I’ve heard of medieval-themed dinner theater before, but this is the first I’ve heard of Confederate-themed dinner theater, where they re-fight the Civil War, with the South usually winning. And it’s a Dolly Parton operation!
Because I had seen the promo video on the show’s webpage, I thought I knew what to expect. It all seems innocent enough until you begin to see relics of the War Between the States: waiters dressed in Union uniforms dropping food on the plates of happy patrons hungry for nostalgia and smiling men on horseback wearing Confederate uniforms. As one colleague pointed out with a mix of horror and delight, recalling the deliberately offensive fictional musical from The Producers, it’s Springtime for Hitler.
Except that this thing has been running for 30 years, and the audience doesn’t see it as parody.
Last time I was in Germany, I didn’t see any Nazi-themed restaurants, or Nazi musical revues. Did I not look hard enough?
That is both appalling and unshocking.
History has made very plain that Lincoln and the Union made a terrible error by not stringing the whole lot of treasonous Confederate dogs.
Confederates didn’t give up, they just stopped fighting.
JoseBuddha — “…they just stopped fighting” Nah, they’re still fighting. And they’re still fighting mad that they can’t put blacks “in their place” or use certain words. Plus, there’s putting the Bible in school and stop killing babies.
To make it authentic, why not go all out?
-Only whites get served dinner with the show…blacks get shunted to a different part of the building and given some fried chicken and watermelons for dessert.
-Every now and then, have the sounds of a slave being whipped and crying for mercy piped through the Pa system.
Sheesh, this is so backwards…what Is it with the south and their desire to return to treating people like garbage? Where is the pride in not only knowing you lost a war, but deserved to lose it morally? Maybe there IS a God…and he hates them for their views? Did they ever think of that? After all, Jesus was a middle-eastern man…the same ones they still hate on constantly.
As Sheldon Lee Cooper’s mum would say ,that sounds like a hoot and a half .
Just joking ,What a strange place America is ,well some parts ,perhaps i have only visited
the normal parts.
There goes Dolly’s reputation – who’d have thunk anything about her could sink?
@2 In some fairness to Lincoln, he did get killed rather early in the process. There isn’t much one can do when they are dead. But I have read pieces from historians who suggest Lincoln would not have been too harsh on the South and that the war, for him, was much more about keeping the country in one piece than about demolishing slavery.
@#8, Leo Buzalsky
IIRC, Lincoln was the one who held back the other members of his party who wanted to take revenge — the famous “with malice towards none” line — and his assassination made them shut up to avoid seeming in bad taste.
It’s Springtime for Davis and CSA
It’s Winter for Lincoln and Grant
Catholic churches have been doing medieval-themed dinner theatre every Sunday since the Council of Trent. Albeit the portions are very stingy indeed.
What! You mean treason isn’t freeze peach?
There’s a South Park episode about this.
I know we all expect better from The South, but come on… is this really all that surprising?
My grandparents are a huge fan of that place, actually. I hated it even as a kid.
I thought those had all been closed. The one in Myrtle Beach was anyway. It’s now “Pirate Adventure”, or some shit like that. It’s still owned by Dolly Parton I believe, but they just took the same thing and made it pirates vs. someone instead of blue vs. grey.
I went to it years ago, not because I wanted to, but because… long story. Anyway, there was nothing overtly offensive about it, they basically just divided the two sides of the theater into different camps that cheered on whoever was doing the cool equestrian stuff and other crap to entertain you while you ate okay food. One of my aunts got to chase a pig. The bullshit of it of course is that the two sides in this case weren’t arbitrary. One was a real-life slave-holding faction. Needless to say, not one actual issue as to why the Civil War ever existed was allowed to intrude on the festivities, it was all just two different colored factions playing games. The one thing that was offensive, at least to me, was watching black people who were serving food dressed in Confederate uniforms, even though those uniforms didn’t actually mean anything in the context of the silly dinner theater. That was not cool.
As best as I can tell (that being the only time I went to one of those things), the model they used was the same as Medieval Times uses, and it can be applied to anything. Two sides, which fight! And you root one on! Which I guess is why they switched it to pirates. There is no reason not to take all of them and turn them into pirates, which may in fact be the solution to all of the world’s problems.
From an outsiders perspective it seems to be focussed on the nobility of manners. Matters of justice and humanity are simply ignored. That allows the privilleged to hold themselves up as shining examples of the true and good. All you meanies are bringing irrelevancies in to sully the glorious and righteous experience.
I remember seeing this when driving through Orlando and wondering what it is since, as a youngin’, I was a fan of Dolly Parton’s. I never looked it up, and they closed the Orlando location down before I had a chance to care. Never have I been so glad to have missed out on a dinner or show. I can almost guarantee I would have walked out, especially if the cheers and jeers on the South’s side were louder.
The romanticizing of the Southern Slaveholders Insurrection was PR genius. The fancy dress and almost exaggerated politeness of the Antebellum South, combined with the extravagant mansions, faux gallantry and southern cooking (hey, they did some things well!) all combined into a ready-for-primetime cultural fig leaf, covering over the fact that the Southern patrician class fought this nation’s most lethal and destructive war because they didn’t want to give up the right to treat fellow human beings as chattels. It also masks the institutional cruelty and the callous nature of slave-owning. Dolly Parton (who is, by all accounts a nice person) should have to experience a few days of being treated like one of the slaves. Perhaps then some of the charm of the old south would fade, and she could see it for what it was.
They should have hanged the lot of them. By the neck until dead.