I Hope I Never See You Again Quotes I Never Want to See You Again Quotes
Ken Burns' Benjamin Franklin — the documentary filmmaker's latest deep swoop into an important figure in American history — is now out on PBS. When I heard the film was coming out, I got excited. Through the magic of filmmaking, documentaries like this i can make the past come alive. They can take historical scholarship and plough it into an exciting drama. The music rises and falls; you lot can't help but experience carried away.
That feeling is pretty compelling; it'southward also tough to let become of it. Historical documentaries try to make you feel like yous've been through an experience, and that now you empathise, but I call up that feeling is a fiddling dangerous. Information technology'southward so of import that we learn nigh the events of the past, but it's also really important that nosotros don't think we know everything. More and more, we seem to be looking to history every bit a source of entertainment, and that has all kinds of complicated implications in how we think about the past.
Looking to the By for Certainty
You may take noticed that there are a whole lot of documentaries around these days. It feels similar every time I peek at the offerings on Netflix or other streaming services, I'thousand presented with options for everything from truthful-law-breaking docs nearly serial killers to docuseries nearly cults to deep dives on historical figures like the same Benjamin Franklin.
There are, of course, lots of reasons why so many documentaries are getting made. To exist certain, the pandemic has been a huge cistron, but across that I wonder if we're as well craving a kind of settled narrative that just isn't available to the states in the present moment. Life is pretty disruptive these days. Nosotros're living through global wellness crises, wars, divisive politics, and the terrifying implications of ongoing climatic change. It feels really hard to know anything.
Nether those circumstances, you lot tin run into the entreatment of plopping yourself downwardly in front of something like a history documentary. Yous lookout man, and you get to feel similar you know the story of something that happened. The past, in that mode, can feel settled and certain in a way that feels comfortable to u.s.a. in the nowadays.
The Positive Side of History as Entertainment
There are, of course, some good things nigh all of this. The best documentaries ask compelling questions and exit us feeling a sense of wonder about the globe. When I was a child, I call up beingness then bored in history classes that I thought I had no interest in the topic whatsoever. As an adult, I've get actually interested in the history of the American Ceremonious War, merely I think blowing off entire reading assignments on the subject in loftier school.
The success of historical documentaries like Burns' The Civil State of war, dated and problematic equally information technology undeniably is, is absolutely part of why I've come to realize that I actually dearest learning near the by. With so many documentaries available — and the proliferation of history podcasts and companies like MasterClass that sit on the edge of education and entertainment — it'south more possible than ever for people to realize, outside of the context of school, that they actually enjoy learning. The run a risk is that these learning opportunities can lead to a situation where the dominant historical narrative is being curated past people and companies driven by profit rather than by the rigors of historical research and truth.
How We Feel Near the Past
As who we are changes, how we feel almost who nosotros used to be changes besides. Gimmicky criticisms of Burns' The Civil War are a good example of this. Burns himself has admitted that he "would probably be making a dissimilar kind of film now," from the one he made in 1990. The picture he made, though, was incredibly influential, and for many people it concretized a lot of what the American Civil State of war became in our collective memory.
In that location is a lot of excellent material in the documentary, just unfortunately, on the whole, its formulation of the American Civil War itself is securely flawed. From perpetuating the thought that the war was nearly a failure to compromise to the idea that a human being like Robert E. Lee "disapproved" of slavery, The Ceremonious War presents a limited and occasionally troubling perspective. That perspective becomes even more problematic when it becomes the dominant style the war itself is remembered. It takes a lot of time and energy to undo these misconceptions — to help people open up their minds to the idea that things might take been different than how they were portrayed.
History Isn't But Facts
In the finish, information technology's important to recall that history is a field of study and a soapbox. History isn't just a set of facts that we receive and know how to interpret, merely an ongoing conversation that happens over time. That conversation changes, as I said above, based on who nosotros are and what we value in a given flow. Information technology also changes based on how the facts are presented and who controls the ability to nowadays them.
Documentaries are not, generally, conversations; they are statements. The best ones — and Burns' Benjamin Franklin might very well terminate upwardly being i of these — encourage united states to explore further and to ask more questions. They might even leave us feeling a piffling unsettled, similar nosotros aren't certain whether the great historical figures of the past are heroes or villains. That'due south a expert thing, because most of the time, the figures of the past are neither. They are people, like us, full of flaws and doubts. Hopefully, when nosotros learn most them, nosotros learn most the importance of beingness willing to change our minds and ourselves.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/when-we-look-to-history-for-entertainment?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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