Unmodified: Real People, Fantastic Worlds

In a more positive manner, I'd like to praise this video I found related to D&D, as something other than the normative apologetics pumped out by those who want to sell the game. It's not like me to like a video like this... but honestly, I believe the difference lies in the video's source, which is public broadcasting based. In other words, it's not "selling" D&D so much as enthusiasm for D&D, which I find vastly more palatable. That makes this a very unusual post for me.

I do want to stress, because honestly I think many believe the tag line of this blog, "I Love the Game of D&D," is meant either ironically or sarcastically. I'm such a grouchy old bastard, I spend so much of my time kicking the crap out of things, it's easy to believe that because I think the White Box set is horribly written, that Basic D&D is a joke and that Gygax was simply an awful human being, that every conceivable Venn Diagram that includes "D&D" in a circle must have me in another circle completely outside it. But no, that's not true.

I am enthusiastic for D&D. I would not have spent three weeks this month squeezing out a 32-page example of the Lantern geared for Christmas, or the amount of time I've given to talking about the game, nor the years I've spent playing it, because I do not get a vibrating charge in my nerve endings at the thought of it. No, it's just that I think everyone else is wrong, stupid or misinformed, that's all. No biggie. I don't dislike people who are wrong, I just want to change their mind.

Unmodified: Real People, Fantastic Worlds makes no effort to do any of that. It presents expressive, enthusiastic people talking about a game concept — role-playing — unabashedly with love. This is captured in every scene, so if what you want is to feel an engagement with people who are prepared to be authentic about love, then take the time and watch at least some of the video. If you're into miniatures, or concrete details about setting design, with all the table-top functionality that comes from creating 3-D models, then you'll likely watch this to the end.

You won't find enlightenment. These are people who have been clearly raised on the language of modern D&D, who are woefully let down by that language. They've been taught to use the word "story" in its alternate corporatised sense, who do so because they have no other language they can use. It's quite possible to see them fighting for language throughout the documentary... not because they do not know what they believe, but because they've been saddled with a vocabulary that really does not express what they need to convey or want to. They've been let down. This does not make their genuine faith or love for the game less so; it only makes it next to impossible for them to talk to someone who is not in fact like them.

My partner Tamara, for example, would get nothing from this. Nor would my musician friends, nor my writing friends, nor any of my work associates. No non-roleplayer is going to watch this and understand in the least what these people are talking about. But the enthusiasm alone may potentially get some joiners. Which is good. But the simple fact that people in this hobby cannot communicate what this hobby is after 50 years, because that language has never been a priority, is criminal.

I wrote the "story" article as a preliminary to this; and those who commented on the story article largely did not get what I was saying — that exploiting a positive word from the childhood of a person in order to sell that adult version a product is bad. The reason those commentors did not read it that way is evidenced in this video, which shows people who cannot literally describe what they really believe, because they've been crippled by a vocabulary that's allowed to convey only emotional faith. And if you're a person whose background does extend into language and the use of it, you'll recognise this shortcoming within the first couple of minutes. Though without my saying so now, you might not have been able to identify that shortcoming without my having primed you first.

So that's on me. But honestly, without this priming, I don't think a lot of you would stay with this long enough to get the whole picture — and I really want you to. I think it matters. Because until we separate the love here from the way these people have been failed by the game seller, we cannot grow. Emotions are wonderful. But they also correspond to a pre-Neolithic social outlook.

Love deserves a proper culture.

Hidden Hiddins

If you're not familiar with the Bush Tucker Man series of the late 1980s, then you really should be.  Les Hiddins (stay away from the other fellow) was a military officer with the Australian army, whose mission it was to identify and evaluate food sources in the Australian outback for operations that would take place in that country.  As such, he has a straight-forward, honest, somewhat jovial attitude towards what he's doing - a breath of fresh air.

Here's the first episode of the first series, from 1988:



It's worth the look for the visuals, the information and for ideas that will undoubtedly 'thicken' your fantasy campaign.

Hard look should help you find most of the three seasons this fellow and his team provided.

