PEPI, LUCI, BOM AND OTHER GIRLS LIKE MOM: early, ragged Almodóvar

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A very young Pedro Almodóvar’s 1980 Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom. This is early Almodovar – zany and ribald, even transgressive. The filmmaking craft is very rough (and very low budget), but Almodóvar’s signature energy and vibrant colors are already there. Fun rock music sets the tone from the get go in the title credits.

The humor is outrageous, embracing that of the very first American gross-out comedies (The Groove Tube and The Kentucky Fried Movie) and taking a step (or a few) farther:

  • A penis-measuring contest as a party game;
  • The question of whether a cop’s wife can become a punk band’s groupie;
  • Panties that turn farts into perfume;
  • Cops baited into a narc raid on a plastic marijuana plant;
  • Perhaps the dirtiest pop pseudopunk song ever: I love you because you’re dirty; Filthy slutty and servile.

The protagonist starts out as the party girl Pepi, but the story evolves to center around Luci, the wife of a brutish cop. As Luci is debased by more and more characters, becoming a human piñata, it is revealed that she is a masochist who actually is attracted to and pleasured by the meanest behavior. [SPOILER: There’s even a Golden Shower early in this story thread.]

Viewing through today’s lens, the movie violence against women no longer works as comedy, even though the character who is debased is a masochist and the rape that spurs the revenge theme is clearly intended to be broadly comic.

This is Almodóvar having fun being naughty. His most profound work was still two decades in the future: Talk to Her, Bad Education, Broken Embraces.

I watched Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom on TCM, and you can stream it from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

THE BIG PICTURE: Christopher Guest before the mockumentaries

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Kevin Bacon and Michael McKean in THE BIG PICTURE

Pre-mockumentary, Christopher Guest’s first feature as a director was The Big Picture (1989), a pointed satire of modern Hollywood. It’s not as vicious as Robert Altman’s The Player, and not as funny as Guest’s own brilliant mockumentaries, but you can glimpse Guest’s path to realizing his comic genius.

In this cautionary comedy, Nick (Kevin Bacon), a young director, wins a prestigious student film competition and suddenly finds himself Hollywood’s new Bright and Shiny Thing. Movie studios and agents clamor over him, and Nick moves to LA with his architect girlfriend (Emily Longstreth) and cinematographer and best friend (Michael McKean) for his first big movie; all three newcomers are very naive. Nick is soon dazzled by promises of fame and money (and Teri Hatcher’s body), loses his way and betrays his girlfriend and his best friend.

Kevin Bacon and Teri Hatcher in THE BIG PICTURE

Along the way, Nick hires a wacky agent (Martin Short) and encounters a range of Hollywood Suits, and there are lots of funny moments. My favorites are pitches for a beach party sexploitation movie and an Abe and Babe buddy picture (about Abe Lincoln and Babe Ruth).

The cast also includes the always welcome J.T. Walsh and Jennifer Jason Leigh at her most comically kooky (joyously manic but hinting at emotional damage underneath). Watch for John Cleese as the bartender Frankie. And then there’s Teri Hatcher, ravishing even in an unfortunate 1980s hairstyle.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kevin Bacon in THE BIG PICTURE

The Big Picture follows Rob Reiner’s 1984 This Is Spinal Tap, which Guest co-wrote and in which he starred in as the dim guitarist Nigel Tufnel, who sets his amp to eleven. In 1996, Guest followed The Big Picture with Waiting for Guffman, which launched his string of mockumentaries – Best in Show (his masterpiece), A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration and Mascots.

I watched The Big Picture on on Turner Classic Movies, and it streams from Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.

Emily Longstreth and Kevin Bacon in THE BIG PICTURE

THE FASTEST GUITAR ALIVE: not quite over a low bar

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Roy Orbison in THE FASTEST GUITAR ALIVE

The Fastest Guitar Alive, a would-be comedy western, is a Roy Orbison vehicle. Indeed the only reason to watch even a few minutes of The Fastest Guitar Alive is to see what Ray Orbison looked like without his sunglasses.

