Acknowledging the criticisms, I still think The Civil War may be the best documentary television ever made, for its sweep, its texture and richness, its ambition, its humanity and its influence. A staggering achievement. I go back to it frequently like a hot bath, to soak. And Jay Ungar is superb.
Yes, absolutely. As a media [not pejorative] artefact it's absolutely brilliant. I guess what I'm sort of mentally futzing with is a) whether, as a historiographical artefact, it's significantly skewed (I think I think it is, although I'm by no means an expert) and, if so, b) is it actually quite alarming that it's so damned good as a media artefact. There are wild stats about how many Americans get basically all their information about the Civil War through this series.
I’d certainly concede there’s an element of moral exemplar-ism, what we’d think of as the Whiggish progress of history, about it. On the other hand, there were some extraordinary, heroic figures involved in the Civil War, Lincoln most of all.
Lincoln is really fascinating. A total centrist dad, bewitchingly charismatic and supernaturally politically gifted. I love the 'Team of Rivals' narrative about how many of his cabinet members went into it thinking 'what a rube, got the job by accident, he's going to be totally under my control' and ended up thinking he was the greatest man they'd ever met.
For good or ill, anyone who thinks they’ll be pulling the strings of the front-of-house puppet is almost always wrong. It’s exactly the narrative the dense-but-arrogant Franz von Papen sold to President von Hindenburg about Hitler, and that… didn’t turn out well.
“I used to live in England”. Tune. Best track LCD Soundsystem never made.
Acknowledging the criticisms, I still think The Civil War may be the best documentary television ever made, for its sweep, its texture and richness, its ambition, its humanity and its influence. A staggering achievement. I go back to it frequently like a hot bath, to soak. And Jay Ungar is superb.
Yes, absolutely. As a media [not pejorative] artefact it's absolutely brilliant. I guess what I'm sort of mentally futzing with is a) whether, as a historiographical artefact, it's significantly skewed (I think I think it is, although I'm by no means an expert) and, if so, b) is it actually quite alarming that it's so damned good as a media artefact. There are wild stats about how many Americans get basically all their information about the Civil War through this series.
I’d certainly concede there’s an element of moral exemplar-ism, what we’d think of as the Whiggish progress of history, about it. On the other hand, there were some extraordinary, heroic figures involved in the Civil War, Lincoln most of all.
Lincoln is really fascinating. A total centrist dad, bewitchingly charismatic and supernaturally politically gifted. I love the 'Team of Rivals' narrative about how many of his cabinet members went into it thinking 'what a rube, got the job by accident, he's going to be totally under my control' and ended up thinking he was the greatest man they'd ever met.
For good or ill, anyone who thinks they’ll be pulling the strings of the front-of-house puppet is almost always wrong. It’s exactly the narrative the dense-but-arrogant Franz von Papen sold to President von Hindenburg about Hitler, and that… didn’t turn out well.