Speaker 1: You are listening and waiting on reparations production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Yeah, it's waiting on reparations. It's obviously fresh
Speaker 1: the podcast where hippop and politics connect and acknowledge is
Speaker 1: the quest. Any scholarship you get, how could you forget?
Speaker 1: This level? Is acknowledge? You the best? Getting the mix
Speaker 1: stopped with all the relevant ship right wing is really
Speaker 1: thinking this a session? Is it? Body? Y'allma win? In
Speaker 1: real life? They never been hit. Dope Knife been six,
Speaker 1: has never been kissed. It's hip hop. But I'm like,
Speaker 1: how metal is this? But if you want to play
Speaker 1: the dozens, we can settle it quick. I get every
Speaker 1: rebound like whenever I missed the Dope Ama laugh plus
Speaker 1: yellow and Chips. Nick Yo name is Dope Knife And
Speaker 1: we are waiting on reparations. But you know, if slavery
Speaker 1: never ended, maybe you know we have nothing to wait for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all good. We're still you know. That's a groom
Speaker 1: way to open up the ship, isn't it? Well? You know,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? I'm good. I'm doing all right.
Speaker 1: It's rainy. It's rainy day here at the Georgia, But
Speaker 1: I can't really complain too much. How you do. I'm good.
Speaker 1: It's been thunderstorming off and on in Savannah for like
Speaker 1: the last week, so same sort of thing, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I don't feel like leaving the house.
Speaker 1: Climate change some day, drying up this field, the pain,
Speaker 1: you know what's crazy as the rain is going but
Speaker 1: it's still hot as ship. I know. I was like yo,
Speaker 1: in the South, it'd be raining and then some come
Speaker 1: out afterwards to just steam us like a bag of crabs.
Speaker 1: Every time I was walking into the store the other day,
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell if it was rain or like sweat
Speaker 1: pouring down on me. It's just the yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just gotta go with the flow. So so today
Speaker 1: we're doing something a little different. Um, we're doing a
Speaker 1: movie review of a two thousand four film by the
Speaker 1: name of C s A The Confederate States of America.
Speaker 1: This is a movie that I saw back in college
Speaker 1: years ago, and I don't know, it's circulated throughout the
Speaker 1: crew and everybody. You know. It really was a subject
Speaker 1: of discussion amongst my you know, inner circle of friends
Speaker 1: and all of the people who saw it, and it's
Speaker 1: something that just as years went on, I never really
Speaker 1: understood why it wasn't not necessarily more popular, but just
Speaker 1: more known about considering that it was made in the
Speaker 1: era of the Chapelle Show, you know, and things like that,
Speaker 1: and you can definitely see in its humor that it
Speaker 1: is it isn't that I wonder why it never caught on.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's definitely has more of a serious
Speaker 1: tone than Chappell's show. But anyway, I know that we're
Speaker 1: we're talking about it and we're being kind of a
Speaker 1: but that's because we want to kind of go in
Speaker 1: depth and in it on this so we are going
Speaker 1: to explain to you the premise, the plot and everything,
Speaker 1: but just to give you a little synopsis of what's coming.
Speaker 1: This film is a mockumentary about retelling of American history
Speaker 1: if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Oh and
Speaker 1: it's available. It's available on YouTube and various other streaming platforms, so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, check it out. We do get a little
Speaker 1: spoilery in our discussion, but I don't think it ruins
Speaker 1: the film because like it's worth it for the way
Speaker 1: the humorous instantiated. Like, well, we're talking through some of
Speaker 1: the plot points, but it's still very much worth it
Speaker 1: for the chapels. Yeah, and the way that I mean,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you that what we're the things that we
Speaker 1: do go in depth on. It's not even scratching the
Speaker 1: surface of how much there is in the movie, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean to sink your teeth into. So
Speaker 1: we're just it's something that i'd I'd been wanting to
Speaker 1: get Maria to check out for years just because you know,
Speaker 1: you hadn't heard of it. It was again, it was like, damn, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this would definitely be something that you would
Speaker 1: find interesting, you know. So we're gonna talk about that
Speaker 1: and more after Oh no, no, no, I forgot Um yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean the uh, I guess the inception point for
Speaker 1: this whole thing was based off of a pole that
Speaker 1: I recently heard about. It was a new you gov
Speaker 1: poll that revealed that sixty six percent of Southern Republicans
Speaker 1: support secession. According to the results, a fair share of Democrats,
Speaker 1: independence and Republicans in different regions can't imagine leaving the
Speaker 1: US to join a smaller union. Um, and I think
Speaker 1: of it. It's potentially a positive thing. Um. But an
Speaker 1: only one region, the South, did a majority of one
Speaker 1: group come out and strongly in favor. I was six
Speaker 1: of Southern Republicans approving of the idea of a secession
Speaker 1: of Southern Chane. The thing is, I can remember, you know,
Speaker 1: we all thought it was when when I saw this
Speaker 1: movie with my friends back in the day, we all
Speaker 1: thought it was funny. We all thought it was pointed
Speaker 1: and sharp and and made a lot good points and
Speaker 1: with a good commentary and all that stuff. But there
Speaker 1: was still definitely a there was a fantastical element about it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There was there was definitely
Speaker 1: a like, damn, that would be crazy if that happened.
