I literally knew EVERYTHING on the series already and learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Except for one single most crucial piece of evidence of all, the identity of the person in the Nixon campaign who was talking to the N Vietnamese and sabotaged the peace talks right before the election. And don’t tell me I didn’t watch or listen closely enough or that it was in the book, if it was in the book it certainly should have been on the goddamn tv show. AND IT WASN’T.
Fuck this pisses me off and it’s dumb that it pisses me off.
I loved the series even if it didn’t focus enough on the suffering of the South Vietnemese people. I grew up in the Little Saigon area of Orange County, California and saw it all the time.
So are you saying you’re already a Vietnam War scholar? Or a Vietnam War history buff at least?
I can see how maybe the series didn’t teach you anything you didn’t know already if you were well versed in Vietnam. But then again I don’t think Burns’ documentaries are meant to be revealing, or exceedingly in-depth. He takes a broad topic and gives a solid overview of it over so many hours. It was a 20-year war, so one half hour per year.
Lots of people probably did learn lots of things from it. I’m the child of a Vietnam combat vet and I learned things. And when I wasn’t learning things, I was just able to *feel *things. I’m also a Kent State graduate who was involved in the 30th anniversary of May 4, and I even learned some stuff about that. I had never heard the audio of the professor pleading with students to leave. It was quite powerful, to me.
So the OP was looking for a “On the NEXT Ken Burns’ Vietnam. . . .!” moment?
That war has been cussed and discussed for decades. I did not get any buzz that it was going to reveal something new or different. None of his documentaries really reveal anything new, they are just a way to bring old information to a new generation of people in a way that is engaging and informative. That is all I expected and that’s what I got.
It’s more that televisions have changed aspect ratio since Vietnam: A Television History (1983) was last re-broadcast on PBS in 1997 (in edited form) and released on DVD (also in edited form) in 2004.
I was born during the late 1960s and I remember the war from early childhood. I always wondered what happened. I started watching the Ken Burns doc on Netflix and I’m about halfway through. I feel like it’s filling in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge and I am enjoying it. I find it incredibly interesting to see how past actions laid the foundations of current situations. But the thing that I keep asking while watching these things play out on the documentary is just “why?” I don’t know if it’s hindsight, but it seems to me that they knew from early on it was going to be a losing situation and some involved even expressed that sentiment, but just… why? It’s depressing.
Are you familiar with the “domino” theory (note: I didn’t watch the series so I don’t know what’s in it)? That if Vietnam fell to communism, then the rest of SE Asia would fall, including Thailand, and then Indonesia and maybe Japan and so on. It was complete and total paranoia on the part of people who feared communism much more than they understood it.
Then there was the idea of throwing good lives after bad. No-one wanted to be the one to give up on all the lives already lost - if we only do this or that or throw more arms and men at the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, they will finally give in and it will all be worth it. Those in power HAD to believe that, to sleep at night.
Finally, there was the resistance to the resistance. This was the era of demonstrations by people who seemed disloyal and disreputable, and how could a regular person agree with those people? They had to be wrong, and we have to be right! It was only the actual losses that happened during the war that finally made regular people change their minds.
These are my opinion, from having lived through that period. Maybe you had to be there for these reasons to even remotely make sense. I was exactly the right age to be sent to Vietnam, the only thing that saved me was asthma. I still have it, and thanks to that I’m still alive to have it.
I have to say I find something hilarious about someone claiming the documentary took away 20 hours of life that they’ll never get back, when the actual war took away years of life that guys will never get back, including their actual entire lives. I’m not really trying to imply that the OP’s phrasing is deliberately flippant about this situation, only that the irony amuses me.
I agree that the documentary wasn’t really that interesting or illuminating to me, but I guess that’s because I’ve already heard a lot of first-hand stories about that war from veterans. The documentary, I guess, offered some of the guys who were interviewed the opportunity to publicly recount very grisly and tragic memories that they’d ordinarily not want to talk about, so in that regard it was worthwhile. I guess anything that preserves oral histories from people who experienced important moments in time is valuable to us collectively.
The show did leave some things out; for instance, it mentioned in passing that thousands of Canadians volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Then the narrator continued on and never brought this up again; why not? Did they not think it would be interesting to interview some Canadians who volunteered to fight in another country’s war - which people from that country were fleeing their country to avoid? That was a missed opportunity.
Your claim that people feared communism more than they understood it isn’t based on fact. Look at a map of the world from 1935; then look at a map of the world from 1955. Most of the shiny red on the map from 1955 came about because of broken promises and military conquest. The Soviets had signed treaties to the effect that liberated Eastern European nations would be free to choose their form of government. They never got that chance and any opposition to the new communist governments were either jailed or killed. The Soviets spent millions undermining governments. The fear of communism was justified based on the facts.
I don’t know if my 22yo son watched it or not but believe many his age did watch it and learned something important. Doubt if they watched any of the prior documentaries mentioned.
I don’t think I’ve forgiven Burns for Baseball yet. The Civil War remains one of the best documentary series ever. I really liked Prohibition and the Roosevelts. I’ve found most of his other work to be hit or miss.
I watched a car run over a wild bunny and squish it nearly flat but I ran over and put it on theg rass and then watched the crows come and have at, then went home and hugged and pet my own bunny.
So I express my feelings about a tv show, NOT THE ACTUAL WAR and you become a crybaby. Christ. Pwecious ittle snowfwake much?:rolleyes:
I notice you didn’t actually quote my post, which left you free to lie with impunity. Hu-zzah for you.
NOWHERE in my post was there the implication that I had perfect knowledge of the Vietnam War, in fact the exact opposite. But that doesn’t fit your twisted worldview.