 2017 at 5:19 AM
I like alternate history fiction. But it has to make sense. It has to be something that could have happened. No way in hell could the South have kept slavery and increased their standard of living beyond 1865 levels. No slave South could have built Walmart, Coca-Cola, or CNN.
Njguy73
July 31, 2017 at 3:07 PM
What are you taking about, the movie Starship Troopers was amazing
sterling
July 31, 2017 at 3:16 PM
Amazon managed to create The Man in the High Castle. And it somewhat subversively cast a charismatic actor (the underrated Rufus Sewell) as the main American Nazi, and had his family living a Leave It to Beaver lifestyle, with a beautiful, loving, well-behaved family. The (presumably unintended) message was that Nazi America would be a perfectly fine and happy place for those who just go with the program (i.e., most people).
Still, I thought that show was boring. All of these “prestige” TV shows are tough to sit through now. I’m sure the show has now abrogated that previous message, and Sewell was probably set up to turn against the Nazis, or he has been shown to be more evil and his family life just a thin facade, etc. etc.
If you want to watch a good, thought-provoking, subversive show, go with Rick and Morty. Best show on TV. Still fundamentally feminist, but also willing to poke at feminism a few times. Highly nihilistic, but that’s kind of the point.
Wency
July 31, 2017 at 3:24 PM
How is it subversive to make a Nazi charismatic? This is just so alt right stupid.
Charismatic doesn’t mean good. The Devil is a very charismatic character.
gothamette
July 31, 2017 at 7:04 PM
Charismatic understates it, then. Others used the word “relatable” — maybe that’s a better word. Point to another film or TV show with a Nazi treated nearly as sympathetically. The Hollywood norm is to say once you put on that Nazi uniform, you’re more monster than man.
Col. Landa in Inglourious Basterds is charismatic, in a sense, but he’s quickly shown to be a very dark character nonetheless. With Sewell, you didn’t have that darkness, at least not as far into the series as I watched.
Meanwhile, treating the Devil with sympathy hasn’t been subversive since 1968.
Wency
August 1, 2017 at 7:56 AM
” Point to another film or TV show with a Nazi treated nearly as sympathetically.”
Why should Nazi’s be treated sympathetically?
” The Hollywood norm is to say once you put on that Nazi uniform, you’re more monster than man.”
You’re wrong (see “The Young Lions”) but it’s true. Once you put on that uniform, you WERE more monster than man.
I bet a lot of people in the alt-right would foam at the mouth at what Sherman’s troops did. But when it comes to Nazis, they love it.
gothamette
August 1, 2017 at 3:39 PM
“Why should Nazi’s be treated sympathetically?”
Not every “nazi” was working at auschwitz. Most didn’t even know about it. Most were probably just patriotic like people from any other country. A few years ago, I got into a disagreement with someone who said that German women women and children who were raped and murdered by the soviets “deserved” it. Well, I think that person was an evil son of a bitch. What do you think?
”Once you put on that uniform, you WERE more monster than man.”
I think the 200,000 Chinese civilians that John Rabe saved from being massacred by the Empire of Japan would disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe
destructure
August 1, 2017 at 6:56 PM
I don’t believe in holding enlisted men responsible for the sins of their nation’s leaders.
Lion of the Blogosphere
August 1, 2017 at 7:42 PM
” A few years ago, I got into a disagreement with someone who said that German women women and children who were raped and murdered by the soviets “deserved” it. Well, I think that person was an evil son of a bitch. What do you think? ”
What do you think about gassing millions of men, women and children because of their ethnicity?
gothamette
August 15, 2017 at 5:36 PM
I would have thought I would enjoy a show like The Man in the High Castle, but I watched the pilot during Amazon pilot season and found it boring so I’ve never been back.
Mike Street Station
July 31, 2017 at 10:12 PM
The Man in the High Castle featured the most unlikable and annoying main character ever seen in a series.
