C.S.A. The Movie
- Thread starter SilentMage
- Start date
A good satire at least has SOME semblance to reality. Sinclaire's It Can't Happen Here (sic) reflected a rise in pro-fascism in pre-WWII United States and had all the changes to the American system occur through legal and semi-plausable means.
Animal Farm took place in a completely impossible situation, but still reflected reality.
CSA is not a good satire. Any insights it offers are shrouded by the horribly-conceived "reality," and a feeble attempt at creating a bright and sunny dystopia.
Of course, William Shunn's clever response to the letter linked above made me laugh.
If CSA is about raising awareness on race issues, then it sure has gone above and beyond the call of duty. I'm sure those "thirty-five million or so" neighbors of mine to whom Willy refers will become so angry at seeing their alternate-reality selves enslaved will surely take this movie with a bit of light titters and a chuckle or two.
The legacy of slavery is a horrible one, yes, but if the chains are still burning your wrists and you're a white man named Willian Shunn, I have a very strong urge to put you in a respected private school where you will learn how history has shaped the United States and stop whining about things that only have a bearing today because people still cry about it in hopes that Jesse Jackson will listen and put your face on television.
Animal Farm took place in a completely impossible situation, but still reflected reality.
CSA is not a good satire. Any insights it offers are shrouded by the horribly-conceived "reality," and a feeble attempt at creating a bright and sunny dystopia.
Of course, William Shunn's clever response to the letter linked above made me laugh.
If CSA is about raising awareness on race issues, then it sure has gone above and beyond the call of duty. I'm sure those "thirty-five million or so" neighbors of mine to whom Willy refers will become so angry at seeing their alternate-reality selves enslaved will surely take this movie with a bit of light titters and a chuckle or two.
The legacy of slavery is a horrible one, yes, but if the chains are still burning your wrists and you're a white man named Willian Shunn, I have a very strong urge to put you in a respected private school where you will learn how history has shaped the United States and stop whining about things that only have a bearing today because people still cry about it in hopes that Jesse Jackson will listen and put your face on television.
Good criticism of CSA's background regarding their mockumentary:
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/letters/show.php?id=12376
Found it from being linked to a "good rebuttal of more criticism."
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/letters/show.php?id=12376
Found it from being linked to a "good rebuttal of more criticism."
I didn't think It Can't Happen Here was a "satire" at all, it was an attempt at a semi-plausible future history showing how fascism could arise in the US. C.S.A. does have a "semblance to reality" in the sense that it takes the real racism in our history and puts it on steroids in the fictional world of the C.S.A., but it is not attempting to work out a plausible imaginary history as It Can't Happen Here was, satire often uses cartoonish or impossible settings rather than internally consistent fully-imagined alternate worlds.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
How can you say this without having seen it? And by "horribly-concieved" do you mean "historically implausible"? The problem is that you are judging it by the standards of alternate history, when the C.S.A. is really just supposed to be a warped mirror of our own history, with no more attempt at plausibility than an article from "The Onion"--look at this image from the website, for example:ShadowCommunist2009 said:
This is similar to how Animal Farm, which you mentioned, was not an attempt at a plausible science fiction story about how animals might behave if they had human-level intelligence, but simply a warped version of the real history of USSR, but played out on a farm with talking animals. Criticizing C.S.A. on the basis of its plausibility as an AH misses the point just as badly as criticizing Animal Farm on the basis that no attempt was made to explain how these animals had gotten so smart, why they all spoke english, why their owners did not find it odd that they could talk, etc.
Did you edit that last sentence incorrectly? Anyway, the point of the movie is not to laugh at seeing people enslaved, it's to indict the racism in our own history by showing a super-exaggerated version of it. There are plenty of other examples of black writers using these kinds of harsh exaggerations to satirize racism--I mentioned Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" earlier (which features a modern-day minstrel show), and Dave Chappelle did a lot of skits in this vein on his show.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
It was. It Can't Happen Here was written to satirize the various American fascist parties, the public's warm and open response to them, and what the US would be like under their rule. It presented an hyphothetical future, yes, but it was satirical at the same time.
We don't need to indict racism in our history anymore than we need to indict present racism on both sides of the fence today. African American's are denied jobs in the South. Jesse Jackson jumps on the train and takes it to the Supreme Court. A white kid is barred from a Michigan university because he is white. How are all-black schools even legal? They have a discriminatory enrollment based on the color of your skin. Just because it's reverse racism does not make it right, and there are idiots out there that will use this movie as justification for such racism. There will always be those idiots, but we don't need to be feeding them their own propaganda.
OK, I haven't read the book, but the point remains that most satires do not involve well thought-out and internally plausible alternate histories, and this is not a requirement for quality satire.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
"Barred"? Source please.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
Name a single black school that does not allow whites to join. They are usually referred to as historically black colleges, because they were formed when blacks were not being admitted to other colleges, but nowadays they all have a certain fraction of white students, as far as I know. See the Wikipedia entry on historically black colleges and universities.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
Leaving aside "right" and "wrong", in practical terms do you think "reverse racism" has harmed the lives of white people to anything approaching the degree that anti-black racism has harmed the lives of black people, over the course of the last century?ShadowCommunist2009 said:
So are you saying it's unfair to satirize one without giving "equal time" to satire of so-called "reverse racism", or are you saying both should be off-limits for anyone to satirize, or what? Basically, it seems like your opinion is that C.S.A. is bad satire because you have an axe to grind on the issue of racism (and perhaps also on the issue of the civil war, as suggested by your 'the civil war was not about slavery' argument on the other thread)--but the quality of a satire should not be judged on whether or not one agrees with the political views of the creator.ShadowCommunist2009 said:
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