The Other Burns' Coney Island

Not many people know that Ken Burns has a brother, Ric Burns, who made some very good documentaries for the PBS series The American Experience.  I'm watching a long series at the moment, something that's taking me more than a week to watch, so I'm just going to insert this little one-hour doc on Coney Island.

This documentary is probably the saddest I could recommend.  There's something especially heartless in the eventual decay of anything that once brought a great deal of joy to so many people ... and the documentary does make me wonder what it would have been like, exactly, to walk along those boardwalks, visit the parks and see the spectacles described.  Images like this below suggest there's a wonder there that has been utterly lost.

But, too, there is a cynical part of me, born and living in modern times, and I wonder if it really was that sensational.  To the ordinary person at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, perhaps; how many fewer wonders had they to mesmerize them, to lift them from that much less media-driven culture, where ramshackle cars and bi-planes were the wonder of the age.  Could it not be, if the gentle reader and I found ourselves transported back through time, to pay our fee and enter Luna Park, that we would only find it a most disturbing plaster dump, something ugly and trite, to find ourselves after to be glad that is it all burned down and gone.

How, truly, would we see it?  Like the crowds above, or like persons enlightened, who are beyond the callous pleasure seeking of that time.  For you will take note, as you watch the documentary, of all the moments where the disinterest bestowed by the owners upon the customers, or upon the park animals, reach heights of bafflement and rife absurdity.  An elephant is electrocuted; rides where no doubt people were regularly injured, or perhaps killed, are demonstrated and little is said but the occasional throwaway line.

There's something odd about this documentary, in that although it was produced in 1991, it seems to dismiss entirely any social change that would make the parks themselves intolerable to many of us.  The real education here is not the elaborate nature of 'fun,' but the willingness of a culture long ago to risk things our present neurotic culture could not tolerate at all.  Almost none of the rides depicted could exist today, even if we had the money.  None would pass a licensing inspector's eye.

All things change.  There are three fires described in the documentary - and that in itself gives a clue as to what dangers the parks represented. Take note of how easily and quickly Dreamland, one of the parks, vanishes.

This is Luna Park burning, in 1944; we had no aerial shots
we could take of Dreamland burning in 1911.

Have we really lost what we think we've lost?  Or has the world properly moved on?

You can see the documentary here.  I heartily recommend it.



Jones' Crusades

From one ex-Python to another, I thought it would be appropriate this week to highlight the first effort by Terry Jones, crazy man, brilliant director, jack of all trades, certified flake of the first order and probably my favorite Python ... but really, can there be a favorite?

Those savvy enough to watch the last doc with Michael Palin will notice that Terry Jones has a cameo as one of the 'reform club.'  It's tempting to say that Jones was jealous, but the BBC being such a small house, with a willingness to make so many docs, probably the producers were tripping over themselves to get to Jones after Palin's success rather than the other way around.  Either way, Crusades is the documentary that kicked off a set of others by Jones, mostly passable, largely silly and somewhat catered to the dumber people of Britain.

Still, there's something I like about Crusades, even if I can't put my finger on it.

There's an odd tactic in the use of drama, there are a few too many talking heads in some places, and every now and then the doc resorts to the most annoying human interactions.  Still, the content itself is something rare and elusive, and for that reason I've included it on the list - it attempts, unlike SO many other documentaries, to give a chronological account of the Crusades.  It doesn't hop about.  It describes this happening, and then this, and then this, in the order it happened ... thus providing a clear, comprehensive overview of the actual Crusades, as opposed to a lot of shit testifying to what the producers were willing to research.

This need to produce works of history as though we were throwing paint randomly at a wall, as though there were some pattern to witness in such action, drives me up the wall.  I had a prof in university who consistently did this, to the point where one grew to understand that without doing the reading, you were lost.  Jones and Crusades do not demand that you do the reading.

Yes, it's simplified (heck, it's only four episodes) and it's hokey in places ... but it's quite honest about the grisly brutality of the events involved.  It does not hold back.  There's some marvelous demonstrations and insights that make the show worthwhile.

The gentle reader stands a chance to learn something about combat, interaction with the church, the funding of expeditions, difficulties in maintaining an army and so on.  With any luck, as a primer it will encourage one to read more into the period, having now gotten a solid framework for the order of events.

