to watch or not to watch this 15-hour documentary on PBS. Honestly, when I hear the name “Ken Burns” I flinch and suddenly wish to do something un-American, like join the Worker’s Party or mock an aging ballplayer. I don’t know why, since I have never seen anything by Ken Burns. have you? I fear that I will hear a great deal about what makes an American, thereby getting a rather precise measurement of my own alienation. I also fear another go-round with “The Greatest Generation”–hearing all those grizzled decent and unpretentious men talk about Guadalcanal and Anzio makes me more feel ever more effete, poring over my “cultural studies” assignments for my students and sorting my iTunes selections. I watched the many hours of Band of Brothers and even at the end was still entirely unable to identify a single character with any precision. I did not attend to Tom Brokaw’s edifying lessons. Ashamed, I realized I had no grandfathers or uncles who had made a heroic stand against the Hun and the Yellow Threat. All I had was my hothouse fanboy appreciation for Cross of Iron , Hell is for Heroes , The Big Red One and The Dirty Dozen . Thinking about Ken Burns makes me feel that Lee Marvin is sniggering at me.
I also fear the “intimate” approach, as apparently the documentary focuses on four soldiers from “quintessentially” American towns. Have we had enough of intimate approaches to huge historical-global events? Have we had enough of the homespun American heartland–especially considering the ideology that keeps getting deployed during this current war? And why is it “The War” according to Burns? others wars too complicated, ambiguous, etc.? Isn’t it about time to complicate “The War?” And why did we all have to wait around for Burns to package this neatly—with accompanying DVD, book and CD available at Barnes and Noble–when there must be thousands of reels of unseen footage languishing all over the country? Why does every consideration of the historical have to be an “event?”
Do I fear and carp too much? Has anybody seen other works by Burns? Any thoughts on this one? Will there be a well-modulated voice-over that makes me want to pull my own teeth out? Will there be…..teaching resources??
Hey, Lee, at least I never pranced around in a big-budget musical!
Ah, bless you, bless you. The only reason I might have even thought of tuning this in would be to hear “fuck” on PBS, but I figure Charlie Rose’ll break down one of these days, and that’d be more fun than 36.3 hours of this. My grandfathers did serve in WWII. The one most of us hated and/or (at best) tolerated served on a bomber, and would proudly remind me that one of his squadron’s planes showed up in The Longest Day, which was also a good title for time spent with him. The grandfather everyone loved spent WWII in the Air Force, and from what I could piece together from his many inappropriate tales of poker and profanity was that his time serving his country resembled Phil Silvers’ work in the Navy. Now that’s a greatest generation I can get behind.
my father was a ragamuffin who stole from all sides and sold to all sides during WWII. my grandfather had had a stroke which left him unable to talk by the time i was born so i don’t know if he fought with mussolini but for some reason i think not. my other grandfather was killed in a car crash during curfew in WWII. he was a vet on a night emergency and crashed into a car with obscured lights. he would have joined the partisans if my grandmother had let him.
i have no desire to hear ken burns narrate “the war” (yeah, what war?) to me. i just want this one to end.
i saw quite a few hour of jazz and i think i learned a few factoids but not very many — like michael, i couldn’t really tell people apart, and i found the theoretical points (the great innovations brought by charlie parker, the great innovations brought by john coltrane, etc.) underexplained.
me don’t like encyclopedian syntheses.