20 August 2007

CSA: The Confederate States of America

(Kevin Willmott, 2004)

Fake documentary based on the premise that the confederates won the civil war, the emancipation proclamation was overturned, and slavery continued to exist until the present day. The alternative history is quite cleverly done. The whole thing is presented as though you're watching a US TV channel (except of course it's not the USA, it's the CSA) airing the documentary, which was made in the UK and previously banned in the CSA. The only problem is that it's just not quite funny enough. If they couldn't think of any more decent gags, then they should have bitten the bullet and made it a completely dead serious, dark and disturbing satire, rather than aiming for more of a "lighthearted chuckles" satire. The most interesting things are the commerical breaks throughout the feature, which include adverts for all manner of products with racist / slavery-based brandnames and logos. Some text comes up at the end of the film explaining that all of these products really existed at some point in US history ("Coon Chicken", as featured in Ghost World, is one of them).

No comments: