StarDestroyer.Net BBS

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act ... -ken-burns



Kind of funny, and I'm glad people still remember the Ken Burns series too.

Edited to fix link.

I've actually read some articles criticizing Ken Burns for supposedly being too sympathetic / apologetic for the Confederate cause. I really don't see the problem. The truth is that it IS possible to talk about the suffering of the rank and file Confederate / Stormtrooper, or to talk about a bold / daring / brave risk that Lee / Palpatine took without supporting the reasons they were fighting for.

Burns' documentary is rather sympathetic to a lot of Confederates, and there's a major note of nostalgia and reconciliation at the end as I recall, though its been a while since I've seen it. I think this is common in America because there's a sense that, at the end of the day, the Confederates are still fellow Americans. That was probably a necessary attitude to hold the country together once, though it had the long term effect of perpetuating sympathy for the Confederate cause. However, Burns' documentary is very strongly against slavery, and spends a great deal of time celebrating the demise of that institution, and paints a fairly positive picture of Abraham Lincoln. So its hardly good neo-Confederate propaganda.

I think its strength, though, is not so much the political perspective of the film makers as it is its heavy use of quotes, pictures, and music from the time, so that regardless of weather you share the film makers' views, you are getting to hear and see what was actually going on at the time. That and it really does convey the scale and horror of the war, at least for me.

Of course, the political situation of the American Civil War was quite different from that of the Galactic Civil War, but perhaps its best not to overthink a parody video.

And the Jar Jar bit was really funny, I thought.

Edit: And damn, they actually made a surprisingly compelling point about the Ewoks. Or at least, you could spin it that way if you wanted to.

Somewhat funny, though Community's similar affectionate parody was far better(though obviously had a far larger budget and professionals). It was a portrayal of the campus-wide pillow fight that erupted when best friends Troy and Abed had a conflict over whether to build a blanket fort or pillow fort. Being Community, it was treated as a completely serious event.

Notable events included: Annie portraying a heroic nurse, who turned a storage room into a sactuary for soldiers with broken glasses and lightly grazed testicles. Britta portraying a war correspondent, whose borrowed camera captured the war's blurriest and most poorly framed events. The dried up heir to a moist towelette empire, who turned out to be the dried up heir to a moist towelette empire. It also featured the letters between war lovers as text messages.