Entry 28 (Part 1): Getting to Know Mercy Street

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

Mercy Street, “The New Nurse,” Season 1, Episode 1. Directed by Roxann Dawson. Written by Lisa Wolfinger and David Zabel.

Release Date: January 17, 2016.

We’re finally getting fully introduced to Mercy Street this week and I’m not sure how to feel about it. Unlike some other reviewers, I haven’t seen all 6 episodes, so my thoughts here are only based on the premiere, “The New Nurse.” There are certainly some promising aspects but the episode didn’t grab me as much as I’d hoped. The good news is the history’s pretty solid, which isn’t surprising given the list of historical consultants. The bad news is it played a little flat.  Read More

Dreaming of Mercy Street

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

MercyStreetPosterwSawbone

2016’s slate of original high-profile Civil War entertainment keeps coming fast and furious, with PBS’s Mercy Street starting Sunday. About this time last year, I shared my plan to review Point of Honor on an episode-by-episode basis if Amazon picked it up. Fortunately, that didn’t happen (although, in all honesty, writing more reviews would have been fun given how terrible it was), but Mercy Street is a different animal. PBS is running the series in 6 parts over 6 weeks. I think reviewing each episode separately is a little much for all of us (I might rip off the AV Club a lot here, but I don’t have to copy everything they do), so the plan is to review the first episode, then do the next four in pairs, with a wrap-up for the finale. I had high hopes for the series months ago, but the recent promo press and Twitter comments have made me even more optimistic, so I think it’s worth almost entirely turning the blog over to it until March. As always, I’m very curious to hear your opinions, so feel free to sound off in the comments.

PS – Speaking of 2016’s Civil War entertainment, we got our first trailer for The Free State of Jones last week. I’m sure most of you have already seen it but, as with Mercy Street, my expectations for this movie just keep getting higher.

A Whole Year Already!

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

shiny78

It seems I started this little blog only yesterday, but lo and behold I’ve been at it for an entire year! Thanks to everyone who’s dropped by—whoever you are and however much you read—and a special thanks to those who helped spread the word, especially Kevin Levin over at Civil War Memory and my old buddy Glenn Brasher at History Headlines. 2015 was a bit of an experiment, but I think things worked out pretty well and most of you have responded positively. My plan was to bounce around different subjects, genres, and art forms, and it’s been interesting to see how my audience had changed or grown depending on the subject. As a general rule, the posts that aren’t main “entries” tend to do better, in part because they’re more likely to get “shared” and retweeted. Some of my biggest surprises were the duds (you guys aren’t nearly as interested in John Wayne and D. W. Giffith as I expected) but that comes with the territory. So, I thought it might be fun to do a little year in review by listing my 10 most popular posts in ascending order. Enjoy, and please keep reading and commenting in 2016! Read More

Entry 27: Tarantino Re-fights the Civil War

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

The Hateful Eight. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. 

Release Date: January 1, 2016.

We now have the third in Quentin Tarantino’s run of historical films, and just as the last one, Django Unchained, built on the revenge-fantasy structure of its predecessor, Inglourious Basterds, so too does The Hateful Eight build on Django. Bookending the Civil War (Django was set in 1858 and The Hateful Eight takes place at least a decade after Appomattox), The Hateful Eight borrows Django‘s central theme: race. Black and white relations occupy the most space but no one gets off easy, creating a vision of America where racial tensions and history infect everything and everyone. This isn’t all the film is trying to say, but for at least its first two acts, The Hateful Eight is a movie about the country the Civil War made as much as anything else. Like Django—and really all of Tarantino’s films—it uses an exaggerated lens, but that exaggeration serves to emphasize very real aspects of America’s past and present.

[Note: Mild Spoiler Warning!! I’m not going to discuss anything here that isn’t revealed in the film’s first 30 minutes, but stay away if you want to go into the movie fresh. I’ll have a well-marked section for substantial spoilers after the end of the post.]

Read More

Entry 26: Dreaming of a Confederate Christmas

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

General Lee and Santa Claus. Written by Louise Clack. Modern revision by Randall Bedwell.

Release Date: 1867; December 1997.

