Review of C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2005) by Nathan H — 10 Mar 2010

"CSA" is a fun little mockumentary, obviously built with a limited budget, and ultimately taken best as a comedic diversion and not a grand and timeless piece of social commentary. The film imagines a world in which the Confederacy had won, in which slavery still persisted, in which the CSA's imperialist ambitions led them to consume all of South America, and in which America had stayed neutral during World War II.

By the end, yes, you're left wondering how terrible the world would have been had the South won the Civil War, and you've got the pleasant sort of smile that can only accompany a film or book that truly tackled and realized a creative premise. But, like Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," or Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," the only real idea you can take away is that history is filled with tenuous moments...had we gone down this particular path, think how different we might have turned out? Interesting, yes, the possibilities of such inquiry are so endless that you must ultimately dismiss the fiction as mere entertainment. Any over-arching commentary or moralizing becomes a bit pointless, futile.