Lion of the Blogosphere
July 31, 2017 at 10:58 PM
Same experience as Mike.
steve@steve.com
August 1, 2017 at 12:04 AM
I third that emotion.
gothamette
August 1, 2017 at 3:40 PM
I streamed the first episode when it first came out and was bored to tears. A year later, I was looking for something weirdly scifi and watched it out of desperation. It gets much better after the first few episodes and I enjoyed it. Phillp K Dick is awesome.
destructure
August 1, 2017 at 5:12 PM
Why would slavery have continued if the Civil War didn’t happen? It was abolished everywhere, usually without any civil wars.
Maz
July 31, 2017 at 3:27 PM
It wouldn’t have.
Curle
August 1, 2017 at 1:02 AM
The Europeans abolished it in their colonies because the slaveholders were generally few in number, politically weak, and far away.
How much longer could slavery have lasted if the South fought a successful, bloody war to defend it, in a national economy dominated by it, where most politicians owned slaves themselves? Much longer than it did in our world. Though my guess is not too long after the mechanization of agriculture, especially the development of the cotton picker, in the mid-20th century.
Why did the U.S. fend off the Left’s former hobby-horse, Communism, so easily, yet so quickly adopt feminism, gay marriage, trans bathrooms, etc.? Because Capital (i.e., the corporate class) opposed Communism (i.e., its destruction) yet it’s fine with those other things. As long as Capital supported slavery (and in fact, slavery WAS Capital), then slavery would stick around. Once it decided that slavery was holding it back, then slavery would be on its way out.
Wency
August 1, 2017 at 8:45 AM
The internet SJW mob led by Black Twitter has essentially vetoed this show.
Otis the Sweaty
July 31, 2017 at 3:31 PM
Normally, I would agree, but look at what they did with The Man in The High Castle. It’s an alternate history show in which the Nazis won WWII and rule the world (along with Japan as a weaker junior partner). The American Nazi, Obergruppenfuhrer Smith is the most interesting and relatable character on the show. The show has been critically acclaimed despite the fact that it makes the Nazis look good (in some ways). Of course, they also make the Nazis look evil in other ways, but they could do the same with the Confederacy.
Jimbonobo
July 31, 2017 at 3:34 PM
Nazis didn’t have black slaves, so they aren’t as bad as white Southerners.
peterike
July 31, 2017 at 5:44 PM
And there was a critically acclaimed faux documentary about an alternate history where the south won the civil war.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/csa_the_confederate_states_of_america/
Magnavox
July 31, 2017 at 7:44 PM
‘premium’ t.v is overrated.
james n.s.w
July 31, 2017 at 3:41 PM
Starship Troopers was a phenomenal film. Once you get over the fact Verhoeven made no attempt to stay true to the source material (and didn’t even bother reading it) what you are left with is one of the most adult and serious depictions of fascism ever produced. And please don’t doubt Hollywood’s willingness to portray whites as “Star Wars” type villains. The upcoming film “Detroit” does exactly that and this is a film directed by an Academy Award winner and allegedly based on a true story, not historical fiction.
Ironically, it looks like the virulently anti-White Confederate project is going to be scuttled by the Blacks. This is what happens when you build a political movement around an increasingly low-IQ base. The Liberal Elites can’t openly explain in simple language why their TV series is fantastic anti-White propaganda and their base is too stupid to comprehend their opaque efforts to do so.
PerezHBD
July 31, 2017 at 4:09 PM
Maybe clever and educated blacks don’t want to be used as pawns in liberal whites’ self-important, self-aggrandizing, crusade against other whites. Liberal whites treat blacks like they are children–“oh, we’ll protect you from the mean old racists, and tell your story and get rich doing it.” It must be galling for many blacks to be patronized like this.
Gozo
July 31, 2017 at 5:20 PM
“This is what happens when you build a political movement around an increasingly low-IQ base. The Liberal Elites can’t openly explain in simple language why their TV series is fantastic anti-White propaganda and their base is too stupid to comprehend their opaque efforts to do so.”
Ha! Tremendous observation.
Two in the Bush
July 31, 2017 at 7:50 PM
1. I think this show might have been a bit of trolling on HBO’s part. I can’t imagine a liberal network and liberal show runners like Beniof and Weiss seriously thinking they could make a show like this and get away with it. Maybe it was done to drum up more publicity for GOT.
