The Worst Civil War Era Film Ever

Last night, I discovered that The Conspirator was available on Amazon Instant Video. Huzzah, I thought. Having the house to myself, I figured it a perfect time to enjoy a Civil War era film.

I made it through twenty minutes and turned it off.

Keep in mind, I have never walked out on or turned off any Civil War film. Ever. And I have sat through Gods and Generals TWICE. Clearly I am committed to Hollywood's take on this epic historical event. But I just could not stomach this wretched piece of rubbish.

If the first twenty minutes were any indication of things to come in the rest of the film, then I suppose I would have been treated to more over-wrought testaments to "American" jurisprudence - the right to a trial by one's peers and the notion of innocence before guilt can be established without any element of doubt. Thanks for the elementary lesson in  law.

But wait, there are more lessons to be learned here. Yes - Mary Surratt was indeed a woman. Her implication in the murder of Abraham Lincoln and her subsequent execution were shocking to be sure. Thanks for the elementary lesson in nineteenth-century gender assumptions.

The problem, at least in the first few scenes that I could watch, is that both of these issues are of great significance - then and now - and they were glossed over in a tisk-tisk fashion only after dripping a taste of sickening "look-at-how-we've-progressed-but-there's-still-work-to-be-done" syrup on for good measure. And even this was done so in a mumbly dead-pan stumble fest. Such nonsense can only amount to some of the worst writing, the worst acting, the worst directing, or a combination of the three. I would have been more riveted watching a plate of white toast get stale as time slowly, painfully passed.

Not that the film was completely lacking in merits. I got a bit of a chuckle at the actor who played (with all the southern-Gothic styling of a junior high production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) John Wilkes Booth. His brutish pronunciation of the Virginia state motto in the Ford's Theatre scene - sic semper tyrannis - was delightful. I suppose this was merely an effort to "southernize" or if you like, "Rebelize" the president's assassin (who was a classically trained actor), by giving him a slightly raspier Jethro Bodine-esque accent. Such clumsy and obvious efforts make me laugh.

But who knows? Maybe the utter brilliance of rest of the film made up for the first twenty minutes. I will never know. Perhaps it got slightly less patronizingly preachy. Maybe there was a musical number. Maybe robots. If anyone has seen the whole thing, chime in.

K

 

A Most Peculiar Memorial

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

With all the whoop-dee-do last week about a ridiculous Booth bobblehead incident at the Gettysburg visitor center, I began to think about something that today strikes us as a bit perverse - well, most of us anyway. It seems that not so long ago, there were folks who probably rejoiced over the death of Abraham Lincoln. They may not have trumpeted it throughout the land - that would have been in bad taste. But regarding killing the man who had led the assault against the prospect of an independent Confederacy? I can only imagine that more than a few smiled a little on the inside. They might have even uttered a few quiet words of praise for John Wilkes Booth. Maybe, anyway.

But at least one person wasn't shy about the whole thing. Joseph Pinkney "Pink" Parker was a police officer, teacher, Baptist church member and Confederate veteran who lived in Troy, Alabama and really really hated Abraham Lincoln. He hated him so much, in fact, that each year, on the anniversary of Lincoln's death, he would don his Sunday best and parade about the town celebrating the event. But Parker was not satisfied with simple annual celebrations - in 1908 he personally commissioned a monument honoring John Wilkes Booth and commemorating Lincoln's assassination.

That was a little much for Troy residents, who had quietly put up with Parker's yearly celebrations. His request to install the monument at the town courthouse was flatly denied. So instead - he put it in his front yard, for all to see.

And there it remained until Parker's death in 1921. Over the years, the Booth tribute had made national news, and people from all over country demanded that the monument be destroyed. It still exists, sort of. Parker's son used the stone - with the inscription celebrating Booth removed - as a headstone for his father's grave. It now marks the final resting place of Troy's most notorious Lincoln hater, at Oakwood Cemetery...a former monument to John Wilkes Booth.

Thanks to fellow historian and blogger Scott MacKenzie for alerting me to this one. He comes up with some gems!

Peace,
Keith

Wiser Bobbleheads Prevailed

Greetings Cosmic Americans!

As a quick follow-up to Sunday's post, I would like to inform all of my avid readers that yes indeed...the John Wilkes Booth bobblehead has been removed from the Gettysburg Visitor Center gift shop. Now...we can all breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the serious stuff. Unless of course, someone starts selling a Henry Wirz bobblehead at Andersonville. Oh! The horror!

You can get the skinny HERE from the Gettysburg Evening Sun. The paper went so far as to get a quote from prominent Lincoln historian Harold Holzer. I have to agree professor...wiser bobbleheads have, with unquestionable certainty, prevailed. Holzer went on to suggest that the Booth bobblehead is along the lines of an Oswald doll at the Kennedy Center. Maybe so. And for those of you who want to know, I assure you I would never purchase such an object. But...if they ever come out with a set of Guys on the Grassy Knoll bobbleheads for the conspiracy theorist in all of us, I may consider it.

Peace (and back to business),

Keith

The South is Avenged...

...is at least one of the phrases witnesses to the Lincoln assassination heard John Wilkes Booth shout as he jumped to the stage from the presidential box. The other, and of course the most well known phrase that Booth bellowed to the audience at Ford's Theatre: Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Greetings Cosmic Americans! I wonder which of these phrases the Gettysburg Visitor Center employee had in mind when he or she decided to stock their gift shop with a John Wilkes Booth bobblehead? Both Kevin Levin and Brooks Simpson reported on this event - the story hit the Internet yesterday and didn't take long to find its way to the Civil War blogosphere.

I offer only a few words in critique. It entirely trivializes a dreadful chapter in the Civil War epic (as do many of the souvenirs available in Gettysburg gift shops - remember the Kitty Cats?). But worse yet, poor taste aside - the toy is pretty vulgar. For shit's sake - the man murdered the president.

Feel free to chime in.

Peace,

Keith