Original Available Here.

We’re in the heart of the holiday season and it seems fitting and proper to offer up some Civil War Christmas content for your perusal. Fortunately, I’ve had just such an item sitting on my bookshelf for almost a decade. Back before Amazon, I had to subscribe to a Civil War book catalog to get a sense of what was out there. One issue prominently featured the hilariously titled General Lee and Santa Claus. Of course, I immediately ordered it for laughs and out of morbid curiosity. As with most such purchases, it’s sat unread on my bookshelf ever since—at least until now. Read More

How Much Civil War is in Star Wars?

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

A ragtag group of rebels sustain an extended military revolution through pure gumption and righteousness against an omnipresent, corrupt, industrial empire. Sound familiar? You either just recognized the underlying narrative of the Lost Cause or, more likely, the plot of the most popular and influential franchise in film history. Star Wars never really left us, but it’s been inescapable for the past few months as we await The Force Awakens. I have only a scant impression of where this trilogy is going but I do know that, when George Lucas was in charge, the series wore its historical influences on its sleeves. Star Wars is often touted as an adept melange of Lucas’s cinematic influences, but it’s also a collection of historical echoes and allusions that resonate enough with audiences to add familiarity without becoming overbearingly allegorical. That begs the question: how much of the American Civil War is mixed into the Galactic Civil War? Read More

Entry 25: See Dick Secede

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

B is for Battle Cry: A Civil War Alphabet. Written by Pat Bauer. Illustrated by David Geister.

Release Date: April 20, 2009.

What kind of a children’s book can you write about the Civil War? In general, war is a horrible thing and anyone reading about it, regardless of age, will have to contend with that horror. Children, as a rule, aren’t too keen on horror of any kind. There is certainly value in teaching children about history, and accurate history is always preferred, but some historical subjects require a certain level of maturity to fully comprehend without doing more harm than good. Thus, it seems to me, readers should leave a conflict as deadly and brutal as the American Civil War alone until at least reaching adolescence. Read More

The Potential of The Free State of Jones

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

The big story in Hollywood right now is the upcoming seventh Star Wars film. Seemingly everyone (including me) is getting swept away by the hype while silently hoping the movie doesn’t stink. History geeks, however, are equally fired up for The Free State of Jones, starring Matthew McConaughey and based on Victoria Bynum’s excellent book of the same name. Few people are better positioned to comment on the film and its place in pop culture than Bynum herself, and I’d like to draw your attention to this thoughtful and personal blogpost she published last week. Read More

Entry 24: Sympathy for the Rebel

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

Click to View Larger

The Proud Rebel. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Written by Joseph Petracca and Lillie Hayward. Based on the short story, “Journal of Linnett Moore,” by James Edward Grant.

Release Date: November 2, 1958.

It might seem odd in a post-Glory world, but 20th Century pop culture often portrayed Confederate soldiers and veterans as beleaguered victims. Screenwriters defined these characters—usually protagonists—by their commitment to the Confederate service until the bitter end, making loyalty and toughness their primary traits. Think of Josey Wales, Johnny Yuma, or the narrator in “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The Proud Rebel takes this concept to an extreme by placing the beleaguered Rebel in the North and creates tension from the harsh way northerners treat him. This generates some predictable historical problems, made worse because the film largely loses interest in the concept as it goes along and eventually devolves into a fairly standard Western. Read More

Entry 23: Griffith on Lincoln

Posted on by Christian McWhirter

Abraham Lincoln. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Written by Stephen Vincent Benet, John W. Considine, Jr., and Gerrit J. Lloyd.

Release Date: November 30, 1930.

This was a hard film to review because it required me to modify my perspective in two ways. First, although it’s impossible to ignore D. W. Griffith’s earlier, highly controversial and influential Civil War film, Birth of a Nation, I wanted to judge Abraham Lincoln on its own merits. Second, this film is 85 years old and Hollywood stage conventions were very different then, so I attempted to take the purple prose and overacting in stride. I think I failed on both counts because the film’s artistic sensibilities really did seem alien to me and the history wasn’t much better. This made watching it interesting, if not particularly enjoyable. Read More