C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

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C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
Directed by Kevin Willmott
Produced by Rick Cowan
Ollie Hall
Sean Blake
Victoria Goetz
Benjamin Meade
Andrew Herwitz
Marvin Voth
Written by Kevin Willmott
Starring Rupert Pate
Evamarii Johnson
Larry Peterson
Running time 89 minutes
Language English
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is a 2004 mockumentary directed by Kevin Willmott. It is a fictional account of an alternate history in which the Confederates won the American Civil War. This viewpoint is used to satirize subsequent issues and events in American culture.

The movie is presented as if it were a British documentary. A note suggests that censorship came close to preventing its first broadcast in the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.), and that its point of view might not coincide with that of the TV network. C.S.A was released on DVD on August 8, 2006.


Contents

[edit] Plot

C.S.A. is a British documentary about American history (disagreeing with the Confederate American interpretation of North American history) featuring two historians, Sherman Hoyle, a conservative white man, and Patricia Johnson, a black-skinned Canadian. Throughout the documentary, an American politician and Democratic presidential candidate, John Fauntroy V (great-grandson of one of the men who made possible the C.S.A.), is interviewed. Narration explains historical newsreel footage: a D.W. Griffith movie showing U.S.A. President Abraham Lincoln (disguised in blackface) being helped escape to Canada by Harriet Tubman, when Confederate soldiers capture them after the C.S.A.'s military defeat of the U.S.A.; Tubman is put to death and Lincoln imprisoned. After two years, Lincoln is pardoned and exiled to Canada, where he dies in June of 1905. Before dying, Lincoln laments not having made the civil war a battle to end slavery.

In the Confederate timeline, politician Judah P. Benjamin succeeds in having the U.K. and France aid the Confederacy, thereby, the Battle of Gettysburg favours the South. After the war, the C.S.A. becomes the Western hemisphere's superpower — conquering and occupying all of the continental U.S., Central America, and South America, with a blend of segregation and apartheid. Only Canada is not a C.S.A. nation, becoming home to refugee abolitionists and escaped black slaves; the American wall constructed to separate the two countries is called the "Cotton Curtain". Hatred of "Red Canada" dates to the late 19th Century, when Frederick Douglass convinced the Canadian Parliament against repatriating slaves. This enlightened thinking led to the obvious trade impediment: the Cotton Curtain. Canada reaps the greater reward of becoming the popular culture capital (the African cultural contributions profitably feeding Canadian culture), whereas the C.S.A.'s culture never evolves beyond government-inspired propaganda such as The Lawrence Welk Show.

In the 1880s, the Confederate government, which did not separate the Church from the State, outlawed all non-Christian religions. After much debate, the Roman Catholic Church was permitted as a Christian religion, and, originally, Judaism, too, was outlawed, but, after grasping the contributions of the Jewish Judah P. Benjamin to the Confederate cause, the government decided to house American Jews in a ghetto in Long Island — instead of executing or deporting them.

During World War II, the C.S.A. were allied with Nazi Germany — but disagreed with Hitler's Final Solution; the C.S.A preferred enslaving non-white races, instead of destroying them, but agreed not to act in any German war. Instead, the C.S.A. pre-emptively attacked the Empire of Japan on 7 December 1941 as the opening blow in a defensive war against the Yellow Peril. The C.S.A. military commission a black regiment to fight that race war, which is ended by the atomic bomb — "the Grace of God", say historian Hoyle. Moreover, the European World War II ends in German defeat, but with many more Russian dead; the Vietnam War is briefly mentioned as an "expansionist campaign" of the C.S.A.

During the 1950s, a series of abolitionist attacks cause some Confederate Americans to question the need for slavery. In 1960, Roman Catholic Republican John F. Kennedy is elected C.S.A. president when only 29 per cent of voters approve of slavery, however, foreign policy distracts him, and he is unable to change the nation before being assassinated. Slaves rebel throughout the country. Democratic Senator John Ambrose Fauntroy V presents programs returning America to its former Southern Protestant Biblical values — tolerance of cheating and wife-beating husbands, intolerance of homosexuals; by the early 1990s, the Confederacy has put away self-doubt.

The documentary's finale reveals why the C.S.A. Government forbade its broadcast in the C.S.A. The documentarists had asked (Democratic presidential candidate) Senator John Ambrose Fauntroy V to arrange their meeting some slaves. As the slaves were coached for the interview, proceeding was pointless, however, the crew had clandestinely received a note instructing them to go to a rural Virginia road and meet the black man "Big Sam" (earlier identified as a slave fugitive for two years) who, in turn, leads them to Horace, Sen. Fauntroy's slave, who reveals to them that Fauntroy is part Black, for having a slave ancestor. The racial revelations cost Sen. Fauntroy the presidential election; a month later, the senator kills himself.

Racist advertisements aimed at white slaver families appear throughout the movie, including an electronic shackle for tracking runaway slaves; the Runaway television program ; Darkie Toothpaste; and the Coon Chicken Inn, and deleted commercials: the Confederate States Air Force advert; and the children's show Uncle Tom and Friends. The advertisements either parody real product ads or reflect historical products. At film's end, there is an explanation of which parts of the C.S.A. timeline are historically based, as well as which advertised products actually existed.

[edit] Cast and crew

[edit] Main cast

  • Sherman Hoyle: Rupert Pate
  • Patricia Johnson: Evamarii Johnson
  • John Fauntroy V: Larry Peterson
  • Narrator: Charles Frank

[edit] Crew

  • Director: Kevin Willmott
  • Writer: Kevin Willmott
  • Producers: Rick Cowan, Ollie Hall, Sean Blake, Victoria Goetz, Benjamin Meade, Andrew Herwitz and Marvin Voth. (The film, after the initial public release, became a Spike Lee production.)
  • Editors: Sean Blake and David Gramly

[edit] See also

[edit] External links