Ken Burns' new documentary: The Vietnam War

I hope he used better advisors than he did for the Jazz series.

 

definitely will be watching.

 

No angry jazz on the soundtrack? Definitely sounds of the times.

 

This war has been exhaustively covered by several documenary series, the best of them being "10,000 Day War". It will be interesting to see Burns' spin on this.

 

Looks like big efforts are being made to avoid bias. From an interesting article in Vanity Fair:

Why The Vietnam War Is Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Most Ambitious Project Yet

"In terms of content, The Vietnam War, written by the historian Geoffrey C. Ward and narrated by Peter Coyote, is rich, revelatory, and scrupulously evenhanded. It succeeds in large part by not being reductive or succinct—by being, in fact, rather overstuffed, a lot to take in. (The documentary will be available for streaming via PBS’s app, which will be useful not only to cord-cutters but also to viewers keen, as I was, to revisit earlier episodes after having watched later ones.) Even so, Burns said, he and Novick “spent a lot of time subtracting—subtracting commentary, subtracting an adjective that might put a thumb on the scale” in terms of bias. By dint of its thoroughness, its fairness, and its pedigree, The Vietnam War is as good an occasion as we’ve ever had for a levelheaded national conversation about America’s most divisive foreign war. It deserves to be, and likely will be, the rare kind of television that becomes an event."

 

Will removing any controversy or perspective from the film create a bland interpretation of the war?
Contrary to many opinions I have found Burn's programs to be amazingly unsatisfying.
Even the simple choice and presentation of "facts" can be biased.

 

The great novelist Tim O'Brien will be a part of this. In the series preview, he is seen commenting that 80% of the casualties in Vietnam were incurred by land mines.

 

Blu-ray review: The Vietnam War Blu-ray

 

Still a week to go, right?

 

Here we go. Hope everyone's ready.
Quote from a Nam vet in the paper today: "It heaps ineptness upon ignorance upon immorality by policymakers and the military brass--all guided by an archaic worldview shaped by the Cold War and the post-WWII Can-do attitude."

 

Ken Burns is in the same camp as Ron Howard - when their subject isn't directly political, good results can ensue, but throughought their non-political works, they are revealed as nostalgiac American sentimentalists reared during the height of the Cold War, whose bias of, and romanticism for, their nation and its history, permeate everything they do. Frankly, I found his WWII doc to be one of most vapid accounts of the multi-faceted, global war out there. If no other historical account survived of the notorious conflict into the future, their understanding of WWII would be of a very limied, sorry state.


As for Vietnam, any fair coverage of American involvement in the conflict is doomed from the outset. The Boomer/Vietnam generation is largely still alive, and 'Nam proves just as divisive within the USA alone today as did from 1968-1973. It's sad that over a quarter-of-a-century later, unbiased, non-hawkish American historiographies of the Cold War are still rarer than cheap copies of the original David Bowie The Man Who Sold The World RCA CD...

 

Is this a quote about Ken Burns' documentary or about The Vietnam War in general?

 

the doc. The writer got to see a preview copy, more or less

 

Based on the WSJ review, they made a concerted effort to cast the net wide.

 

we knew that in 1970

 

Every NCO club, officers mess, what have you had "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" on the jukebox, r2r tape machine, whatever. And it was being played. I've always maintained that this was the most popular record of the U.S. forces in the war. (I lived in Thailand amongst Americans supporting the war effort and G.I.'s, and also visited a handful of bases in-country in 1970.) Creedence Clearwater Revival was also huge, as I recall.

 

A very safe prediction, I'm sorry to say......

 

Absolutely. We Gotta Get Out of This Place was everywhere (as was CCR). I can't understand its omission.

 

I know this is a small point, but it's narrated by longtime Ken Burns favorite Peter Coyote. If you're going to invest 18 hours in a TV show, this is the man to tell the story.

 

Gonna check out Episode 1 tonight. There is an hour long thing following it of old Dick Cavett show highlights about the war on the Detroit PBS channel, which I'm sure will be very anti type clips mostly, but maybe there will be some pro too, hoo nose, quite awhile ago now.

 

Definitely going to watch - reminder to self!

 

Dvr'ing it. Not my favorite subject but an important one, and all of Ken Burns docs have been interesting and I learned a lot and gained different perspectives.

 

I closed the door on that part of my life decades ago. Rarely think of it, never talk about it and won't watch it. No need to revisit.

 

I think that's one of the compelling reasons this is being aired. The people who are inheriting the reins of power seem to have no memory of it. Insert George Santayana quote here.