← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Feric Jaggar
Thread ID: 13068 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-04-07
2004-04-07 16:33 | User Profile
Another reason to kill your television... [url]http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/22238.htm[/url]
REBEL STATE By SUSAN KARLIN
April 5, 2004 -- WHAT if the South had won the Civil War - then was forced to reunite with the North in the 21st Century? Cable channel USA is producing one of the most unusual TV series ever - based on the book "If the South Had Won the Civil War" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author MacKinlay Kantor.
"It starts in the present day - a TV reporter is standing in front of the White House, which is flying a Confederate flag," says co- creator Bruce Nash. "This USA is not the most powerful nation on Earth, because it was divided. The Soviet Union is, with allies in Mexico and Cuba.
"It's not intended to be inflammatory, but it's provocative and will make people think."
The still untitled series is expected to air next year as a two-hour pilot, followed by six to eight hour episodes.
The political thriller covers the modern-day merger of the United States of America - the northern country overseen by a white president - with the Confederate States of America, an African- American nation with a black president.
This confederacy mirrors a South African history of an oppressed black majority eventually taking power in the American south. The joined country would be the United States of America, with a shared presidency until the next election.
Meanwhile, sinister politicians on both sides seek to assassinate the leaders.
This is the first scripted series for Nash, who has produced more than 50 reality TV series in the last decade, including "Who Wants to Marry My Dad?" "For Love or Money," and "Totally Outrageous Behavior."
Nash first read Kantor's novel as a youngster when it came out in 1960. He optioned the TV rights six years ago. But the project didn't jell until last year when he met co-creator John Leekley, a producer and writer ("Wolf Lake" and "The Kindred") who for years sought a network that wanted to make a sequel to his 1982 CBS Civil War miniseries "The Blue and the Gray," based on his book of the same name.
(Leekley has another Civil War connection: Four of his ancestors marched off to the war with Ulysses S. Grant.)
"It's the perfect time for this drama," says Leekley, citing the country's current political polarization.
"It tells the story of the American people coming together. It's not unlike bringing together a North and South Korea. Putting it in a modern context drives home how difficult it is."
2004-04-08 12:32 | User Profile
I read the book [I]If The South Had Won The Civil War[/I] back in the early 70s, and it doesn't bear any resemblance at all to the outline quoted in this article.
ITSHWTCW is actually a speculative article printed in [I]Look[/I] magazine in, I think, 1960, as the Civil War centennial was beginning to become a hot topic. It isn't actually a novel in the usual sense at all (and certainly isn't a "political thriller"), but rather masquerades as a short historical piece written in an alternate America, outlining the events from 1860 to 1960. I found it rather dry and not very entertaining -- except perhaps to those who've never read a parallel-history novel before.
From the blurb quoted here, I gather that USA has taken the bare bones of Kantor's article and inflated it into the usual politically-correct propaganda claptrap.
Yes, Trueman Jaggar, yet another reason to kill your TeleVitz.