|
 Ken Burns The Vietnam War First episode airs Sunday 9/17 at 8/7 on PBS Ken Burns – The Vietnam War is, as the name says, Ken Burn’s new documentary about the Vietnam war. Ken Burns himself really needs no introduction at this point. He has either directed or produced some of the greatest American documentaries of our time. With series such as “The Civil War”, “Baseball”, “Jazz”, “The War” and many others. “The Vietnam War’ has been in production in various forms since at least 2006, and reunites Burns with Lynn Novick, who worked with Ken Burns on “The War” and “Prohibition”. The sound track will be composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and I am very excited to see what they do (they won best original score for their work in The Social Network). I am sorry for the relatively brief OP, as I am at work, but I wanted to let everyone know this was airing and I have been waiting for this documentary for years. It is already getting stellar reviews, and The Washington Post as an excellent article on it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/opinions/2017/09/14/ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-pbs-documentary-tries-to-unite-america-under-trump/
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 16:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 05:26 |
|
|
Been looking forward to this for over a year. I love me some Burns, especially his warfare stuff.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 18:20
|
|
|
I'm glad that per the article they'll also be focusing on the North Vietnamese. Mostly in media we see them as black pajama, cone hat wearing, sneaky bad guys instead of actual people fighting a war for their own reasons, it's a real blind spot in American culture. Also we don't do well when it comes to humanizing enemies that we fight in Asia, the dehumanizing narratives (they don't value life like we do, they don't have the same respect for humanity we do) that we applied to the Japanese in WWII were applied just as badly to the Vietnamese. So I'm very interested to hear from former NVA and VC about the war from their perspective, and hopefully it'll help people understand them better.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 19:55
|
|
|
zoux posted:I'm glad that per the article they'll also be focusing on the North Vietnamese. Mostly in media we see them as black pajama, cone hat wearing, sneaky bad guys instead of actual people fighting a war for their own reasons, it's a real blind spot in American culture. Also we don't do well when it comes to humanizing enemies that we fight in Asia, the dehumanizing narratives (they don't value life like we do, they don't have the same respect for humanity we do) that we applied to the Japanese in WWII were applied just as badly to the Vietnamese. So I'm very interested to hear from former NVA and VC about the war from their perspective, and hopefully it'll help people understand them better. I'd like to see a lot of the Vietnamese side as a a whole, including interviews with former VC, NVA, and ARVN . We tend to forget that the Vietnam war was also a civil war among Vietnamese, and it still splits the community something fierce today. That said since this is a Ken Burns doc I'm positive he will dedicate time to all sides, in the preview we already see interviews with former NVA soldiers.
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 20:13
|
|
|
zoux posted:I'm glad that per the article they'll also be focusing on the North Vietnamese. Mostly in media we see them as black pajama, cone hat wearing, sneaky bad guys instead of actual people fighting a war for their own reasons, it's a real blind spot in American culture. Also we don't do well when it comes to humanizing enemies that we fight in Asia, the dehumanizing narratives (they don't value life like we do, they don't have the same respect for humanity we do) that we applied to the Japanese in WWII were applied just as badly to the Vietnamese. So I'm very interested to hear from former NVA and VC about the war from their perspective, and hopefully it'll help people understand them better. i read in some interview that burns/novick dug up a lot of popular vietnamese music of the time and not only put it in the doco but let some of their vietnamese interview subjects listen to it to jog their memory and they were like "where did you find this song i haven't heard it in decades" also trent reznor is involved in the score for this one so this is a nice continuation from my former sunday night tv watching in twin peaks
|
|
#
?
Sep 14, 2017 20:14
|
|
|
This will be drat great.
|
|
#
?
