Actually, when I hear someone say “the wah”–I tend to think Gone With the Wind–Olivia deHaviland. We’re just goofing on her-as was stated, no offense was meant.
But I’d really like to know (since Cub scouts, Brownies and the like were involved in all manner of drives) what she did in the Wah–besides wait for her brother to come home. I’m sure she’s nice lady.
Looking forward to tonight’s episode. I’d like the soundtrack.
Compared to The Civil War, I think Burns phoned this one in. I ain’t saying I could do it any better, but his “craft” stopped evolving long ago. It could use a little McCullah, and a little less Hanks. And the music is not doing it for me, especially the screechy noise during the dramatic scenes. What is that, anyway? Bad slide guitar? Broken reed tooter?
I noticed a couple of slight errors that grated on me. Too much use of the same footage over and over. Not too bad, however, and certainly better than anything else on TV (unless the Trojans are playing).
I’ll give it a 7.
It’s not really working for me either. Not sure why. Maybe I’ve read too many books and seen too many movies covering pretty much the same stuff. The War feels like an outline, not a finished, coherent production.
There are some interesting tidbits, but overall, I’m kinda bored with it.
Yes, I did, and in doing so, both were relevant to this thread. You comments before and now about contributors to The New Yorker were not. I never said you did say the review wasn’t about the documentary.
Yes it was. If The New Yorker continues to be, a cheap shot. If it’s so cloying, insular, smug, and let’s face it, a *Manhattan-uber-alles *, while being paradoxically provincial, snobbishness, why read it?
To get back on track with the topic of this thread, I don’t know where you’re getting this bashing accusation from. Many peope on the board, and Nancy Franklin independently of this board, noticed something about that particular subject and commented on it. Since I’m from the deep south myself, why would I bash her – I I simply commented on something I’d noticed too. eleanorigy, (post # 80: sorry to keep dragging you into this, but you’re making excellent, pertinent posts here) expressed perfectly what, in addition to the accent, we’re all noticing here.
For the record, I’m quite liking the presentations and, as I said upthread, will make an effort to read some books and Learn More About It. I don’t know what’s bashing or politically correct about being inspired in that way by The Wawh.
Re: the audio.
I’ve noticed some out-of-synch, but there aren’t that many talking heads. I’m time-delaying on Comcast using a Motorola DVR. The thing that’s bugging me is that there are audio dropouts every minute or so. Of course they almost never occur during the foleyed scenes, but during the narration and dialog. The dropouts are not occuring on the other things I’ve DVR’d.
On Wednesday night, I was watching the HD broadcast on Comcast and about 2 hours into the 2.5 hour broadcast, the screen went black for about two minutes and the show just started over. I then flipped to the non-HD broadcast and watched the rest. Did this happen to anyone else?
I haven’t had anything like the above happen to me. I am watching it with just plain old cable on an old color TV.
I was somewhat miffed to realize it wasn’t on last night, but upon reflection, I was glad of the break. I don’t watch much violence (because I find movie violence predictable and boring), so the footage is a bit much for me. The color bits are particularly hard–in some not very rational part of my brain, WW2 is in a black and white world (WW1 is in sepia and b&w, as is the Civil War; the Revolutionary War is in oil paintings in my head). Suddenly seeing WW2 in technicolor shoved it forward in my mind to Vietnam era footage–especially the Pacific theater parts. It gave it a sense of immediacy, instead of nostalgia for me. Odd, but moving.
I plan on starting to watch again on Sunday at 7pm here. Sunday is all day marathon on WTTW here, but that would be too much to take. I almost dread the Holocaust episode. Having been to Dachau, I am somewhat reluctant to visit those feelings again. But I will.
I’m afraid I don’t quite see why we can’t be critical of the Auburn woman–or am I misreading this bit of the thread? I wasn’t too thrilled by the way Frazier got into the military (he joined up after he drove his car into a bar, if I remember correctly). Just because this is a serious subject doesn’t mean we check our brains and judgements at the door. The Auburn’s woman recollections of the war are valid. Our perceptions of her sheltered and privileged lifestyle are as well.
Exactly. I have nothing against her as an individual.
I think most of the complaints (mine anyway) are because her comments add absolutely nothing to the program (at least not so far). Unless we see something different in her perspective in the remaining episodes, I’m thinking that she’s there because Burns goofed, and by the time he figured it out, it was too late to go in another direction.
She’s like the people we see on the news every time there’s a natural disaster or a neighbor turns out to be a serial killer – their comments are all the same, like there’s a script and they have to follow it.
That’s it exactly. She reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon from the 40s: two wealthy executive types are enjoying brandy and cigars while a very young, scantily clad woman is lounging on divan behind them. One of the men says to the other: " I never told her about the Depression; she would have worried."
