The Game of Thrones creators’ next HBO project, Confederate, is set in an alternate reality where slavery remained legal in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the announcement was met with instant confusion and anger.
Responses to the news that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are taking on a modern-day slavery drama set in an alternate reality America have been almost exclusively negative.
Following in the footsteps of the alternate history Nazi drama The Man in the High Castle and the harrowing The Handmaid’s Tale, the HBO pilot pitch Confederate imagines a contemporary, alternate reality United States in which the South won the Civil War and slavery has remained legal. On the brink of the “Third American Civil War,” the drama is set to explore ‘contemporary slavery’ in a South that has broken away from the Union.
Understandably, this concept has sparked a lot of concerns, partly because this is definitely not the right political climate for exploring any reality in which slavery is given any sort of credibility, and partly because it seems to assume that we’re living in a present where slavery is a thing of the past, which does not still continue to impact and oppress black Americans. It also seems incredibly tone-deaf to have two white men in charge of what, let’s be real, sounds an awful lot like a white supremacist fantasy come to life.
A small sample of the many intelligent, important reasons why this show should not be made:
It is exhausting to think of how many people at @HBO said yes to letting two white men envision modern day slavery. And offensive. https://t.co/xsxWJ6FHUv
— roxane gay (@rgay) July 19, 2017
Article Continues Below
The writers of a fantasy show with no black people cant wait to write a fantasy show where the black roles are… slaves
— Ira Madison III (@ira) July 19, 2017
Note who says, about HBO’s #Confederate, just ‘give it a chance’ White people. Who have never had to worry about representation
— Jeremy Gaudette (@jerm_me) July 20, 2017
give me the confidence of white showrunners telling hbo they wanna write slavery fanfic
— pilot (@pilotbacon) July 19, 2017
If HBO wants a series about the Civil War so bad, here's an idea – PICK UP UNDERGROUND.
— ReBecca Theodore (@FilmFatale_NYC) July 19, 2017
In an interview with Vulture, the series’ four producers (what wasn’t clear from the initial announcement was that Benioff and Weiss are joined by The Good Wife‘s Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Empire‘s Malcolm Spellman on the project) attempt to quell some of the early criticism, urging concerned audiences to wait until the series has been fleshed out before writing it off.
“It’s just a little premature,” says Benioff of the backlash. “You know, we might f— it up. But we haven’t yet.”
Weiss elaborates:
“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.”
Nichelle Tramble Spellman recalls what the conversation was like when Weiss and Benioff approached her and husband Malcolm with the idea, saying, “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.”
She also suggests that the show would explore what has happened in the rest of the world as a result of this huge change in history, saying, “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?” (It is unclear whether this means the series will tackle the issue of contemporary slavery and slave trading around the world, which is horrifically still very much a reality for more than 20 million people.)
Tramble Spellman adds that she definitely understands the strong and negative reactions to the announcement, saying, “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.”
Read the full interview on Vulture.
Do you think there is value in exploring the idea behind Confederate with competent black voices (Malcolm Spellman and Nichelle Tramble Spellman) at the helm, or should they drop the idea altogether and pick up Underground instead?
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.