It’s all supposed to take advantage of Orbison’s popularity, along the lines of an Elvis Presley movie or a Ricky Nelson movie (or Johnny Cash’s Five Minutes to Live). Problem is, Orbison’s mystique was based on the deep emotions embedded in his haunting voice – and there’s none of that in this movie. Orbison performs six songs, but none of his good ones.

What substitutes for a plot is that Orbison, with a gizmo combination guitar-rifle, cavorts around the Old West with a Medicine Show run by Steve (Sammy Jackson) and enriched by a handful of saloon girls.

Jackson, who starred in the television series No Time for Sergeants and the TV movie Li’l Abner, doesn’t bring much to the party. The film begins with a cringe-inducing racist spoof on an Indian chief (the venerable Iron Eyes Cody). Veteran character John Doucette must have wondered what he had stumbled into.

Oddly, this movie seems out of place for 1967. It seems like it would have fit better earlier in the decade (although it would still be bad).

CASANOVA, LAST LOVE: the seducer seduced

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Photo caption: Vincent Lindon and Stacy Martin in CASANOVA, LAST LOVE.

In Casanova, Last Love, a middle-aged Casanova (Vincent Lindon) visits London and meets an entrepreneurial sexpot (Stacy Martin). It’s an age-old story – playing hard to get, a young woman captures the heart and soul of an older man – but we REALLY don’t expect this from Casanova himself. The seducer is seduced and it’s well, pathetic.

“Casanova” is a synonym for “womanizer”.  Indeed, sex sells and the historical Casanova’s remarkable fuck-and-tell memoir does detail a record of sexual encounters perhaps unmatched until Wilt Chamberlain.

This was an era where, even more than today, men of privilege could get away with any exploitation of women. Casanova reflected and projected the power of his powerful patrons – and took full advantage.

The historical Casanova was also a hustler, who sponged off a series of aristocratic patrons and pitched lottery schemes to crowned heads of Europe (France was a Yes, England and Russia were Nos).  In Casanova, Last Love, he easily rebuffs the opportunity to invest into a magic elixir scheme.

In his four decades cavorting across Europe, spinning schemes and seducing? women, Casanova saw himself as a professional gambler. He suffered the expected cyclical busts of a gambler, a harsh circumstance in the era of debtors prisons. That roller coaster life would have taken a toll on anyone of Casanova’s age at this point.  Indeed, Casanova, Last Love’s Casanova is starting to lose something off his fastball.

Vincent Lindon is an actor well-equipped to play conflicted characters (Mademoiselle Chambon, Augustine), and he’s played defeated characters before. Here, as Casanova’s confidence unravels, Lindon’s performance becomes ever more poignant.

Stacy Martin, very good as Jean-Luc Godard’s girlfriend Anne Wiazemsky in Godard, Mon Amour, is a capable web-spinner, but doesn’t project the nuclear-level sexual allure that I imagined necessary to ensnare Casanova.

Director Benoît Jacquot (Diary of a Chambermaid, Farewell, My Queen) specializes in sumptuous period tales.  If you want powdered wigs, candlelight and harpsichord music, then Jacquot is your guy.  Jacquot and cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne have made a visual delight. Many frames is this film could have been paintings from the period.

Jacquot has some sport with us when he shows Casanova taking friends on a 20th Century-style castle tour of Hever Castle complete with English speaking docent (He treated his servants very well). And the great yew maze in Castle Hever’s garden wasn’t constructed until 100 years later.

Note: Early in his London visit, Casanova is taken aback by a well-dressed Brit in Hyde Park who defecates in public. Does movie shitting constitute acting or a stunt? In Casanova, Last Love, there are actors credited for performances as Man in Hyde Park ,and there are stunt performers credited as well. But there are no additional crew listed as shit wranglers. Who is the shitter here? Just wondering.

