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[prag16]

Problem I have with this is the same as American History X. Despicable people filmed beautifully. Just adds to the pile of footage to their library.

What? What the hell is wrong with American History X? It is an all time great movie.

I assume you're gonna tell me how problematic it is, somehow, for some reason. How and when are the despicable people in that movie glorified? Unless you think Derek's redemption is not possible and/or bullshit.

 

[Cornballer]

- NY Mag interview: The Producers of HBO’s Confederate Respond to the Backlash and Explain Why They Wanted to Tell This Story

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are no strangers to controversy, be it serious (questions about the show’s handling of sexual violence) or trivial (Ed Sheeran cameos). Whatever experience they’ve mustered over the years dealing with backlash probably came in handy Wednesday when online outrage erupted over the announcement of their first big post-Thrones project. A sci-fi tinged alternative history drama called Confederate, the mere idea of the GoT braintrust tackling such a sensitive subject provoked a negative response from a number of critics. “Give me the confidence of white showrunners telling HBO they wanna write slavery fanfic,” tweeted journalist Pilot Viruet. Author Roxane Gay was similarly scornful (“It is exhausting to think of how many people at HBO said yes to letting two white men envision modern day slavery. And offensive”), while actor David Harewood was quick to predict a boycott of the show among fellow thespians.

One thing left out — or minimized — in many of the critiques is the fact that while Benioff and Weiss will be the official showrunners and creators of the new show, HBO’s announcement also prominently noted the presence of two other writers/executive producers on Confederate, husband and wife Nichelle Tramble Spellman (The Good Wife) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire). The GoT duo noted in the press release that the Spellmans, who are black, would be their partners, not just part of the writing team. As the backlash to Confederate began to build on Twitter, Malcolm Spellman — a frequent and vocal presence on Twitter for years, often commenting on political and social justice issues — quietly began responding to some concerned commenters, assuring them the show would not be about “whips and plantations.” But Vulture was still curious about how and why the Spellmans became involved in Confederate, and what Benioff and Weiss thought about the reaction. So we e-mailed HBO publicity Wednesday afternoon to ask if the four producers would be willing to get on the phone with us to talk about the project. Late Thursday, with about a half-hour’s advance notice, HBO called and connected us with the four scribes. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

Did you anticipate any of the reaction that came yesterday?

David Benioff: Oh, yeah. We all knew it was coming in one form or another. I remember the very first time we talked about this, one of the first things that came up was….

D.B. Weiss: Malcolm said, what was it?

Malcolm Spellman: “You’re dealing with weapons-grade material here.”

So Malcolm and Nichelle, take me back to how David and D.B. first came to you with this. How did you decide to get involved?

MS: They first called me and said they wanted to take us to lunch and talk about a project they had. They took me and Nichelle out to a restaurant and told us the history of it: They had this script, the movie version, but they felt taking it to TV would be better. And they knew they needed black voices on it. There was already a comfort level between all of us. I feel like me and Nichelle, both separately, have a great pedigree — her particularly — and so it made sense.

For me and Nichelle, it’s deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history. We deal with it directly, and have for our entire lives. We deal with it in Hollywood, we deal with it in the real world when we’re dealing with friends and family members. And I think Nichelle and I both felt a sense of urgency in trying to find a way to support a discussion that is percolating but isn’t happening enough. As people of color and minorities in general are starting to get a voice, I think there’s a duty to force this discussion.

Nichelle Tramble Spellman: When we initially sat down, we made the joke, “Oh, this is going to be a black Game of Thrones spin-off! This is gonna be awesome.” And then [Benioff and Weiss] got into what the story was about, and I just remember being so excited — and absolutely terrified at the same time. I can’t remember the last time I approached any story like that. So Malcolm and I left the lunch and couldn’t stop talking about it the entire way home. And immediately that night, this chain of e-mails just started. Like, “Have you read this? Have you read that? What about this piece of history? How can we bring this all into a present-day storyline.”

