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Post by Ripley on Jul 20, 2017 0:07:43 GMT -5
HBO Press Release "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. “As the brilliant ‘Game of Thrones’ winds down to its final season, we are thrilled to be able to continue our relationship with Dan and David, knowing that any subject they take on will result in a unique and ambitious series,” said Bloys. “Their intelligent, wry and visually stunning approach to storytelling has a way of engaging an audience and taking them on an unforgettable journey. CONFEDERATE promises to be no exception, and we are honored to be adding the talented team of Nichelle and Malcolm Spellman to the mix.” “We have discussed CONFEDERATE for years, originally as a concept for a feature film,” add Benioff and Weiss. “But our experience on ‘Thrones’ has convinced us that no one provides a bigger, better storytelling canvas than HBO. There won’t be dragons or White Walkers in this series, but we are creating a world, and we couldn’t imagine better partners in world-building than Nichelle and Malcolm, who have impressed us for a long time with their wit, their imagination and their Scrabble-playing skills.”..." link
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Post by dark sister on Jul 21, 2017 11:03:21 GMT -5
This sounds like a terrible idea.
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Post by merelei on Jul 21, 2017 11:44:32 GMT -5
May I provide a different side and how interesting this sounds?
It's an alternate reality where just one event changed the face of a continent. I've always been one to think about how different the streets would like if the first one in a town was even ten feet away from where it is currently; just how different would this world be?
It's the Butterfly Effect!!
Yes I know that current environments on Twitter especially and other social media is going right now but if handled correctly I think this could be a great show. Benioff and Weiss are working with two black people.
Husband and wife team Malcolm and Nichelle Tramble Spellman are black. I think with the combination of excellent writing and producers like Benioff and Weiss, this could turn out to be very compelling and be very relatable to modern times.
I would give it a shot and I barely watch television (Save for GoT, AG, Mr. Robot, The X-Files and TWD.) That's all I'll say.
(Besides, it would be nice if tv shows and movies recognize that Canada exists! XDD)
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Post by Ripley on Jul 21, 2017 11:46:46 GMT -5
This sounds like a terrible idea. I have struggled since the announcement because my first reaction was 'WTH? REALLY?" I grew up in the South, in Virgina, home of the Confederacy. Even today, idiots worshop the Confederate flag in all the Southern states as do racists everywhere. The same folks who love to see black folks and other peoples of color kept down, held back, marginalized and treated badly. The KKK marched in Charlottesville, VA recently and thank goodness local folks met then and counter-protested peacefully. We are seeing everywhere cities like New Orleans taking down those monuments which glorify the Civil War. Many of those folks actually call that "The War of Northern Aggression" because they love slavery and insist it was an economic necessity. Those folks also talk about Sally Hemmings as "Thomas Jefferson's mistress" or "lover", ignoring the fact she was his slave and legal property, so she really had no choice i the matter and it was not a relationship of equals between a man and a woman. While I loved Roots, Underground (canceled after season 2 due to low ratings) and even PBS' Mercy Street, I do not want to spend hours watching a show in which blacks and others of color (Native Americans most likely) are beaten, raped, exploited and treated with violence. Oddly, had we seen more diversity in GoT, a show in which every character suffers, it could be easier I think. But GoT has taken a lot of flack for having a mainly white cast. With the 7 Kingdoms of Westeros and all the other cities, lands and proples in the Martinverse, it has always surprised me we see no Asians, few Latino charatcers and one black man.
