CASUAL VIGNETTES OF GILDED VULGARITY (CVGV) IS AN ALLEGORICAL ACCOUNT TOLD THROUGH A SERIES OF VIGNETTES THAT CONNECT THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN SYSTEMIC AND STRUCTURAL RACISM TO ITS CONTEMPORARY MANIFESTATIONS. THE FILM’S 12 CHARACTERS ARE FLAWED ARCHETYPES FOUND WITHIN ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY AND CLASSISM THAT CARRIED OVER TO FORM OUR AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS – AND ARE EMBODIED UNCHANGED BY LEGACY OF AMRICA'S 45 PRESIDENT, DONALD TRUMP.  THROUGH HISTORICAL SATIRE, CVGV IS A BLUNT INDICTMENT OF AMERICA’S ENGLISH PEERAGE ROOTS WHICH CREATED THE CULTURE OF WHITE PRIVILEGE, ENTITLEMENT AND RACISM THAT CONTINUES TO PERPETUATE TODAY.

 

THE SPECIFIC HISTORY:

 

Between 1642 and 1675 a wave of Royalists migrated en masse from England to the mid-Atlantic region of the American Colonies.

• Some 45,000 Cavaliers drawn from English nobility and their indentured servants, migrating from the South of England to Virginia and the Lowland South.

• These aristocrats believed in 'hegemonic liberty': dominion over self, and others. In other words: keeping slaves was okay, but domination by others was not.

• The Cavaliers were the foundation of plantation culture in the South. 

The Cavaliers came from the losing side of the Civil War in England, which was now led by the Puritan-inspired Oliver Cromwell. Royalist, Anglican, and aristocratic, they brought along with them their indentured servants – more than 75 percent of the total migration – hoping to recreate in Virginia and environs the socially stratified agrarian society they had left behind.

When their servants began dying en masse, they started importing African slaves, laying the groundwork for the race-based slavery system that underpinned the economy of the South until the end of the Civil War. From this point forward it continued in the form of segregation, Jim Crow, denial of voting rights, to current police brutality, economic disparagement, and the perpetual discrimination that denies equal opportunity and acceptance.