I was working on yet another long overdue video in my apartment in Queens.
My brain was frazzled in that special creative hell created by feeling overworked with no work to show for it.
So I gave myself a break and watched a movie.
I've been trying to make the most out of my FilmStruck subscription, so I checked that out.
I saw that they had a collection of films by Ross McElwee
whose seminal documentary, Sherman's March, I had, to my great shame, never seen.
So I decided to invest the time in watching it.
Sherman's March, as a very authoritative voice tells us at the beginning
"In 1864 during the American Civil War Union General William T. Sherman began his famous march to the sea
With an army of 60,000 men he swept into the south destroying, Atlanta, Georgia, Columbia
South Carolina and dozens of smaller towns."
And Sherman's March, as described by the director in voice over --
"Two years ago I was about to begin shooting a documentary film on the lingering effects of Sherman's march on the South
Anyway, I just got a grant to make my film
And I stopped off in New York from Boston where I live to stay for a few days with the woman I'd been seeing
But when I arrived she told me she just decided to go back to her former boyfriend"
As another guy caught in a place between intent and action between finishing a task and managing your own tumultuous emotions
I could relate.
And it's why I decided to start this video by aping the structure of the film
Plus I desperately need a faster turnaround time
So I want to see if I could finish a full video in a shorter time than I'm used to so here goes
While setting out to document the South and the people who live there
McElwee way uses most of his film stock to document the women in his life.
His sister, his best friend Charlene whom he would later marry,
And a long, long string of crushes and paramours
"As for me. I keep thinking that perhaps
I should return to my original plan to make a film about Sherman's march, but I can't seem to stop filming Pat."
Well alright, dude. It's your movie. Whatever you want to do
In fact part of me would dismiss the movie as
self-indulgent crap
Worthy of a vlog rather than a documentary. Like for one of those YouTube channels
Which somehow managed to make every single thing they talk about into an excuse to talk about themselves.
Jesus Christ Kyle you stupid narcissistic piece of shit get a real job-
I stopped myself loathing mid-sentence and continued writing because I remembered that I still had a point to make.
The difference between self-indulgence,
and self-reflection.
McElwee avoids the pitfalls of the former to do the hard, necessary work of the latter
Because McElwee,
for a guy who turned his own life into a two-and-a-half-hour movie,
not to mention half a dozen documentaries after that documenting his life into the 21st century,
McElwee is pretty camera shy.
The clearest view we get is this.
He's a little drunk, come home from a costume party
Filmed in half light and speaking in whispers because well...
"I have to be quiet though because my father's asleep upstairs.
You know I think he already has enough questions about the validity of my film project without
seeing me dressed up like this."
It's not the best look for him.
And that's not even mentioning the Confederate uniform he's wearing.
Well, it is the South.
Of course after this year, that's thankfully no longer an excuse
I realized while watching it that in a year when the Confederate States of America
lives again in the headlines.
A year with rising nuclear tensions.
A year of pressure and anxiety.
This was the perfect year to finally watch this film.
Because, for all this time mooning of the objects of his affection,
McElwee actually does manage to talk about William Tecumseh Sherman and the legacy of his march.
Through his study of the people of the south, yes including the women he courts,
he creates a southern mythology with Sherman as its central figure.
A mythology with its own visceral sense of the Apocalypse
"Sherman was merciless, he spared nothing,
He spared nobody.
I'm sure in Vietnam, we did the same thing.
I'm sure we did the same thing in Vietnam, probably worse."
"Well, did you know that they had they have total underground cities?
In Vietnam.
Total underground cities in Vietnam and Russia
Where they stockpile food, they carry out communications.
That's why we never could win because they have total underground cities underground.
If we have a nuclear attack, and you whose gonna survive it?
The Vietnamese, and the Russians."
In McElwee's South
Judgment Day is always imminent.
Armageddon imagined so much it feels more like a memory.
because it actually is.
A century-old wound slashed on the people of Georgia and the Carolinas.
The southern fear of northerners sweeping south and destroying everything Dixie held dear, made reality .
A famous line from the Battle Hymn of the Republic speaks of a "terrible, swift sword."
For the South that sword was in Sherman's hand.
RHETT: Take a good look, my dear.
RHETT: It's a Historic moment. You can tell your grandchildren how you watch the Old South disappear one night."
Sherman wasn't just a military commander. He was a figure from the Book of Revelations
For the Christian South the two myths intertwine.
"We do have to accept the
Inevitable that Christ is coming again because that's the promise."
"And not be concerned or worried over the
holocaust through the destruction that's predicted
but because we hopefully none of us will be here when that even happens."
The way they talk about it, the South
survived an apocalypse, and they intend to again.
"We have allowed ourselves to become weak
in our nuclear arsenal, so it's high time
that this country
take an isolationist viewpoint,
and get on with getting itself the strongest nation in the world because you can't trust the Communists."
And in the early 80s, when another celebrity president was gleefully heating up a cold war,
when nuclear winter was again a terrifying plausibility?
That stereotypical Southern backwoods survivalism
suddenly makes sense.
"The only thing we want from
governments at all levels
is to simply be left alone.
Leave us alone
You better leave us alone."
'Course
There's a part that's missing.
A big part.
You'll notice that neither I,
nor any character in the film has uttered the word
"Slavery."
Cause when they do talk about slavery...
"I really get turned on about the Civil War.
