Ken Burns Revolution

Ed Haywood

Ed Haywood

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Anyone else watching it?

It started off a bit weird, but is really picking up on the 3rd and 4th nights. Not up to the high bar Burns set with the Civil War, but well worth watching.

In other news, George Washington was a badass. I think we would have failed without him.
 
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Ed Haywood said:
Anyone else watching it?

It started off a bit weird, but is really picking up in the 3rd and 4th nights. Not up to the high bar Burns set with the Civil War, but well worth watching.

In other news, George Washington was a badass. I think we would have failed without him.
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I’ve watched the 1st, have the others recorded/set to record. I thought the 1st was very good. Learned some stuff. Like Washington was ****ed at the British. He used to be an Officer in their Army but they wouldn’t promote him because he was a Colonist. He gets his revenge.
 
In those days, promotions were bought, and expensive. Washington thought he had earned promotion by good leadership. He was correct.

Fortunately, the widow Fairfax had experience managing a plantation, and his home prospered while he was convincing the British that they should have promoted him.
 
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I didn't realize this was a thing until after the 2nd (?) episode. I'll have to figure out a way to record it.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Anyone else watching it?

It started off a bit weird, but is really picking up in the 3rd and 4th nights. Not up to the high bar Burns set with the Civil War, but well worth watching.

In other news, George Washington was a badass. I think we would have failed without him.
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Nothing is going to eclipse his Civil War; it changed what we expect from documentaries. I was also at the tail end of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.
 
luvflyin said:
I’ve watched the 1st, have the others recorded/set to record. I thought the 1st was very good. Learned some stuff. Like Washington was ****ed at the British. He used to be an Officer in their Army but they wouldn’t promote him because he was a Colonist. He gets his revenge.
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I believe he was a Militia officer, not an officer in the British Army (NEVER the "Royal Army"!). He felt he deserved a commission as a regular, and felt they turned him down due to his being a colonial.

As Geezer said, in this era (and for the next 100 years), British officers bought their commissions. Burns never said whether Washington tried to buy one, or whether he wanted one of the few opportunities for a direct commission.

The practice of buying commissions in the Army dates back to the British civil wars. It was felt that officers would be less likely to support "the other side" if they had to put a financial stake into their career. It was also felt that a high purchase price kept the "wrong sort" from officer rank. There was no pension for officers; when you decided to retire, you had to hope that your commission had increased in value. For the most part, the officers came from the upper class, anyway.

The price depended on the "quality" of the regiment (you paid more for more fashionable-regiments) and the upcoming orders for the unit (being sent overseas, to the "fever isles"). Existing officers would then be much more interested in selling out and you might catch a bargain.

Did it work? Well, for the most part. Napoleon was beat by officers who had bought their commissions (up to and including the Duke of Wellington), though Boney's comment about the British army was "Lions led by donkeys."

You couldn't buy a commission in just any unit, though...Royal Artillery and the Engineers promoted by ability. The Royal Navy, also, didn't have purchased commissions.

It ended about 1870...and led to the immortal song, "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General...."

Ron Wanttaja
 
Hengelo said:
Nothing is going to eclipse his Civil War; it changed what we expect from documentaries. I was also at the tail end of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.
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Hmm. Maybe he’ll do one on that next. Ken Burns Television.
 
Matthew said:
I didn't realize this was a thing until after the 2nd (?) episode. I'll have to figure out a way to record it.
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Maybe I shoulda confirmed all is well but after seeing this thread I looked for it on the PBS app on my Roku and the episodes appeared to all be there and available without subscription.

We’re wrapping up Black Rabbit (meh) on Netflix and this’ll be next, if so.
 
Watched 2 last night. Benedict Arnold got introduced. He was a hero type for the Colonials. That was confusing me. So I looked it up. He doesn’t become a traitor until later. I think I got the whole Revolution figured out in just a few words. FTM, follow the money.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Maybe I shoulda confirmed all is well but after seeing this thread I looked for it on the PBS app on my Roku and the episodes appeared to all be there and available without subscription.