And immediately what the conversation turned into is how we could draw parallels between what has been described as America’s original sin to a present-day conversation. In this futuristic world, you could have this conversation in a straightforward manner without it being steeped in history: “What does this look like now.” I think what was interesting to all of us was that we were going to handle this show, and handle the content of the show, without using typical antebellum imagery. There is not going to be, you know, the big Gone With the Wind mansion. This is present day, or close to present day, and how the world would have evolved if the South had been successful seceding from the Union. And what was also exciting to me was the idea that in order to build this, we would have to rebuild world history… OK, if this had happened here, how did the rest of the world change? That was another huge bonus factor for me — the idea of rewriting some of the history of, like, the French Revolution. What happened in the entire world if that one event had ended differently?

I know you’re not prepared to get too deep into the specifics of the show, since you haven’t written any of it yet. But in the release, it mentions this being set after the third Civil War. That confused me, and a lot of people. Can you explain that a bit more?

DB: Right. When I read it over, I did realize that line is a little bit confusing. So the idea, and yes, we won’t go too much into it because we haven’t even written up all the fictional history yet. But the idea that we’ve talked about for a while is that if the first Civil War happened at the same time as the Civil War in our time happened, it just seemed unlikely to us that these two countries, these two hostile countries that share a massive border, would not have fought again in the time between the 1860s and the present day. So in our mind, there was also 20th-century civil war.

But this points out — we haven’t written any scripts yet. We don’t have an outline yet. We don’t even have character names. So everything is brand new and nothing’s been written. I guess that’s what was a little bit surprising about some of the outrage. It’s just a little premature. You know, we might fuck it up. But we haven’t yet.

MS: This is not a world in which the entire country is enslaved. Slavery is in one half of the country. And the North is the North. As Nichelle was saying, the imagery should be no whips and no plantations.

I saw you saying that on Twitter yesterday, Malcolm. So maybe this is a good time to ask about the Twitter response Wednesday. There are a lot of people I respect, like Roxane Gay and Joy Reid, who had some very strong and very negative reactions to the press release. Do you understand their concerns? Do you think they misread your intentions?

NS: I do understand their concern. I wish their concern had been reserved to the night of the premiere, on HBO, on a Sunday night, when they watched and then they made a decision after they watched an hour of television as to whether or not we succeeded in what we set out to do. The concern is real. But I think that the four of us are very thoughtful, very serious, and not flip about what we are getting into in any way. What I’ve done in the past, what Malcolm has done in the past, what the D.B.s have done in the past, proves that. So I would have loved an opportunity for the conversation to start once the show was on the air.

MS: You cannot litigate this on Twitter. It’s not possible. There’s a new emerging group of black filmmakers, right? And we have a good standing there with our peers. But there’s no connective tissue between us and what’s coming out in the media. I don’t know that we can change anyone’s mind… but what people have to understand is, and what we are obligated to repeat in every interview is: We’ve got black aunties. We’ve got black nephews, uncles. Black parents and black grandparents. We deal with them every single day. We deal with the struggle every single day. And people don’t have to get on board with what we’re doing based on a press release. But when they’re writing about us, and commenting about us, they should be mindful of the fact that there are no sell-outs involved in this show. Me and Nichelle are not props being used to protect someone else. We are people who feel a need to address issues the same way they do, and they should at least humanize the other end of those tweets and articles. You know what I’m saying?

I guess that brings us back to David and D.B. We don’t have a lot of time, and this probably isn’t the interview to get into a deep dive about Game of Thrones and how it’s dealt with race. But it clearly is an issue that has come up. I mean, there’s a joke about your show in the first episode of Dear White People that riffs on how Thrones handles race. Do you think that’s part of why Twitter reacted the way it did? That it wasn’t just the idea of this show, but this show from you?

DW: We were very hyper aware of the difference between a show with a fictional history and a fictional world, and a show that’s an alternate history of this world. We know that the elements in play in a show like Confederate are much more raw, much more real, and people come into them much more sensitive and more invested, than they do with a story about a place called Westeros, which none of them had ever heard of before they read the books or watched the show. We know they are different things, and they need to be dealt with in very, very different ways. And we plan, all of us I think, to approach Confederate in a much different spirit, by necessity, than we would approach a show named Game of Thrones.

