The Martin Luther King speech on Vietnam that I mentioned: https://youtu.be/HISxIFwjO70?si=5e1jWkolBHL_wowO
This is part of my so-called "Scripted Review" series, in which I make a Youtube video based on an old blogpost. For more information on what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE:
In this case, the old blog post is here: https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2013/11/television-addiction-part-4.html
This is also part of my Television Addiction series. For my explanation of what the Television Addiction series is and why I'm doing it, see: https://youtu.be/T5CEQ9-35xA and http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2021/04/television-addiction-article-on.html
Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States
Another history documentary.
This documentary series is at times spectacular. Oliver Stone is no stranger to cinematic storytelling, and, in the earlier episodes especially, he brings all his storytelling abilities to this project. The archival footage, the dramatic music, and the bold narration all contribute to the feel of watching something epic.
The first 5 or 6 episodes are examples of documentary history at its absolute finest.
The problem, from an entertainment perspective at least, is in some of the later episodes the editorializing gets in the way of the story telling. For example, the episode on the 1980s is less a coherent narrative than it is just a list of all the reasons Reagan sucked. The episode on George W. Bush is the same. I don’t disagree with Oliver Stone’s politics, but the powerful narrative thrust of the early episodes gets a bit muddled in the later episodes.
Still, inspite of the fact that the narrative quality of the series is not entirely consistent over all 10 episodes, the high points of this series more than make up for the low points. It’s well worth checking out.
Sidenotes:
1). I’m not sure all this information has ever been in one documentary series before. I remember having to learn all my information about the untold history of the United States in piecemeal fashion. I learned one thing here, another thing there, and just gradually accumulated knowledge.
Now it’s possible to just watch this documentary, and in 10 short hours accumulate all of this knowledge in one go. Which brings me to my next point:
2) It’s really surprising they allowed this to be on TV.
And 3). One last observation: Oliver Stone is famous for his conspiracy theories in his movie JFK, but fortunately he largely stays away from conspiracy theories in this series. (He hints that relations between Kennedy and the CIA were not good, but stops short of trying to explicitly connect any dots.) In The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone largely sticks to facts that, while they may not be largely reported, are not contested. I think this series is credible.
(In my youth I was on-board with some of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, but over time I’ve come to agree with Chomsky that spending too much time speculating on unknowns is a waste of time. For Chomsky’s thoughts on why we shouldn’t waste time speculating about conspiracy theories SEE HERE.)
Related Playlists:
Scripted Reviews Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5BKcEIufNKlS58JHU_glyL&si=Pje0KQqIqOgWGGUI
Television Addiction: Oh, the TV Shows I've Seen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x5dG-fZus5AmF1kQSDBfSDJ
Television Addiction Part 4: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x7tGOeUw5E7xQBVO_DQ3xcn&si=lM1iMgfWSgaA3Bzf
History Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY-0V_l_9x52uI39vSXVrJvUFjdN9QkL&si=dICJTZngZlwi8WIT
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2 comments:
I highly recommend (and advise to keep an open mind on them, by reading them first) the two books, Stan Dane's book, “Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald”, and “Prayer Man: More Than a Fuzzy Picture” by Bart Kamp, which look at the unidentified man who was filmed by Dave Wiegman, Jr., of NBC, and James Darnell of WBAP-TV, standing on the Depository front steps during the JFK assassination, referred to as "prayer man", theorised by some to be Lee Harvey Oswald.
I hasten to add I am neither pro lone gunman or pro conspiracy in regards to JFK controversy. To use my quote used on the website link below, I am a strong believer in “innocent until proven guilty”, which is to say that I will never definitively state that Lee Harvey Oswald or anybody else was responsible for the assassination. There are too many missing puzzle pieces and most of the evidence is circumstantial rather than direct. As someone got interested in the JFK case since 2010, I have been pro-conspiracy and pro-lone gunman at times, and by the mid 2010s, I began remaining on the neutral side, having no opinion, though I’m prepared to accept the WC findings. There’s just something I cannot put my finger on that is preventing me from calling it a lone gunman and calling it a day. I think the PM theory made me wake up to it. If the films are released and it turns out not to be Lee, then fine, I eat my words and accept the lone gunman conclusion. Indeed, I myself admit that a small part is unsure but unless/until high quality copies of the Darnell film are released and can confirm or eliminate Oswald as PM, this theory is the only JFK Conspiracy Theory that could be true IMHO. It deserves more attention and those films need to be released to end the debate or resolve it.
Thanks fo rthe recommendations. I'll keep them in mind.
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