Sep 15, 2017 02:21
|
|
|
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/music/ You can listen to the soundtrack and the original score on spotify and itunes to get you in the mood.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2017 01:25
|
|
|
Reviews are coming in and, as expected, they are very good. Many note how this is one of Ken Burn's more depressing films, which is understandable considering the content. Here is a quote from the NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/arts/television/review-ken-burns-the-vietnam-war-pbs.html?mcubz=3 quote:But it is probably Mr. Burns’s saddest film. “The Civil War” was mournful, but at least the Union was preserved. “The War” ended with fascism defeated. The war in Vietnam offers no uplift or happy ending. It’s simply decades of bad decision after bad decision, a wasteful vortex that devoured lives for nothing. It was, the narrator Peter Coyote says, “begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War miscalculations.” I'll probably need to watch a comedy on Netflix after each episode to lift my spirits before bed.
|
|
#
?
Sep 17, 2017 19:01
|
|
|
It's about time this thing aired, KCTS (Seattle) has been airing ads for this for months straight.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2017 04:46
|
|
|
First ep was really good. Like I know The Civil War is a classic and Baseball too but this one just had a momentum, sadness and energy to it I found very compelling
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 15:16
|
|
|
Why is it jumping back and forth in time? At least they show the year when they do.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 15:44
|
|
|
PowerBuilder3 posted:Why is it jumping back and forth in time? At least they show the year when they do. It's definitely a bit jarring. I figured that it was done to provide a connection to the American audience while talking about the French war in the first episode. However they did the same technique in the second episode as well. I'm curious if it will change once we get into the later episodes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 16:34
|
|
|
PowerBuilder3 posted:Why is it jumping back and forth in time? At least they show the year when they do. déjà vu, it's in the title of the first episode. Americans repeating the same mistakes as the French.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 16:42
|
|
|
PowerBuilder3 posted:Why is it jumping back and forth in time? At least they show the year when they do. because its a good editing technique
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 23:05
|
|
|
The PAVN were the good guys and this documentary will let them down
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 23:10
|
|
|
ewe2 posted:déjà vu, it's in the title of the first episode. Americans repeating the same mistakes as the French. Yeah, it's a deliberate decision to draw parallels. By the way the whole thing, in its explicit unaired version, is available on the PBS website. I've finished the first four and it's probably one of he better Burns docs I've seen. I'm not sure if it's just the amount of time since I've watched the others, but this one feels more straightforward and substantive than his other war documentaries.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2017 23:32
|
|
|
ARGH I forgot this started! Now I gotta go buy the Bluray because I don't want to jump in on episode 3. edit: oh its all on PBS.com? That'll work.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 00:35
|
|
|
Ditto forgetting this had started since watching the preview almost a year ago. Very cool that it's online for cord cutters like me so I don't have to wait a year for Netflix to grab it. And it sounds like the doc presents the politics pretty objectively so I'm hyped to marathon through.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 03:37
|
|
|
I love the soundtrack to this, but I have serious reservations about the interpretation of the causes of the war in the series. They seem to be highly sanitized, perhaps understandably so given that the film was funded by Bank of America and the Koch brothers. See https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/ for a great in-depth review.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 05:06
|
|
|
Anyone else really irritated that their American history courses ended sometime just after WW2 and didn't say much if anything about the Korean or Vietnam wars? All throughout these episodes I keep thinking, "why wasn't I taught more about this stuff!?"
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 05:19
|
|
|
GoluboiOgon posted:I love the soundtrack to this, but I have serious reservations about the interpretation of the causes of the war in the series. They seem to be highly sanitized, perhaps understandably so given that the film was funded by Bank of America and the Koch brothers. See https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/ for a great in-depth review. quote:By Episode Two, “Riding the Tiger” (1961-1963), we are heading deep into Burns territory. The war has been framed as a civil war, with the United States defending a freely elected democratic government in the south against Communists invading from the north. American boys are fighting a godless enemy that Burns shows as a red tide creeping across maps of Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. am I totally off here or is that criticism no where near as damning as its trying to come off as ? I guess I'll keep reading but its a fucken slog so far... Qmass fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Sep 20, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 07:09
|
|
|
Qmass posted:am I totally off here or is that criticism no where near as damning as its trying to come off as ? I guess I'll keep reading but its a fucken slog so far... Was gonna post the exact same thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 07:47
|
|
|
That particular article quote was pretty far off from the message I got watching the series. That said, I think one individual does use the term "civil war" in one of the interviews. If you believe we're supposed to accept that statement uncritically, then perhaps you can reach the article's interpretation of the documentary. Maybe. The documentary never stated nor implied that South Vietnam was anything even remotely democratic.
