The film is clear as day in its endorsement of the Confederacy’s ideology of white supremacy. Which prompts an interesting question: does the film itself support this reading? If there’s a disparity between the ways The General and The Birth of a Nation are discussed, I think it’s because most people assume The General falls into the revisionist category. Both are bad, but right-thinking people who might feel they have some leeway to forgive the ignorance, naiveté or bias of the revisionists often feel much less comfortable enthusiastically endorsing works of explicit white supremacy. When dealing with films like The General which don’t appear to touch on slavery, it can be hard to tell if the filmmakers are coming at their history from a revisionist or full-on white supremacist perspective. It’s well-known that a lot of revisionist Southerners engage in denialism about slavery in order to guiltlessly celebrate the cultural heritage of the Confederacy, as if the two weren’t connected. Whereas writers tend to feel obligated to acknowledge the horrors which films like Gone with the Wind and The Birth of a Nation defend, dilute or erase that same obligation does not appear to extend to The General. Reviews at BBC and The Guardian don’t touch on the Confederates or slavery. In their 2018 episode on The General, Unspooled hosts Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson only passingly reference the Civil War subject matter. Scott doesn’t say much about the Civil War in his brief 2010 video essay celebrating the film. A 2008 review at Slate praises the film for its attention to historical detail without reference to the Confederacy or slavery. It’s not surprising, then, that the words “slavery,” “slave,” “Confederacy” or “Confederate” don’t appear at all in Roger Ebert’s 1997 Great Movies review of the film. Like most of the films which Keaton directed and starred in, the plot is minimal and often remembered only as an incidental setup for Keaton’s incredible array of sight gags and stunts. The General follows Confederate railroad engineer Johnnie Gray (Keaton) as he defends his town of Marietta, Georgia from some nefarious Union soldiers.
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