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Mahoning posted:It's like The Civil War on steroids. Except without a clear good guy and bad guy. There was a clear good guy. Moreso than the USCW. At least the Viet Minh didn't wait three years in until they were losing to come out against landlordism just in case they could have it both ways..
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Sep 19, 2017 03:23
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Alhazred posted:Watching Time: The Kalief Browder Story and it does a really good job of showing of hosed up american prisons (especially Rikers Island) are. I watched this and it destroyed me I'm legit crying right now. gently caress. 
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Sep 19, 2017 03:31
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MonsieurChoc posted:I watched this and it destroyed me I'm legit crying right now. P sure I couldn't handle this ATM
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Sep 19, 2017 03:38
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DeimosRising posted:P sure I couldn't handle this ATM I didn't know about his suicide. He was younger than me. gently caress.
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Sep 19, 2017 03:44
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MonsieurChoc posted:I didn't know about his suicide. Considering they had all the taped interviews with him and others, I didn't even consider 'oh this was put together post-mortem'. That depressed the Hell out of me. Definitely the wrong choice for 'I'm in a lovely mood and don't want to leave the house; I'll watch a doc'
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Sep 19, 2017 04:29
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LadyPictureShow posted:Considering they had all the taped interviews with him and others, I didn't even consider 'oh this was put together post-mortem'. That depressed the Hell out of me. Definitely the wrong choice for 'I'm in a lovely mood and don't want to leave the house; I'll watch a doc' Yeah, I'm not getting to sleep feeling like this, I need something to cheer me up. I mean, it's super good and definitely worth watching to get properly pissed off at a major problem of today, but don't watch it when you're feeling down.
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Sep 19, 2017 04:50
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Mo_Steel posted:I thought this first episode was good; it makes me hate basically every leader involved from the French to the Communists to the U.S. to the various Vietnamese leaders. To me the whole leadup rings of the saying that "everyone is the hero of their own story". The French leaders probably thought they were right to try and re-establish their colony so they could fund reconstructing their own war torn nation and after all other nations still had colonies; Ho Chi Minh clearly felt he was in the right in fighting for the independence of his nation, and amazingly I found a lot of sympathy for him. The Communists saw their struggle as a push back on the colonialism and exploitation of capitalism; the U.S. saw itself as defending freedom and protecting it's allies. They all seem to have been so sure they were in the right. WAR: We Are Right. 
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Sep 19, 2017 06:11
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It's Tuesday and we're in Vietnam... THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 3: “The River Styx” (January 1964-December 1965) - Watch it here "With South Vietnam near collapse, LBJ begins bombing the North and sends US troops to the South." Rather than the picture they included of the LBJ administration thinking about Vietnam, I will be submitting this image:  ------------ I appreciate how much they're focusing on soldiers and civilians from both sides of the war; it's something I always really liked about the Civil War documentary because it helped anchor the war as something real and tangible and impactful instead of abstracts about just place names and dates and winners and losers. The French now arguing to get out of it seemed real loving rich all things considered. The rapidity of the escalation, and the lying about it to the American people is really disheartening to watch unfold. LBJ reasoning that he couldn't back out seems to me is bullshit to protect his pride: they lied about how easy it would be to win and how things were going, and now caught in that lie decided feeding tens of thousands more into the war was easier than admitting they had lied. gently caress his complaining about reporters telling the truth. Not to tie too closely to today (because I hope desperately that America as a country is more skeptical of it's leaders now) but it makes me worry about the rhetoric and tone and our stance with North Korea. The story of Jim Nakayama is bone chilling. gently caress. Just... gently caress.
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Sep 20, 2017 03:03
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The last 5 minutes are so
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Sep 20, 2017 03:09
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Deeper down the rabbit hole I go....just finished Episode 4. I openly wept at two difference points.
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Sep 20, 2017 04:41
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After these batch of episodes are there many differences between the broadcast and uncut online versions? My cable is back up now and I have the broadcast ones on the DVR, if there’s barely any differences due to a few language cuts I’ll just watch it on that out of ease.
