A rather unsettling mockumentary has come my way. Titled CSA The Confederate States of America it offers an alternate history in which the South won the civil war. Ironically the weakest part of this comedy are it’s attempts to be funny. The commercial breaks for products named Sambo and Darkie come off as mostly just lame and in bad taste despite the advantage of a situation that invites broad humor. The Dave Chapelle Show would rolling over in it’s grave if the rest of CSA weren't so profound.
The “doc” itself concentrates on how the South handles reconciliation with the North and eventually gets everybody in the US to embrace slavery. The move from that into a foreign policy not unlike that of the current administration is far too thought provoking to dismiss with the title mockumentary. This is satire of a dark variety alright plumbing the depths of prejudice as it goes beyond the color barrier into the human heart. You do get some extras with it but they aren’t really the point.
What hits closer to home is Lincoln's attempted post-war escape where he's discovered in blackface underscoring his own relatively ambiguous feelings about slavery itself. His real concern was the stability of the union and that theme is underscored all the way through the 150 post war years the mockdoc covers. Certainly slavery was everybody's problem North and South but as todays version of injustice dressed as patriotism ignores the suffering of innocents in favor of the war on terror and trickle down economics the mock history posed in CSA starts to make an embarrassing amount of sense. Humans really do adopt these kinds of policies in governing their own. What's next? Maybe the Simpsons space aliens Kang and Kodos should do a doc about how we blew ourselves up over money power and ideology.
As one who comes from a pretty specific ideology/worldview (that of Christianity) I’m no stranger to how the human race sic’s dogma’s on one another and how paternalism poses as love. CSA’s chillingly cold look at what could have been reminds me an awful lot of what is and what may well be.