I would like very much to see more footage of the post-battle care of the wounded etc. That needs to be de-mythologized as well. And what of post war? The shell shock/battle fatigue, the drinking, the strained and unhappy marriages etc. I realize that is beyond his ken, but so far we have True Love. It adds a nice relief note from all the death and barbarism, but I wish there was more emphasis on the consequences of war. Maybe there will be in later episodes.
Oh, I completely agree.
The thing is, to me, she is just as part of the story as the Japanese-American internment camps. I think, in her way, she does contribute to the program.
But I knew it might not sit well with the TV audience.
I saw her, I listened to her, and I knew what was coming.
I too was surprised yet a bit relieved for the break last night.
The movie seems to jump around a lot from war front, to interview to social commentary, but I really appreciate a lot of the information about the Pacific front, I learned a lot. I still wish it was only in one hour increments.
OK, I’m caught up.
So far… Well, I’m not planning to buy the DVDs. Much of the footage I’ve already seen on The History Channel or elsewhere. (A lot of the bomber footage is from William Wyler’s The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.) There’s a lot of footage that is new to me, of course; but nothing special. Burns is good at ‘bringing the war home’ through letters and interviews. Again, I’ve seen a lot of interviews. The letters are good. (ISTR a ‘letters to home’ show somewhere, but it’s been a while.) Overall though it seems to be pretty much like any of a number of WWII documentaries I’ve seen over the years. Mildly interesting, but not breaking any new ground.
I wonder if the audio glitches are because I’ve been recording HD?
Letters from the Front. That was a heartbreaker.
Thank you.
Bump so I can find this thread again for tomorrow night.
She serves KB’s purpose: on last night re-run, they showed that infamous photo of Leonard Siffleet being beheaded by the Japanese.
A few moment later she’s reminiscing about sugar and white flour rationing, saying “cakes took it the worst.” (no…that would be Leonard Skiffleet)
Later we’ll see peeling Japanese in Hiroshima, and then cut to Americans dancing in Times Square.
Burns must be fond of W. H. Audens sentiment in Musée des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
I’ve always wondered what the circumstances were of that beheading. Your post allowed me to look up details. The article on findagrave says that the executioner was Yasuno Chikao, who was sentenced to hang after being captured. His sentence was commuted to ten years and he later returned to Japan. But searching Yasuno Chikao I came upon a Japanese site that sait he was killed in battle and did not survive the war. So what really happened to him?
Slithy Tove, looking at her participation in that light, it almost seems cruel for Burns to use her that way. But you’re right, her perspective makes a necessary(?) contrast with real suffering.
I think this is what the criticism of the Auburn lady boils down to. If she were grim and weeping, we would all love her. But her smiles do seem incongruous. (And granted, her pronunciation of “Wah” is seriously annoying. Her accent is, in my experience, an affectation of certain wealthy Southerners – to set themselves apart from the proles.)
On the other hand, the criticism of her as “sheltered” just doesn’t wash. Her brother Sid (also interviewed on the show) was at Guadalcanal, and Auburn lady talks about how much the family worried about him, and how anxiously they awaited his V-mails.
She talks about the news from Tarawa, and how much she worried that Sid might have been there.
She talks about seeing the footage from Tarawa some months later (after she knew Sid had not been there), and how she and her friends wept together at the images of bodies floating in the surf.
I don’t see how she is supposed to have been “sheltered” from the war at all. I think it’s only that her smiling visage on camera makes it seem like it didn’t affect her.
Well, I think she was plenty sheltered in her life in general, but never mind. I think you have seen more episodes than I have–I have yet to see Sid on camera or see footage from Tarawa. I’m sure the Wah effected her negatively in some sense. Most likely she lost friends or school mates.
But I now think KB may well have included her as a standing comment on how we have viewed this war: sentimentalized, nostalgic, even romantic. To use extreme examples (and I’m not saying Auburn lady is equivalent to them),* Hogan’s Heroes* and Gomer Pyle–the fun, nobody truly got badly hurt funny war. There was a film titled, The Best Years of Their Lives that came out shortly after WW2. I believe it won an Academy award; it showed the harshness of returning to civilan life. But other than that, we have softened the memory of this war–it was the Good War. KB refers to it interviews as the “John Wayne war”. I think (and this is pure speculation on my part) that the Auburn lady sees it that way. I would never wish death or hurt on anyone, but I wonder if she would be quite so chipper about it if Sid had not returned home. Just a thought.
Her uncle (and Sid’s) was killed at Guadalcanal. She talked about how that devastated her family.
She talked about how several of the neighborhood boys were killed. She talked about comforting the mothers of these boys.
She was very much affected by the Wah.
I just think it’s her on-camera demeanor (and maybe her accent) that’s rubbing people the wrong way.