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Sep 20, 2017 04:53
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Watched this BBC documentary called HyperNormalisation that tries to show that since the 1970s, governments, financiers, and technological utopians have given up on the complex "real world" and built a simple "fake world" that is run by corporations and kept stable by politicians. It shows how Trump recreated New York while also showing how different Syria was during this time and how the US and the Middle East both developed differently in creating their own fake worlds during the same while comparing it to the state of the USSR before it fell. It paints a bad picture for Henry Kissinger in how he helped the US muck around with Syria in the 1970s. The term "hypernormalisation" is taken from Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, about the paradoxes of life in the Soviet Union during the 20 years before it collapsed. It's pretty confusing and it goes over alot of material for 3 hours.
Tenzarin fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 05:45
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HyperNormalisation is basically a must-watch. Its length and density and, at times, abstractness gives it kind of a fever dream quality sometimes.
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Sep 20, 2017 05:50
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In the continuation of 'I make poor life choices in picking documentaries', Audrie and Daisy is goddamn infuriating. It looks at two cases regarding instances where Highschool girls were passed out/incapacitated, were assaulted or raped, photographed/filmed and the aftermath since social media and small town poo poo is just a mess. Audrie's story doesn't last too long, but Daisy focuses on the 'Maryvale rape case' from a few years ago. Anonymous took it up as a cause as charges were initially dropped due to 'lack of evidence' (like all of these 'promising athlete rapes intoxicated girl' stories tend to go). If you're ever thinking to yourself 'yanno, I want to know how it feels to want to strangle someone' rough it out until you get to some hot takes from the Maryvale sheriff... E: oh boy! In the aftermath of the case, the victim's family's HOUSE WAS BURNED DOWN
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Sep 20, 2017 13:15
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LadyPictureShow posted:E: oh boy! In the aftermath of the case, the victim's family's HOUSE WAS BURNED DOWN 
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Sep 20, 2017 18:44
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[quote="“LadyPictureShow”" post="“476578588”"] In the continuation of ‘I make poor life choices in picking documentaries’, Audrie and Daisy is goddamn infuriating. It looks at two cases regarding instances where Highschool girls were passed out/incapacitated, were assaulted or raped, photographed/filmed and the aftermath since social media and small town poo poo is just a mess. Audrie’s story doesn’t last too long, but Daisy focuses on the ‘Maryvale rape case’ from a few years ago. Anonymous took it up as a cause as charges were initially dropped due to ‘lack of evidence’ (like all of these ‘promising athlete rapes intoxicated girl’ stories tend to go). If you’re ever thinking to yourself ‘yanno, I want to know how it feels to want to strangle someone’ rough it out until you get to some hot takes from the Maryvale sheriff... E: oh boy! In the aftermath of the case, the victim’s family’s HOUSE WAS BURNED DOWN [/quote] I have two daughters and have this on my watch list, thankfully every time I come close to watching it I get scared and pick something different.
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Sep 20, 2017 21:31
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"War is hell, but Contact is a mother fucker." - --- .-. - ..- .-. . THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 4: “Resolve (January 1966-June 1967) - Watch it here "Defying American airpower, North Vietnamese troops and materiel stream down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the south, while Saigon struggles to “pacify the countryside.” As an antiwar movement builds back home, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines discover that the war they are being asked to fight in Vietnam is nothing like their fathers’ war." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4 ------------ Tonight we continued to feed meat into a grinder, escalating the war. The lack of clear objectives turning to a focus on kill count is grim, and the fact that South Vietnam continued fighting amongst itself while the U.S. stepped up the war effort casts it all quite dismally. With no goal or aim for victory but slaughter and seemingly no real allies it's astounding that Westmoreland felt all he needed was more men, bombs and years. The prevailing echo in South Vietnam seems to be that Buddhists get right hosed for actually being on the right side of things as simple as wanting representation. The coverage of how just dropping bombs without ground forces to follow up did little to impede North Vietnam and in fact probably just pushed more people to their cause is sobering, and ought be remember forever. Dr. Ben Spock echoed my sentiments from last episode that this poo poo sandwich seems to be a lot of lives thrown away to spare the dignity of leaders making lovely decisions. Less focus on the aspects of North Vietnamese leadership this episode; whether that's from a lack of knowledge about the inner workings at this moment or a desire to focus more on the American ramp up I'm unsure. I feel like more pain is still to come for Mogie's family, as the country itself splits more over the war to come. 