Speaker 1: And now, almost twenty years later, thinking about it, it's like, damn,
Speaker 1: this feels like it feels like we could get there.
Speaker 1: Not not likely, but it just feels like a lot
Speaker 1: more probable of a thing in the movie. It makes
Speaker 1: the movie seem a lot more grip to me when
Speaker 1: I watched, like watching it now for this for this review,
Speaker 1: it's like on a point, you do hear a lot
Speaker 1: of libs, Like on the internet you see those maps
Speaker 1: of like okay, if you had to pick four states
Speaker 1: to seceed with four contiguous states, you know what states
Speaker 1: would you pick? Or like, oh, let's break off the
Speaker 1: South from the rest of from the coasts or whatever
Speaker 1: and like join with Canada like this dream of like
Speaker 1: let's just like get away from racism. Let's just like
Speaker 1: essentially most black people to exactly the Republican overlords in
Speaker 1: the Red States where we you know, generationally, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a yeah, it's not a good thing. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a good thing. And it's it's something you
Speaker 1: hear both sides entertained as like a Nana Nanni boo boo.
Speaker 1: Like even if it wasn't that, like, even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't on that like lib fear raging ship, it would
Speaker 1: still be like a fucked up sentiment because like you said,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, I guess everybody who lives there,
Speaker 1: we can just abandon them and it's all good, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I know that's not what we
Speaker 1: meant black people can come to. It's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we were the afterthought in your dream of
Speaker 1: just leaving behind your problems rather than confronting and addressing them,
Speaker 1: which is just like liberal wed dream. But anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna get into this. Flix c s A
Speaker 1: and more after the jump. All right, we are back,
Speaker 1: so c s A the Confederate States of America. It's
Speaker 1: a two thousand four movie that's mockumentary that was directed
Speaker 1: by Kevin Wilmot, who's the writer and director and is
Speaker 1: long focused on black issues in his works. He's collaborated
Speaker 1: with Spike Lee often, and they share an OSCAR for
Speaker 1: Best Original Screenplay for the twenty nineteen movie Black Klansmen.
Speaker 1: Spike Lee is also a producer on this flick. Have
Speaker 1: you seen Black? I have not, you know, if I
Speaker 1: had tried and I fell asleep or something. I'm tripping
Speaker 1: admittedly because like I don't think I've seen Spike Lee's
Speaker 1: last three joints. In general, I'm not a huge movie watcher.
