HBO caused a bit more of a stir than they likely intended last week when they announced a new racially charged series they’re producing with the two creators of the massive hit series Game of Thrones. The new series, Confederacy, imagines what America would currently look like if the South had been able to secede and maintain the horrific practice of slavery. In other words, the series imagines what the Left imagines modern America actually looks like in reality.
Here is what HBO announced last week:
CONFEDERATE chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War. The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. The story follows a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone — freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.
Rather than cheering the realization of their dark dystopian vision of America, several Leftists are actually outraged at HBO and the GoT producers over the new show. The problem for some on the Left, is that the men creating the show are two white dudes. Others are worried that the show will serve as some sort of “slave porn” for White Supremacists.
USA Today — which is always sure to hit anything regarding race, even when race has nothing to do with it — highlighted some of the outrage, including these two quotes:
“It is exhausting to think of how many people at HBO said yes to letting two white men envision modern day slavery. And offensive,” tweeted Roxanne Gay.
“This is white nonsense … We finally had an Oscars ceremony where a black film won Best Picture (Moonlight) without having slaves or servants in it. But I guess HBO’s eyes are still fixated on 12 Years a Slave,” wrote Daily Beast‘s Ira Madison III in a piece titled “The ‘Game of Thrones’ Creators’ Next Show Sounds Stupid as Hell.”
Madison went on to say that today’s culture looks a lot like actual slavery…
Even if we ignore the fact that this sounds a hell of a lot like the present — Klan membership and hate crimes in America are on the rise, the prison industrial complex is basically the government’s substitute for slavery, and Bo, Luke, and Daisy Duke are far from the only ones repping the Confederate flag — white people love to imagine a world where “the Confederacy won.” It’s been the subject of many pieces of fiction, from If the South Had Won the Civil War to The Confederate States of America. But Americans barely know enough about what actually happened during slavery as is, so how about HBO just pick up the canceled series Underground instead of this?
But HBO and the two star producers, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, are defending their decision to move forward on the project. For one thing, they revealed in a phone interview with Vulture, the two white men made sure to get some black writing/producing partners, spouses Malcolm and Nichelle Tramble Spellman. And the African American couple are not “props,” stressed Benioff.
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“I’d say anyone who thinks that Malcolm and Nichelle are props (has) never met Malcolm and Nichelle,” he said. “The idea that we would tell them anything — neither one of them is afraid to call us an (expletive). Believe me. That’s happened many times before. [Laughter.] And it’ll happen again. It’s a partnership.”
Malcolm Spellman said that the project is “deeply personal” for him and his wife because they have dealt with the results of slavery their whole lives.
“For me and Nichelle, it’s deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history,” said Spellman. “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.”
He later added, “What people need to recognize is, and it makes me really want to get into the show: The (expletive) is alive and real today. I think people have got to stop pretending that slavery was something that happened and went away. The (expletive) is affecting people in the present day.”
Tramble Spellman stressed that this is not going to be some simplistic vision of the antebellum South. “There is not going to be, you know, the big Gone With the Wind mansion,” she said. “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.”
Speaking of Game of Thrones, in case you missed it, here’s this: