Feb 15, 2006
A Historical Path Less Traveled, and the Differences Made
Satire via sledgehammer, Kevin Willmott's fake documentary about an alternative American history, "CSA: The Confederate States of America," opens with a quotation attributed to George Bernard Shaw. "If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you." Another version of that same quotation opens Wesley Brown's novel "Darktown Strutters," an exploration of minstrelsy and identity hinged to a 19th-century Kentucky slave named Jim Crow who becomes a dancer in an all-white show. Mr. Brown ends the Shaw quotation with the admonition "make them laugh"; for his part, Mr. Willmott keeps the threat intact, which warns of a far heavier hand at work.
Taking the form of a British documentary, produced by the familiar-sounding British Broadcasting Service and narrated by one of those insufferable know-it-all twittering voices, the film purports to tell the history of the Confederate States of America, starting around the period of Ulysses S. Grant's famous face-to-face with Robert E. Lee. This time, though, it's Grant who surrenders to Lee, allowing the South to rise permanently again and create a parallel America that at times deviates wildly from the historical record and, at other times, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the world we know. As the Confederate flag waves, Lincoln dies of old age and D. W. Griffith makes a movie ("The Hunt for Dishonest Abe") about the disgraced president's escape attempt by Underground Railroad and the good graces of a doomed Harriet Tubman.
Taking the form of a British documentary, produced by the familiar-sounding British Broadcasting Service and narrated by one of those insufferable know-it-all twittering voices, the film purports to tell the history of the Confederate States of America, starting around the period of Ulysses S. Grant's famous face-to-face with Robert E. Lee. This time, though, it's Grant who surrenders to Lee, allowing the South to rise permanently again and create a parallel America that at times deviates wildly from the historical record and, at other times, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the world we know. As the Confederate flag waves, Lincoln dies of old age and D. W. Griffith makes a movie ("The Hunt for Dishonest Abe") about the disgraced president's escape attempt by Underground Railroad and the good graces of a doomed Harriet Tubman.