Casanova, Last Love posits that everyone can act like a romantic fool, even a cynic like Casanova. There is palace porn here, like a 17th Century HGTV would offer, plus a little sex. And a wretched womanizer teased into despair.

499: the legacy of Mexico’s Original Sin

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499. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

In director and co-writer Rodrigo Reyes’ highly original docu-fable 499, one of Hernán Cortés’ soldiers (Eduardo San Juan Breñais) is transported centuries into the future and plunged into contemporary Mexico. The movie’s title reflects a moment 499 years after Cortés’ conquest of the Aztecs in 1520; the conquistador and the audience discover that the dehumanization inherent in colonialism has persisted to plague modern Mexico.

I’m calling Reyes’ medium a “docu-fable” because it is all as real as real can be (the documentary), except for the fictional, 500-year-old conquistador (the fable).

Cast upon a Veracruz beach after a shipwreck (but 500 years later), he conquistador is terribly disoriented, and retraces Cortés’ march from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan/Mexico City. Seeing everything with a 500 year old lens, he is initially disgusted that the Indians that he conquered are now running things.

Soon he finds a Mexico reeling from narco terror. He meets Mexicans who have been victimized by the cruel outrages of the drug cartels, those risking their lives to hop a northbound train, and those in prison. In the emotional apex of 499, one mother’s account of a monstrous atrocity, clinical detail by clinical detail, is intentionally unbearable.

Reyes wants the audience to connect the dots from Mexico’s Original Sin – a colonialism that was premised on devaluing an entire people and their culture. Will the conquistador find his way to contrition?

499, with its camera sometimes static, sometimes slowly panning, is contemplative. Cinematographer: Alejandro Mejía’s work won Best Cinematography at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival.

499 releases into theaters on August 20, and will play San Francisco’s Roxie in early September, before its national rollout.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN

This week – a contemporary Australian bodice-ripper on video and a whole mess of great television recommendations. The best two movies in theaters are still Summer of Soul and Roadrunner.

IN THEATERS

ON VIDEO

Kelly MacDonald in DIRT MUSIC. Photo courtesy of Blue Finch Film Releasing.

Dirt Music: A sweeping romance amid Australian coastal vistas, but with an ending that wants to have it both ways. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Riders of Justice: Thriller, comedy and much, much more. It’s the year’s best movie so far. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube. #1 on my Best Movies of 2021 – So Far.
  • No Sudden Move: Steven Soderbergh’s neo-noir thriller has even more double-crosses than movie stars – and it has plenty of movie stars. HBO Max.
  • Neutral Ground: the supremacist legacy of old statues. PBS.
  • The Courier: amateur among spies. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
  • Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two gay Southern geniuses, revealing themselves. Laemmle.
  • The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • My Name Is Bulger: Two brothers, two paths to power. discovery+.
  • About Endlessness: Damned if I know. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Brewmance: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Louder Than Bombs: An intricately constructed family drama. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and YouTube.
  • That Guy Dick Miller: Putting the “character” in “character actor:” Amazon (included with Prime).
  • Sword of Trust: comedy and so, so much more. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Run Lola Run: you’ll never see a more kinetic movie. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Brenda Blethen in SECRETS & LIES

Well, here we are in the August doldrums and Turner Classic Movies is turning up the heat with some great choices.

First, on August 1, there’s Secrets & Lies, which I considered the very best movie of 1996. Written and directed by Mike Leigh (Life Is Sweet, Naked, Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, Vera Drake, Another Year), this is Leigh’s masterpiece and his most acessible film.

Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is an accomplished young British woman who has been raised by middle-class adoptive parents. She decides to track down her birth mother, who turns out to be the working class hot mess Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). This triggers Cynthia’s emotional damage from giving up baby Hortense, her panic at explaining this to her family – with the complicating factor that Hortense is Black. All kinds of family complications ensue. Cynthia’s underachieving daughter (Claire Rushbrook) is not at all comfortable with the emergence of an over-achieving sibling. Cynthia’s sister-in-law (Penelope Logan) faces this through her own child-related anguish. And Cynthia’s brother (Timothy Spall), who has clawed his way to respectability, has to juggle these developments.

There’s a searing emotional authenticity to Secrets & Lies, but there’s plenty of humor, too. (The montage of the brother’s portrait photography clients is hilarious.)

This is a career-topping performance by Brenda Blethens (TV’s Vera) and she was Oscar-nominated.

Blethyn’s fine performance is the showiest, but this is the movie where I recognized the greatness of Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner and Wormtail in the Harry Potter franchise),

The rest of the cast is brilliant, too, including Logan (Lovejoy and Mrs. Hughes in Downton Abbey) and Leslie Manville. Claire Rushbrook is especially good as the gobsmacked daughter.

Secrets & Lies, Leigh, Blethyn and Jean-Baptiste were all nominated for Academy Awards (and this was a little British indie back when they only nominated 5 movies for Best Picture). Secrets & Lies and Fargo lost the Best Picture Oscar to The English Patient (only because The English Patient was far, far more pretentious). This is a film of uncommon humanity and one of my Greatest Movies of All Time.

Bette Davis and Warren William in SATAN MET A LADY

On August 2, TCM airs Satan Met a Lady, an earlier version of the 1941 The Maltese Falcon. I’ve written about all three versions in Three faces of the Maltese Falcon. This 1936 version is more of a screwball comedy than a whodunit, and the ensemble acting is magnificent..

Finally, on August 4 , TCM plays Pushover, one of my Overlooked Noir. Tracking a notorious criminal, the cop (Fred MacMurray) follows – and then dates – the gangster’s girlfriend (“Introducing Kim Novak”).  It starts out as part of the job, but then he falls for her himself. He decides that, if he can double cross BOTH the cops and the criminal, he can wind up with the loot AND Kim Novak. (This is a film noir, so we know he’s not destined for a tropical beach with an umbrella drink.)

Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in PUSHOVER

DIRT MUSIC: a gorgeous bodice-ripper with a WTF ending

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Garrett Hedlund and in Kelly MacDonald in DIRT MUSIC. Photo courtesy of Blue Finch Film Releasing.

Dirt Music is a contemporary bodice-ripper set on the wild West Coast of Australia. Georgie (Kelly Macdonald) has become increasingly dissatisfied in her lot as the second wife of Jim (David Wenham), the local commercial fishing baron. Taking some personal time out on the beach, she happens upon Lu, a recluse who ekes out his subsidence from midnight poaching; it turns out that Lu has been emotionally scarred by tragedy in his family.

Georgie and Lu are soulmates and soon become passionate bedmates. Jim, pissed off about Lu’s poaching and REALLY pissed that he is screwing his wife, drives Lu out of town. Georgia goes on a quest to find Lu, who has become even more reclusive, becoming a needle in an endless haystack of tiny coastal islands. At this point, there’s a very unexpected plot twist that is justified later by a dark secret about the earlier tragedy,

During Georgie’s search, the landscapes and seascapes of Western Australia, become even more spectacular.

Will Georgie reunite with Lu or will she have to live only with his tragic memory? The WTF ending wants to have it both ways. As I said, WTF?

Dirt Music is based on the award-winning novel by Australian writer Tim Winton, (and I am assuming that a substantial percentage of the Australian movie audience had previously read the novel). In fact, this is one of those stories that might be better told as a novel.

Kelly MacDonald in DIRT MUSIC. Photo courtesy of Blue Finch Film Releasing.

Kelly Macdonald has been a compelling screen presence since her debut in Trainspotting. She’s brought her intelligent watchfulness to roles in Gosford Park, Intermission, Finding Neverland, No Country for Old Men, Boardwalk Empire and Puzzle. Macdonald’s performance elevates this material, which could have been completely silly with a lesser actress.