We’re wrapping up Black Rabbit (meh) on Netflix and this’ll be next, if so.
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I set it to record (YouTube TV). Looks like this weekend some, or all, episodes will repeat so I should catch them that way. They are also streaming on-demand from our PBS station.
 
luvflyin said:
Watched 2 last night. Benedict Arnold got introduced. He was a hero type for the Colonials. That was confusing me. So I looked it up. He doesn’t become a traitor until later.
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Hey, warn us if you're posting spoilers.... :)


Ron "What's in your boot?" Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Hey, warn us if you're posting spoilers.... :)


Ron "What's in your boot?" Wanttaja
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Not a spoiler. I haven’t seen 3 yet. But he does go traitor. His name is synonymous with traitor. I just assume they will get to that in future episodes.
 
luvflyin said:
I was also at the tail end of an era when we all watched the same things at the same time.
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now and then I miss those days. There was oddly some sense of comfort in it.... learning about something upcoming, the planning for it, the hope that it would be as good as you thought it might, then the extra effort to be in front of a TV at the specified time
and then if you missed an episode or part of one, the certain dissapointment that you'd feel.... but somehow that was ok too. It fostered the ability to fill in the blanks either through imagination or through actually talking with your friends the next day about what you'd missed.
 
Doc Holliday said:
Revisionist History. Great work of fiction.
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Please clarify.

I find his documentaries to be very well researched and adding a lot more “color” to the simplistic mythology we were typically taught in middle school about his topics. That doesn’t make them “revisionist” in my book - just more informative and enlightening.”It’s not how I wanna understand the story” doesn’t make it revisionist, to me.

And:
1) By “mythology”, I don’t mean anything negative - just that it’s more “legendary” than a complete history - and things like Ken Burns documentaries add completeness to the legends.

2) Open to thoughtful, factual points to back up the assertion

3) Fully expecting the thumbs down for disagreeing with the assertion
 
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Llewtrah381 said:
Please clarify.
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Wish I could, but this forum doesn't allow us to go there.
Llewtrah381 said:
I find his documentaries to be very well researched and adding a lot more “color” to the simplistic mythology we were typically taught in middle school about his topics. That doesn’t make them “revisionist” in my book - just more informative and enlightening.”It’s not how I wanna understand the story” doesn’t make it revisionist, to me.
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He is a master of leaving out important information in order to develop a narrative, which is revisionist. Saying Ken Burns is a historian is like calling Jeffrey Dahmer a culinary expert. o_O
 
I'm far from a civil war buff but I thought Newt Gingrich's trilogy (Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War, Grant Comes East and Never Call Retreat) fantastic.

Listen to Matt Walsh episode 1698 if you want to know where Burns might have been driven by ideology.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Who said he was a historian?

His documentaries are filled with explanations provided by actual historians and other experts in the field, with their credentials cited on screen.
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If one is making an historical “documentary” then it would be expected to follow history as written. If history says A, B, C and D happened, then the guy creating the documentary leaves out A and B to lead the viewer in believing something else, then the historical aspect goes out the window and it becomes fiction.
 
Just be careful: there’s a tendency by ALL of us to think a story we want to hear is true and unbiased and things that don’t fit our narrative are “revisionist”.

I’m sure there are people who think Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing xxxx” are unbiased. Or Newt doesn’t have an agenda.

The point is, outside perspectives provide food for thought whether we agree with them or not.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Aristotle
 
Doc Holliday said:
Wish I could, but this forum doesn't allow us to go there.

He is a master of leaving out important information in order to develop a narrative, which is revisionist. Saying Ken Burns is a historian is like calling Jeffrey Dahmer a culinary expert. o_O
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Examples of things left out?? What is his narrative?
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Who said he was a historian?

His documentaries are filled with explanations provided by actual historians and other experts in the field, with their credentials cited on screen.
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Very, very biased historians, cherry-picked, and in direct contradiction of contemporary direct source literature? I'll take original documents over "experts" all day long.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Very, very biased historians, cherry-picked, and in direct contradiction of contemporary direct source literature? I'll take original documents over "experts" all day long.
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I haven’t seen the newest doc yet, so I can’t comment on it directly .

I think my take has already been mentioned.

You can present facts: “X happened on this date.”
You can present reasons: “Y says in his writings ‘this’ is why he made that decision.”

But a soon as you interpret, you are putting your own opinion into the mix.
 
I recently listened to a revisionist historian who gave a well referenced "Story" that the colonists at the time of the revolution rarely owned guns personally, they were owned by the militia, and stored in armories. The armories in fact were at the British forts, and the arms for issue to the soldiers.

True historical fact, from contemporary British records, following the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breeds Hill), the non Loyalist population of Boston plead with General Howe for permission to leave the city before the expected attack.
A condition of the permission was that private arms held must be turned in to the garrison of Boston. Those city dwellers turned in 1778 musket, 634 pistols, and 386 blunderbusses from their personal property.


