Why I'm of two minds about watching Ken Burns' "The War"

[capri0mni]

(Which airs on PBS starting Sunday night)

Two points in its favor:

One: I've loved the Ken Burns documentaries I've seen before.

Two: It's important history quickly disappearing over the horizen of Living Memory (Dad's older brother, Jimmy, died in the war, and he didn't talk much about it, but he did say that the loss soured his family, and was like a shadow over their fates ever since; Jimmy was the family's golden boy. And now, Dad is gone, and I can't ask him to elaborate. There's no one left in that family who can elaborate. Dad was the last survivor...).

One Big (for me, ymmv) point against it:

Those aren't actors on the screen, pretending to suffer, and pretending to die. Those were real young men, and their pain and their deaths were real. Watching that unfold on a little tv screen, from the comfort of my home, has a whiff of the snuff film about it, and the idea kinda turns my stomach -- even though the story is being told in their honor.

So... I don't know...

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I feel somewhat the same way, but for me it's more that the events depicted are within living memory for some of the participants, while they weren't for the Civil War one. Also, film is so much more evisceral than photographs where war is concerned, for me at least.

I also feel that WWII has been romanticized a bit too much for my taste. There's nothing romantic about war. Maybe this will counter that, I don't know.

I might just wait for it to come out on DVD and get it from Netflix.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

One of the things that promted this post was a rave review of the series by the TV critic on "Fresh Air"... he said if ever there was a series worthy of DVD, this is it, but that it's worth planning the next two weeks around the show because it's Burns' best work yet... even better than the Civil War.

...

One of the things that softens my reaction to Civil War photos is the knowledge, in the back of my head, that many of those pictures were staged by the photographers. And, besides, none of them were taken during>/i> the battle (the technology hadn't gotten that far, yet -- wasn't possible).

I don't mind looking at dead bodies, after all suffering is passed; it's the intrusion into someone's a person's life, at the moment when he's at his most vulnerable, that squicks me, and gives all newsreel war footage a pornographic feel, for me.

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

I also remember seeing footage from Vietnam when I was a kid, and how disturbed I was by it. I don't want to become desensitized. It really is different when it's real.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.