2. Starship Troopers was a good movie.
Jean Ralphio
July 31, 2017 at 4:27 PM
The Confederacy itself just isn’t very interesting and entertaining material for a TV show. It was a rural society based on slaves doing farm work. Farm work is boring. There’s no way to depict farm work as interesting fodder for a TV series. And then there was the small class of wealthy planters who basically didn’t do much but socialize at balls and gossip. That’s also very boring and only interesting to women as soap opera material.
Tom
July 31, 2017 at 4:42 PM
Gone With the Wind? Though that was mostly about the end of the South rather than the South per se.
Admittedly, Tarantino, with the huge help of a virtuoso performance by DiCaprio, managed a depiction of the South that you couldn’t take your eyes off of in that evil film Djiango Unchanged. To be fair, he wasn’t actually depicting the South but the modern progressive’s worst lies about the South which is what I’d have thought something like Confederate would be. I think commenter PerezHBD is right and the scrapping of this by the progressive left’s black base is an own goal.
Andrew E.
July 31, 2017 at 6:17 PM
Heh heh heh have you ever read Mandingo? Kyle Onstott made something like 15 “interesting and entertaining” novels about slaves on the plantation. Highly suitable for a TV series!
Tarl
July 31, 2017 at 6:51 PM
Tarl’s post brought to mind an ancient Saturday Night Live parody of Mandingo called “Mandingo II.” It starred OJ Simpson! They even had OJ kissing a guy. Pretty wild for 1978.
steve@steve.com
August 1, 2017 at 12:14 AM
The show probably isn’t happening, and I’m glad. There’s no way HBO would produce a show like this without trying to make SJW talking point after SJW talking point. Like our beloved Otis says, black twitter is all over this and they’re going to help kill it. Black twitter calls Trump “45” and everything I’ve seen there is all, “a show about slavery in modern day America WHILE 45 IS PRESIDENT?!?!”
Most blacks genuinely don’t realize that PoC are worshiped and fetishized by journalists and the media. They view this show as an example of the evil racist white people who control the world rising up now that one of their own is president.
Horace Pinker
July 31, 2017 at 7:00 PM
Here’s an article by a black SJW in Teen Vogue (notable for its recent advocacy of butthex) I saw reposted by some SJW acquaintance on social media, which seems fairly representative of SJW thought on this show. Its arguments basically amount to the following:
1. It’s cultural appropriation. White people “don’t get to” (a phrase SJWs are fond of) comment on slavery.
2. The reason The Man in the High Castle is acceptable, while Confederate isn’t, is that Germany has truly and earnestly repented of Nazism, in ways including, but not limited to, offering financial compensation to victims of Nazis. In contrast, America has never truly repented of slavery, as evidenced by:
a) America has never given blacks reparations,
b) America’s imprisonment of large numbers of blacks is tantamount to a modern-day continuation of slavery (a notion in vogue among SJWs ever since another black SJW made a documentary called “13th” which makes this argument,) and
c) America is racist, racist, racist, blah blah blah.
Hermes
July 31, 2017 at 8:15 PM
Confederate is a horrible idea, primarily because it maintains the fiction that the war was fought over slavery.
Curle
August 1, 2017 at 1:06 AM
The blog “A Historian Goes to the Movies” picked this up awhile ago:
https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/
I’m posting the link because I think AHgttM should get more readers. But I’ll admit I don’t get the point of the series. Commentator “Tom” above just nailed it.
Ed
August 1, 2017 at 4:53 AM
Any different articles by this blogger you’d recommend? The piece on Confederate was very SJW with lots of virtue signaling, so I’m not sure why you picked that for a sampler on a BadThought blog like this one.
Richard
August 1, 2017 at 12:27 PM
Like Richard has hinted before me, this Historian is a essentially a verbose SJW, even using words like “problematic” unironicaly.
johnBeck
August 1, 2017 at 8:22 PM
Hang on, how do you morally justify slavery? Even the most extreme alt right 1488 edgelords on youtube dont support slavery.
DataExplorer
August 1, 2017 at 7:53 AM
If the producers (or our society) can’t think of answers to that, then they shouldn’t make the show.
