Black trauma as entertainment.
The show runners for Game of Thrones announced their next project “Confederacy”, which re-imagines American life if The South had won The Civil War. The announcement and the show runners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were immediately shot down by many potential viewers of color and for good reason; Black trauma is not entertainment.
It’s more than likely that “Confederacy” will have a black protagonist and put the institution of Slavery in the terrible light it so justly deserves, however, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter which way the show leans, whether it is sympathetic towards Slavers or the Enslaved because there is a devil’s playground that people in positions of privilege get to play in at the expense of others. “What if Slavery didn’t end?” “What if the Nazis won WW2?” These are just two examples of the “thought experiments” that have either become entertainment (Man in the High Castle, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus) or may come into development with “Confederacy” through Weiss and Benioff.
It takes what are really broad, traumatic, and complex events, and reduces them to a hypothetical for entertainment purposes. It’s not an analysis of the modern carceral state, like Ava Duvernay’s “13th”, but another fetishistic adventure with the antebellum south. American culture seems to be fascinated by Slavery, mostly to remind Black folks that it “ended” 150 years ago. So how does another show about the institution of Slavery change how we currently think of slavery?
It most likely won’t. Since it’s expected that many people of color won’t watch the show, that leaves an uncomfortable, unanswered question.
Who is this show for?
Narratives about slavery have usually preserved white people’s feelings. “12 years a slave” did the rare thing and made white people uncomfortable. When white comfort is ingrained in media, the narratives surrounding Slavery are stripped of nuance and watered down to make white audiences feel good about themselves. The same way that rapists are often imagined as “masked men forcing themselves on Women at knife point in a dark alley” instead of Brock Turner, who was a swimmer who made a mistake. Or Bill Cosby who couldn’t have raped all those women because they should have known what he wanted. Or that guy your Women friends warn each other about but ‘he’s always been cool to you’ is the same way that the familiar tropes in Slave-spoitation films play to dogmas about the institution. “Slavery was bad. My moral sensibilities reinforce that I’m a good person for disliking slavery.” and without irony or reflection some of these same folks can be seen saying “These ungrateful black people protesting in 2017 should really be thanking white people like me because we ended slavery.” or “Justine Damond was the most innocent victim of police violence.”
The show runners have stated that this was a public conversation that they felt needed to happen. And maybe it does, but my only thought is: If the public conversation needs to happen, why did these two white men deem themselves the ones to have it in this capacity?
There have been plenty of writers, activists and scholars of color already having these conversations about slavery in the modern era through the school to prison pipeline, the prison industrial complex, and broken windows policies for decades, and those conversations and impact findings have gone largely ignored by both policy makers and the public.
So why is this show getting made then? Well, because it can be. We’ve seen how white mediocrity gets rewarded with opportunity and how the entertainment industry is happy to have representation, just as long as it’s not too much, or doesn’t speak up too loud. All reinforcing the comfortable mentalities previously mentioned.
Who gets authority and autonomy to create shows highlights a lot of the problems within the entertainment industry, but I have to wonder…Is television, or rather, a serialized program really the best vehicle for the conversation that Weiss and Benioff want to have? Has there ever been a program that has effectively changed the culture by indulging in these types of fantasies? Because if not, then the motivation, while noble or not, is disingenuous and ultimately a poor excuse to defend creating a show that appropriates black trauma.
Depictions of Slavery and the enslaved by non black filmmakers is, quite simply, appropriation. Non-black filmmakers utilize the familiar elements of the lingering traumas of Slavery without having any real connection to it, and without any regard to those who have already done the heavy lifting reeks of the same appropriation as Kylie’s cornrows or the entire existence of Rachel Dolezal. I say all that, of course, as a non-black person, but I would hold it in the same regard if those Executive Producers wanted to create a show about the genocide and enslavement of my indigenous ancestors by Spanish Conquistadors.
Some things are best left alone. Especially when we consider that week after week, and month after month, recordings and audio tapes of black Americans getting assaulted and murdered by police get replayed and analyzed in real time with little regard for the victims’ humanity. When we’re still living through a time of mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and rampant authoritarianism.
It’s just not the time for “Confederacy”, and I can’t think of a time when it would be. Not while media elites like Bill O’Reilly contend that the enslaved were treated rather well and given free housing. Not while White Supremacist ideologues are appointed to work in the white house. Not while constitutional promises are out of reach for so many even 241 years after their inception.