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Post by merelei on Jul 21, 2017 12:17:14 GMT -5
This sounds like a terrible idea. I have struggled since the announcement because my first reaction was 'WTH? REALLY?" I grew up in the South, in Virgina, home of the Confederacy. Even today, idiots worshop the Confederate flag in all the Southern states as do racists everywhere. The same folks who love to see black folks and other peoples of color kept down, held back, marginalized and treated badly. The KKK marched in Charlottesville, VA recently and thank goodness local folks met then and counter-protested peacefully. We are seeing everywhere cities like New Orleans taking down those monuments which glorify the Civil War. Many of those folks actually call that "The War of Northern Aggression" because they love slavery and insist it was an economic necessity. Those folks also talk about Sally Hemmings as "Thomas Jefferson's mistress" or "lover", ignoring the fact she was his slave and legal property, so she really had no choice i the matter and it was not a relationship of equals between a man and a woman. While I loved Roots, Underground (canceled after season 2 due to low ratings) and even PBS' Mercy Street, I do not want to spend hours watching a show in which blacks and others of color (Native Americans most likely) are beaten, raped, exploited and treated with violence. Oddly, had we seen more diversity in GoT, a show in which every character suffers, it could be easier I think. But GoT has taken a lot of flack for having a mainly white cast. With the 7 Kingdoms of Westeros and all the other cities, lands and proples in the Martinverse, it has always surprised me we see no Asians, few Latino charatcers and one black man. Well I don't want at all to see that kind of treatment, but with constitutional amendments in the modern times didn't abolish it but changed it? I don't know, not much is known right now. I think they should take real world examples from places in the world where slavery still exists; Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Congo, Nigeria, Russia, Pakistan, China and India. (Source)I guess this is the product of GoT in modern times; taking someone's premise but a twist and can make something even more incredible - just like what GRRM did with Lord of the Rings, HP Lovecraft, and others who have also inspired him. ... Then again this is modern TV so it's really up in the air! XD
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Post by Ripley on Jul 21, 2017 13:29:30 GMT -5
You make great points, as usual merelei.
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Post by Ripley on Jul 24, 2017 14:53:46 GMT -5
Reposted by Slate from Vulture
"This article originally appeared in Vulture.
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.
Advertisement 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 emailed 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 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.
So, before we get into the reaction to the announcement, let me start by asking something more basic. What was the genesis of Confederate?
David Benioff: We’ve been talking about this as a feature because we had an idea for a two-hour story. The more we talked, the more it evolved. And with the success we’ve had on Thrones, and how happy we’ve been with HBO, it’s really opened up storytelling possibilities and world-building possibilities, especially in a story like this, which we imagined being an ensemble with dozens of characters and multiple story lines, which frankly I think TV has done better with over the last ten-to-15 years. And once we realized it was going to be a bigger story, we knew we didn’t wanna do it by ourselves because we’re … lazy. [Laughs.] And they’re two great writers. We’ve known Malcolm and Nichelle a long time, socially, and always talked about doing something together at some point. And this felt like a good thing. Now we’re bonding under fire.
Tell me more, though, about exactly how you came to do this idea. Did you do a whole bunch of research? Maybe go out one day and smoke peyote like Jim Morrison? David Benioff: In a dorky way, I guess it goes back to—we’re both history nerds. I remember reading a history of the Civil War, I think it might have been the Shelby Foote one. And there’s a famous story, which I’m going to mash up, because my memory’s not what it used to be—but there’s a famous story of when Robert E. Lee was invading the North. Not the Gettysburg invasion, but an earlier one. And the set of orders got misplaced and were found by a Northern soldier. And it ended up ruining Lee’s invasion. A lot of people think if the orders hadn’t been lost, things might have been different: The Confederates might’ve sacked Washington, D.C., it’s possible the South could’ve won the war. So that notion of, what would the world have looked like if Lee had sacked D.C., if the South had won—that just always fascinated me. And history as a genre has always been interesting to me. That was really the initial thing. I wish I had a more specific trigger moment for you, but I don’t.
Advertisement D.B. Weiss: Yeah, on top of what David said about history and how we’ve both been heavily invested in it since kids—it goes without saying slavery is the worst thing that ever happened in American history. It’s our original sin as a nation. And history doesn’t disappear. That sin is still with us in many ways. Confederate, in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show. It’s a science-fiction show. One of the strengths of science fiction is that it can show us how this history is still with us in a way no strictly realistic drama ever could, whether it were a historical drama or a contemporary drama. It’s an ugly and a painful history, but we all think this is a reason to talk about it, not a reason to run from it. And this feels like a potentially valuable way to talk about it.
Did you anticipate any of the reaction that came yesterday? DB: 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 …
DW: Malcolm said, what was it?
Malcolm Spellman: “You’re dealing with weapons-grade material here.”
Advertisement 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 emails 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 story line.”