This not what some proponent of the second amendment claims, but the record of the British commander who confiscated them.

AI will not go to the original facts, it will reference recent documentaries and books as real facts.

The Minutemen were real, and had their personal firearms at home, and were a very large portion of the population.

The British Are Coming, Rick Atkinson. The war for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775 to 1777.
 
To add to the narrative that the revolutionary arms were stored in Armories, yes that was a fact, but they were attacked and "stolen" from the British garrisons, along with most of the cannon used at Breeds Hill, and used to drive the British ships further out in the harbor. They remained in the possession of those revolutionary thieves and bandits for the rest of the "Discussion" of firearm confiscation, ordered by King George.
 
I’ll stick with my premise: there’s a strong tendency for all of us to think that stories which support our view are inerrant and those which don’t are “revisionist” and “cherry-picked”. The reality is, by necessity, they’re ALL cherry-picked since there’s typically too much data to be all-inclusive. How the cherry-picking is done varies by motive. Across the board.
 
Early Washington movie out. He fought for the British at Fort Necessity, Indian French war. Got his butt beat.

I never knew this.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
I’ll stick with my premise: there’s a strong tendency for all of us to think that stories which support our view are inerrant and those which don’t are “revisionist” and “cherry-picked”. The reality is, by necessity, they’re ALL cherry-picked since there’s typically too much data to be all-inclusive. How the cherry-picking is done varies by motive. Across the board.
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Precisely. The concept of "history as written" does not exist. All 'known' history is an interpretation and stories will always be left out.

As a society we can't even agree on what happened during major news events in the last half decade, let alone 250 years ago.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
I’ll stick with my premise: there’s a strong tendency for all of us to think that stories which support our view are inerrant and those which don’t are “revisionist” and “cherry-picked”. The reality is, by necessity, they’re ALL cherry-picked since there’s typically too much data to be all-inclusive. How the cherry-picking is done varies by motive. Across the board.
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How that cherry picking is weighted is the tell. I don't have a problem with the mention of the Iroquois stuff, but if it it deliberately leaves out the influences on John Witherspoon and things like Lex Rex, then it's bias is clear.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
I’ll stick with my premise: there’s a strong tendency for all of us to think that stories which support our view are inerrant and those which don’t are “revisionist” and “cherry-picked”. The reality is, by necessity, they’re ALL cherry-picked since there’s typically too much data to be all-inclusive. How the cherry-picking is done varies by motive. Across the board.
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Yup. Confirmation Bias is a hungry creature. It must be fed.
 
I’m one episode away from finishing up the first Vikings series on Netflix. Having lived in Norway for three years, I had a very rudimentary knowledge of their history. I was hoping for a fairly accurate portrayal and was really disappointed when I got into it: there were many characters in the series who really existed but almost none of them interacted with each other as per the show. Plus the timelines were absurd (and costumes, living conditions, etc.were ridiculous in many cases).

But throughout the series, I did use the show to get me digging deeper into specifics, which is where the discrepancies came to light. I learned a LOT - prompted by the show but not actually from it.

My point: if one looks at any “story” and only seeks out the discrepancies from their previous understanding, where’s the learning in that? If a new premise comes to mind, presented in a biased way or not, doing some digging to put it in context is how I personally grow in understanding.

There’s a lot of absurdity being presented on “news” channels on both sides of the spectrum, which is tempting to blow off as wrong. Almost all of it is rooted in at least some modicum of truth. Putting it in a fuller context adds to my overall understanding.

And, yeah, I know it can be tough to sort out the credible “context providers”.

Like him or not, Ken Burns does provide good food for thought on many topics, I find - even if it’s apparent he’s cherry-picking
 
Llewtrah381 said:
I’m one episode away from finishing up the first Vikings series on Netflix. Having lived in Norway for three years, I had a very rudimentary knowledge of their history. I was hoping for a fairly accurate portrayal and was really disappointed when I got into it: there were many characters in the series who really existed but almost none of them interacted with each other as per the show. Plus the timelines were absurd (and costumes, living conditions, etc.were ridiculous in many cases).
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At the risk of pointing out the obvious.

Revolution is documentary. Valid to pick at it when it fails to be accurate.

Vikings is historical fiction. All bets are off.

Comparing them is apples to oranges.

I was also disappointed when The Office turned out to not be a docuseries... I was really bummed when I visited Scranton and Kevin And The Zits weren't playing any of the local bars.
 
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