Speaker 1: Um So I'll use that as my excuse. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you watch a lot of horror movies, or at least
Speaker 1: when usually when I do see you watching movies, you're
Speaker 1: watching like so this movie was perfect. Um So, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an alternate history, as we said that for
Speaker 1: the jump, and where in the Confederacy wins the Civil
Speaker 1: War and establishes a new Confederate States of America that
Speaker 1: incorporates the majority of the Western hemisphere, including the contiguous
Speaker 1: United States as well as the Golden Circle, UM, Caribbean
Speaker 1: and South America. And it details the history of you know,
Speaker 1: significant political and cultural events UM in these Confederate States
Speaker 1: in America from its founding up until the early two
Speaker 1: thousand's UM and the viewpoint is used to kind of
Speaker 1: satirize real life issues and events and shed light on
Speaker 1: the continuing existence of discrimination in American culture. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing that separates this from other mockumentaries is, I guess
Speaker 1: I would have to say, is the perspective that it's
Speaker 1: told in. So it's it's brought to you as if
Speaker 1: it's a British documentary. Like just imagine like a sort
Speaker 1: of BBC type of channel, and imagine that you're watching
Speaker 1: that and on this BBC channel, you're there's a documentary
Speaker 1: about the history of the United States, So like you're
Speaker 1: in England and you're watching some about American history over
Speaker 1: there that you know, BBC produced production. And in in
Speaker 1: between it, you know that that's kind of the perspective
Speaker 1: that is told in. So you're watching, you know, television
Speaker 1: in this world where the Confederacy has taken over so
Speaker 1: interrupting the program you're watching. You have these commercial breaks
Speaker 1: that we're gonna get into later on, but it's it's
Speaker 1: showing you what I guess advertising and marketing would be
Speaker 1: in a white supremacist slave culture. And then it has
Speaker 1: two talking heads that sort of provide a lot of
Speaker 1: the narration for the film. There's Sherman Hoyle, who, um,
Speaker 1: I guess it is is supposed to be a parody of
Speaker 1: this dude, Shelby Foote, who was sort of a historian
Speaker 1: that was a leader with the you know, um, the
Speaker 1: Lost Cause movement of like, oh, you know, the the
Speaker 1: heroism of those that fought for the Confederacy, and then
Speaker 1: now it wasn't all about slavery, that whole branch of
Speaker 1: of history, making um, the attempt to arrest control of
Speaker 1: the narrative away from the linus UM. And so these
Speaker 1: are conservative seven are given his take. And then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you've got a black Canadian professor, Patricia
Speaker 1: Johnson UM providing commentary throughout the film. UM. And then
Speaker 1: you've got this dude, John Ambroise spawn Troy, great grandson
Speaker 1: of one of them men that helped found the cis A.
Speaker 1: It's also interviewed and what's interesting is the narration UM
Speaker 1: explains the fake historical news real footage UM which is
Speaker 1: either acted acted out or made of genuine archival footage
Speaker 1: dubbed with fictional narration, which I found really entertaining. And
Speaker 1: one of the things one of the reviews that I
Speaker 1: read about this film is it was kind of like
Speaker 1: a critical review, but they were just saying this film
Speaker 1: suffered because the budget was very low. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: like they were making the point that it made it
Speaker 1: seem a lot maybe more hokey or more satirical than
Speaker 1: I actually think the budget in that sense that you
Speaker 1: just made up or that you just pointed out. I
Speaker 1: think the budget helped it out because some of those
Speaker 1: scenes where they have like archival footage next to their
Speaker 1: stuff that's like re enacted. Because the budget is low,
Speaker 1: the quality of the film makes it like blended. So
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, man, is that you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like for a second, you're like, is that really a
Speaker 1: video of Abraham Lincoln? Like you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like that really like an old video of Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 1: like talking, because it looks like actually Grady photo video
Speaker 1: next to like these old Civil War photos and stuff.
Speaker 1: Like that. I thought that I thought that helped it. It
Speaker 1: It made it look genuine. I think I think it
Speaker 1: holds up. I mean I think that thinking back to
Speaker 1: like the History Channel documentaries and ship that I saw
Speaker 1: him when I was a kid, maybe late you know,
Speaker 1: late nineties, etcetera, this is very I mean it's very similar,
Speaker 1: very similar, at least in the way it looks. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know, I don't think that um pretty
Speaker 1: good the critique stance, But you'll be the judge. I
Speaker 1: can check it out after you listened to this episode.
Speaker 1: Kevin Wilmot brgan production on the film with funding from
Speaker 1: the National Black Programming Consuscordia, or the NBPC, and he
Speaker 1: wrote the first draft. He had earlier written a screenplay
Speaker 1: about abolitionist John Brown, and he told interviewers he was
Speaker 1: inspired to write the story after seeing an episode of
Speaker 1: the ken Burns nineteen nineties documentary The Civil War. I've
Speaker 1: never seen that documentary view No, I have not. Actually
Speaker 1: I've seen the Vietnam one that ken Burns did. That's
Speaker 1: like a famous one. So let's get into some of
Speaker 1: the things that kind of stand out about this film
Speaker 1: to you, Like, what were your somebody what were your
Speaker 1: initial just first and foremost, since I finally got you
Speaker 1: to see it, what's your initial like thoughts about the movie? Well,
Speaker 1: and watching it, you know, I was aware that it
Speaker 1: was intended to satirize and sort of um speculate about
Speaker 1: what if with a lot of American history had the
Speaker 1: Confederacy one. But as I was watching it, I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: some of this kind of like did happen though, like
Speaker 1: in real life, like for real, for real um, particularly
Speaker 1: as I was thinking about like um um the so
Speaker 1: um in the film, they the Confederacy goes on to
Speaker 1: conquer not only the contiguos United States, but Cuba, South America.
