The West

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.

This documentary mini-series does a decent job of covering such a huge, complex subject in 9 episodes (about 10 hours of time). I like that appropriate focus and time given to American Indians, who played such a crucial role in the story, and to other groups like Latinos, blacks, and Chinese immigrants who played vital roles, as well.

(I'm also offended by a number of reviewers who complain that too much screen time is given to Indians and minorities. These same reviewers complain that whites aren't credited enough for their courage and virtues in subduing the "wild west" and "civilizing" the Indians. The irony is that these reviewers are the very sort of racist people who caused so much trouble and misery while the real history was being played out!)

On the whole, I do recommend watching this mini-series.

Burns and Ives combine to produce a work that's very much up to Ken Burns' standards. As a viewing experience, it's everything you'd expect.

And then there's the content.

Much has been made about the supposed bias of Burns' presentation of the history of the west. A lot of time was spent on the way the US treated the indigenous populations, on the crimes of the US military, on the theft of lands, and the systematic attempts to eradicate native cultures. The loss of the age before white settlement is lamented.

Is this a balanced perspective? Maybe not, although I don't think it's as biased as other reviews would have you believe. The triumphs of the west are told as well as the losses. Not all whites are painted as evil, nor are all natives painted as innocent. Events are often just told as they happened, and the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions. A lot of the content doesn't concern native Americans at all.

More important that all of that, however, is that it's a story that needs telling. Americans have been indoctrinated with romantic fictions about the west for over a century. Giving Burns a chance to tell the other side of the story doesn't seem too much to ask. A few Hollywood movies that paint the indigenous people of America before westward expansion as noble savages - also a pleasant fiction, incidentally - does not make up for a century of bias, misinformation, and outright lies taught to American schoolchildren. What's worse is that for the most part, these fictions are still taught to American schoolchildren.

At nearly nine hours, The West is an experience that will take up several of your evenings, but it's nine hours that may change the way you think about American history.

This documentary directed by Steven Ives (not Ken Burns, as several of the reviews in this thread inaccurately state) is a sweeping epic that showcases the salient moments in the settlement of the American West. Using historical documents, academic narratives, scenes of stunning natural beauty, and original photos and documents, "The West" is a gripping and historically accurate overview of this great (and, at times, terrible) period in American history.

The reviews that complain that this series is somehow anti-American suffer from two flaws. The first is selection bias. Parts of "The West" feature cruelty and brutality, usually at the hands of white settlers. But to focus on this as the only distinguishing feature of the film ignores the numerous instances in which white people--e.g., Sam Houston, Brigham Young, Joseph Meek, just to take a few--are portrayed quite deservingly as heroes. Nor are all Native Americans portrayed in a positive light; the film also makes the point that the Lakota Sioux's claims to the Black Hills territory as their ancestral lands are somewhat ironic because the Lakota conquered the Kiowa and other tribes, driving them out of that area in conquests very similar to the Americans' accession of the West.

The second error is simple oversensitivity. The history of the West is both a great and terrible story. It's great because it epitomizes the expansive American spirit that binds us together as a nation. It's terrible because in acquiring the West, we (Americans, that is) more or less decimated an entire people. I think those who refer to this process as genocidal are wrong, but not by much. The history of the West is thus not a story of good or evil, but a story of both, and the film "The West" shows this dialectic unflinchingly. If you have too delicate a constitution to accept that brutality and suffering are the flip side of manifest destiny's glory, you should not watch this documentary. "The West" does not seek to spare anyone's feelings, but rather only to tell the truth about this period in all its great and awful reality.

This documentary was incredibly well done and well researched. A lot of very sensitive white people on IMDB have been leaving reviews about how this documentary is a "revisionist" history and framed as all white men are evil. As a guy who teaches history I find it fascinating that so many people believe whatever version of history they learned growing should be the only version that future generations learn about. History is something that can be interpreted differently by different generations. Just because you were raised with some baby boomer propaganda filled version of American history does not mean that any other version is "revisionist" or "PC."