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Sep 21, 2017 02:46
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Alhazred posted:Watching Time: The Kalief Browder Story and it does a really good job of showing of hosed up american prisons (especially Rikers Island) are. I just Googled RIkers Island. How does it cost $209,000 to incarcerate one inmate for one year when they are treated like complete poo poo and the place is massively over populated? It blows my mind that jails like this exist in the US. These people have not been convicted of a crime and they can be there for years! This isn't a case of innocent people being given the wrong verdict for a crime, they could just be flat out innocent.
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Sep 21, 2017 03:41
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LesterGroans posted:HyperNormalisation is basically a must-watch. Its length and density and, at times, abstractness gives it kind of a fever dream quality sometimes. This is a wonderful description of it. I absolutely loved it precisely because of the fever dream quality of it. Events of the past 40 years woven together into this intricate narrative that's just so *compelling* without seeming like a conspiracy theorist's ravings.
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Sep 21, 2017 19:59
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Thanks for ruining a sweet rear end name like "Tiger Force"... THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 5: ““This Is What We Do” (July 1967-December 1967) - Watch it here "American casualties and enemy body counts mount as Marines face deadly North Vietnamese ambushes and artillery south of the DMZ and Army units chase an elusive enemy in the central highlands. Hanoi lays plans for a massive surprise offensive, and the Johnson Administration reassures the American public that victory is in sight."  ------------ Lot of hard stories to listen to tonight. Musgrave saying in order to be prisoners the Vietnamese soldiers had to make it to the back, and him struggling to find a way to explain it so that it "makes sense" was hard to watch, because even as I feel like I'm understanding more each episode about what a lovely experience it was I can see that without having been there maybe no words or pictures would be enough to really put me in that place or time, to really understand. Maybe even to Musgrave at the time it didn't "make sense"; maybe there was no sense about it. Listening to him being pulled out by his fellow soldiers and then repeatedly passed over as basically a dead man was harrowing. The antiwar movement starts pressing; I don't remember hearing about the march on the Pentagon but that must've been something amazing to see. I'll be curious to see if they interviewed John McCain for this series, as we saw video of him post-capture tonight. And of course, the NV make ready a huge move for the Tet Offensive. Episode 6 will play on the 24th, so if you haven't been hammering these nightly you've got a chance to catch up now. We're halfway through and I would highly recommend the series thus far; difficult, troubling, but important and well produced.
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Sep 22, 2017 01:13
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I like them a lot, I do get angry a lot. As the dude said, making a mistake is human and he had no problem with that. Sending kids to die because you get to save face hard to watch. Especially the talking heads, who had no one of their family over there, talking about what a good cause it was and that we need to keep fighting.
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Sep 22, 2017 17:32
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So happy we have a Ken Burns for this story. Such a complex tragedy. Still working my way through it, hoping he nails the Laos and UXO legacy. Still hosed all these years later...
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Sep 23, 2017 21:51
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Heads up to people who have been watching this on the PBS app. I tried watching episode 6 on there last night, and it wouldn't let me. It would only redirect me to a subscription page. Dug around a bit, and it would still let me watch episodes 1-5, but 6-10 are locked, and you've got to pay $60 to unlock them. So unless they are unlocked later, you can't watch the whole thing on there for free.
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Sep 23, 2017 22:22
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Was that the $5 a month thing I barely read so I could keep watching? Still worth it for me. e: watching on laptop though...
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Sep 23, 2017 22:26
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Herv posted:Was that the $5 a month thing I barely read so I could keep watching? I was on my phone, so maybe it's only a mobile thing? Idk, it wouldn't let me around it.
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Sep 23, 2017 22:29
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Just finished ep6. We are getting into the meat of it now... jaw dropping first hand confessions. Jesus gently caress.
