Philip Kennicott in "Ken Burns takes 4 hours to canonize Leonardo da Vinci. He needed only two.The celebrated documentarian turns his lens on the great Renaissance polymath, with mixed results" (WaPo).
Ken Burns things are always extra long. Why complain about this particular lengthiness? It's Burns's style to drag it way out. But Kennicott has a special problem here. It seems to have something to do with the idea that "our world" isn't so great, that "the civilization we have inherited" does not deserve reverence. I don't know if that's what Kennicott thinks or if he's just looking down on the people who feel "anxiety" and "insecurity" and want to be indulged with a vision of human glory.
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94 comments:
Ken Burns got Ty Cobb wrong. I don’t trust him on any subject.
Leonardo was white, and religious. Therefore not great to the trans-men who populate the Washington Post hate room.
Good grief, he was a genius of the age,
Ken Burns is a victim of massive success of The Civil War (1990) miniseries. He became a household name and people threw roses at his feet (i.e., let him choose and edit his own work). Everything that followed has been slow and too long and tedious. His Baseball (1994) miniseries proved that.
But equity, but PBS support. He couldn't 'lose' if he tried.
I’m curious about the background music. Civil war fiddles with unrosined bows?
His neighbors on the lake in NH like fucking with him. I like that...
...the Isaacson book on Leonardo was pretty good...
Kennicot would probably prefer 10 hours on some Indian chiefs.
The Trump presidency will not be truly great until he gets rid of NPR and PBS.
I'm looking forward to Kennicott's shorter, but better, show about da Vinci.
We admire him. We marvel at his genius. Do people worship him? Perhaps some do, but the use of the term "worship" seems to have more to do with making the piece fit with Kennicott's conceit.
the Dante one they did some months back was pretty good
...nobody liked him when he was alive so we told him to STICK IT!
...and he got Ty Cobb wrong, too...
If you want to see a short documentary by Ken Burns, have him make one about Donald Trump.
We are not allowed to celebrate any Western culture.
the Posts style guide, makes them phaser themselves like Captain Terrell
Kurt Vonnegut wrote about modern America's approach to human excellence in Harrison Bergeron. His short story is meant not as an example, but as a warning against allowing the Diana Moon Glampers of the world to ever have any authority, power, or say in this world. And the Left doesn't get that, and wants to elevate the Glampers of the world, and to be the ones destroying excellence. It might have something to do with inability to be excellent themselves, or perhaps just a desire to level all humanity rather than allow anyone to be better than anyone else, keeping us all in the mud.
Four hours of lavish praise because definitely gayish...
Catholicism was everywhere when Da Vinci lived and created. Much of his subject matter was Catholic. To claim that Burns "canonized" someone is rude, idiotic, and lazy.
What is the insecurity, the anxiety, the deficit in our culture today that makes us worship figures like Leonardo?"
I hate that hyperbolic lazy bullshit. It can't be that we simply admire the man and appreciate his works. Maybe marvel at the breadth of his achievements and wonder at how he did it.
No, we worship him.
Fuck off.
There is much in this essay to find rude, idiotic, and lazy.
If I have three hours to listen to Joe Rogan interview some dopey politician or tech bro, surely I have four hours to listen to Ken Burns natter on about Leonardo.
When I’m insecure and anxious I don’t go to documentaries but that’s me.
When I’m insecure and anxious I don’t go to documentaries but that’s me.
If it's Ken Burns, it will all be about American racism. Interested to see how he'll shoehorn that into 15th/16th century Italy.
We've got Elon!
At Ken Burns’ family plantation, they used indentured European labor, basically white slaves. Outraged when asked about it, he announced that his family treated them well.
Maybe he can make a documentary about that.
Ken Burns. meh. Some of his work is very solid - some of it is peppered with his own perspective, and yes - it goes long and tedious - and it's often laced with his own political agenda.
With art and art history - Waldemar Januszczak is far superior... and fun to watch!
I recommend this if you care to - for balance. Very interesting. I watched all of his videos. I enjoy his way.
I really recommend Waldemar's Gauguin episode. If you want to know everything about Gauguin - including many of the falsehoods that have been mainstreamed - Waldemar cuts thru the bull.
Retire their licenses. Vacate or re-purpose their real estate and assets and eliminate any associated government positions. Retain and protect the brand so no replacement can claim to be NPR or PBS. Bye bye...
I still like his Civil War, although in retrospect he apparently infused it with his own and others' shading of what really happened. That, I think, brought the Civil War back into the mainstream culture where (I feel) it had subsided in importance.
Also watched Jazz and Baseball in bits and pieces. Oh, and The West which was interesting but even more infused with his politics. I've always wished someone would do a similar doc about college football.
Oh good grief, the problem is obvious. Leonardo = dead white male. Even worse, not-Jewish dead white male. So, we must balk at any attempt to praise him.
As for Ken Burns, he did one good documentary "The Civil War" and looking back the greatness of "The Civil War" was more due to Shelby Foote and the other talking heads than anything Burns did.