Speaker 1: They build a wall between America and Canada, the Cotton Curtain, um,
Speaker 1: to to to separate the abolitionists and the runaway slaves
Speaker 1: from you know, those territory in which slavery is illegal.
Speaker 1: But thinking about like the conquests that they undertake of
Speaker 1: Latin America to sort of spread their capitalists ideology, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, like using humans as capital um. I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: that's sort of like real ship though, because if you
Speaker 1: you know, study the history of US Latin American relations, um,
Speaker 1: we've been involved in like regime change in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
Speaker 1: Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, pretty
Speaker 1: much every single country. Uh, then you can name if
Speaker 1: you throw a guard at a map, you hit a
Speaker 1: country where the CIA and you know, US backed forces
Speaker 1: have been involved in the destabilization of democratically elected governments, um.
Speaker 1: Such so that um, you know, we can continue to
Speaker 1: you know, exploit their resources, UM so that you know,
Speaker 1: socialism or other forms of organizing the economy don't take
Speaker 1: on and then get exported to other countries. When people
Speaker 1: are like that actually works out really well, they're like
Speaker 1: they come in, it's like, nope, we're gonna make sure
Speaker 1: that you're working classes are held as chattel. Um by
Speaker 1: coming in and there militarily or covertly through espionage another
Speaker 1: means like I think com neoliberalism. Yeah, it feels like
Speaker 1: that's the point of the movie kind of show that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like showing that just because the mask
Speaker 1: was on doesn't like differentiate the actions, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it's like it shows you how this
Speaker 1: how the Confederacy one and just continued on this like
Speaker 1: white supremacist sort of agenda. But it was just like
Speaker 1: open face because it's like, hey, we're the Confederacy, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, we got But then when you
Speaker 1: think about it in parallel to how history actually played out,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, wait, we were doing the same white
Speaker 1: supremacist thing. We just weren't calling it that, and you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, And that just we just weren't
Speaker 1: being open with the ship. Yeah. And as an abolitionist myself,
Speaker 1: I mean, like my key, my like core political framework
Speaker 1: is the come stemps in the belief that slavery was
Speaker 1: not abolished, like with reconstructions failure, with a pull out
Speaker 1: of Northern troops from the South during the period of
Speaker 1: economic um they're rebuilding the South economically, our failure to
Speaker 1: provide um stable supports and protections for people of color
Speaker 1: during that period um, and and the way that our
Speaker 1: you know, our criminal justice apparatus apparatuses were restructured to
Speaker 1: maintain social control, like that stuff never ended. And so
Speaker 1: I think that I mean, from that lens, like a
Speaker 1: lot of what they portrayed the movie, if it very
Speaker 1: much fits into that, was like white supremacy ultimately still
Speaker 1: one even if slavery was nominally abolished in the form
Speaker 1: of like, you know, chattel ownership of of humans. So
Speaker 1: let's let me give a little, just a little like
Speaker 1: bullet point timeline of how they have events sort of happened, right,
Speaker 1: So the Civil War happens for all of the reasons
Speaker 1: of the Civil War happens. But in in the film,
Speaker 1: the South decides to like decidedly declare that the Civil
Speaker 1: War is about states rights. Like that's there. That's their
Speaker 1: main propaganda push is that it states rights instead of
Speaker 1: you know, just openly being like we're fighting for the
Speaker 1: right to preserve slavery. So this, well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the ambiguity of it is strategy. So them doing that
Speaker 1: then opens the way for Europe I guess feel good
Speaker 1: with getting involved at this point. For example, in the
Speaker 1: movie The Battle of the Battle of Gettysburg, it's the
Speaker 1: Northern troops that fighting the Confederacy, but also French troops
Speaker 1: and British troops and stuff like that. The Confederacy ends
Speaker 1: up winning. This leads to a chain of events like
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln getting exiled and then he has to run
Speaker 1: away to Canada where he dies. Um Harriet Tubman gets
Speaker 1: gets found and they execute her. They do a they
Speaker 1: do like a Northern Northern reconstruction where they pretty much
Speaker 1: go in and then implement slavery throughout the nation, so
Speaker 1: that in turn makes this giant fascist state that yeah,
Speaker 1: they like offered tax credits for like Northerners to get them,
Speaker 1: to incentivise them to own slaves, and even got a picture.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, you know, this government benefit makes it
Speaker 1: very lucrative. I mean, I don't know, I can get
Speaker 1: a picture it. Hey, here's what I can picture, right,
Speaker 1: and this is this is what I can picture. Okay,
Speaker 1: So seventy five million people voted for Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 1: mm hmm. I feel like if Donald Trump looked dead,
Speaker 1: dead eyed in the camera tomorrow was like, yo, we
Speaker 1: need to bring back slavery. I kind of think that
Speaker 1: at least seventy million people would still vote for Donald Trump. Well,
Speaker 1: they'd be a little yeah there, There'd bet million would
Speaker 1: be like, oh, that was a deep fake. I don't
Speaker 1: believe that he's a good guy. And then another are
Speaker 1: probably like, yeah, let's do it. Other historical things that
Speaker 1: you know they portrayed the film that we're not too
Speaker 1: far off from reality. Um, I think in World War
Speaker 1: Two they go America goes to fight the Nazis, but
Speaker 1: not because um, they want but because they prefer that
Speaker 1: the Jews be enslaved rather than yeah, exterminated. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: because we're this uh giant Confederate fascist state that's taken
Speaker 1: over um, South America and has their hands rooted in everything.
