I'm pretty sure someone tried to make a movie like this in 90s but it didn't get any attention and I think it kind of wussed out doing anything really hard-hitting. The idea is pretty simple: make a movie where the white and black racial roles in our society are reversed. Black culture dominates society. Whites live in fear of the cops. The economic deck is stacked against the white folks. Definitely hit on the systemic stuff hard. And in the movie, when the whites want to bring up these issues, the media as well as most black folks just don't believe them and dismiss their concerns. Because you know, in America it doesn't matter if you're black or white anyone can pull themselves up out of poverty if they really want it.
I admit, the concept is a bit lib. But I think the real value in a movie like this would be in observing white folks' reaction to it. Conservatives would no doubt fucking lose their shit over it. I mean really lose their shit. Might even get to witness some mask off anger. But even white libs... I think they would find ways to criticize it without wanting to appear like they agree with the conservatives. You know, stuff like "I think it's a good premise but the movie just goes a little over the top".
And I think you could make this movie on a shoestring budget. You really don't need any special effects, sets, props, etc. Within budget of a leftist project, I think. So someone who can make movies, go ahead and give it a go. There's no way in hell any Hollywood studio would even touch this idea.
They made a movie kinda like this, or a show or something, where it was American slavery but with black people instead of white people as the slavemasters, the whites as slaves. I saw it criticized a lot by black people, the argument being something like that it implied that slavery was inevitable, just do the quirks of history, white people were the slavemasters. Like, I can kinda imagine some racist white person watching that and going "see! The blacks would've done what we did if they were in our position!" Something like that idk. Kinda makes sense to me
Genuinely asking this is good faith, is it not the historical materialist position that slavery was more or less inevitable? I agree that as media such a story could be perceived as just assuaging white guilt, but as a concept surely any capitalist society in a position to do settler colonialism on the Americas in that time period would have taken most of the same actions?
Edit: On second thought I will backtrack this a bit; a version of history in which the Americas are colonized by African settler colonizers would be massively different from our own, to the point that you can't really say one way or the other what would happen without way more information.
I was thinking the same thing! My take would be that, yes, according to a materialist understanding of history, if merely the skin color was changed but let's say that black people were in europe and white people in africa or something (because I agree with your edit), then yes, slavery was more or less inevitable....however, since most Americans don't have a materialist understanding of history, they would interpret in an idealist way, leading to the problem I originally stated