Corbeau fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Sep 20, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 07:51
|
|
|
I thought they said something along the lines of "the conflict between the north and the french supporters in the south divided families like a civil war" not that it was a civil war, if that differentiation makes sense.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 07:55
|
|
|
The article is very academic, so some of their dispute is over silly things like whether the Vietnam war should be classified as a colonial war or a civil war, which is pretty irrelevant imo. The review points out multiple omissions from the documentary, such as the role of the CIA in Diem's takeover and the formation of the South Vietnamese state. He also points out that many of the people interviewed on the US side were deeply complicit in the shady business of the war. It's hard to assess his review without seeing the entire series yet though. Personally, my issue stems from the summation in the beginning of episode 1: "The war was started with the best of intentions." The intentions behind the entry of the US into the war, as presented in the documentary, are entirely about anti-communism and the domino theory. If anti-communism was well-intentioned, then you have to claim that the bay of pigs coup attempt was well-intentioned, and that all of the McCarthy witch hunts of political enemies were acceptable. This opinion is very right wing, and I think completely goes against the lessons of Vietnam. In fact, Vietnam almost completely disproved the domino theory, as fighting communism in Vietnam resulting in communism spreading not only in Vietnam, but also Cambodia and Laos, which may never have happened if the US had held a referendum on reunification or never deployed ground troops. Anti-communism in Vietnam only led to the creation of a series of puppet dictatorships and widespread death and devastation. Also, in episode 3, their account of the Gulf of Tonkin episode is very different from wikipedia, and seems to leave out the role of the intelligence communtity in muddying the waters as to what happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident GoluboiOgon fucked around with this message at 08:55 on Sep 20, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 08:51
|
|
|
Solkanar512 posted:Anyone else really irritated that their American history courses ended sometime just after WW2 and didn't say much if anything about the Korean or Vietnam wars? All throughout these episodes I keep thinking, "why wasn't I taught more about this stuff!?" I don't know how old you are, but I started high school in the late '90s and it covered those things a bit but definitely not in depth. I think people of that generation were still trying to figure the events out for themselves. For those textbooks of that era pretty much everything post WWII was almost like an afterthought because it was almost as if even though it was history it was so fresh they hadn't really gotten a good handle on how to approach them in a classroom setting. The exception being major cultural touchstones like Kennedy, MLK, and so forth.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 10:16
|
|
|
GoluboiOgon posted:I love the soundtrack to this, but I have serious reservations about the interpretation of the causes of the war in the series. They seem to be highly sanitized, perhaps understandably so given that the film was funded by Bank of America and the Koch brothers. See https://mekongreview.com/americas-amnesia/ for a great in-depth review. yeah it's burns' usual uncritical revisionism GoluboiOgon posted:The article is very academic, so some of their dispute is over silly things like whether the Vietnam war should be classified as a colonial war or a civil war, which is pretty irrelevant imo. that's not silly or irrelevant at all. in fact it's impossible to understand the war without discussing its origins in anti-colonial struggle The Muppets On PCP fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Sep 20, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 11:49
|
|
|
The Muppets On PCP posted:yeah it's burns' usual uncritical revisionism What are you talking about? At no point does the Documentary, at least in the first three episodes state that the war against the French was anything more than an anti-colonial struggle, or that the South Vietnamese government was anything other than horribly corrupt and authoritarian. I don't get how people can say it is "sanitized" it is very, very critical of the U.S. involvement. The scenes showing U.S. troops burning down that village remain as heart wrenching today as they did 50 years ago. If anything, the Documentary (so far) goes light on the Northern government. Barely mentioning the thousands that were executed during land reforms. However I can over look this in the context that Ken Burns's focus is on the American involvement in Vietnam, and for that you have to focus on the South. One thing I found interesting was the number of former Vietminh he interviewed, that ended up fighting for the south. I had always assumed the Viet-Minh were solidly communists but it really was a big tent organization against the French.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 13:36
