"The West" (1996) TV series

User Rating:

8.5/10   

Director:

Stephen Ives

Writers:

Dayton Duncan (writer)
Geoffrey C. Ward (writer)

Seasons:

1

Genre:

Documentary | History | War

Plot:

Ken Burns' "The West" is a PBS 4-Video Series: - "Death Runs Riot" 85 min. - "Fight No More Forever" 85 min. - "Ghost Dance" 58 min. - "The People" 82 min.

Plot Keywords:

Racism

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Peter Coyote

...

Narrator (unknown episodes)

Runtime:

USA:537 min (original version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Filming Locations:

Alamo Village - Highway 674, Brackettville, Texas, USA

Company:

Florentine Films

Disappointing exercise in PC history

I had looked forward to the series as coming from a master of the documentary form. After all, Burns set in motion several documentary devices that have been widely copied since, such as first-person voice-over narration and having the narrator sign off each spoken part with his or her name. The Civil War series was truly an achievement.

This thing, however--

It amounts to a chapters-long indictment of Europeans that verges on racism. It emerges after a while that the only good whites are dead whites. It's true that there was much brutality in white settlement of the west, and that horrible crimes were committed, usually unthinkingly, and many of them by whites. But is there really nothing more to the story than white-folks-bad/red-folks good? With a little effort, Ken Burns might have found, oh, I don't know, at least one good white person. Or, rather, one good white person who wasn't immediately tarred and feathered by his redneck fellows.

It's as if you were to tell the story of World War II and focus on nothing but the fact that the American armed forces were rigidly segregated at the time. Oh, wait, that one's probably Ken Burns' next.