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Sep 24, 2017 00:24
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I'm only on ep2 and I've already been tearing up and also shouting at the TV with my wife so I guess mission accomplished, holy poo poo this is a must watch
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Sep 24, 2017 02:00
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This series is great and I'm sad that there will probably never be something of equivalent quality for the periods of history that I'm most interested in. Eh, maybe in 2030-something the local media landscape will have changed and we'll get a decent documentary on the 90s in Russia.
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Sep 24, 2017 07:49
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"Living is the difficult thing." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 6: “Things Fall Apart” (January 1968-July 1968) - Watch it here "On the eve of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the south, suffering devastating losses but casting grave doubt on Johnson’s promise that there is “light at the end of the tunnel.” The president decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest." The image they chose for this episode was alright, but given that this is one of the most famous images of the war and came up tonight I'm going with this one; the video clip shown tonight was about a thousand times more brutal, be forewarned:  Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém------------ The Tet Offensive must surely have been hell on earth for all involved; listening to Bill talk about what he did in Hue, the fighting in Saigon, all of it sounded just terrifying. I had a particularly hard time listening to the elderly woman talk about how she shot a U.S. soldier with her AK; this is a woman who at the time was probably quite young, and now resembles my grandmother. The massacre by retreating VC and NVA was equally disturbing, whether planned or just panic, 2800 "hooligans and reactionaries" essentially slaughtered. LBJ not seeking re-election was probably astounding; I can scarcely imagine it happening today. The deaths of MLK and Robert Kennedy were loving tragedies for this nation. The narrator echoed my feeling: between the wars, and the nuclear arms race, and civil unrest, and assassinations; for people living at the time it must've surely felt the world was going to spin itself into a billion pieces. This was Episode 6, and by the end of it I felt like "well good people are awake now so we can wrap up this stupidity. and senseless loss of life." Seven more years to go. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Sep 25, 2017 |
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Sep 25, 2017 03:51
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It's been all good so far but yeah episode 6 is where we get In The poo poo and it's fantastic/awful.
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Sep 25, 2017 11:59
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Mo_Steel posted:This was Episode 6, and by the end of it I felt like "well good people are awake now so we can wrap up this stupidity. and senseless loss of life."
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Sep 25, 2017 13:27
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"Knowing you're going to die... is liberating." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 7: “The Veneer of Civilization” (June 1968-May 1969) - Watch it here "Public support for the war declines, and American men of draft age face difficult decisions and wrenching moral choices. After police battle with demonstrators in the streets of Chicago, Richard Nixon wins the presidency, promising law and order at home and peace overseas. In Vietnam, the war goes on and soldiers on all sides witness terrible savagery and unflinching courage."  ------------ Tonight's episode reminds me in many ways of a maxim from the Civil War: "Rich man's war; poor man's fight." Repeated stories of soldiers and individuals on both sides who had little or nothing to gain from the war, who nevertheless found themselves pressed into it by drafts, social pressure, or lack of alternatives. More failed offensives from the North, more missions in the South by the U.S. to take or destroy an area and then leave with nothing to show for it. I wasn't familiar with the Phoenix Program, but that was pretty messed up. I recognized Tim O'Brien from the Vietnam War era history course I took over a decade ago in college, and his book "The Things They Carried" was a good read. Watching the Democratic Convention, and the police clubbing protesters was rough. Glad the Soviet Union resolved the 10 week dispute over seating arrangements at a table. 37,563 Americans dead now; I can only imagine the death toll for Vietnamese. We've had a lot of stories thus far of inhumane treatment, executions, mass graves, torture, and awful violence; of how cruel soldiers could be and were to their enemies. That poo poo is wrong to do, but a part of me understands that put in a terrible situation people can become desensitized and do those sorts of things when not kept in check. I haven't experienced those situations but I can imagine it and have some empathy for people who did wrong like that. I don't understand how Richard Nixon could have done what he did in secretly telling South Vietnam to avoid peace talks so he could have better odds to win the election; intentionally prolonging the war behind the backs of his own country so he could improve his chances at being President for a few years. It's been a long time since I feel like I've lacked words to express how angry I am about a subject. All that rises up is gently caress you, Richard Nixon over and over again.
