So, about 'Civil War'
An estoric look at a box-office leader
Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Each week, a member of our team (or a friend of the show) gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Today, you’re in the steady hands of… me, Jacob Feldman, This Day’s researcher and resident A24 Stan.
A quick look at the week ahead in American history.
April 18
1906: An earthquake and resulting fire destroys much of the city of San Francisco
1942: The Doolittle Raid, the first air raid on the Japanese home islands during World War II, takes place
April 19
1775: The Battles of Lexington and Concord mark the beginning of the American Revolutionary War
1943: Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann intentionally takes LSD for the first time
1993: The Waco siege ends in a deadly fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas
April 20
1775: The Siege of Boston begins during the American Revolutionary War
1861: Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States Army and assumes command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia
1914: The Ludlow Massacre occurs during a coal miners' strike in Colorado, sparking nationwide protests
April 21
1789: John Adams is sworn in as the first Vice President of the United States
1836: The Battle of San Jacinto takes place, leading to the capture of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna and Texas winning its independence from Mexico
1918: Manfred von Richthofen, the German World War I flying ace known as the "Red Baron," is shot down and killed in action
1927: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 kills 250 after overwhelming levees across the lower Mississippi River valley.
April 22
1970: The first Earth Day is celebrated
1994: Richard Nixon dies at the age of 81 after suffering a stroke
April 23
1635: The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts
1789: President-elect George Washington moves into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York City
1940: The Rhythm Club fire in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people, making it one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history
1968: Students at Columbia University begin a week-long protest against the university's ties to the Vietnam War military draft and its plans to build a gym in Morningside Park
April 24
1800: The Library of Congress is established by Congress
1898: Spain declares war on the United States after rejecting America's ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba
1951: Black students at Robert Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia have walked out of school, staging a strike over poor conditions at their school, particularly when compared to the white school across town
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more.
I would believe I’m the only one that walked out Alex Garland’s Civil War thinking not about political differences today, or even those from the 1860s, but instead perseverating over Revolutionary War tensions.
Then again, I happened to have seen the film almost 248 years to the day after the so-called “shot heard round the world” in a theater about 10 miles from the War of Independence’s first battleground in Concord and Lexington, MA.
I think Civil War did itself a disservice by setting the action in the modern day US. When faced with the dispute on screen, us humans are innately trained to quickly identify whose side we ought to be on—but the movie scrambles those efforts. California and Texas fight together, and very few details are given about why America has become torn apart.
This inability for the audience to find an ideological home on either side of the battle is clearly intentional. It’s the film’s central provocation. In what will likely be the most notable line of the movie, Jesse Plemons’ character (“Unnamed Soldier”), rifle in hand, asks the protagonists, “What kind of American are you?”
The horror is meant to come from the fact that someone would ask the question, rather than what the answer might be. In fact, no real answer is given. We never even learn who or what Plemons is actually fighting for (though his xenophobia becomes frighteningly clear).
As a result, the movie seems to plant its flag with the centrists. It argues that war is the fault of all parties, the ugly result of division. That maybe if we just listened to each other, conflict could be avoided. In the end, it is compassion that is celebrated, not passionate partisanship.
But in making that point, the movie undercuts its arguments with numerous allusions to America’s first war. The characters travel through New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, all sites of key moments from the 1770s. One haunting scene may very well have been shot at a Valley Forge gas station. The climax comes on July 4 for goodness’ sake.
And yes, you could make the case that the Revolutionary War too was a needless horror. It’s certainly been sanitized by time, and likely left swaths of the American populace worse off.
But, sitting here nearly a quarter-millennium later, it seems difficult to argue the causes of freedom and representative democracy were not worth fighting for. And that they’re not still worth fighting for.
Walking back from the AMC, alongside the park where Redcoats made camp before embarking on their fateful trip to Lexington and Concord, it certainly seemed to me that it might not be so villainous to ask yourself what kind of American you are. Is that so revolutionary?
— Jacob Feldman
A little more esoterica
If you’re reading this from NYC, come on out next Thursday, April 25th, for Jody’s live show Ask Roulette. It’s a series in which strangers ask each other questions on stage — special guests include writer/podcaster Jon Ronson and comedian Caitlin Cook.
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