Speaker 1: And also they're about some right supremacy ship. The Confederacy
Speaker 1: allies with Hitler, and while he's getting ready to do
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, they suggest to him this character who's kind
Speaker 1: of his generation. This character font Roy, is kind of
Speaker 1: a recurring character throughout the movie, like in the different
Speaker 1: generations of his families are Like you see him in
Speaker 1: the Construction of the Confederate State, and then you see
Speaker 1: his grandson who's running for office now. But that senator,
Speaker 1: that congressman. He suggests to Hitler, a, you know, you
Speaker 1: should enslave the Jews instead of killing them. So then
Speaker 1: that leads to access power that includes the US and Germany,
Speaker 1: and then we end up invading Japan prematurely and taking
Speaker 1: that over. It's it's crazy, man. I mean the whole thing,
Speaker 1: the way that I'm describing it is almost sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a fucking like sci fi thriller and ship like that.
Speaker 1: It's very much, you know, done in the style of
Speaker 1: a documentary. But I think that the ideas they're dealing with,
Speaker 1: it's just there's just so much there, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. When you just think of it from a
Speaker 1: story standpoint, the it's really a cool work in world
Speaker 1: building because they really thought of every aspect of how
Speaker 1: history would play out. And I think it's a number
Speaker 1: of parallels here, but one that popped out to me
Speaker 1: was that the Confederate recruited slaves voluntarily released by their
Speaker 1: owners for military service as soldiers by and promised them
Speaker 1: their freedom after the war and exchanged for fighting I promise,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a lie. And that this
Speaker 1: does not stray too too far from the reality of
Speaker 1: black veterans returning for more, whether it be within the
Speaker 1: promises made by the g I bill, UM for mortgages,
Speaker 1: for access to higher education, UM. The g I Bills
Speaker 1: language didn't specifically exclude African American veterans, but it was
Speaker 1: structured in a way that ultimately shut out I think
Speaker 1: like one point two million black veterans that served in
Speaker 1: the world War two who served in resegregator ranks by
Speaker 1: the way, UM, and so they actually used some of
Speaker 1: the tactics that had previously been used with the New
Speaker 1: Deal to ensure that UM. The g I Bill helped
Speaker 1: a few black people as possible. UM. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: some couldn't access benefits when they got home because they
Speaker 1: had not been given an honorable discharge. UM. A much
Speaker 1: larger number of black Urrans who were discharged were discharged
Speaker 1: dishonorably than their white counterparts. As well, UM, a number
Speaker 1: of veterans UM who did qualify couldn't find facilities that
Speaker 1: delivered on the bill's promise. For example, black veterans UM
Speaker 1: or offered access to a vocational training program, but the
Speaker 1: only place to get it was at a segregated high
Speaker 1: school and in the and then for in this specific example,
Speaker 1: it was in Indianapolis, UM because because they weren't allow
Speaker 1: because they weren't allowed to use the facilities. Because if
Speaker 1: there's a segregate UM and then intimidation from the public,
Speaker 1: you know, MOB rules also leverage to discourage black veterans
Speaker 1: from taking advantage of the benefits they were promised. UM.