|
|
|
The Muppets On PCP posted:
Good thing they spend like the entire first episode talking about it, then.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 13:37
|
|
|
I think the real argument of that review is more about the detail from the Pentagon Papers than the documentary per se, although they then go on to admit that those details are present in the book on the series. Perhaps Koch didn't sponsor that? It wasn't good criticism, it had as much an agenda as its target.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 14:25
|
|
|
ewe2 posted:it had as much an agenda as its target.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 14:37
|
|
|
X-O posted:By the way the whole thing, in its explicit unaired version, is available on the PBS website. I've finished the first four and it's probably one of he better Burns docs I've seen. I'm not sure if it's just the amount of time since I've watched the others, but this one feels more straightforward and substantive than his other war documentaries. I was watching via the app because I can't pause live TV but I only see the Broadcast version. WTH? Edit: Nevermind, i got to listen to LBJ curse like a sailor PBS's app isn't the best designed but who cares, i care about content with them. Croatoan fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Sep 21, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 16:50
|
|
|
X-O posted:I don't know how old you are, but I started high school in the late '90s and it covered those things a bit but definitely not in depth. I think people of that generation were still trying to figure the events out for themselves. For those textbooks of that era pretty much everything post WWII was almost like an afterthought because it was almost as if even though it was history it was so fresh they hadn't really gotten a good handle on how to approach them in a classroom setting. The exception being major cultural touchstones like Kennedy, MLK, and so forth. Yeah, I graduated '01 and that makes a lot of sense to me.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 19:26
|
|
|
Haha how loving absurd was the brass band playing while airstrikes were raining down on the other end of the valley?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2017 19:46
|
|
|
X-O posted:I don't know how old you are, but I started high school in the late '90s and it covered those things a bit but definitely not in depth. I think people of that generation were still trying to figure the events out for themselves. For those textbooks of that era pretty much everything post WWII was almost like an afterthought because it was almost as if even though it was history it was so fresh they hadn't really gotten a good handle on how to approach them in a classroom setting. The exception being major cultural touchstones like Kennedy, MLK, and so forth. I'm from an earlier generation and had to learn about the French experience in Vietnam myself, and that's just Australia. I can't imagine how difficult it would be for American classrooms. Australia had a similar very slow public awakening to what Vietnam was about from our perspective, and we didn't get around to doing the marches and moratoriums until the early 70's.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
I could have sworn I just heard god save the queen on the piano in the second episode, what on earth?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 09:22
|
|
|
Popelmon posted:Haha how loving absurd was the brass band playing while airstrikes were raining down on the other end of the valley?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 10:49
|
|
|
Qmass posted:I just got to this part and had to go back and make sure I hadn't dreamt what I just saw... we want to assure you peasants that we are hear to save you, by showing you a waking nightmare. Apocalypse Now was a documentary.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 12:17
|
|
|
Was it my PBS station, or for a number of minutes in the last two episodes the narration was overlaid twice? You could hear a low volume one, offset in time, from the main narration? I swore at one point Peter Coyote was clearing his throat or laughing or something before resuming the narration.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 15:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 05:26 |
|
|
I would blow Dane Cook posted:I could have sworn I just heard god save the queen on the piano in the second episode, what on earth? If you turn on closed captioning, it says, "My Country 'Tis of Thee". Different words to mock the original.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2017 15:34
|
|