Via Ta-Nehisi Coates is an...interesting new AMC series:
AMC has officially given a 10-episode series order to Hell On Wheels, the post-Civil War drama (which we previously told you about) set during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and those uncertain years immediately following emancipation. But aside from providing a big, steam-powered metaphor for America building its own railway to the future out of blood, sweat, and racially-charged tears, Hell On Wheels is at its heart a vengeance story about an ex-Confederate rebel hunting the Union soldiers who killed his wife, as well as a gritty Western that takes place in the lawless, eponymous traveling camp of the title.
In the comments, "Cynic" notes Hollywood's long-standing fascination with the (fictional) tales of former Confederates:
Note that these cinematic narratives all focus on the victimization of the flower of Southern womanhood. The Birth of a Nation apparently lives on in tinseltown.
But perhaps even more important may be the appeal of the drifter. The winners of a war go home; but the story of the vanquished, his home destroyed, his life upended, is more tempting. On the other hand, Confederates are not terribly sympathetic figures. So throw in a raped and murdered wife, to transform him into a sympathetic victim of the war. Now the producer can applaud himself for conceiving of a storyline with genuine moral complexity.
Relatedly, can anyone actually deny that Firefly -- Joss Whedon's short-lived and acclaimed sci-fi series -- is the best show that's ever been made about former Confederates who leave their past to find a future in the frontier? Mal Reynolds and Zoe Washburne -- two of the main protagonists -- were among the many losers of an interstellar civil war who moved to the outer planets as smugglers and frontiersmen. In its mythology, the series draws heavily from Westerns, which themselves come out of stories that originate in the aftermath of the Civil War, as former Confederates move West as pioneers and settlers. Indeed, Whedon developed the show, according to Wikipedia, after reading The Killer Angels, a novel chronicling the Battle of Gettysburg.
That's not to disparage Firefly; it's a fantastic show and you should watch it, but to say that this -- the independent Confederate -- is a very common trope. That we focus on the Confederates could speak to our fascination with the losers of a civil war, or it could speak to the huge success of the Lost Cause. Most likely, the truth is somewhere in between.
-- Jamelle Bouie