Speaker 1: For example, in a crowd hurled rocks at black veterans
Speaker 1: as they were moved into a Chicago housing development. And
Speaker 1: you know, thousands and thousands of black veterans were attacked
Speaker 1: in the years following World War Two. UM, some were
Speaker 1: singled out and lynch and so just like street violence,
Speaker 1: in addition to you know aarious uh you're bureaucratic or
Speaker 1: other otherwise you know, policy means used to actually ensured
Speaker 1: that like yelling, get shit. UM. And then uh, the
Speaker 1: discussion of Interestingly, this is a theme that's carried through
Speaker 1: and some of Spike Lee's work, UM, the Five Bloods
Speaker 1: that came out into UM talks a lot about actually
Speaker 1: the focus of the film is a black federalist treatment
Speaker 1: returning from Vietnam UM, which also UM in my study,
Speaker 1: I've been reading the hub P Newton Reader, and UM,
Speaker 1: it seems like, particularly the Vietnam conflict. While it doesn't
Speaker 1: really like the factor in the film here, this idea
Speaker 1: that all you go fight you know, abroad and come
Speaker 1: back and to you know, a better life, because well yeah,
Speaker 1: but you really come back to being a slave. UM
Speaker 1: was a reality that like a lot of black revolutionaries
Speaker 1: were keenly aware of and that really informed their anti
Speaker 1: imperialist uh stances in a sense of internationalist solidarity um
Speaker 1: during that period, umcause they're like, are you kidding? Go
Speaker 1: fight a war again, people who have more in common
Speaker 1: with and the folks sending me to go fight, um
Speaker 1: just to come home and be like called a nigger
Speaker 1: still Like like that whole part is actually my favorite
Speaker 1: part of the movie, when they get into the sixties
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because by the time they get
Speaker 1: to the sixties in the film, you know, everything as
Speaker 1: far as like, as far as they're concerned, the Confederacies
Speaker 1: in tranquil peace and everything is the way they wanted
Speaker 1: to be, and the you know, the whole entire thing
Speaker 1: is thriving. But then you start having an abolitionist group
Speaker 1: that's Canadian bass called the j BU, the John Brown
Speaker 1: Underground and they form as freedom fighters slash terrorists to
Speaker 1: the Confederacy, doing bombings and things like that, and this
Speaker 1: creates more tension between Canada and the US. And in Canada,
Speaker 1: by the way, since free black people are in Canada,
Speaker 1: Canada is the country that cultural elite ribs where you've
Speaker 1: got blues and jazz and rock and roll and all
Speaker 1: these things, and uh, the US pretty much stays like
Speaker 1: you know, Dixie. So it starts this tension between Canada
Speaker 1: and the US and they build like they pretty much
Speaker 1: they use abolition as a substitution for communism. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the Red Scare in the sixties and the film is
Speaker 1: like a scare about the spread of abolition, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a really cool part where they show a
Speaker 1: snippet from a fake nineteen sixties movie called The Abolitionists,
Speaker 1: and it's like this woman confronting her husband and she's like,
Speaker 1: you've been reading all of these books the Life and
Speaker 1: Times of Frederick Douglas, Uncle Tom's cabin. What are you
Speaker 1: doing with these? And he's like, I'm reading them. I'm
Speaker 1: an abolitionist. Don done Dune. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's
Speaker 1: that's mad funny. What would you say it was your
Speaker 1: favorite part? Um? My favorite part? I honestly, I know
Speaker 1: you're gonna talk about this a little bit, but I
Speaker 1: thought the commercials really particularly understanding some of their like origin,
Speaker 1: the origins of the I'll let you get into that
Speaker 1: in a second, but that those little snippet breaks. You
Speaker 1: never knew what was gonna You never knew it's gonna
Speaker 1: be like oh, commercial brake, let's see what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So okay, so let's get into these commercial breaks, because
Speaker 1: I guess if there's any sort of like hook to
Speaker 1: the film, and it got it's such like a dark,
Speaker 1: darkly humorous thing. But the hook of the film, I
Speaker 1: would say, is around the commercial breaks that are, you know,
Speaker 1: interrupting the document documentary that you're watching and in this
Speaker 1: fake world of the Confederacy, in this fake world, but
Speaker 1: in this in this world that the movie creates of
Speaker 1: the Confederacy running things you have ads for I mean
Speaker 1: pretty much the sort of advertisements that would exist that
Speaker 1: existed in the US in the time of slavery, but
Speaker 1: you see them updated through time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And then also they do parallels with shows in products
Speaker 1: and things that we have now to kind of peel
Speaker 1: the skin off of the onion to show you, you know,
Speaker 1: how some of these things themselves are rooted in white
Speaker 1: supremacy to begin with, the best example of this is
Speaker 1: their interpretation of the show Cops. So they have a show,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a commercial break for a show called Runaways,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just cops chasing after runaway slaves and
Speaker 1: through the theme song instead of having the Bad Boys
Speaker 1: theme song. It's like, you know, Southern Dixie, run boy
Speaker 1: run boy By, you better run run run boy run
Speaker 1: boy By, you better run Runaways and all the twitters
Speaker 1: that you're seeing it looks like an episode of Cops.