Now I know it's been a hundred years,
and I still don't think we were wrong.
Only in that slavery should not be enforced. It should be a right.
If you wanna be a slave, be a slave.
If you don't, fine.
Oh, that's bad
That is so, so bad.
That is a hot take.
Yeah, a big problem with Sherman's march, not just with this film, but with the way we talk about the historical event
It's focused on the experiences of the white Americans involved.
Oh, there are black people in the film, but McElwee doesn't have the same intimacy that he shows with his white friends
We never get the african-american perspective on the legacy of William Tecumseh Sherman
Because that legacy is huge
"I mean, the late, great unpleasantness was really a great unpleasantness.
He destroyed everything!"
He also freed slaves along the way, I don't recall the film mentioning that
Nor is there any mention of how many of those freed slaves drowned in Ebenezer Creek
while they were fleeing from Confederate cavalry.
Nor any mention of how Sherman's scorched-earth policy hurt the South's black population already weak from years of malnourishment
Nor any mention about how it was Sherman who made the famous broken promise of
"forty acres and a mule."
His legacy with the black South is just as complex, if not more, than his legacy with the white South.
I wish I could get a black southerner's opinion on him
Then I remembered oh yeah, I'm dating one
Uh, Sherman...
You know it was interesting learning about Sherman in school because
The history books are very very against him the Georgia history books are so it just kind of
portrays him in the most negative light possible
which of course me as a black person in the South trying to be contrarian to all the white people,
I, like developed this love for General Sherman that was very like
Unfounded for a few years like I didn't really do like just based on
What was in the textbooks, but I didn't read further until recently
about him and
Basically what I learned is that General Sherman kind of saw himself as a white Savior kind of guy
Which I think a lot of Union people did
But Sherman did free slaves during his march?
He did, he did...
But what's interesting is that when he did free slaves Sherman refused to?
Let slaves become part of this army he wanted yeah for his for his military forces specifically
What he wanted to do
Was you know take the South down and he wanted to do it with himself and his white soldiers?
He didn't really have much interest in black soldiers working with him, which I found to be really interesting and he also um
Didn't really like the idea of everyone just
encouraging slaves to run away
because he felt like the war was going to handle it and
and so...
Why mess things around when they're gonna handle it like it's like he just acted like it was like a waste of time
You know I kind of wish more people that were that we're fighting for the Union including Sherman you know like
actually cared about
About you know the moral implications of slavery
But he, it seems like Sherman's a guy who just happened to be working for the right side
My girlfriend's great check out her stuff. I guess even the northern narratives tend to erase slavery from the war
Just like the southern ones
For a long time it was common in American schools to teach that the Civil War was fought for a "lost cause" for a
for a "certain way of life"
without having to specify what that cause was.
The Confederate narrative of the "lost cause" is necessary once you factor in their sense of Apocalypse
Because in every end of the world myth there are survivors who can build the world anew and those survivors
are always the righteous.
Only the sinners are damned
Therefore:
We can't be sinners.
Ever.
To admit such is to surrender to damnation
Only God can judge us.
Not these mortals coming from the north
with their disruptive laws, their terrible swift swords,
their fancy video cameras...
This is Fort Moultrie.
I have to be careful because the Rangers have told me that
I'm not allowed to film here without permission, and I could get into trouble, so...
The myth of the Confederacy, like all myths
crumbles when exposed to the light of reason.
Sherman destroyed everything in his path
That's not in dispute.
But no one in the film seems to question whether it was worth destroying
For the South the sins of another is used to distract from the sins of our own
We can't be sinners
Not when it's our tragedy!
Many of those young boys, some of them went in at 14 and 15, they never had had a sweetheart!
But yet they went into the battlefield and were killed!
Confederate Lives Matter! (oh god)
It's why some people insist that we can't talk about gun control right after a mass shooting
Why we can't talk about climate change after a record-setting flood. We are the oppressed
Not the oppressors
We
Cannot Be Sinners
Send your thoughts and prayers, but keep politics out of it,
let's see... I do them a lot better if I'd had on some underpants.
But of course politics is always in it
Always,
I keep wondering how I should have responded to Pat's comment about not wearing any underpants.
I mean, that's not like telling someone that you're not wearing any socks.
Also I've begun having my dreams about nuclear war again
Incidentally while I was writing the script my brother called me from his place in North Carolina.
He and his friends were also wondering how to survive a nuclear war.
I suppose most people are now.
The work of Ross McElwee
Inspires us to rethink our boundaries
He tackles the assumption that art is the escape from life rather than a confrontation of it
but from a distance
behind the safety of the camera McElwee can be both present and absent
observer and participant
and he knows this!
As does his family.
You have an instant rapport with people because you have a camera,
at least it's something, a conversation piece
I'll try to think of it that way from now on
McElwee reminds us that the stories we tell ourselves affect our actions
That we're constantly being shaped by narratives thrust upon us and by narratives that we perpetuate
Even if we cringe when the cameras roll
Would you stop!? Would you STOP!?
Don't touch that lens!
I can't help but touch it, turn it off!
This is important. This is not art, this is LIFE!
She's wrong
It's art. That helps us have a life
And I think I'll end this video by
showing a southern monument that I think is worth preserving
How's your Arabic?
The monument was erected anonymously for survivors of nuclear war
It explains in 12 different languages how to reconstruct civilization.