Hollywood's portrayal of the South has never been sympathetic... - Glory (1990) Discussion

[–] agracier-574-436194 8 years ago

It was a region of vast disparities of wealth versus poverty. Wealthy plantation slave owners convincing dirt poor farmers and laborers that it was in their interest to give their lives so the rich could continue to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth.

You can't have been all that smart to have fallen into that slave-owners trap ...

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[–] NOTACLERK1 8 years ago

The slave owners owned the land and stores . poor whites were forced to fight or their families kicked out and what little they had taken from them. Kind of like today

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[–] amcalabrese-2 8 years ago

Hollywood has always played up the myth of the "Lost Cause" and until recently has generally viewed the South's cause favorably.

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[–] digitaldiva 8 years ago

Agreed, amcalabrese. The South has always been treated well in films like the original Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, So Red the Rose and many others. Only recently have filmmakers looked at the reality of slavery and presented a less romantic view of the South.

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[–] fnj-07126 8 years ago

Gods and Generals was about the only film I can think of that ever portrayed the Confederacy fair and balanced. Sympathetic? Even that. Certainly a deeply moving and informative work.

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[–] fountainhead (323) 8 years ago

So, your complaint is that the Confederates looked weathered and poorly equipped? I think that's just a historically accurate portrayal. Nothing to do with being sympathetic or not. They were clearly the underdogs in the fight. Lacking the resources and organized military apparatus of the Union, many of the Confederates just had to go into battle with whatever they could throw together as far as clothing and equipment.

That said, one of my favorite movies about the war, that, I think, doesn't have any agenda other than to tell the story of the war from different points of view, is Gettysburg (1993), to which Gods and Generals, mentioned above, is a prequel. It's a well-made movie so you might want to check it out.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9659) 5 years ago

Gone with the Wind.

And, frankly, I'm not sure the Confederacy deserves a lot of love. There were certainly brave, dignified men who fought on the wrong side of that war (Gen. Lee, obviously), but they were trying to keep the whole chattel slavery thing going. That's bad.

Also, as fountainhead says, I think the disheveled nature of the Confederate army by that point in the war was pretty accurate.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 5 years ago

I'm always surprised that we treat those who owned slaves are harshly criticized today. But that only goes for white people. Native Americans had slaves, kidnapped women with the sole purpose of reproduction to increase their tribal numbers, murdered in some of the most horrific ways. Slavery has never left Africa. Black people have enslaved other black people for many centuries.

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[–] sut6432 (2928) 5 years ago

Yeah, but in 2020 logic we can’t mention that or we’re racist. 😂

We only condemn what past white people did hundreds of years ago. Every other race was perfect angels and never did anything wrong.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9659) 5 years ago

Two reasons:

1) PC police won't let you bring up history, facts, or actual equity.

2) Civil Rights didn't happen until the '50s. Slavery was made illegal a century earlier, but people were still up to racist B.S. In Ken Burns' jazz documentary series, there's a story of Dave Brubeck's where he was in an army band - racially integrated. After the war, these guys were trying to get a meal and the black guys weren't allowed to come in the same door and eat with their fellow soldiers. One of them started to cry and wanted to know what they were fighting for when his own country wouldn't accept him.

So, while I'm no fan of the Wokes, I think the Confederate States of America take the beating because the effects are more piquantly felt today. Slavery's end didn't stop the lynchings and Jim Crow laws and stuff like that. I think every race, nationality, tribe, and geopolitical force in history had slaves, but other countries don't have the same modern circumstances as the US.

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[–] BourbonKing (5789) 5 years ago

You fucking kidding?

The South has a Hollywood heritage of being portrayed as romantic and sad. Mostly melancholic at best.

The truth is that the Southern Elites who started the Civil War successfully painted the lower class whites as the culprits and the sad irony is that the poor white trash still look up to the very same elite icons as their "heritage".

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