I want to ask about how the creative process will be overseen on Confederate. David and D.B. are the showrunners, but all four of you will be executive producers and writers. All four of your names were part of the release Wednesday, and your relationship was described as a partnership. So does that mean you’ll all get mostly equal say in the direction of the show, even if D.B. and David are sort of the bigger name producers and creators? That it is a true collaboration, as opposed to just the vision of the Game of Thrones guys?

DB: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think there’s — talking about the rush to judgment. There are all these assumptions about what happens when the four of us are talking, as if Dan and I are running the room and bossing them around. And I’d say anyone who thinks that Malcolm and Nichelle are props have never met Malcolm and Nichelle. The idea that we would tell them anything — neither one of them is afraid to call us an asshole. Believe me. That’s happened many times before. [Laughter.] And it’ll happen again. It’s a partnership.

Look, the honest answer to the question, the reality is, Game of Thrones has been a successful show for HBO, which has put us in a position to come and pitch another show and get them excited about it. And that’s what helped get us here. But when we sit down and map out this show, and the season, and the characters, it’ll be the four of us arguing about everything. There is no president who gets to rule by decree. And people can believe that or not, but it’s the truth, and they’re not in the room, so they don’t know.

Some online critics have also wondered why you chose to do this idea when, quite frankly, your leverage at HBO probably meant you could do any idea you wanted and get it on the air. So why as a show about an alternative history of the Civil War? Did you have any other ideas?

DW: We threw a bunch of things around, but, look, we’re fortunate to be in the position that we’re in currently with the show, knock wood. And we knew there was the opportunity to do another show with HBO, which we were very, very happy about because they’ve been great people to work with. And we knew that we could do something easy, and that there are many, many easy things that we could’ve done. But we also knew that we could use the fact that the show is successful and the fact that this gives us a certain amount of leverage to attempt something difficult, that wouldn’t be easy, that would be challenging, that would cause us all sorts of problems that something easy wouldn’t. And we think the difficult idea was much, much more valuable to us, and much more worthwhile to us than any of the easier ideas would be. So we thought that using the current show as a springboard to do something that couldn’t happen any other way seemed like a worthwhile way to spend that capital. Whether or not it turns out to be that, we’ll have to wait and see.

DB: I want to harken back to something Nichelle said earlier. This is scary, for all of us. It’s scary for different reasons. But it is a pretty terrifying prospect getting into it. We knew it would be, and now it’s come true. It’s obviously creating a lot of controversy before anything’s happened just on the basis of a press release, and that will only continue as we get closer. But even aside from that outside part of it, there’s just the frightening part of — we’re all gonna put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it right. And that’s scary, but it’s also exciting. It’s what gets the adrenaline pumping and what gets you excited to sit down at your computer and start typing up themes and running them off the other three. And there hasn’t been anything since we started on Thrones that got me so excited to get back to writing new characters. So I’m scared and also excited.

Another concern some have raised is that a show like this could end up as almost pornography or wish-fulfillment for white supremacists and the alt-right. What’s your reaction to that worry about a show where the South won the Civil War.

MS: I think that [using the word] “winning” creates the wrong image. [In the world of Confederate], it was a stand-still. They maintain their position, the North maintains theirs. What people need to recognize is, and it makes me really want to get into the show: The shit is alive and real today. I think people have got to stop pretending that slavery was something that happened and went away. The shit is affecting people in the present day. And it’s easy for folks to hide from it, because sometimes you’re not able to map it out, especially with how insidious racism has become. But everyone knows that with Trump coming into power, a bunch of shit that had always been there got resurfaced. So the idea that this would be pornography goes back to people imagining whips and plantations. What they need to be imagining is how fucked up things are today, and a story that allows us to now dramatize it in a more tangible matter.

More via the link.

 

[Bronx-Man]

If they're agreeing that scars of slavery still affect us today, I have to ask: what exactly would be the difference between the world this show presents and our modern reality?

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

Interview makes it seem like a decent amount of thought will go into it

If they're agreeing that scars of slavery still affect us today, I have to ask: what exactly would be the difference between the world this show presents and our modern reality?

Probably the lack of pretense.

 

[Fast Forward]

I'm a SUCKER for the alternate Universe concept. Probably why I loved Sliders so much as a kid, and why Spider-Man TAS ranks among my favorite series finales.

Even so, I wonder. Is the average Joe gonna understand this concept?

 

[akira28]

what is the concept and what is to understand?

 

[Dan]

- NY Mag interview: The Producers of HBO’s Confederate Respond to the Backlash and Explain Why They Wanted to Tell This StoryMore via the link.

And what was also exciting to me was the idea that in order to build this, we would have to rebuild world history… OK, if this had happened here, how did the rest of the world change? That was another huge bonus factor for me — the idea of rewriting some of the history of, like, the French Revolution. What happened in the entire world if that one event had ended differently?

But... the French Revolution happened long before the American Civil War...

And it really bothers me that these interview responses double down on referring to future wars between separate North and South countries as civil wars. That's... not how that works.

Misunderstanding these things doesn't give me confidence in a well conceived alternate history.

 

[Gleethor]

That interview should help assuage some of the fears I've seen expressed in this thread.

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

 

[Not]

What they don't seem to understand is that PRESENT DAY, to a lot of people, in OUR OWN TIMELINE, is just as fucking terrifying as slaves in skyscrapers.

 

[Marmaladefire]

"Pinky Promise we won't be insensitive" from the "We didn't realize how that rape could be interpreted as rape" guys, with a side helping of "We aren't sell outs. Actually black people who criticize us are the racists"

Hahahaha

 

[Slayven]

- NY Mag interview: The Producers of HBO's Confederate Respond to the Backlash and Explain Why They Wanted to Tell This StoryMore via the link.

You cannot litigate this on Twitter. It's not possible. There's a new emerging group of black filmmakers, right? And we have a good standing there with our peers.

Dude you make Empire.....

What they don't seem to understand is that PRESENT DAY, to a lot of people, in OUR OWN TIMELINE, is just as fucking terrifying as slaves in skyscrapers.

It's weird that a lot of people can't understand shit unless it made fantastical.

"How about how the prison system destroys families and communities?"

"Nah that won't sell, what if you could buy an Iphone and an Islave at the apple store?"

 

[akira28]

Dude you make Empire.....

they took them out to dinner and gave them the whole "we really need some black people on this project...like really" talk and since they had some level of comfort with those two, they said yes.

and now they better quantum teleport a goddamn rabbit out of a hat, or its their asses. Empire and The Good Wife don't mean shit if you get bamboozled into writing the great slavery apologia epic of the 21st century.

 

[HoJu]

"Pinky Promise we won't be insensitive" from the "We didn't realize how that rape could be interpreted as rape" guys, with a side helping of "We aren't sell outs. Actually black people who criticize us are the racists"

Hahahaha

Where do they say that

 

[ISOM]

i like how they didn't really answer or address the last question of it being porn for the alt right and white supremacists. They basically danced around it and gave a nonsensical answer.

 

[metalslimer]

My fears are only slightly reduced. It will take a masterful handling to not strike the balance between making a bunch of slave owners seems like ok people and torture porn. And if they decide to pull back on the pain inflicted upon the slaves than you run into making it look like slavery isn't so bad.

 

[Slayven]

they took them out to dinner and gave them the whole "we really need some black people on this project...like really" talk and since they had some level of comfort with those two, they said yes.

Looking at his resume, i could see that

I never begrudge someone running their coins, just don't be mad in a few years when you are not doing shit and start talking "the black community needs to support black artists"

 

[Not]

My fears are only slightly reduced. It will take a masterful handling to not strike the balance between making a bunch of slave owners seems like ok people and torture porn. And if they decide to pull back on the pain inflicted upon the slaves than you run into making it look like slavery isn't so bad.