The last Burns documentary I tried to get through was his Jazz one. I stopped when he concentrated on Charlie Parker's drug habit instead of what Parker did for Jazz music. That along with wasting valuable on what band had the first female musician and - wait for it - racism.
I must say, if you can borrow a burns documentary from the library, its an inexpensive sleep aid.
and his Vietnam documentary was about 50 years out of date,
yes Parker's genius was his music
Burns' hugest mistake (besides his leftism) was the WWII doc. America settled in to watch a Civil War-style documentary on WWII and were heartbroken by ... whatever that was.
For a second I thought we were talking about Leonardo DiCaprio. So when you quoted this...
Leonardo sometimes seems like humanity’s miraculous pet unicorn, a pure and perfect, one-off instantiation of grace, intelligence, superhuman talent and bewildering wisdom.
I was like, "I don't know about that. He needs to do some sit-ups."
What I always thought was hilarious was that Dan Brown was so lazy he thought the artist's name was Da Vinci. Anti-Christian screed with zero research and zero fact checks. Awesome! Meanwhile, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guy gets it right.
Why are we "worshiping" great men of the past? Something that never would've occured to most educated people prior to say 1950.
"Whats all this fuss about Shakespeare and Beethoven. Beethoven wasn't so great. Did he ever get his name on a bubble gum card?". Lets celebrate the great geniuses of the current age. Oprah. Bob Dylan. And JK Rowlings.
What makes the Burns Civil War documentary so good are all the letters that are read out loud by various actors. People were so literate in the 19th century. It's kind of embarrassing how far we've fallen. We don't even write letters anymore.
Imagine a future documentary filmmaker doing a documentary about our time, and actors reading our Facebook posts out loud. Ouch.
BTW, whatever happened to his documentary "400,000 dead men weren't enough" about how America let down the Jews, and was responsible for the Holocaust?
"I'm looking forward to Kennicott's shorter, but better, show about da Vinci."
Exactly.
I haven't given a thought to Leonardo. I'm insecurity and anxiety free.
+1
the Priory de Sion had been debunked a long time ago,
The rationale for PBS as educational TV for the working class, free over the air, optional contributions accepted, went away with the switch from analog to digital broadcasting 15 years ago. Digital just doesn't work, especially in the dense urban areas where so much of the underclass live.
So now everyone watching PBS has paid for the experience in some form, either with their cable bill, internet bill, satellite bill, etc.
This ruptures the original paradigm, as does the whole narrowcasting phenomenon: no household has just 4 or 5 channels available, making PBS a likely landing spot for even the most bored kids and unengaged parents. The only people watching it now are the ones who seek it out. Who are mostly middle-class, state-university educated government employees and their allies. And they can afford to pay for it.
Time for PBS to follow the paradigm of The Chosen: stream it free, with a "pay-it-forward" option. And also offer various perks for paying more, such as ad-free service (Viking River Cruises? More like Fucking River Cruises....). They almost do this with PBS Passport. Would just take a bit of tweaking.
NPR is a different story, as long as broadcast radio remains viable. Lost count of how many cab and Uber drivers have it on as a way to learn standard English. Just need to tweak the political content dial back to midrange...
JSM
I'm on the automatic contribution plan with our local NPR affiliate, and my wife keeps suggesting that we should send the PBS side of the station some money also.
But I listen to the radio (which is mostly classical) more than I watch the TV, and they don't seem to lack sponsors and underwriters, so . . .
Kennicott is a woke pill. His "art criticism" in the Washington Post always slides, at about the fifth paragraph, into an indictment to Western society for racism, colonialism, sexism, etc. I make a point of never reading him.
Leonardo sometimes seems like humanity’s miraculous pet unicorn, a pure and perfect, one-off instantiation of grace, intelligence, superhuman talent and bewildering wisdom. We feed and cosset his memory as if he is the spiritual father of all humanism, art and science, which he wasn’t.
Leonardo's life was full of frustrations and disappointments.
“Tell me if anything was ever done,” he repeatedly scribbled in notebook after notebook. “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me if ever I did a thing. … Tell me if anything was ever made.”
I'm going to assume that the documentary documented Leonardo's disappointments and Kennicott just wasn't paying attention.
It seems to have something to do with the idea that "our world" isn't so great, that "the civilization we have inherited" does not deserve reverence.
A pretty common feeling on Mondays.
Mama said there'll be days like this
There'll be days like this, Mama said
(Mama said, Mama said)
There's Galileo, who has a song about him Claire Pelletier
The critic is an ass.
One can argue about Ken Burns' storytelling, but the visual-gathering is impeccable, esp in The Civil War and Baseball.
La caverne has her big hit though. Lots of play on Radio Canada.
Exactly
"But Kennicott has a special problem here. It seems to have something to do with the idea that "our world" isn't so great, that "the civilization we have inherited" does not deserve reverence."
Mr. Kennicott is free to go live in a cave, if he wants.
He's also free to materially improve civilization if he's capable. Ahhh, I see. There's the rub.
It seems to have something to do with the idea that "our world" isn't so great, that "the civilization we have inherited" does not deserve reverence.
