I’m going to guess that the people forming the OP’s consensus were primarily white. Black Americans might have a different view of which stories are more entertaining.
To be clear, “we” in that sentence better not just mean “The North,” especially if you mean “The South” lost. The “we” who won ought to include folks who were enslaved, and their allies. Many, many Southerners won in the Civil War.
Sure, the Union won. But their victory wasn’t nearly as sweet as the victory of the newly free.
Too often, conversations about Southerners are really about white people in the south, and Black Southerners are erased and forgotten. which is some bullshit.
I can see a clear distinction between “the modern hate-all-the-Others South” which is what Exapno Mapcase said vs. “fuck the modern South”. For now at least the same level of distinction exists between “the South is the more interesting setting for literature and film” which is being allowed here and “we want our slaves back” which would be for elsewhere.
No, they just went to Canada (like a Loyalist branch of my family tree did).
Putting aside the morality issue, I think defeat is generally a better source for drama than victory is. So you’re going to see more interesting stories about characters who were on the losing side of a conflict. Defeat gives the writer something to write about.
I think they were side-barring about the American Revolution.
See below.
So are you and Beck are hate-all-Others Southerners? Do you actively work to perpetuate that culture? Do you support the politicians that pass hate laws? Do you fly the Confederate flag and attack those pulling down statues?
I hope not. I also hope that you recognize that the South has a unique past and unique burden even among the many sins of America that millions of people are perpetuating today in a way that exists in all areas but is not celebrated as a culture. It is that culture of the South I call out. I’m sorry if you get in the way, but I’m more sorry for those still suffering for it.
He didn’t say “fuck the modern South”. He said “the modern hate-all-the-Others South”. He made it very clear he doesn’t hate all southerners. So that’s also a no on “Sweeping generalizations and bigotry against anything and everything to do with the US South”.
No, we are not. We are a nation built out of a rebellion, but we aren’t based on the idea of rebelling.
But “hate-all-others” is easily interpretable as being a descriptive term for the South, not a narrowing of the focus of the comment. For instance, if someone said “Fuck the greedy Jews”, one would not be overreacting to think that they meant “greedy” to be a descriptive term for all Jewish people, and not an assertion to “Fuck all of the Jews who also happen to be greedy.”
A lot of great literature has come out of the post Civil War South – Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Zora Neale Hurston (just reading my bookshelf). There is something about the sense of place, the climate, the incredibly complex ambiguous attitude toward race, that seems to have created a fertile ground for writers unlike any other.
I may confuse “interesting” with “foreign to me” because there is no place in the US more alien to me than the south. I have spent a moderate amount of time there without ever feeling even slightly at home.
The greatest Civil War movie — Buster Keaton’s The General — made heroes of the Southern Cause. But that was 12 years after Griffith’s Birth of a Nation and in the middle of the Daughters of the Confederacy movement to slam up statues of Southern Generals all over the country.
Still, though I’m a thoroughbred Yankee, that was one fuck of a good movie.
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind (the movie is probably more significant)
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Ulfreida has a better list. Also, Twain isn’t really a Southern author. Check his biography.
This. Plus have you ever noticed that evil usually have better uniforms? Whether it’s the confederacy, the Nazis, or Darth Vader.
Plus, Hollywood has been dominated by whites and especially in the 20s an 30s when there was a concerted effort to re-write civil war history, movies were part of that disinformation campaign.
A. I have nothing against the south-eastern section of the continental United States. My antecedents have been stomping that territory since before Jamestown.
- Southern cooking/BBQ is what French cuisine wants to be when it grows up.
#. The South (read Confederate States of America), their supporters, romanticisers, wanna-bes, and all other associated hangers-on can go pork a donkey.
D. Nathan Bedford Forrest sucks donkey schwantz.
I agree with #2, except I respect French cuisine. (Where the fuck were you EATING it that you don’t think it’s what all other food aspires to?)
Although a Cleveland/Connecticut/NYC Yank, I have mastered Southern cornbread, fried chicken, greens, soup beans, gumbo, pulled pork BBQ, dirty rice, Creole daube, pork necks with potato. I have had New Orleans NATIVES say my red beans and rice were as good as they ever had.
Southern food is the best…along with Northeast steamed clams, chowder, and lobster. And all the great food in the Southwest, the northwest, and the Midwest.
The greatest Civil War movie introduces a third possibility to the discussion, neither Northern nor Southern, but Western!
Your link…confuses me. But the pizza looks good.
Again, not a political thread - this is Cafe, not Great Debates.