I just really don't want this show. Any extreme in either direction would make it unwatchable. It sounds like it exists just to give D & D an adrenaline rush

Goddamn, you really can't be excited about anything other than "weapons grade material," huh? The egos.

 

[Peru]

Main problem is that as much as I like GoT, Weiss and Benioff are not great minds. They manage to dutifully translate GRRM's ideas into a TV show, but they're not particularly good writers, or visionary storymakers. So in addition to "great, more black slaves, what entertainment needed", it's "please, know your limitations".

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

My fears are only slightly reduced. It will take a masterful handling to not strike the balance between making a bunch of slave owners seems like ok people and torture porn. And if they decide to pull back on the pain inflicted upon the slaves than you run into making it look like slavery isn't so bad.

I feel like the whole thing will hinge on how they "modernize" slavery. We've already had things like sharecropping, company stores, etc. in our history so there's already a base to work from.

Honestly anything they do short of physical restraints and beatings/mutilations will seem like they're trying to diminish slavery because those are the immediate associations.

I'm also wondering how/if they'll deal with global relationships between other countries and America with a federally recognized slave trade.

 

[wutwutwut]

Nvm

 

[Kurdel]

If they're agreeing that scars of slavery still affect us today, I have to ask: what exactly would be the difference between the world this show presents and our modern reality?

They could have a North that lived close to the ultra racist pressure in the South, so they advanced on civil rights for free black people faster than in our terrible, terrible timeline.

 

[JesseEwiak]

The actual problem is I have zero faith that the producers have any understanding of what a South win in the Civil War actually means beyond, "US is split, slavery survives."

The US win was a historical blow for freedom. A split in the US would be seen as discrediting democracy writ large and would've given fuel to autocracies already in places, along with existing slave socieites.

If the world of this show is just, "oh, the CSA has racist TV shows," and doesn't delve into the fact that it's likely that voting is likely limited even in Europe and there are a lot more monarchies still in power and Dixie has spread across the Caribbean, then it's basically a worthless show.

That's before you even get into the likely conflicted morally grey good looking early 40's southern slave owner.

 

[Widdle Puppy]

smh @ these clowns thinking that:

a) this is their story to tell
b) that they can possibly pull this off properly

out of touch hollywood bros.

 

[The Illiterati]

I could see this working if future version of the North is a incredible utopia (race relations wise at least) where automation took over and future South is basically America today, with a slight change were its just black people doing all the work instead of robots. I think it only works if you're directly pointing out and commenting on how shitty life is for black people today.

 

[Slayven]

That's before you even get into the likely conflicted morally grey good looking early 40's southern slave owner.

Who is sleeping with the slave that really gets him. Like a modern Thomas Jefferson

 

[metalslimer]

I feel like the whole thing will hinge on how they "modernize" slavery. We've already had things like sharecropping, company stores, etc. in our history so there's already a base to work from.

Honestly anything they do short of physical restraints and beatings/mutilations will seem like they're trying to diminish slavery because those are the immediate associations.

I'm also wondering how/if they'll deal with global relationships between other countries and America with a federally recognized slave trade.

Right there are a lot of modern parallels to draw from, but then I would rather watch a show about those issues.

The Man in the High Castle has done a pretty masterful job at making you feel both sympathetic and disgusted by the Nazi main characters though, but with this show they absolutely cannot make the confederancy into a sympathetic nation

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

I could see this working if future version of the North is a incredible utopia (race relations wise at least) where automation took over and future South is basically America today, with a slight change were its just black people doing all the work instead of robots. I think it only works if you're directly pointing out and commenting on how shitty life is for black people today.

...nah, showing the north as a utopia just because they rejected black slavery as the economic foundation of their society would actually be kind of insulting. There was and still is plenty of hatred to go around in the north.

Right there are a lot of modern parallels to draw from, but then I would rather watch a show about those issues.