Jones wants the viewer to laugh, and he goes all out for it.  The man must be something to know in real life ... more than his time in Python, his documentaries give insight for that.

And now, a nice fortress:

Palin's Around the World in 80 Days

Stuffed here among the other documentaries I've posted, this one seems more visceral, a great deal less intellectual.  It, too, would be a doc that launched a thousand crappy docs, for while Michael Palin had resources and a world-wide challenge to manage here, we've seen dozens of others take on some incredibly mundane 'adventures' and try to pass them off as something worth watching.

This series works not because the travel is particularly well documented, but because Palin himself is so entertaining.  He manages to put himself into various circumstances, both mundane and dangerous, all with that sort of British aplomb which simply isn't there with many over-produced hosts in the modern age.  The best feature of this documentary now is that it's almost 25 years old - which means it shows a world that was, that in large part has ceased to exist ... while at the same time showing that in fact we haven't advanced as much as we might think in the last quarter century.  Certainly not if we were to compare 1989 with 1964.

I don't have to explain who Michael Palin is to a bunch of D&D Monty Python enthusiasts, so I'll skip that.  The series itself explains how it comes about ... and through the series, there's no hint that Palin will become the fanatic about travel that he has.  He soon topped Around the World in 80 Days with Pole to Pole (which I'll talk about later), and then a long series of different, rather flat documentaries that go far to feed his obvious addiction to journeying everywhere.

The flaw in Around the World shows from what's filmed - 'Passepartout,' the camera crew throughout the documentary, are somewhat limited in what shots they can set up, and for how long, so there's a very heavy emphasis on the main cities.  The runtime in total is just over 340 minutes, yet we see Cairo for 20 of it, Bombay for 20 of it and a town in Colorado for 15.  In comparison, the train ride across India lasts less than 10, the majority of what you see during the train ride through China is people on the train, while the various container ships Palin is forced to travel on offer very little insight of place.

Still, the dhow from Dubai to Bombay - an entire episode - is by far the best part, for you become quite chummy with the residents living their very real lives.  If you see no other part of the series, be sure you see part three.

All of it is available on youtube, starting here.  Netflix probably has it also, I don't know for sure (someone will write to say so if true).

Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

I suppose what I like about Adam Curtis is that he takes a great many apparently disparate events from recent history and draws connections that reveal patterns or causality that wouldn't normally occur to people ... and I find myself doing that all the time.  To some, I'm sure, the conclusions seem "questionable," and of course to some degree they are, just as all interpretation of data is questionable to some extent.  What is not questionable is the core facts being presented - the various persons whom Curtis follows or references really did say the things they said, or took the actions they took - those things are a matter of record.  The only thing left to be questioned is whether or not you choose to believe that the actions of a person based on their philosophy has an effect.   I think it has.  I think it is long overdue that that effect is examined and debated.

There are a number of his films that I will eventually include in this series of documentaries (which seems to be the focus of the blog of late - though the reader shouldn't worry, as those docs I feel are worth posting has a finite number).  The one I'm starting with, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, is a three part series which largely examines - apart from what other sources say - how fucked up we all are due to the philosophical theories of a few driven, somewhat deranged individuals:  Ayn Rand, Arthur Tansley, Jay Forrester, William Hamilton and so on.  None of these people could be called 'stupid' ... yet all were to some degree more interested in making the data fit the theory rather than the theory fitting the data, as Curtis patiently relates.


I want to say a few words about Ayn Rand.  I have always felt that she made a terrific diagnostician.  For me, she has always had the ability to go straight to the heart of the problem and identify it.   The most mediocre people, prepared to concern themselves with gain rather than achievement, gain the greatest notariety; the incapable resent the capable; the weakest, most useless people demand the greatest amount of energy; people, by and large, seek to find their own value in the attention and opinion of others; and so on.

She is, however, a really shitty therapist.  The prescription she offers is pure, unmitigated bunk, and because it is bunk the actual value of anything she might have said otherwise is overshadowed by the satisfaction her detractors gain in dancing naked on the ludicrous grave of her proactive philosophy.  Which is a shame, really.  But that's how it goes - she herself describes exactly how it goes that way.