Speaker 1: But in the context of this, it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, just growing up, Cops was always just whatever.
Speaker 1: I never watched it, but it was just a thing
Speaker 1: that was on TV, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: it was debiquitous, yeah, exactly. And it wasn't until I
Speaker 1: saw this movie back in the day where I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wait. Commercials range from there is a toothpaste called
Speaker 1: Darky Toothpaste. We've got the sambo X fifteen motor oil
Speaker 1: commercial and that commercial and is pretty, um, pretty disturbing.
Speaker 1: It starts off with kind of like a what are
Speaker 1: they called smoke? What's not smoking? In the bandit the
Speaker 1: Dukes of Hazard. It kind of has like a Dukes
Speaker 1: of Hazard duo who are who are sitting cleaning their car?
Speaker 1: And then you know, a famous NASCAR ish driver appears.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, you you're having car trouble. Try
Speaker 1: sambo X fifteen motor oil. We've got um nigger hair cigarettes.
Speaker 1: We've got a spoof on the Leave It to Beaver
Speaker 1: show called Leave It to Beulah and was a real
Speaker 1: show one. Then yeah, it definitely was like that where
Speaker 1: it's like ha, but then it's like, oh, shift, No,
Speaker 1: that was like real ship though. Um the Coon Chicken
Speaker 1: in which was a real restaurant that I think lasted
Speaker 1: up until like nineteen nineteen fifties. Oh, and the nigger
Speaker 1: hair cigarettes that I mentioned, if I'm not mistaken, the
Speaker 1: movie says that that was actually that, like it was
Speaker 1: a product that existed until the nineteen eighties. All this
Speaker 1: ship so much it in here was like, nah, I
Speaker 1: actually had some real ship, bro. And so it's like,
Speaker 1: unless you know your history deeply, it's like chuckle, like,
Speaker 1: oh that'd be That'd be ridiculous if that happened. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: we had lived in a ridiculous reality currently. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just I just like that and and maybe this
Speaker 1: is completely anecdotal, but it's just, you know, the personal
Speaker 1: experience that I have with the film because you know,
Speaker 1: the crew, the caps that I hung out with, we
Speaker 1: were all you know, it was literally like my crew
Speaker 1: back in the day. Was literally like one of those
Speaker 1: like Burger king kids clubs sort of looking cre I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like we've got like three Asians, we've got like
Speaker 1: four black guys, we've got a white guy, we've got
Speaker 1: two girls. One of them's Latino, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Just like everyone was covered and we all you know,
Speaker 1: and I just remember like us watching this, and we
Speaker 1: must have watched this like four times as a group,
Speaker 1: you know, and just Sharon Blunt's and having like in
Speaker 1: depth discussions on just our feelings about race and politics
Speaker 1: and culture, and you know, our reaction to the film.
Speaker 1: So it's always going to have that sort of special
Speaker 1: sentimental like feeling for me. But I can't help but
Speaker 1: think that in a group of like minded people, it
Speaker 1: probably can spurre the same sort of discussions and understandings
Speaker 1: that we got back in the day. So it's definitely
Speaker 1: a recommended movie for me, recommended you know, for for
Speaker 1: groups of friends, you know, definitely you know, some people,
Speaker 1: It definitely definitely trigger warning, trigger warnings all around there.
Speaker 1: There's definitely some things in there. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: It's a little hard to watch times because it's just
Speaker 1: like like in Sallustlers in it, you know, for I
Speaker 1: guess to keep that world building aspect for it to
Speaker 1: seem as realistic as possible. But I flunched a couple times.