The Man in the High Castle has done a pretty masterful job at making you feel both sympathetic and disgusted by the Nazi main characters though, but with this show they absolutely cannot make the confederancy into a sympathetic nation

Do you mean "cannot" or "should not?" Because it's important to show that otherwise "good" people can do terrible things.

Think about how many threads we have here where people reference their racist family members, and especially after the election when people fought hard to defend their family and friends who voted for Trump as good people who couldn't possibly be bigoted. If the confederate side is all caricatures it becomes that much easier for those kind of people to continue rationalizing racist behavior in people they know because "they're not all bad."

 

[Slayven]

Watch they have a Nate Turner type that goes hard core. Cause both sides

 

[JesseEwiak]

Who is sleeping with the slave that really gets him. Like a modern Thomas Jefferson

I see an emotional scene during the next year's Emmy reel where in the 9th episode of the 1st season where he has to whip her while she's naked (of course) to prove to his family he's still on their side. Maybe call her the n-word a few times to truly earn that statue.

 

[metalslimer]

...nah, showing the north as a utopia just because they rejected black slavery as the economic foundation of their society would actually be kind of insulting. There was and still is plenty of hatred to go around in the north.

Yep it's not like the south led to the violent reaction in the north to things like busing and public housing

In fact its possible things would be far worse in the north today because you know damn well white resentment would be high after blaming black people for the constant enemy to the south. There would certainly be a crop of politicians in the north willing to throw blacks under the bus for better relations with the south

 

[The Illiterati]

...nah, showing the north as a utopia just because they rejected black slavery as the economic foundation of their society would actually be kind of insulting. There was and still is plenty of hatred to go around in the north.

That's what I meant by (race relations wise at least). I don't mean they should be a utopia in other ways because of it.

 

[Slayven]

I see an emotional scene during the next year's Emmy reel where in the 9th episode of the 1st season where he has to whip her while she's naked (of course) to prove to his family he's still on their side. Maybe call her the n-word a few times to truly earn that statue.

Or he has to sell his mixed child. Cause it is so hard seeing his kid in chains. This burden on him.......i tear up jsut imagining it.

 

[Alienfan]

i like how they didn't really answer or address the last question of it being porn for the alt right and white supremacists. They basically danced around it and gave a nonsensical answer.

In what conceivable universe would HBO green light a pro white supremacist TV show?

 

[Massive Duck. C.M.]

In what conceivable universe would HBO green light a pro white supremacist TV show?

There's a difference between creating a pro-white supremacy show and creating a show that becomes a favorite of white supremacists.

 

[Slayven]

There's a difference between creating a pro-white supremacy show and creating a show that becomes a favorite of white supremacists.

yeah people think Walter White is a hero, and his wife was an evil crone for not letting this man cook.

And Tower of Babel made Batman look good.

The fucking Punisher

 

[JesseEwiak]

In what conceivable universe would HBO green light a pro white supremacist TV show?

Norman freakin' Lear didn't realize that Archie Bunker was a hero to many people at first.

 

[SENPAIatLARGE]

Watch they have a Nate Turner type that goes hard core. Cause both sides

I'm calling it now, the "good" white protagonist has to kill the angry black rebel leader because he wants to kill white kids. He will then have to guide the slaves to beat the south in a peaceful battle of words.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Right there are a lot of modern parallels to draw from, but then I would rather watch a show about those issues.

The Man in the High Castle has done a pretty masterful job at making you feel both sympathetic and disgusted by the Nazi main characters though, but with this show they absolutely cannot make the confederancy into a sympathetic nation

They will. You and I both know it.

 

[Slayven]

There are few people i would give blind trust on the subject. Ava, and Shonda.

Anyone else gets a "yeah this would be some fuckery" until they prove me wrong

 

[ISOM]

There's a difference between creating a pro-white supremacy show and creating a show that becomes a favorite of white supremacists.

Exactly.