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 … Okay, 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?
Advertisement 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 a 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.
Advertisement 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 onboard 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 sellouts 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 precedent 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.
How long have the four of you known each other? NS: About ten years.
DW: Since the last writers’ strike.
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 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’s gotten 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 standstill. 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.
Nichelle, do you want to add anything to that? NS: How could I?
See also: Thinking Out Loud About Ed Sheeran’s Game of Thrones Cameo"
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Post by Ripley on Jul 30, 2017 10:59:00 GMT -5
CNN
"(CNN) The woman behind the #OscarsSoWhite movement has set her sights on a new quest: to get HBO to say #No to "Confederate," a recently announced series from the creators of "Game of Thrones."
April Reign, whose award show hashtag started a rallying cry for more opportunities and acknowledgment for people of color in Hollywood, is attempting again to unite social media voices in hopes of stopping HBO from not moving forward with alternate history drama "Confederate."
"Confederate" imagines what would have happened if Southern states successfully seceded from the Union during the Civil War and slavery continued to be practiced. The series is set in the present day.
The show comes from "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as fellow executive producers Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman.
Reign is asking for people who wish to participate to tweet using the hashtag #NoConfederate during the airing of Sunday's new episode of "Game of Thrones."
"We would like HBO to cancel #Confederate and instead uplift more marginalized voices with a different series," Reign told CNN in an email.
HBO has been on the defensive about the project since announcing it almost ten days ago.
Critics called the premise harmful and questioned whether such a show was appropriate considering America's ongoing racial and political tensions.
Reign added, "the premise of the show itself is without merit."
"The commodification of Black pain for the enjoyment of others must stop," she said. "Earlier this month, there were protests about taking down Confederate monuments. The prison industrial complex is bursting with Black and brown people, disproportionate to the crimes committed. So, for some, Confederate is not 'alternate history,' but a painful and recent reminder of how much further we still need to go for true equality in this country."
Following the initial wave of ire, the four producers granted a joint interview to Vulture, where they attempted to assuage concerns. They defended the show, saying it would not present typical imagery associated with slavery in works of fiction and said they intend to use the series to illuminate current racial issues facing the country.
HBO programming president Casey Bloys was also confronted with questions about the backlash this week when appearing at the Television Critics Association press tour.
He called HBO's initial announcement "misguided," as it did not address the controversial premise with the appropriate care, but he stood behind the idea.
"We're going to stand behind [the producers]," he said. "And my hope is that people will judge the actual material as opposed to what it could be or should be or might be."
For Reign, who is leading the campaign in collaboration with fellow activists Rebecca Theodore, Lauren Warren, Shanelle Little and Jamie Broadnax, that's not quite enough.
"Nothing that I have seen from Mr. Bloys or 'Confederate's' producers has changed our focus," she said.
Reign added: "While we are not currently calling for a boycott of 'Game of Thrones' or the cancellation of HBO subscriptions, we will not rest until 'Confederate' is scrapped."
"Confederate" is currently in development at HBO. No scripts or outlines have been written, according to producers.
(HBO is a unit of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.)"
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Post by Ripley on Jul 31, 2017 10:32:23 GMT -5
EW HBO issues statement Sunday night on "Confederate"
"HBO responds to Confederate Twitter protest
Christopher Rosen July 30, 2017 at 10:22pm EDT HBO issued a statement Sunday night in response to an organized Twitter protest against the network’s planned alternate-history slavery drama from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and writer-producers Nichelle Tramble Spellman (Justified) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire).
“We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate,” the network said in a statement. “We have faith that Nichelle, Dan, David, and Malcolm will approach the subject with care and sensitivity. The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.”
As hit series Game of Thrones aired on Sunday evening, the hashtag #NoConfederate trended globally on Twitter. “We believe the time to speak up is now before the show has been written or cast. Before @hbo invests too much money into #Confederate,” activist April Reign, one of a group of women who started the campaign, wrote on Twitter last week. “This Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, during @gameofthrones, we ask you to stand with us. We want to send a message to @hbo using hashtag #NoConfederate.” (Reign launched #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 after the Academy Awards nominated an all-white slate of acting nominees.)
