I’ve been taking a wait-and-see attitude toward HBO’s recently announced series Confederate, whose premise is an alternate history where the South won the Civil War. Right now, that’s all the show is: a premise. But it’s by the same people who do Game of Thrones, so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s a controversial idea, but they’re thoughtful writers and I don’t want to judge it before they’ve even written a single script. Depicting an idea isn’t necessarily condoning it, and “What If?” alt-history stories are a mainstay of fantasy and science fiction. That’s what this is: fiction. It’s not real. It’s just a show.
This attitude is, of course, racist.
A social media campaign to derail HBO’s planned modern-day Southern slavery drama quickly caught fire, rapidly shooting to the top ranks of Twitter both nationally and internationally.
Amplifying earlier criticism of the project, the campaign, with “OscarsSoWhite” activist April Reign among its organizers, asked people to tweet to HBO with the hashtag “NoConfederate” during Sunday’s broadcast of the channel’s top hit “Game of Thrones…”
And it started trending, which apparently obliged HBO to say something about it:
“We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around ‘Confederate,’” HBO said in a statement. “We have faith that [the writing team of] Nichelle [Spellman], Dan [Weiss], David [Benioff] and Malcolm [Spellman] 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.”
Yeah, right! Don’t they know what year it is? Reserving judgment is the furthest thing from woke:
Bringing up Man in the High Castle as a counterpoint to #NoConfederate sorta just proves that nuance is beyond you
— Studio Glibly (@NoTotally) July 31, 2017
#NoConfederate because the terror of white supremacy is a reality for POC. This shouldn’t even have to be a hashtag in 2017.
— Jay Coles (@mrjaycoles) July 31, 2017
Make this show instead. Many don’t know Black Wall Street even existed; this would be thoughtful and interesting. I’d watch #NoConfederate https://t.co/rb48YM0Ukl
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) July 31, 2017
#NoConfederate is basically:
White ppl: omg… what if… white supremacy….was still real????!?!?! could you imagine??!?!?!?
Black ppl: pic.twitter.com/wT8cobNAd2
— black history heaux (@localblactivist) July 31, 2017
Just a reminder that i am not here for any fiction that continually brutallizes black & brown bodies for entertainment value. #noconfederate
— Harper Yi (@HarperYi) July 31, 2017
We did it!!! We trended #1 nationwide & #2 worldwide for most of the hour. THIS is the power of social media, @HBO, & we say #NoConfederate
— April (@ReignOfApril) July 31, 2017
I want y’all to understand what we did. Five Black women announced on Friday that we would have #NoConfederate trending on Sunday at 9p.
— April (@ReignOfApril) July 31, 2017
The goal was just to have it trend. To harness the power of social media. Not only did #NoConfederate trend nationwide, it trended worldwide
— April (@ReignOfApril) July 31, 2017
Now, if we can get #NoConfederate trending worldwide at a specific time w/ just 3 days’ notice, imagine what we can do with more time. pic.twitter.com/k6goRtBTKK
— April (@ReignOfApril) July 31, 2017
Yes, just imagine what they can achieve… two hashtags!
I seem to recall a lot of controversy when Quentin Tarantino announced Django Unchained. A lot of people accused him of making “slave porn.” Then the movie ended up being two hours and 45 minutes of Jamie Foxx killing all the racists. It was great. A lot of people jumped the (ahem) gun, and they were wrong. Maybe they’ll end up being right this time, but we won’t know until we see it.
And if they do end up being right… so what?
If you don’t want to watch Confederate, or any other TV show, here’s one weird trick: Find that little red button at the top of your remote control. Press that. See what happened? The TV just turned off! You’re no longer watching premium cable. You can go do something else with your abundant free time. You live in America, and you get to do that.
Try showing some appreciation. You’re welcome.