 

[Psychoward]

Main problem is that as much as I like GoT, Weiss and Benioff are not great minds. They manage to dutifully translate GRRM's ideas into a TV show, but they're not particularly good writers, or visionary storymakers. So in addition to "great, more black slaves, what entertainment needed", it's "please, know your limitations".

Yeah even outside of the glaring issues this topic presents, annnnd the problematic stuff about PoC on the GOT show only... there's still the fact that they're just not good creative minds/writers. Almost every time something in GOT was poorly done, it was their added fanfiction.

 

[JesseEwiak]

There are few people i would give blind trust on the subject. Ava, and Shonda.

Anyone else gets a "yeah this would be some fuckery" until they prove me wrong

The truly sad thing is that even something great that would bring up all the issues a CSA would cause would still get plenty of fetishized viewing by white supremacists.

That's the extreme downside of a movie or TV show versus a book that may be 1000 pages long and full of harrowing descriptions of the dehumanization of non-white people (because let's be honest, a Dixie Slave Empire would enslave themselves some brown folks too) isn't something that your random alt-right guy can get off to if he just mutes the TV and watches the brutality.

 

[CloudWolf]

Dude Cersei is a fucking monster and they crafted a huge scene designed to make you feel bad for her on some level and cheer on her revenge (and it worked)

Eh, they didn't craft anything in that scene. That was almost shot-for-shot from the book. D&D have yet to show that they can make an antagonistic character with depth.

 

[Jarmel]

24 hours later after hearing the announcement...

Yep still a terrible fucking idea and reading that interview did nothing for me. Premise is just idiotic on so many levels. If this affected global history then chances are we all would be speaking German. The USA wouldn't have had an united front against the Germans in WW2 and it's possible the South joined the Axis. Hell, a second civil war (presumably post 1940s) would have wrecked the US economy and we certainly wouldn't be the world's sole superpower.

This is just so damn stupid.

 

[C4Lukins]

Not a great idea.

I like alternative history, but the south winning the Civil War?

Now maybe if you take that idea and present it in current times it could be interesting. But if it is just going to be late 1800's and you have reverse carpet baggers going north, I am not sure that would be compelling.

They are smart guys, and I am sure it will be good. Just not super compelling material for me.

I would like to see a modern show that took place in current times where the South won. And maybe that is what they are doing. But it sounds like Civil War era, in which case, not so interested.

But who am I fooling I will totally watch it.

 

[Aytumious]

I am more referring to extras (something they had direct control of), not characters. In all the trading ports we see in the show, no black traders or merchants. Only slaves and pirates. It's not some huge issue, but it's a thing, a thing that leads me to believe the white savior will appear in this show.

I bet the white show runners will force the black writers to pen the white savior storyline because they are just that racist.

The fact that this show even possibly existing bothers so many people here bodes well for the ratings. You'll also have alt-right types angry at the show for portraying the South as a horrid place filled with evil white slave owners.

The dipshits on twitter will have all kinds of things to argue about. The controversy could really drive viewership.

 

[Jarmel]

Do we even still develop the atomic bomb?

 

[watershed]

Reading the interview did nothing for me. I wish for the day white people stop fantasizing about the South winning the American Civil War.

 

[OléGunner]

Is it set in present day or way back when?

 

[Kanhir]

But... the French Revolution happened long before the American Civil War...

And it really bothers me that these interview responses double down on referring to future wars between separate North and South countries as civil wars. That's... not how that works.

Misunderstanding these things doesn't give me confidence in a well conceived alternate history.

I'm wondering if they'll change something in the French Revolution that has a knock-on effect to how successful the North is in the Civil War. That's the only way I can imagine it.

As for "civil wars", this kind of makes sense if you think about it from a China-Taiwan perspective, or a nationalist-unionist Northern Ireland perspective.

The Civil War ended at a stalemate and the North still acts as if the South is part of the Union, even though it obviously isn't. So they call it a civil war, whereas the South just calls it a war.
(Or both sides call it civil war, because to them the other side is just a part of the same country that's going through a phase.)