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