Reimagine Your History, Kids

My family insists I practice "revisionist history" on a regular basis, meaning I tend to "creatively reimagine" events from the past. I deny this vehemently and really believe my own press - I don't think I do it. It's just that everyone remembers the facts a certain way and I contend my memories are closest to the truth. So...there you go.

This past week, I have partaken in two films where imagined history is a large part of the plot. The first is "Watchmen" which is popular, mainstream, anxiously awaited, and gloriously violent in its heightened over-the-top fashion. I enjoyed it, even though I have no familiarity with the graphic novel and did not know the story going in.

The strong movie style fascinated me nonetheless, and part of that dealt with the film's ability to place the fictional Watchmen in all the important parts of history. It created a brand new version of the familiar world in a satisfying way, so that you felt the on-screen events truly could have been just that way. That blended reality with pure fantasy made for a deep, insightful trip into a strange, yet plausible universe of moral and cultural dilemmas. This is just the type of film you can discuss for hours afterward - always a treat.

The other film was completely unknown to me before my sister alerted me to its showings on IFC. Unfortunate, really, that more people haven't seen it and I hope that changes after reading my highly influential blog posts. (Sarcasm intended, naturally.) It is called "CSA: Confederate States of America." From this point forward, whenever I am asked of the most terrifying film ever, this will be my response.

This is a mockumentary from a very highly reimagined, scary world that could have been, at least in the minds of these particular film makers. After the South won the "War of Northern Aggression" the Confederate States of America went through, as you might imagine for yourself, radically different experiences. In this version of reality, Britain has made a "documentary" which chronicles this new America's history, from Abraham Lincoln's exile to Canada to present day high-tech gadgets to keep your slaves from taking off.

This film is a marvel, in that the documentary - done in PBS-style, with dry narration and clips from "films" made throughout history - is spot-on. The acting matches in such a truthful, authentic manner, you're sucked into thinking it could be real. (In fact, I had moments of panic when I thought of some redneck stumbling onto this, not knowing what it was, and thinking it was some racist, facist propoganda for their ridiculous positions. Then, I tried to tell myself that most stereotypical rednecks don't stumble upon the Independent Film Channel very often...or, at least, I hope not.)

The clincher is it comes complete with fake commercials - for pills you get from your "veterinarian" to keep slaves calm and submissive, offensively modeled fried chicken establishments, and horribly named tobacco products, among others. This is what really crawled under my skin. Though I admire the finished product, I took a break in the middle so I could watch from beginning to end: it just felt too disturbing. And when I did get to the end, I found an even bigger surprise awaiting me which provoked even more feelings of unease. (I won't say what that is, because you are all going to rush out and watch this!)

So, history reimagined both made me think and scared me out of my wits. But, it intrigued me too. Because history is precarious, prone to differences we live with just because that's the way it ended up - and we don't often spend hours upon hours thinking of how it could have been, given a few alternate moves on the board. And as strange as things seem to be, it seems things have worked out okay for us so far - as compared to the terror-ific alternatives.

I hope when we look back from ten or twenty or one hundred years in the future, we still think the same thing.