“We know we have the power to make change,” she added in another tweet. “Let’s show @hbo how many people are against #Confederate. Please join us Sunday w/ #NoConfederate.”
In an email to CNN, Reign added, “We would like HBO to cancel #Confederate and instead uplift more marginalized voices with a different series.”
HBO announced Confederate earlier this month. According to a press release from the network, the show “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.”
In the wake of the news, social media erupted in protest over the premise — a response the producers discussed in an interview with Vulture. “I do understand their concern,” Nichelle Tramble Spellman said. “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.”
Added Malcolm Spellman, “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.”
Last week, HBO president Casey Bloys took the blame for the way Confederate had been announced, saying it could have been handled with more grace.
“File this under hindsight is 20/20,” Bloys told reporters Wednesday at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. “If I could do it over again, HBO’s mistake — not the producers’ — was the idea that we would be able to announce an idea that is so sensitive that requires such care and thought on the part of the producers in a press release was misguided on our part. [We] had the benefit of sitting with these four producers, we heard why they wanted to do the show, what they were excited about, and why it was important to them, so we had that context, but I completely understand that somebody reading the press release would not have that at all. If I had to do it over again, I would’ve rolled it out with the producers on the record so people understood where they were coming from.”
Bloys added the show will not be “Gone with the Wind 2017” and that all the producers understand the “high degree of difficulty with getting this right.”
“But the thing that excites them that excited us is if you can get it right, there’s a real opportunity to advance the race discussion in America,” he added. “Again, what Malcolm said in one of his interviews was, ‘If you can draw a line between what we’re seeing in the country today with voter suppression, mass incarceration, lack of access to public education or healthcare, and draw a direct line between that and our past and our shared history, that’s an important line to draw and a conversation worth having.’ So it is very difficult, and they acknowledge there’s a high degree of difficulty, but they all feel — and we support them — that it’s a risk worth taking.”
After the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones, Reign noted how successful the #NoConfederate campaign had been in a series of tweets.
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Post by Ripley on Aug 1, 2017 12:43:44 GMT -5
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Post by merelei on Aug 1, 2017 17:27:50 GMT -5
Oh look, I as a white person, and one who loves alternate history, is excited by this too! BRING IT ON, ALL THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSES!! >:O
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Post by Ripley on Aug 1, 2017 18:00:15 GMT -5
Amazon's new series does sound very different from Confederate-here's more "Hollywood projects famously come in pairs, from movies about asteroids to movies about Hercules, and that rule apparently holds true even when it comes to the highly specific subgenre of TV series envisioning an alternate end to the American Civil War. For the last two weeks, HBO and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been dealing with the backlash over the announcement of Confederate, a TV series set in a United States where the South successfully seceded and slavery remains legal below the Mason-Dixon Line. And now Amazon has revealed that it’s planning Black America, a series created by Will Packer and Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder in which, as a form of reparations, black Americans have annexed three former slave states and founded a country of their own called New Colonia. The description, via Deadline: Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder. It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States. The past 150 years have been witness to military incursions, assassinations, regime change, coups, etc. Today, after two decades of peace with the U.S. and unprecedented growth, an ascendant New Colonia joins the ranks of major industrialized nations on the world stage as America slides into rapid decline. Inexorably tied together, the fate of two nations, indivisible, hangs in the balance..." link
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Post by zinc on Aug 1, 2017 18:13:26 GMT -5
I'd watch it. I always found the Confederate-worshipping Southerners to be beyond delusional. They already maintain and propagate a revised version of history that if not for the textbooks wouldn't just exist in confederacy re-enactments, flying the flag with pride, etc. It's certainly not the only example of false pride and nationalism I've come across. In my homeland we have the "Kosovo myth". For those that don't know what that is - it's Serbs (largely Southern) that took a battle that Serbs lost, which resulted in hundreds of years of Ottoman rule and twisted it into something with very strong Christian-overtones. Basically, sacrificing our land for the kingdom of Heaven. Nationalist Serbs have twisted it into something that says the Serbs stopped the expansion of Islam into Europe. The result of this type of thinking? The Kosovo War. (Granted my opinion on that isn't exactly something that betrays my people's idea that Kosovo belongs to Serbia because it IS historically Serb and important to the Serbian Orthodox faith, but that's a different topic). These blind nationalistic people are the type who claim that they are merely proud of the role their ancestors play and accuse those who remind them of their losses of erasing history. But it's them who can't confront an honest record of history. Regardless of how this plays out, it will be interesting to see their reactions to it.