For those who watch the first episode and take glee in the light that is cast upon her by her actions and strangeness, I'd only point out that she does nothing in the throes of love that millions of people haven't also done - millions of people whose lives are not examined for fault because of a book they've written or an opinion they've had.  But if you put yourself out there, you have to prepare yourself for the shit-storm ... which, if you're really significant, will continue long after you're dead.

There are things I want to say about communes that only just occurred to me as I was watching the second show of the series last week ... but I'm saving it, and its relationship to dungeon mastering, for my next post.

If you want to see this, its not hard to find ... google videos will take you there.  Still, the best links can be found here, here and here.

I am curious to know if anyone out there is following along with the documentaries you haven't seen as I post these.  Please let me know.

 

Burns' Civil War

Let me start by saying that a regular reader of this blog is from Oklahoma.  Are you out there, joe?  I'm not sure where you said you were in OK, but I think you said Oklahoma City.

I'm sort of warming up today, had a long weekend that ended yesterday, haven't posted anything since Friday and I'm sort of trying to remember how (yes, its that bad).  Saw the pics of the tornado that blew through Moore and I'm reminded how much more of this we're going to see as the world average temperatures slowly increase.  Going to be a rough ride.

So for the time being I'll post another documentary - there are going to be a lot of these until I run out, particularly as I get through those which are ten episodes long.

Today's would be the doc that launched a thousand really crappy documentaries:  The Civil War.

Ken Burns exploded onto the scene with this massive work that runs 680 minutes, and in the process pretty much defined the 'new way' to produce a documentary.  The method had been done before, but not with nearly so much eloquence as Burns managed it ... but nevertheless he's been copied and copied by people who are absolute shit at producing documentaries.  Burns managed to bring alive the Civil War with images and actors reading contemporary documents, seeded with experts giving commentary and a strong, well-applied soundtrack.

Burns himself was not able to duplicate the grand effort of the work, though he's tried and tried since.  Whereas some works have been fairly decent - notably Baseball and America's Best Idea - by and large the depth of the work that was the Civil War hasn't been there.  I think there are a couple of reasons for that.  The strongest would be Shelby Foote:

I've read the book he wrote that was the backbone of the documentary and the man was an absolute genius.  Never has a documentary had the benefit of so much good source material.  Added to that would be the extraordinary diaries of others who were used in the film, George Templeton Strong and Elisha Hunt Rhodes (I love the 19th century use of all three names), both of which I've read through, being in the university library here in Calgary.

The use of maps and the use of art added a lot to my enjoyment of the series as well.  The maps are well-rendered and clear, the descriptions of the battles involved and without rhetoric, and the overall feel of the documentary is a presentation of events without the need to comment overmuch on the morality of those events (there's a professor in the documentary that drives me crazy with her pontificating, but that can be overlooked).

The Antietam Battlefield

The "Hornet's Nest" at Shiloh

The problem has been, I think, the proliferation of present-day documentaries that feature what I like to call 'talking heads,' where the narrator has just said something, and then four talking heads in a row all repeat the same material.  What works with the Civil War is that there is a LOT of information here, enough to overfill the minutes of documentary (provided by Foote and a great many others), and the documentary retains interest because there is so much to take in.  No matter how much other, later, poorer docs may attempt to make the material exciting, if there isn't very much research done, the documentary just falls flat.

In other words, Burns taught a lot of people how to fake their way into making a documentary appear meaningful - without actually realizing that appearance doesn't mean much if there's no meat for the table.

Disappointingly, I couldn't find all of the series online ... and what I could find was put up by someone who included a lot of junk on the screen.  I own the series, so I've seen it all the way through; and Burns is quite adamant about keeping his stuff off the free net.  You may find it today, but it will be gone tomorrow.  Still, you can see the first three episodes of the series here, here and here.  The fourth episode, apparently, went up today ... it wasn't there Friday, and as I write this it has 1 view on youtube.  You can find it here.  I wouldn't wait very long.  Truly, this is a series you should try to buy, though it will probably cost you around $100.

Isaacs' The World At War

There are many who would disagree with me, but I feel The World At War is the best series ever done on the Second World War.  There are certain elements that are swept over briefly, notably the Balkans, the American involvement in China and China in general, the Vichy Government and so on ... but the war is well organized in the 26 episodes offered, and gives a strong feeling of the War's impact.  For a long time, episode 20 gave the most straightforward description of the holocaust one could find.

