In defense of the documentary as an art form

When I was in high school, I got into a documentary for the first time in my life. The first documentary that I got into was Ken Burns’ “The Civil War” (shown on PBS). It would be the first of many for me. Since then, I have watched hundreds of documentaries (if not more), in a search for the special kind of storytelling that only a documentary can really offer. But what is it that documentaries provide? What advantages do they have over books? What advantages do they have over Hollywood movies? And how can they hold their own against other art forms that undertake to tell stories?

A review of “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross”

“They [African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery … ”

– Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), possibly the most infamous decision in Supreme Court history, which created unfortunate barriers to both emancipation and racial equality

Black culture is “inextricably intertwined” with American culture

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. once said that “black culture is inextricably intertwined with American culture.” I tend to agree with this sentiment. It’s almost impossible to talk about the larger history of the United States without talking about black history in some depth. Unfortunately, chattel slavery was a prominent institution during the first 250 years or so of this country’s history. Compromises over slavery were written into the national Constitution (as I describe in this post) – although they were later amended – and the controversy over slavery was at the heart of our Civil War. We still grapple with the ripple effects of slavery today. The civil rights movement was spearheaded by African Americans, who were the most prominent victims of the racial discrimination against which this movement fought. In so many ways, black history is central to American history.

Slavery in Virginia on a tobacco plantation, 1670

It may be the most talked-about of any minority history that has transpired in this country

Because of this, their history is the most talked-about of any ethnic history that has transpired in this country, with the exception of white history. Of other ethnic minority histories, only Native American history seems to come close in this regard today. It is only natural that there should be a television history of the African American people, made by an African American named Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who has studied the subject in some detail. As Wikipedia noted, “It is the first documentary series to recount this history in its entirety since the nine-part History of the Negro People aired on National Educational Television in 1965, and the one-hour documentary Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed, narrated by Bill Cosby and broadcast in 1968.” (See their page on this series.) This series came out in 2013, and covers African American history from its beginnings, all the way through the election of Barack Obama in 2008 (very recent, at the time that I write this).

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the presenter of this series

A review of “Classical Religions and Myths of the Mediterranean Basin” (audiobook)

“Declare, O Muse! in what ill-fated hour

Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended power

Latona’s son a dire contagion spread,

And heap’d the camp with mountains of the dead …”

– Homer’s “Iliad,” Book 1 (as translated by Alexander Pope) – which thus dedicates the “Iliad” to Greek goddesses known as “Muses”

So I recently listened to a three-hour audiobook called “Classical Religions and Myths of the Mediterranean Basin.” When I took a comparative world religions class some years ago, it was focused almost exclusively on modern religions. Therefore, it didn't really cover these older religions that are mostly gone today.

It was thus good to hear from these people about the early religions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia Minor, Canaan, Greece, and Rome. It was also good to hear from them about how the literature and culture of these religions may have influenced the world in which the Hebrew and Christian scriptures took place. I thought that they may have carried their argument a bit too far at times, when they argued that the stories of this prior mythology may have influenced the stories of Judaism and Christianity, as found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Nonetheless, I thought that they were much more solid on handling the beliefs of these other religions, as this was clearly written by people who had studied the subject in some detail.

Ra-Horakhty, a combined Ancient Egyptian deity of Horus and Ra

A review of “Voltaire and Rousseau” (audiobook)

Voltaire and Rousseau disagreed with each other on many issues. Nonetheless, they do have at least one thing in common, which is that they were both prominent figures of the French Enlightenment (and of the Enlightenment more generally). Thus, they are covered together in this audiobook despite their disagreements. It is a single unified audiobook covering both philosophers, rather than two separate audiobooks being sold together. Since Voltaire was born more than 17 years before Rousseau, they focus first on Voltaire’s life, and then focus on Rousseau’s life, making little effort to connect their lives.

Some thoughts about general education

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

– Thomas Sowell, economist

An anecdote about education vs. experience, from the 1958 movie “Teacher’s Pet” …

In 1958, a romantic comedy called “Teacher’s Pet” presented its audience with some surprisingly deep coverage of the topic of education. In the movie, Clark Gable plays an old-school newspaper reporter with a contempt for formal education, who unexpectedly falls for a journalism professor played by Doris Day. He starts out with contempt for eggheads like her, but grows to have deep respect for them, while they gain an equally deep respect for his practical experience. One of them is a mutual friend (and Clark Gable’s competitor for Doris Day), a psychology professor played by Gig Young. Clark Gable comes to find that his experience commands more “serious” respect among these professors than he thought, and realizes that he is smarter than he believed. At the same time, though, he realizes how much he has missed out on by not getting a formal education, and grows to respect the journalism lessons taught by Doris Day in her classroom.

… with a character in the movie who has to excuse himself from educated conversations

Clark Gable is unfamiliar with certain topics taught by general education, and has to excuse himself from conversations about them when they go over his head, going to the men’s room as a convenient pretext to leave them. At one point in the movie, he thus laments that he has “spent one-third of my life going to, staying in, and coming back from men’s rooms.” It’s a funny line, but it probably describes the experience of many who haven’t gained a formal education, even if their informal education has nonetheless been quite good. If we want to spare our students this unpleasant embarrassment, we should take pains to require some general education of them, at least when they enroll in college (and preferably sooner). That way, they won’t sound like idiots, when people judge their intelligence by whether or not they know certain things. We cannot possibly teach them everything (which would be an unreasonable goal anyway), but we can teach them some things.

A scene from “Teacher’s Pet” (1958)

I can’t decide what to major in …

If you’ve arrived at this page, chances are that you’re either in college, or will be in college soon. Presumably, you know that you want to get a degree, but you haven’t decided yet what to major in. What should you choose?

Blog posts by region

I was once asked whether I covered world history on my blog. The answer is a simple “yes.”

Here is a sort of table of contents for my blog posts. Each link shows you the most recent posts in that category, up to 20 of them (at least, where there are that many).