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Sep 26, 2017 02:11
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"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio." THE VIETNAM WAR EPISODE 8: “The History of the World” (April 1969-May 1970) - Watch it here "With morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable massacre committed by American soldiers, the public debates the rectitude of the war, while an incursion into Cambodia reignites antiwar protests with tragic consequences."  ------------ Tonight was another hard watch. In many ways I expected that this series would be harder to view than The Civil War; after all most people know that there were horrible things in the Vietnam War. But hearing it in the voices of the people who actually lived it amplifies it way beyond that. I sort of had this notion that people were rear end backwards back in the Civil War since it was over a hundred years ago, so obviously they could do stupid poo poo like war to protect slavery. The people involved in the Vietnam War aren't that far removed from us today, and certainly less removed by this point in the series; their naivete unraveling into a cynicism and distrust of militarism I more readily recognize now as part of the modern era. A lot happened tonight; Joan Fury's story about the man she tried to save who was marked as "expected" was a fresh new horror, and a term I was not familiar with. Hamburger Hill, abandoned a week after taking it; Woodstock and Ho Chi Minh's death. The Weathermen (  ) and 4 Days of Rage. There were brighter spots: the story of the POW who memorized 200 of his fellow POWs names to the tune of Old MacDonald almost brought me to tears, and the peaceful moratorium rallies against the war; and there were some real dark spots, about racism in the military, fragging of officers, the My Lai Massacre and the invasion of Cambodia (again, gently caress you Richard Nixon). Musgrave talking about the night he almost killed himself, and how he stumbled saying it aloud on camera, and that the only thing that stopped him was his dogs wanting to be let back in did actually bring me to tears. And of course, Kent State and the shooting of student protestors there and on other campuses afterwards.
Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Sep 27, 2017 |
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Sep 27, 2017 02:15
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Mo_Steel posted:"Knowing you're going to die... is liberating." Came here to post this. That's one of the dirtiest political ploys I've ever heard of. I mean Jesus Christ.
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Sep 27, 2017 11:22
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This series is incredible. I think I'll have to/want to go back and rewatch the whole thing when it ends.
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Sep 27, 2017 18:14
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magnificent7 posted:This series is incredible. I think I'll have to/want to go back and rewatch the whole thing when it ends. -Me after watching The Civil War, Baseball, The National Parks, The Roosevelts, Prohibition, etc.
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Sep 27, 2017 18:22
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Mahoning posted:-Me after watching The Civil War, Baseball, The National Parks, The Roosevelts, Prohibition, etc. And re-re-re-rewatch.
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Sep 27, 2017 20:07
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Honestly though, I still have 2 or 3 episodes left of Vietnam but I think I would say that this is absolutely Ken Burns' best work. Most of what he has done has really engaged me on an intellectual level, but perhaps because the Vietnam War is so recent compared to most of his other docs I find myself engaged both intellectually and emotionally. To the point that I feel this sinking feeling in my chest as I watch it. Almost a state of constant dread and hopelessness as each poor decision piles onto one another and the body count climbs.
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Sep 27, 2017 20:18
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Just finished up and yeah this will probably get another run through. It definitely left a mark. The feeling at the end is very similar to how I felt at the end of Ghosts of the Ostfront... stunned with a dropped jaw. Its the firsthand accounts that always get me. Logical Insanity.
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Sep 27, 2017 23:56
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Vietnam PBS docu is this for 18 hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OySmfR74RUU Whcih, i feel conflicted about when the narration picks up about an ambush, and the soundtrack kicks in and all of a sudden I'm excited. im exctied in that way I get when I consume good media, disconnected from the consequences But i guess thats how its always been. That nin video had all the same components, just that i spent less time in it and had a little bit more abstraction from the stories. Life, procreation, survival, war, the MIC, boner pills, Oil, consumption, proliferation - a quick reflection of our society set to a gripping and reflective soundtrack
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Sep 28, 2017 03:08
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