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DEVIL IN THE DETAILS: A moon landing with a twist from C.S.A.

The fact that this cataclysmic event is still known by that name in some parts of the South makes the film's point—that there is a sinister proximity between its fictionalized history and the real thing. Narrated by a "foreigner," the Briton Charles Frank, C.S.A. imagines what might have been had the South, aided by French and British forces, prevailed. While legal Caucasian ownership of other people, the one-drop rule and "Dixie" as the national anthem are surely nightmarish, the trappings of this alternative universe are surprisingly familiar.

Predictable and sometimes painfully banal, the documentary C.S.A. includes film clips that emulate real-life artifacts: D.W. Griffith's The Hunt of Dishonest Abe finds a blackface Lincoln trying to escape a trial by way of Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad, dancing before his captors in a manner that resembles the blackface performances in The Birth of a Nation ("I'z a darky!"). And a performance by a famous Shakespearean performer as "Popsy" in The Jefferson Davis Story recalls Olivier or Welles as Othello. In this instance, the actor lurches between an affected British accent and colloquial "slave" speech ("May an old, no-count darky like me ax a question, sir?") while re-enacting the pivotal moment when a slave advised Davis to reintroduce slavery into the defeated Northern economy.

The documentary also traces efforts by "science" and "law" to justify slavery, outrageous fantasies based in historical "explanations" of white superiority. In this version of the States, after the Plains Indians Wars and the expansion into South America (in Mexico, the system of "apart" is instituted, to keep blancos separate from natives), sports teams have names like the "Washington Indians" and the "New York Niggers."

The tedious march through history is narrated by two talking heads, historian Sherman Hoyle (Rupert Pate) and black anti-slave activist Patricia Johnson (Evamarii Johnson). The split between their very different takes on the history at hand becomes increasingly overt. While Johnson expresses the quiet indignation presumably shared by C.S.A. 's audience ("Nowhere else were slaves taught they were not part of the human family"), Hoyle never questions the basis of the system. Instead, he admits to practical arguments against slavery ("Our fond attachment to slavery is not economically viable") while asserting the overwhelming existential and spiritual end: "Owning a slave is a constant reminder of who you are." The point is hard to miss: Racism is a function of difference, however fictional: a means to define oneself in hierarchal opposition to another.

The consistent thread in this philosophical and political ruckus is Democratic presidential candidate John Ambrose Fauntroy V (Larry Peterson), whose ancestors appear at various junctures, providing rationales and plans to sustain slavery as a social system and basis of self-identity. Appearing intermittently (extolling the virtues of "our dear family friend Chancellor Hitler," who is, indeed, a CSA ally during the 1940s), Fauntroy underlines the awkward comedy of Willmott's film, a buffoon who speaks the same language as most real-life politicians, only put to a peculiar cause.

Fauntroy is helped in this bizarre comedy by regular commercial interruptions: Robocop-ish ads for historical products like Sambo Axle Grease and Darky Toothpaste; educational announcements (learn to be an overseer or a breeder); and TV shows that presume their audiences' banal attitude towards human slavery. (Runaway, a Cops-style reality TV show, offers repeated images of black suspects in handcuffs with their faces smashed to the ground by slave-catchers in uniforms.) While these inserts posit an imaginary audience quite different than the one likely to watch this movie, when Hoyle begins fondly recalling the antics of TV "jigaboos" like Good Times' JJ and Family Matters' Urkel (even the "homeboys from outer space")—his examples start to seem, again, too close for comfort.

As the distinctions between the "documentary" and the film C.S.A. elide, so do those between the documentary's presumed audience and you. For all its stylistic inelegance and obvious low-budget effects, Willmott's film exposes the terrible, abiding premise for so much of the modern-day USA: that white privilege and righteousness are not constructed, but inherent.

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Written and directed by Kevin Willmott, An IFC release, Now Playing at AMC Anthony Wayne