Simon Schama's The American Future: A History
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DVD details
Author: American FutureActor: Simon Schama
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 240 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-01-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:
- To coincide with the US elections of 2008 comes this refreshing antidote to the whir of sensationalist spin and scandal, measuring up to the seriousness of the moment without diluting the excitement of campaign politics. After 9/11, after Katrina, Enron and Baghdad, the robustness of American optimism is struggling to reassert itself against the sobering reality of military frustration and domesti
DVD Reviews of Simon Schama's The American Future: A History
DVD Review: political advocacy presented as "history"
Summary: 1 Stars
While presented as a "history of the american future", this work in reality is little more than strong political advocacy. Simon Schama has gradually regressed from a historian into an editorialist using the cover of history to somehow lend academic weight to what amount to his opinions.
The work starts with the premise that america is a Democracy when the correct people with the correct politics are elected. When the wrong people are elected, the country is something else. This starting premise sets the stage for the entire work. Schama sees the world as divided between angels and demons based on his own political views. There is no middle ground or shades of grey.
The key points of the work are:
1) The history of America is the history of racism and racial hatred. Following up on his book "rough crossings" in which he presented the American revolution as being a racist revolution against the enlightened British administration, he continues and broadens the attack on American history in this work.
2) The only hope for America is to dismiss the idea of any sort of national identity and embrace multiculturalism/identity politics. There are no "americans". There are only communities of people in America who need to be organized by their race and religion. In the same way, there is no "american" history. History is rather the story of past victimization and grevances which are to bind the racial and relgious communities together.
3) The American Dream is essentially false and needs to be done away with. The American middle class is living a lifestyle it does not deserve and needs to be economically put in its place. While left unsaid, the great vision for the future would seem to be the common american stuffed into urban coldwater flats being shuttled to work everyday in mass transit to do "useful" work like pounding metal with hammers. When you roll back the suburbs, the cars, the education and the living standards, thats what we are left with.
4) When Jimmy Carter looked into the Camera in 1979 and blamed the American people for the problems of the country, he was right. The vast majority of the American people are the enemy and need to be put in their place.
Like most political screeds, the work at its base is one of profound ignorance. Schama looks down on America from Fortress Colombia in Manhattan. While he travels America to get at the racism of the little people in faraway places, he never asks about the well-protected life of priviledge he lives at Colombia. He certainly never talks about the racial issues involved in Colombia's dealings with the neighborhoods that surround it.
The last chapter in the work is by far the worst. He uses the issue of the colorado river and its water to draw overaching conclusions about the country as a whole. But the United States is not Las Vegas and neither is the American Dream. The Colorado river being unable to support limitless growth in Nevada is not a sign of the end of the world.
But to Schama, it is the end of the world. The message at the end is clear. The standard of living in America is simply too high and it must be reduced. Ala Jimmy Carter decades ago, to save America it must be destroyed. The majority must be driven into a lower standard of living.
Schama is selling the bleak view that for the good of the future, Americans must somehow buy into the idea that the only possible future for themselves is a poorer and more miserable future. And that their children's future will be even worse. And in exchange for misery the people making the sacrifice are to gain.....nothing at all!
In the end, as in the 1970s, this philosophy is self-defeating. The kind of self-loathing and hopelessness that Schama deals in only breeds apathy. It doesn't inspire anyone to do anything. It doesn't provide a vision that can motivate people.
Description of Simon Schama's The American Future: A History
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 01/20/2009 Run time: 240 minutes Rating: NrThe election of Barack Obama serves as both touchstone and framework for The American Future: A History, a four-hour, four-part documentary hosted by historian Simon Schama. In fact, title notwithstanding, Schama actually doesn?t say a lot about the our nation?s future, other than the obvious (noting that water shortages will increasingly be an issue, particularly in the western states, is hardly stop-the-presses stuff); his main point here is that Obama represents the country?s best chance to regain its stature in the world and reverse what he calls "the nationwide loss of faith in government" that festered throughout the George W. Bush years. Not a very original thesis, but what Schama, a Brit who has lived half his life in the States, has in spades is a flair for providing information in a manner that?s engaging and entertaining but rarely pedantic or excessively scholarly. Each of the program?s four segments--entitled "American Plenty," which addresses the water issue in the context of the history of Western expansion; "American War"; "American Fervour" (sic), in which Schama discusses on the nature of religious freedom; and "What is an American?", which deals with race and immigration--provides not only a great deal of history but a revealing focus on individuals, both celebrated and otherwise. Thus we learn about the deeds of Montgomery Meigs, an engineer and Union Army officer who was a Civil War hero, or about the opposite stances taken by the pacifist Mark Twain and the gung-ho Theodore Roosevelt at the time of the Spanish-American War. We all know about Martin Luther King, Jr., but who has even heard of Fannie Lou Hamer, a cotton picker and folk singer who became a mid-'60s civil rights leader? And while the black mark of slavery informs so much of our country?s history, how many know about the plight of the Chinese workers who helped build the first transcontinental railroad in the 1800s? Schama?s ability to find the small, personal components of the big picture helps make The American Future both worthwhile and compelling. Bonus material includes an intro recorded by Schama on November 5, 2008, and a photo gallery. --Sam Graham
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