I've known Peter for 40 years; went to Rutgers with him. If anybody remembers the flap about a Smithsonian exhibit on the use of the A-bomb, he was behind that too. The book companion to the series is a real door-stop; it's huge. No comparison to its predecessor, the Howard Zinn book.
On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > NY Times November 11, 2012 > Television Review > Not the Standard Textbook Tales > By ALESSANDRA STANLEY > > The title alone is easy to scoff at. “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of > the United States” sounds almost like a parody, a sendup of that > filmmaker’s love of bombast and right-wing conspiracy. This documentary > series, beginning Monday on Showtime, isn’t a joke, though some may find > it laughable. It’s deadly serious but also straightforward: a 10-part > indictment of the United States that doesn’t pretend to be evenhanded. > > The series doesn’t focus extensively on many of the things the United > States has done right, Mr. Stone and the historian Peter Kuznick write > in the introduction to their similarly titled companion book. It is more > concerned with focusing a spotlight on what America has done wrong. > > And that’s fair enough. There are plenty of documentaries that celebrate > American exceptionalism. There should be room in today’s vast television > landscape for a series that points out the exceptionable. And Mr. Stone, > the director of “Platoon,” “Wall Street” and “J. F. K.,” is an > all-too-eager cicerone: a dramatist of truth who tramples facts to spin > alternative histories that may be grandiose and grotesque but can > sometimes have a hint of grandeur. > > In this reworking of the past Henry A. Wallace, the progressive who was > vice president during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term, is puffed up > as a greater hero than Roosevelt and Churchill. Stalin was bad, but > Truman was just awful. > > It’s too easy to focus on what Mr. Stone does wrong; it’s also useful to > focus a spotlight on what he gets right. And in all the overblown > rhetoric and self-righteous hyperbole (Mr. Stone is his own narrator) > accuracy is sometimes hard to find. > > The first four episodes made available to critics focus on World War II > and the cold war, but the series, like the book, spans World War I to > the Obama administration. President Obama, in Mr. Stone’s > interpretation, isn’t really any better than Woodrow Wilson or George W. > Bush: someone who took a bad situation and made it worse by selling out > to “Wall Street funders with deep pockets.” > > But Mr. Stone’s most pressing obsession is the atomic bomb and the cold > war, which in this telling are the roots of all American foreign policy > and the answer to what seems to be Mr. Stone’s unspoken question: “Why > was I in Vietnam?” > > Along the way he raises some valid points, notably that Americans too > easily overlook the Soviet contribution in waging and winning World War > II. Steven Spielberg and his ilk popularize the greatest generation and > D-Day and other hard-won American victories, whereas the Russian film > world has yet to produce a Slavic equivalent that could move an > international audience. There is no “Band of Comrades” or “Saving > Private Ivan.” What happened in Russia between 1941 and 1945 has mostly > stayed in Russia. > > “Untold History” makes the point that while fewer than a half-million > Americans died in World War II, Mr. Stone says that as many as 27 > million Soviets, military and civilian, lost their lives, though he > doesn’t factor in how many of those were killed by Stalin’s repression. > Different historians put that figure at anywhere from under a million to > over five million. > > Mr. Stone pays as much attention to Operation Barbarossa as Pearl > Harbor, and shows archival material not just from Normandy and Iwo Jima > but also the Battle of Stalingrad, the German invasion of Ukraine and > other calamities of war. > > Almost all war documentaries find room for clips from Frank Capra movies > and works of propaganda, and so does this one. Mr. Stone also includes a > less familiar newsreel clip of Shostakovich after he composed the > Seventh Symphony, which became a hymn to the Siege of Leningrad. > > Mr. Stone makes no mention of how Shostakovich was stifled, but he > doesn’t overlook Stalin’s atrocities, including the 1940 massacre of > Polish officers at Katyn. More often, however, he positions Stalin as a > victim of British and American mistrust and double-dealing, a brutal > tyrant forced to be his worst self because his Western allies didn’t do > right by him. > > And Truman, in this iteration, is the bigger villain, a hick and a bully > who — pushed by a cabal of right-wing, racist party hacks — unfairly > took the place of Wallace on the 1944 Democratic ticket and who was > persuaded by those same conspirators to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. > Their real motive was not to end the war and save American lives, Mr. > Stone argues, but to deprive the Soviet Union of victory and its spoils > in the Far East and to scare Stalin into submission. > > Mr. Stone is not the first to argue that Japan was ready to give up > before Hiroshima, and that it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that > caused Emperor Hirohito to surrender (though he didn’t surrender until > after Nagasaki). Mr. Stone takes pride in calling his version of the > past an “untold” story, but actually that same thesis was presented on > American television in two documentaries on the 50th anniversary of > Hiroshima, one a British-Japanese production on A&E and History, the > other an ABC News special. > > Mr. Stone brings a more stentorian absolutism, leaving no room for doubt > or nuance. He doesn’t allow for the idea that both versions could > coexist, that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was one of several > factors, along with the two atomic bombings, that finally did the trick. > He is among those true disbelievers who cannot accept that a course of > action can be both unforgivably awful and apparently necessary, given > the facts known at the time. Instead, he doubles down on his passionate > indignation. > > “Despite his denials,” Mr. Stone intones about Truman, “his flawed and > tragic decision to use the bomb against Japan was meant instead as a > ruthless and deeply unnecessary warning that the United States could be > unrestrained by humanitarian considerations in using these same bombs > against the Soviet Union.” > > In this “Untold History” Hiroshima, the cold war, Vietnam, Iraq — none > of that would have happened if Wallace had become president in 1945. > What a wonderful world this would be. > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
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