What if the South had won?
By Jon Niccum
February 21, 2003
"This film is bigger than the genre of faux documentary," he says. "It's how we found our way into this story. If I had to create a whole new universe of the Confederacy today, it would have been very difficult. But picking and choosing what I show through a documentary gives me that ability."
Lawrence-based director Kevin Willmott, right, and cinematographer Matt Jacobson, both assistant professors in theatre and film at KU, have completed "C.S.A. -- The Confederate States of America." The movie is a mock documentary of what might have happened to America if the South had won the Civil War.
Persuading the community
Willmott, a Kansas University assistant professor in theatre and film, wrote the first draft of "C.S.A." in 1997 while still working on his previous picture "Ninth Street," a drama that starred Isaac Hayes and Martin Sheen. Armed with that early version of the script, he received a $10,000 grant from the National Black Program Consortium.
"That made it real for me," he says of the PBS-affiliated grant. "I was like, 'I've got to do it now; they gave me some money.'"
"Believe it or not, they probably don't want to think that the Confederacy had slaves," he replies. "There are a lot of people right now who want to hold onto their Confederate heritage, but that heritage is somehow divorced from slavery. The movie puts slavery as the centerpiece. Finally we're going to discuss the Civil War as if slavery mattered. So those people are going to probably feel a little uncomfortable."
Adds Jacobson, "Nobody talks about why society is the way it got today. When people walk out of this movie -- hopefully after the film is over, not halfway through -- I hope that they're going to start talking about an issue that we've raised."
"C.S.A." deals with these issues through its shrewd manipulation of the truth. In real-life history, Confederate president Jefferson Davis purportedly tried to avoid capture by fleeing south dressed as a woman. In Willmott's vision, Union leader Abraham Lincoln is captured en route to Canada disguised in blackface.
Other memorable moments include a look at a Home Shopping Network-type program that specializes in marketing slaves. It's hosted by two chipper white women trying to peddle a black couple and their cute "litter of pickaninnies." And there's a painfully funny commercial for The Shackle -- a device similar to the vehicular LoJack but used for tracking slaves. ("Made of a lightweight aluminum alloy so it won't weigh your Tom down. Perfect for children!")
"In many ways I realized the South DID win the Civil War," Willmott explains.
"They lost on the battlefield, but they won the fight for ideology. The best example is Lawrence -- a town founded on abolition -- but then they start segregating. It's not the MISSISSIPPI Board of Education case, it's the TOPEKA Board of Education case. So the free state becomes a semi-slave state. How the heck did that happen?"
COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2003/feb/21/what_if_the/
