C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America is an amazing film. Trying to describe it gets a little complicated, however. The movie plays out as if the viewer exists in an alternate version of the present with the catalyst that skewed events in an alternate direction being the South winning the Civil War.
In this world, Americans still own slaves. The film opens as if the viewer is watching a San Francisco Confederate TV station that is about to broadcast a controversial British-made documentary about the Confederate States of America. Periodically throughout the film there are “commercial interruptions” as if it were an actual TV broadcast, and these fake ads run in tonal contrast to the “foreign” documentary.
The fake documentary gives viewers an “outside looking in” perspective while the commercials are geared to appeal to the modern Confederate viewership. Combined, they give the audience a sense of how the world might have been had the South triumphed over the North, forever changing not only the history of the no-longer United States of America but also countries all around the globe. The similarities between this alternate history and our own are what make C.S.A. an eerily disquieting and enjoyable piece of charged entertainment.
C.S.A. succeeds on many levels. On one level it successfully creates a largely believable mockumentary, implementing real archival photos and footage with a different narrative spin and adding in new footage and pictures made (for the most part) to look as though they fit into history as well. One can still tell the actual from the manufactured photos and footage, but they’re believable enough not to distract too much from the storyline presented. Only the “1940s” RKO film footage stood out to me as looking a little too polished and modern in its presentation.
The film opens with a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “If you’re going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they’ll kill you.” C.S.A. succeeds again in managing to get its unsettling point very clearly across in a manner which is very entertaining and, at times, very funny in an uncomfortable sort of way. There are a lot of “is it okay to be laughing at this?” moments in the film. Imagine taking some of the racial types of jokes seen on In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show and ratcheting them up another few notches.
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Article comments
1 - foster
God bless the confederacy. the south. and robert e lee.the south didnt secceed because of slavery.it was to get as far from the yankees as possible. and states rights. its all yankee propuganda.this slavery thing.slavery was legal for all the time the u.s. was in existence. and they had slaves .while the yankee lincoln freed only the southern slaves so they would run away and join the fight against us, lincoln was going to send all negroes to south america after the war but he was shot.
2 - garrett
I’m totally ashamed of this country. All the mockumentary and distorted lying views from Hollywood, but what else you can expect, look who is there liberal moronic lift wing morals idiots. Some day GOD almighty will make the tyrannical north pay for the lies, the distortions in history and last but not least the letting of innocent southern blood, for the cause of a tyrannical Lincoln and a shameful union.
3 - Roger B
Garrett, foster: You guys are crazy. Get some professional help before you start shooting people in a shopping mall.