I watched a fair amount of the series, and now I hate Ken Burns.
Much of the visual material is compelling, but the whole thing is
organized like forty Jimmy Stewart movies intercut with each other.
Wars start because men are animals. They were the bigger animals
because they started it, and we were animals too, not least to each other,
but it was their fault. That's the level of analysis to be found.
Much of it feels like a labored defense of the U.S., not least the
decision to use the atom bomb. You could provide a decent argument
either way, but the level of the film is about tenth grade.
I clocked about 60 seconds of the entire series devoted to the Russians.
The series did make clear that MacArthur was a giant screw-up, and
from the film it was hard to see how he salvaged his reputation after sneaking
out of the Phillipines.
It was a kick to see my old professor, Paul Fussell. Back in the day, he
seemed very aristocratic, not someone who had mucked his way through Europe.
mbs
-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list on behalf of Louis Proyect
Sent: Tue 10/2/2007 4:39 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Subject: [PEN-L] Ruminations on WWII
Just around the time I watched Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,”
I decided to take in as much of Ken Burns’s PBS series on WWII titled
“The War” as I could bear. As should be obvious from my review of
Stephen Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” I am no fan of WWII
nostalgia.
Turning first to Ken Burns, I must add that I not a fan of his work in
general. I found his PBS series on Jazz to be problematic as well. All
in all, I find his documentaries to wrap his subjects in a kind of
hagiographic gauze. Whether he is dealing with Duke Ellington or some
marine who killed a bunch of Japs (as the interviewees are wont to say),
you feel as if you are being introduced to a demigod. “The War” is
co-produced by Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein, the daughter of Bard
College President Leon Botstein, who also worked on “Jazz.”
I managed to watch most of three episodes of “The War”. It is a kind of
mixed bag, with the kind of hero worship found in “Band of Brothers” as
well as being focused on ordinary soldiers rather than the top generals.
It also describes WWII as a cataclysm rather than a glorious adventure.
Finally, it zeros in on the racism directed at Black and
Japanese-American soldiers.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/ruminations-on-wwii/
