Confederate: Why Game of Thrones's creators may not be best for a series on slavery

The show's critics say slavery as it might be practised in modern times should not be trivialised for the sake of a fantasy TV series by the creators of 'Game of Thrones'

'Game of Thrones' creators DB Weiss (left) and David Benioff are lined up to work on the new HBO series 'Confederate' about slavery and the American Civil War (Rex)

It was supposed to be HBO’s next big thing: a high-concept drama from the creators of Game of Thrones, set in an alternative America, where the Southern states had seceded from the Union and slavery continued into the present day.

Instead, the new series, called Confederate, has provoked a passionate outcry from potential viewers, who are questioning how HBO and the creators will handle this volatile mixture of race, politics and history. Several historians and cultural critics are also skeptical about whether the creators of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and DB Weiss, are the right people to address the subject and if it should be attempted at all.

Confederate arrives at a time when many minority groups feel their civil rights are under siege, and when issues surrounding the Civil War and its legacy – the propriety of displaying Confederate flags; the relocations and razings of Confederate monuments – continue to confront Americans almost daily.

To the show’s critics, its promise to depict slavery as it might be practised in modern times is perhaps the most worrisome element of Confederate. They say that slavery, a grave and longstanding scar on the national psyche, especially for black Americans, should not be trivialised for the sake of a fantasy TV series.


 HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ (above) is a blockbuster but concerns have been raised about whether its creators working on the new slavery TV series ‘Confederate’ is appropriate 
 (HBO)

“Racial history in this country is a very open, sensitive wound,” said Dodai Stewart, editor-in-chief of Fusion, a social-justice culture and news site.

“Nothing’s settled, nothing’s healed,” Stewart said. “I want to believe that this will be handled sensitively. But it’s an emotional subject, and for too many people, it’s uncomfortably close to the reality they already experience.”

No scripts have been written, and not a single frame has been shot for Confederate, which will not make its debut any sooner than next year. But the show’s pedigree is already established: With Thrones, Benioff and Weiss are responsible for HBO’s most-watched series ever and the winner of the Emmy Award for drama series for the past two years.

The show joins a television landscape in which alternate-history narratives are becoming increasingly popular, as seen in dystopian programs like Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle (adapted from the Philip K Dick novel) and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (from the novel by Margaret Atwood).

In a news release announcing its acquisition of Confederate, HBO said the series would depict hypothetical events leading up to a “Third American Civil War”, and follow characters “on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarised Zone”, including “freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slaveholding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall”.

While this subject matter is delicate in its own right, there is particular concern about how it will be handled by Benioff and Weiss.

HBO’s ‘Confederate’ joins a television landscape in which alternate-history narratives are becoming increasingly popular, as seen in dystopian programmes such as Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

In their time on Game of Thrones, they have been criticised for what some viewers regard as the routine and insensitive depiction of rape, and an over-reliance on sexual violence as a plot device.

Thrones features few black actors in prominent roles, other than characters who are, or once were, slaves, and includes a plot line in which a population of darker-skinned slaves was liberated by a white savior.

Eric Foner, the Columbia University history professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, expressed dismay when he heard that Weiss and Benioff were the creators of Confederate.

“Game of Thrones, to me, is just an exercise in violence and sexual abuse, and many other things that draw a crowd but don’t have much redeeming social significance,” Foner says. “I hope they know more about the American Civil War than they do about the medieval world.”

Weiss and Benioff have become two of the most important talents at HBO, which prides itself on creative freedom. Under their guidance, Game of Thrones has become a ratings blockbuster, delivering 16.1 million viewers across multiple platforms for its season seven premiere.

Actor David Harewood wrote about ‘Confederate’ in a Twitter post: ‘Good luck finding black actors for this project’ (Getty) (Getty Images)

As the show approaches its grand finale (no sooner than next year), a vital priority for HBO has been securing a new project from its creators.

The network declined to make Benioff and Weiss available for interviews. In the announcement for Confederate, they said they had been discussing the idea for several years and had considered pursuing it as a feature film before taking it to HBO.

Weiss and Benioff said in the announcement that they would be working on Confederate with married writer-producers Malcolm Spellman (Empire) and Nichelle Tramble Spellman (The Good Wife), who are black. Spellman declined to comment.

Still, some performers have already suggested that they want no part of a series like Confederate. Actor David Harewood, a star of shows like Supergirl, Homeland and The Night Manager, wrote in a Twitter post: “Good luck finding black actors for this project.”

There is a longstanding tradition of historical fiction that has explored alternate depictions of the Civil War and its aftermath. Winston Churchill wrote a fanciful essay in 1930 titled “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg”.

In CSA: The Confederate States of America, a mock documentary from 2004, writer-director Kevin Willmott explored the imaginary history of a Confederacy that wins the Civil War and expands across the Western Hemisphere.

Willmott wrote in an email last week that he had no comment, except to say that he and Spike Lee, his executive producer on the film, “will be speaking to our lawyer about the HBO project”.

But alternate history can also prove to be unexpectedly provocative. The marketing campaign for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, set in an America where the Axis powers won the Second World War, was condemned for its prolific use of German eagles, iron crosses and other fascist imagery.

Alternate history can prove to be unexpectedly provocative: Amazon’s ‘The Man in the High Castle’ starring Rufus Sewell (above) set in an America where the Axis powers won the Second World War, was condemned for its prolific use of fascist imagery. (Liane Hentscher/Amazon/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock) (Liane Hentscher/Amazon/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

The Handmaid’s Tale series, in which the United States has become a theocracy, and women are subjugated, was criticised for eliding issues of race in its fictional society and featuring a largely white cast.

Still, both of those shows had their respected literary source material to fall back on and quell the preliminary concerns of viewers.

Gavriel D Rosenfeld, a history professor at Fairfield University and the editor of a blog called The Counterfactual History Review, says that some alternate histories were bound to be more controversial than others; some eras have more clearly defined heroes and villains.

“Everyone agrees that we can hate the Nazis,” Rosenfeld says. “There’s no dispute there. The Civil War is still, 150 years later, an unmastered legacy in our country.”

Compared with fantasy stories like Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings, Rosenfeld says that alternate history has a unique power to “prick our conscience and make us realise that history didn’t have to happen the way it did”.

“It forces us to confront that our world was not inevitable,” Rosenfeld says. “Either you’re going to imagine history turning out better, or you’re going to imagine history turning out worse. Those are highly symbolic and reflective of people’s interpretations. Depending on your perspective, one can imagine a fantasy or a nightmare.”

© The New York Times