Garrett Hedlund is appropriately moody and hunky as Lu; he plays most of the movie with his shirt off and the rest with his shirt unbuttoned. David Wenham is very good as the unsympathetic husband. It’s always a treat for me to watch a movie with Aaron Pederson, so great as detective Jay Swan in the movies Mystery Road and Goldstone and the more recent miniseries Mystery Road; here, Pederson has a small part as Jim’s indigenous factotum Beaver.

Dirt Music has an abysmal Metacritic score of 35 because critics have uniformly opined that its corniness outweighs the gorgeousness. I could tell this was going to be a chick flick from the trailer; that usually means that I’m not the ideal audience for it, but I really admire Kelly Macdonald, and took a flyer in case some family members might enjoy it.

Those who can swallow the ending might enjoy this romantic melodrama in a visually spectacular setting. Dirt Music can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN

This week – my first stab at the Best Movies of 2021 – So Far – and you can see two of them in theaters right now and stream another. Plus the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) opens, and here’s my SFJFF preview.

PERSIAN LESSONS, opening the SFJFF toinight. Photo courtesy of JFI.

IN THEATERS

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: An unusually profound, revealing and unsentimental biodoc of a complicated man – a shy bad ass, an outwardly cynical romantic, a brooding humorist. A triumph for director Morgan Neville, Oscar-winner for 20 Feet from Stardom.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Neutral Ground: C.J. Hunt’s pointed exploration of the continuing legacy of Confederate monuments in America. Plus an essay – more thoughts about Neutral Ground and the Lost Cause lie.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

  • Riders of Justice: Thriller, comedy and much, much more. It’s the year’s best movie so far. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
  • No Sudden Move: Steven Soderbergh’s neo-noir thriller has even more double-crosses than movie stars – and it has plenty of movie stars. HBO Max.
  • The Courier: amateur among spies. Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
  • Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two gay Southern geniuses, revealing themselves. Laemmle.
  • The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.
  • My Name Is Bulger: Two brothers, two paths to power. discovery+.
  • About Endlessness: Damned if I know. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Brewmance: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs. Amazon (included with Prime), AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Hamlet/Horatio: More tragedy, less angst. Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play.
  • Louder Than Bombs: An intricately constructed family drama. Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and YouTube.
  • That Guy Dick Miller: Putting the “character” in “character actor:” Amazon (included with Prime).
  • Sword of Trust: comedy and so, so much more. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Run Lola Run: you’ll never see a more kinetic movie. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

John Heard in CUTTER’S WAY

Tonight, Turner Classic Movies will present Cutter’s Way, which I recommended earlier this week. A paranoid thriller framed by post-Vietnam War disillusionment, it features early Jeff Bridges and career-best performances by John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn.

Here’s a choice to complement Summer of Soul. On July 27, TCM will air Monterey Pop (1968). The two music festivals took place within a year of each other – one with a Black audience and one with a mostly White one. The Monterey Pop audience was unfamiliar with – and blown away by Otis Redding’s epic performance.

This is one of the few DVDs that I still own, for the performances by Redding, the Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkle, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Country Joe and the Fish and The Who.  

It’s okay with me if you fast forward over Ravi Shankar.  Don’t miss the reaction of Mama Cass Elliot, sitting in the audience, to Janis Joplin. Pete Townsend and Jimi Hendrix had a guitar-destroying competition, which Hendrix, aided by lighter fluid, undeniably won. 

Otis Redding in MONTEREY POP

Best Movies of 2021 – So Far

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Photo caption: RIDERS OF JUSTICE, a Magnet release. © Kasper Tuxen. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year.  By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here are my Best Movies of 2020 and Best Movies of 2019 lists.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.