Speaker 1: God damn fun. I mean, I think it's I think
Speaker 1: that's important though, you know what I mean, Like, I
Speaker 1: feel like I feel like if it didn't have that, say,
Speaker 1: the fact that when we were watching it, there was
Speaker 1: stuff that would happen in the movie where all of
Speaker 1: like the black people in the room would be like
Speaker 1: and like all the white people would just kind of
Speaker 1: be like silent, like white white Like Yo, I don't
Speaker 1: laugh at that, but I want to laugh. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's like I said, it's that Chapelle era sort of
Speaker 1: racial commentary, you know what I'm saying. So, but jumping
Speaker 1: back to the commercials, I think Richard Bardie in The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, in his review of the film captures what
Speaker 1: like the function of the commercials really well. He says,
Speaker 1: above all the folk commercials captured the blithe contentment of
Speaker 1: white people, um a fantasy of white supremam white supremacy
Speaker 1: that it's inextricable from American history, and continues to sell
Speaker 1: goods and in elections today. The crucial threat of c
Speaker 1: s A is the delicate balance on which even the
Speaker 1: current impaired state of sub rights depends, ingrained premise of
Speaker 1: racism on which the United States is built, the relentless
Speaker 1: effort that it takes to resist the realization of that premise,
Speaker 1: and the restoration of its institutions. Um, and the tiny
Speaker 1: flicks of historical switches on which matters of gravest of
Speaker 1: the grave of moment depends. UM. But yeah, like the
Speaker 1: I think that like up cut throughout the film are
Speaker 1: these moments where it's just like looking at how happy,
Speaker 1: why people are in this scenario, and like that's to day,
Speaker 1: you know, again drawing that the host the parallel to
Speaker 1: our timeline that's so much of white supremacy depends on
Speaker 1: just like maintain the maintenance of just white um to
Speaker 1: petman and complacency. You know that in order to get
Speaker 1: your brunch on Sunday morning and have your fancy mimosas
Speaker 1: and shipped like, you're gotta exploit a worker that's making
Speaker 1: to thirteen an hour UM and tips. And you know
Speaker 1: it's whether or not they can pay rent or not,
Speaker 1: or whether they're like bill or pay for from the college,
Speaker 1: like all of that, Like that's the bedrock on which
Speaker 1: all of this still rests. And I think the commercials
Speaker 1: kind of like they play that up because it's like
Speaker 1: so over the top, how like cheery and content contented
Speaker 1: the white people are. But like that, I think it
Speaker 1: speaks a lot to like, um, what white supremacy looks
Speaker 1: like today. Still. Have you ever seen a Spike Lee
Speaker 1: movie called Bamboozled that came out like two right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Literally too that I think I saw all right after
Speaker 1: it came out, which means it must have been like twelve. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think that the next time that
Speaker 1: we ever do do uh episode where we're reviewing a movie,
Speaker 1: we should we should check that one out. I think
Speaker 1: that's another Forget one because it's pretty much kind of
Speaker 1: about the subject of It's almost like a prequel or
Speaker 1: sister movie to this because it's it's kind of about
Speaker 1: white supremacy hidden in in current day marketing and the
Speaker 1: media and stuff like that. So that could be an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to check out. Um, we do not have
Speaker 1: a music discussion today or do we? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think we do. Yeah, I don't think we
Speaker 1: don't think we do have a music discussion today. So anyway,
Speaker 1: in closing, highly recommend this movie. Um, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's important, it's funny, and you know, it definitely will
Speaker 1: peep your interests in some things about history that you
Speaker 1: did not know. Because there's a little before before Marvel
Speaker 1: movies we're doing the end of the credit scenes. This
Speaker 1: movie hits you with the ill end of the credit
Speaker 1: scenes to let you know how close to reality it
Speaker 1: actually is and how it's not like just wild speculation
Speaker 1: and fantasy. So if you like Spike Lee, if you
Speaker 1: like mockumentaries, if you enjoy the humor, the style of
Speaker 1: humor of like The Chappelle Show era, I would recommend
Speaker 1: this movie. Um checking it out, Thanks for putting me
Speaker 1: on MAC kind of you're talking to me for a
Speaker 1: long time and I finally thought no doubt and now
Speaker 1: I get to spread that with all of y'all out there.
Speaker 1: So we are going to be back next week like
Speaker 1: we always are. But for now, it's been a long time.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't left you left without dope? Rob step two step
Speaker 1: two step to step up here, Hey yo, Joe, drop
Speaker 1: a beat a I'm dope, Knife Lingo Franca and we
Speaker 1: are waiting on reparations. See you next week. Next Week.
Speaker 1: Waiting on Reparations is a production of iHeart Radio. For
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