In an alternate reality where slavery did exist in 2017, it would be because it financially benefited an important segment of society and/or it served what was perceived to be a valuable social function, and under those conditions some would surely argue it was a moral institution. The original Confederates didn’t think of themselves as wicked.
Richard
August 1, 2017 at 10:14 AM
Just wanted to point out that this contradicts the mainstream narrative of today, which is that the reason for slavery was that whites hated blacks and wanted to oppress them for the sake of oppressing them.
Hermes
August 1, 2017 at 11:26 AM
If the South had won the Civil War, the North would still have ended up an industrialized super power, but I wonder if the balance of power would have shifted somewhat? They would have less land to expand into, possibly attracting less immigrants, who might choose the South, or Argentina, Australia, etc. The USA might not have been able to win the Second World War. The whole history up to this point might have been very different.
DataExplorer
August 1, 2017 at 8:08 AM
Turtledove has a Southern Victory series that investigates a CSA win. Slavery ends early on, but is replaced with someone in between slavery and Jim Crow (closer to slavery than Crow). In any event, the oppression in the CSA is never really justified (though otherwise decent characters do support it). Over time, especially between WW1 and WW2, it becomes unambiguously clear that the CSA is an evil state and the (flawed) USA is the only chance of quashing it.
I don’t think even-handedness is really required.
The easiest thing to do, probably, is to make the CSA like the Republic of Gilead in Handmaiden’s Tale. Not good, not neutral, but villainously evil and the story is the courageous slaves rising up or subverting the system. I doubt I would be interested in watching that show, but it wouldn’t be Starship Troopers.
trumwill
August 1, 2017 at 11:03 AM
The premise seems unlikely. Without the Civil War, most likely slavery would have ended through gradual and/or compensated emancipation. Jim Crow or something similar would probably still have occurred.
It’s like how The Man in High Castle assumes that had Hitler won in Europe, America would be under Nazi rule.
Dubious
August 1, 2017 at 12:59 PM
in the man in high castle the nazis develop atomic bombs and nuke washington dc. a nazi victory is plausible if you assume nazis have nukes
Wencil
August 1, 2017 at 6:01 PM
The question isn’t ‘what if the South had won?’ but instead ‘what if the southern strategy had produced a negotiated settlement; higher tariffs in exchange for colonization paid for, in part, by that North. What the South had been pushing for the entire 30 years preceding the war. At the end of the day, the North was just too damn greedy and composed of too many hysterical Puritan moralists. Edgar Lee Masters is the only historian to really understand the war (with the possible exception of Mencius).
Curle
August 2, 2017 at 2:37 AM
Lion. As everyone in the HBD blog o sphere knows, Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ of any ethnic group. A great TV show would have a Philo Semetic leader coming to power in Germany in the 1930s with Jewish scientists given honors and placed in positions of power. Such a Germany would attract many of the smartest Jews in the world, Develop Atomic bombs and other super weapons and come to dominate the world. Wouldn’t a Germany jointly run by Jews and Christians, dominating the world make for a great TV show?
Wencil
August 1, 2017 at 6:04 PM
That already happened…
It’s called the Weimar Republic. 😉
map
August 1, 2017 at 10:37 PM
Well, this didn’t take long. Here’s the total flip-side storyline, coming soon!
http://deadline.com/2017/08/black-america-amazon-alt-history-drama-will-packer-aaron-mcgruder-envisions-post-reparations-america-1202139504/
peterike
August 1, 2017 at 6:09 PM
Now this show has the potential to be hilarious. Reparations are given as several former slave states and they former their own black separatist country. From the article, “…an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. ”
So it would be Hidden Figures on steroids. The Black nation is a rising superpower and the old white USA is declining. I really would love to see this.
Mike Street Station
August 1, 2017 at 10:00 PM
Well, the Pharaohs were black. Oops, no they weren’t.
Curle
August 2, 2017 at 2:40 AM
I’m sure any movies made in “New Colonia” will have the pharaoh’s as black. The 10 Commandments, with Sidney Poitier as the Pharaoh.
Mike Street Station
August 2, 2017 at 7:47 AM