THE BEST OF THE YEAR

Here’s the running list as of mid-July:

  • Riders of Justice: A character-driven comedy thriller, embedded with deeper stuff. Marvelous. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
  • Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised): Questlove’s magnificent revelation of the long-overlooked 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival – glorious musical performances at an important moment in our history and culture. In theaters and streaming on Hulu.
  • Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: An unusually profound, revealing and unsentimental biodoc of a complicated man – a shy bad ass, an outwardly cynical romantic, a brooding humorist. A triumph for director Morgan Neville, Oscar-winner for 20 Feet from Stardom.
  • About Endlessness: The master of the droll, deadpan and absurd probes the meaning of life. One of the best movies of the year, but NOT FOR EVERYONE. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Slow Machine: An incomprehensible art film that is surprisingly engrossing.
  • Special mention: Lune: This Canadian indie, the Must See at this year’s Cinequest, is an astonishingly authentic exploration of bipolar disorder. A mother and teen daughter must navigate the impacts of the mom’s illness. Played by writer and co-director Aviva Armour-Ostroff, the mom Miriam is the most singular movie character I’ve seen recently. Miriam’s streams of manic speech have the rhythm of poetry. On the festival circuit and not yet available to stream.

Note that you see Summer of Soul and Roadrunner in theaters this week, and you can stream Summer of Soul and Riders of Justice at home.

There’s still plenty of room for more excellent 2021 movies. I’m especially eager to see the new works from directors Sean Baker, Asgar Farhadi, Joachim Trier, Hong Sang-soo, Todd Haynes, Joanna Hogg, Pedro Almodovar, Jacques Audiard, Emmanuelle Bercot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Arnaud Deplechin, Leos Carax, Francois Ozon, Paul Verhoeven, Ruben Ostlund and Valdimar Johannson. Stay tuned.

Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson in SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

more thoughts about THE NEUTRAL GROUND and the Lost Cause lie

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Dedication of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia

C.J. Hunt, in his insightful and thought-provoking documentary The Neutral Ground, explores the lie of the Lost Cause, which is still embraced by many White Southerners and is the rationale for preserving Confederate monuments. That myth is that that the Civil War was about a principle of “States Rights” somehow divorced from slavery, and that the Southern cause in the Civil War was romantically heroic.

At one point, Hunt observes,

“The founding documents of the Confederacy talk so obsessively about slavery, the real mystery is how so many people came to believe that Confederate symbols have nothing to do with it.”

Not only is Hunt dead right, but you can read the actual declarations of the causes of secession yourselves. The truth is inescapable – the South fought the Civil War PRIMARILY to continue slavery.

The SECOND SENTENCE of Mississippi’s declaration is “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery”.

Texas identified this grievance against the Northern States:

“based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color– a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.”

One of South Carolina’s grievances against the northern states was, without irony, “They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes.”

It is clear from reading the official actions of the Southern states AT THE TIME that the only relevance of “States Rights” was to continue and expand slavery. Baby Boomers recall that “States Rights” was code for “racial segregation” in the 1950s and 1960s. Same thing.

The Neutral Ground also documents that, after the subversion of Reconstruction in the last quarter of the 19th Century, Confederate statues were intentionally placed to impose terror and demonstrate White supremacist power. See the photo (above) of the dedication of the Charlottesville, Virginia, statue of Robert E. Lee during this period. The dedication is ringed by robed and hooded Ku Klux Klan members. Everybody AT THE TIME knew what was going on,

Unfortunately, Southern Whites have lived in a Lost Cause echo chamber for a century. It has become more offensive to tell them that the Civil War was about slavery than to suggest that Jesus was not the son of God.

The German people embraced a “stab in the back” lie to explain their defeat in WWI. That, of course, led to the Nazi regime, a second world war, mass genocide and the destruction of Germany itself. Today’s Germans know that they can be proud of their contributions to world culture, industry and science and still accept that following Hitler was a grievous mistake. Good luck finding a contemporary German who will say, “Hey, none of us actually believed all that stuff about a Master Race”.