Article theme: Mr Confederate Man - Rebel Son
If there is such a genre as epic comedy, Buster Keaton's magnum opus is unquestionably the finest and greatest example. The logistics of The General alone are so much fun to consider, if it never got a single laugh it would still stomp sphincter as an action chase flick, mogging every other effort except arguably The Road Warrior with contemptuous ease. Orson Welles called it "possibly the GOAT, fr".
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| Me and who? |
Keaton plays "Johnnie Gray", whose very name marks him out as an archetypal everyman in the Southern Confederacy. When the civil war breaks out, he rushes to enlist but is denied because the South needs him to fulfil his essential duty as a railway engineer. Like all train enthusiasts, Johnnie is way too autistic to reason this out, and thinks they just rejected him for service because he's a weird literal me with flat affect, which would also be a plausible explanation. His would-be sweetheart (Marion Mack) also runs with this and dumps his ass, despite which he remains resolved to win her back when she is accidentally taken hostage during the villains' Die Hard ripoff-esque plan to hijack a train for the Union.
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| Same, bruh. |
Keaton chases the hijackers, they chase him; it's a plot born at the intersection of high-stakes action and Looney Tunes cartoon, but the progression of events, the tricks employed to hold up pursuers and the desperate scrambles to catch up to the trains in between flipping railroad switches and scavenging for firewood ramp up an only halfway-comic tension. Scenes behind enemy lines are as suspenseful as any Hitchcock picture. Throughout chase, counter-chase, evasion and climactic battle, Keaton's deadpan expression remains as constant as in all his classics. Given the real danger he faced on practically every project (YT comments sections remain packed with Joe Rogan fans echoing his account of how the master broke his neck in one stunt), the commitment to expressionlessness speaks of balls beyond our mortal comprehension.
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| Timing is everything. |
"But Paaat, how can you praise a film in which the heroes Fought In Defence Of Slaaayveryyy?" You know, I could (and did, in a first draft) write a long, boring screed refuting every brainletism cited in defence of the boomer truth narrative of the American civil war, but I don't need to, because in 2022, ninety-six years after The General first dropped, Hollywood released a movie called The Woman King that lionised the Dahomey Amazons, a real historical faction of warrior women who fought (extremely poorly) on behalf of a guy literally called the Slave King because he captured and sold so many slaves. This means pro-slavery action is officially endorsed by the main propaganda organ of the libtard regime, proving damningly, if thunderously unsurprisingly, that all reb-bashers are completely full of shit and just hate white people.
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| *Dixie intensifies* |
Presumably Keaton turning the tide of battle leads to a third timeline even better than the Berenstein one (let's call it the Berenstöön timeline) where the South goes on to win the entire war, executes L*ncoln, Sh*rman and Sh*ridan, phases out slavery peacefully, and establishes a pan-American Confederacy that stays out of World War 1 (if not prevents it through some butterfly-effect hoodoo), outlaws usury, bans advertising, crushes communism and cancels SNL in 1998. In such a timeline, we'd get movies like The General every year.
