Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea
 

Any other American'ts watching this fantastic documentary?

Yes!

I've hiked a portion of the John Muir trail. Amazing sights throughout.

I bet. I'm jealous! I'd like to check out Yosemite one of these days. I'm nowhere near it though.

I've only ever been to 1 national park (Big Bend). And hiked. It was painful (I'm waaaay out of shape). But well worth it. Earth is pretty incredible.

? this thread.

Six-part televised documentary, which began airing two days ago when I made this thread, about the history the United States' national parks by the master of American documentaries, Ken Burns.

Beautiful pictures of Yosemite and other parks, the history of the naturalist John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt's use of the Antiquities Act, and other stuff about old trees, giant trees, petrified trees, etc.

oh, nice!

what channel made this/is it from?

PBS

I tried to watch it but it was absolutely boring, and generally really like Ken Burns, i like the writing, the narration, and especially the focus on photography instead of videography, pictures allow you to just stare and examine the scene where as video is moving to fast for you to actually enjoy the view. I liked Civil War, i really like Lewis and Clark, Jazz was good but a bit of a let down, Unforgivable Blackness was a gem, the West was nice, but this National Parks thing is boring boring boring, even for Kens Burns standards

I'm sure there is a rant of yours that can be found denouncing instant-gratification consumerism for finding nature boring.

no, nature is what I like. the one I saw was too much a boring biography of Muir, I would have preferred it just been about Crater Lake and Yosemite.. it was just rather dull. I thought it was going to be about the parks and the different bad ass spots in the parks, not some Nazi overlord conditioning film about america's great superheros of the old ;)

John Muir is awesome, though.

true, but his biography was not very entertaining in Ken Burns' format.

I watched the one last night, a bit better, more nature focus.. I still say it should have been a documentary on the park like an episode of Nature or NOVA rather than the biography of the boring, elitist white dudes who made the parks happen.. I am not THAT into history ;)

im only a permanent resident but fuck yeah!

so after watching them all I have two conclusions:

a) They should have interviewed more historians, relatives, first-hand witnesses, etc etc instead of relying so heavily on the writer Duncan for interviews, I thought it was rather low-quality to have the primary interviewee be the head writer of the script. It is lacking in out-side sources which would have been more insightful and entertaining.

b) it was too much boring boring boring biography. I thought it was going to document all the beautiful wonders in each parks and give a bit of story and background and geology about them. that would have been MUCH better, sort of like what PBS aired a few years ago about the Natural Parks in detail.. I wanted to see the parks and all the vistas and sites, not all the historical personages..

I think the focus on the biographical was apart of the show's thesis of identifying the national parks as something that transcends politics and defines the American identity. A valuable message, I believe, in this new trend of reactionary minarchism.

I saw that thesis and enjoyed it and had my own sentimental epiphanies about the same premise while watching it and further that thesis neglected the international appeal of American National Parks which help cement a global identity transcending even American identity..

but it was dramatically put on the back burner, you had to be a detective to catch it. I really was turned off by the over-reliance on Duncan and the writers for interviews, it was essentially 6-8 hours of conversations with Duncan on his opinion of National Park history and purpose, not enough variety of sources to catch my attention, I kept thinking to myself, "who are you?" the beauty of documentary film is that you can interview your sources, the writer synthesizes all the source material into a cohesive draft, but he is not the primary source.