I have many favorite episodes, notably the 8th (North Africa campaign), the 9th (Stalingrad), the 11th (Russia's rise), the 13th (Italy) and the 14th (Burma).  But every episode is a solid presentation of both ideas and events.

There are two quotes that I consider memorable from the series, and both from the 11th episode.  The first, a writer expressing the attitude of the Russians towards the Germans:

"One can bear anything, the plague, hunger and death, but one cannot bear the Germans. One cannot bear these fish-eyed oafs contemptuously snorting at everything Russian. We cannot live as long as these grey-green slugs are alive. Today there are no books, today there are no stars in the sky, today there is only one thought: kill the Germans. Kill them all, and dig them into the earth. Then we can go to sleep. Then we can think again of life, and books, and girls, and happiness. We shall kill them all. But we must do it quickly or they will desecrate the whole of Russia and torture to death millions more people."

The other is a poem, as spoken by a Russian soldier to his love:

"Wait for me, and I’ll return.  Only wait ... very hard.  Wait as you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain.  Wait when the winds sweep the snowdrifts.  Wait in the sweltering heat.  Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.  Wait even when from afar no letters come to you.  Wait even when others are tired of waiting.  Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more.  And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory, wait, and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.  Wait, for I’ll return, defying every death.  And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.  They never will understand that in the midst of death, you, with your waiting, saved me.  Only you and I will know how I survived.  It’s because you waited, as no one else did."

These are both spoken by the most consummate of performers, and unquestionably the best voice ever offered a documentary:  Sir Laurence Olivier.  His presentation (though of course you never see him) is exquisite, lively ... and unimaginably touching at points.

Sir Jeremy Isaacs, who is nearly invisible as the producer of the series, founded BBC Channel 4.  I have great respect for him, for his contribution to culture and to the BBC.

The entirety of the show can be watched from this site.  The service is finicky and annoying, but I've just watched it all the way through so I can tell you every episode works.  If you haven't seen it, set aside the necessary time; turn off your television and watch what a 1973 documentary can offer.

Burke's Connections

I am not a fan of documentaries which involve a lot of talking heads repeating the phrases or points that other talking heads have just made, which is the recent pattern of most documentaries.  Nor I'm I a fan of films that try to make history "exciting" or some other nonsense, with excessive dramatization and the like.  I don't mind a little set design, but it shouldn't venture into the ridiculous, with actors portraying people in bad form.  I've seen too much of that, too.

I like a  doc where one person presents one flow of narrative, particularly if that flow is intended to make a point.  An early master of this was James Burke.

In the 70s, conveying scale was everything.

His first major series was Connections, a ten-episode series accounting for development of major technologies through history.  It's getting a bit dated now, since it was done in '78, and occasionally Burke is clearly trying to get his point across to the stupid people (particularly in the tenth episode), but overall its very accessible and interesting.  The fact that Burke goes hither and yon to present the show is a huge selling feature, as is his journalistic sense of timing (particularly evident at the end of episode 8).  But James Burke began as a science reporter, so it falls into line he would know how to communicate ideas.

You can find all ten episodes of Connections on youtube, starting here.

John Romer's Testament

Just a general potpourri today, I suppose.

Something I've wanted to do is put up a series of posts highlighting what I consider to be the best documentaries, mostly on any subject.  I prefer docs very heavy on content and thought, which do more than inform, they challenge ... and the very best presume you have at least some knowledge already of what's presented.

Below are two screen shots from John Romer's Testament, the whole series of which can be seen on youtube.  It's a seven-episode series on the development of sacred Judeo-Christian texts.  John Romer is an archeologist and designer; he's done four excellent documentaries, of which Testament is undoubtedly the best.  I'll be highlighting all four ... but since I've decided to watch them all again, I'll post here when I'm done each.

John Romer inside Hagia Sophia

A shot of Hagia Sofia's dome, 107 ft. across
(between the circle of windows)

Those paying attention will note that Hagia Sofia is also the wallpaper behind this blog.