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Post by Ripley on Aug 10, 2017 17:13:58 GMT -5
THR
"HBO's 'Confederate' Uproar Sparks TV Industry Debate"
Should white creators tell black stories? Top creators John Ridley, Glen Mazzara and more weigh in on the controversial alt-history drama from the 'Game Of Thrones' creators, Amazon's similarly-themed 'Black America' and whether it's "all fair in love and television writing."
HBO and Amazon's dueling Civil War alt-history dramas have brought an age-old debate about art back to the cultural forefront: Who is "allowed" to tell certain stories, particularly those about marginalized communities? The question is prompting frank conversations among those in the TV industry.
"It's all fair in love and television writing," says Master of None actor-writer Lena Waithe, "as long as it's good, not exploitative and not ill-intentioned."
The current conversation was sparked by HBO's July 19 announcement that its most successful showrunners, Game of Thrones' David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, would make Confederate, a drama that imagines a modern-day Confederacy with an intact slavery industry. Two weeks later, Amazon revealed the details of Black America, its long-in-the-works drama with producer Will Packer and Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder.
It's another contemporary-set drama that imagines a fictional nation 160 years after the Civil War, but with a different point of speculation: What if the formerly enslaved received reparations, in the form of their own sovereign state?
Whereas HBO's show has been besieged by a #NoConfederate campaign that continues to trend during Game of Thrones broadcasts, Black America hasn't felt such heat. But it would be a mistake to attribute the disparity to the racial makeup of the creative teams (Benioff and Weiss will serve as executive producers alongside Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman, who are black), says Packer, who notes that the original germ of his project's premise originated with Amazon content head Roy Price, who is white.
"It's not about whether somebody of a particular ethnicity can tell a story," Packer says. "Should you tell it? As a black filmmaker, I feel a responsibility to put forth images that counteract those that have historically been put forth, that there have been a dearth of, that are aspirational."
Other working TV creators are similarly measured in their take, especially after criticisms of white director Kathryn Bigelow's police brutality film Detroit.
"I don't think there should be a litmus test," says John Ridley, pointing to Norman Jewison's "powerful stories about race and identity" in such films as In the Heat of the Night. "If I have a problem with the guys who are telling the story of Confederate, then it's going to be easy for somebody else to say, 'Well, John, we're doing this story about a Hispanic family in Texas, and we don't see why you should be a part of that, thank you very much.'"
On the other hand, the American Crime showrunner notes that the chance to write outside of one's experience rarely swings the other way. "The issue is that traditionally disenfranchised writers don't get the call to do space operas, suburban stories, something about Wall Street," he says. "I'd have less of an issue with Confederate if we saw women, people of color or other orientations having shot after shot at shows on HBO or Showtime. Where are those opportunities?"
For these talents, the reality of industry context is key. "I can understand when you have films like Straight Outta Compton or Hidden Figures [which were penned by white writers], people say, 'Where are the black writers?'" says Glen Mazzara, who next will showrun MRC's The Dark Tower adaptation. "I would rather the story still be told, and what we need to do is continue telling these stories while getting young writers in the pipeline and investing in them so they can gain experience and the trust of the studios to move up and eventually create their own shows."
That investment in minority writers is vital to diversifying Hollywood's pipeline in a meaningful way. "I get it — there are more white straight guys who are showrunners and have these opportunities," says Waithe. "It's OK to say, 'I want to tell this story about this black person living in Chicago,' but they need to embrace a black writer who lives in Chicago and work with them. When you don't involve us in the process, you're using our bodies for profit."
The key is partnership, agrees Mazzara. "The only way we're going to honestly examine the complex issues of race and gender is by listening to and challenging each other," he says, adding that these subjects of identity should not be considered niche interests. "It's unfair to expect every non-white, non-male writer to carry the burden of writing diverse stories and characters, and giving white men a pass."
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