Well next to the world of the Renaissance we do live in a paradise. Just look at medicine: antibiotics were still hundreds of years in the future, as was doctors’ knowledge of human anatomy, understanding DNA, the germ theory of disease, and many, many other things. Women regularly died in childbirth. People were ruled by monarchs (including dukes like the Medici family), and running afoul of the king or the prince of the ruling duke would be life-shortening and no one would give a damn about it. The notion that a person might rise from humble beginnings to be the political leader of his country through talent, hard work, and a bit of luck, like Abe Lincoln or Dwight Eisenhower, would have been impossible to comprehend. Also impossible to comprehend would be the entire notion thst women had rights. No. I’ll live in the 21st century USA, thank you kindly.
When I couldn't use the internet for a month and was stuck seeing "basic cable" and FM radio, I would often tune into PBS or NPR hoping some of worth would show up. But nope, 90 percent of the time it was boring crap, or leftwing crap. Their target audience seems to libtard women 45 and up who work in education, live in college town or big city, and worry about Abortion and transgenders.
I'd hope for some "Masterpiece theater" on Sunday. I remember that from my youth. But that's gone, replaced by contemporary Brit cop show. Although, there was something about around the world in 80 days, but with a chick a black guy.
I just googled it. Yes, it was "Around the world in 80 days". Phileas Fogg is given a chick traveling companion. His valet is now played by a Black guy (who cant act). I remember watching it and thinking "This seems like "around the world in 80 days" but the hero in the novel and old movie didn't have a kickass girlfriend or a strong black valet.
I guess its Jules Verne - woke warrior.
should he be Leo or Lenny?
Glad you mention the "worship" misuse. It is a habit of lazy Leftists to make the claim that others are worshipping someone when the proper word is probably admiring. People admire Leonardo, some are amazed at him and declare him a genius (I would), but literally no one is worshipping him. Just as no one worships Trump, but Leftists all over the media claimed it was so, claimed that MAGA was a cult, right up until the point the female losers shaved their heads and donned blue bracelets for Kamala.
This is more of the marxist tendency by Hollywood and Manhattan elites to take Biblical terms and redeploy them inappropriately.
And polymaths come along fairly regularly. The late Richard Feynman was one of them — he made major contributions in multiple areas of theoretical physics, which is rare. Most physicists, even the best, make a home in one area and stay there. Yet he was also pretty fair artist. I’ve seen some painting and sketches by Ofey — his pseudonym — and not all are good, but I’ve also seen a few Ofeys I would not mind owning. On top of that he was a supposedly a pretty decent drummer — by all accounts he was an enthusiastic one.
I can see why Leonardo would rather have been an artist in Renaissance Italy instead of an engineer. Between commissions and court patronage I suspect he made a pretty good living at it. In the 20th Century Feynman made the choice instead to be technical.
Leonardo sometimes seems like humanity’s miraculous pet unicorn, a pure and perfect, one-off instantiation of grace, intelligence, superhuman talent and bewildering wisdom.
That was before Obama came along.
Saint Croix said...
“For a second I thought we were talking about Leonardo DiCaprio.”
For a second I thought we were talking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Who cares about people back in the old days. They didn't have cars and couldn't watch Bill Maher on TV. Or drink pepsi.
Rabel, you magnificent bastard, you beat me to it!
Well, Italian, so you were close...
I love old-school country music, but his series was so tedious I didn't finish it.
Early bird gets the brain worm.
I don't know if that's what Kennicott thinks or if he's just looking down on the people who feel "anxiety" and "insecurity" and want to be indulged with a vision of human glory.
I think you are getting it backwards, Ann. The people who are feeling anxious and insecure today are those who go around filled with hatred and contempt for human glory, especially of the sort that Western civilization historically celebrated until the Frankfurt School termites took over our great institutions. They despise Leonardo for the same reasons they despise Elon Musk.
The author is one of their acolytes. He is shitting all over the notion of excellence, truth, beauty, and the well-deserved global primacy of the values of the European Enlightenment. It is an attempt to pander to the neurotic anguish of the Kamala voter who loathes Christianity and European civilization, even if that is the root whence their own ancestors sprang forth.
They should feel extremely anxious and insecure. I am glad they are feeling anxious and insecure. We have four years to utterly dismantle their hold on our society, and rescue Western Civilization from the collectivist/materialist enemies of humanity for the next three or four generations.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the American Republic last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”
Four hours is hardly too long for covering the life of Leonardo.
"What is the insecurity, the anxiety, the deficit in our culture today that makes us worship figures like Leonardo?..."
I'm late to the party and second everything above about the difference between admiration and worship. But...
... isn't the real question, ""What is the insecurity, the anxiety, the deficit in our culture today that makes us worship figures like Taylor Swift?..."
All of Burns’ shows move at the pace of oil paint drying. He must be getting paid by the second of run time.
Whenever I try to think of Leonardo da Vinci, I always get distracted with thoughts of the Roman Empire.
Have I been "worshiping figures like Leonardo?" Is some insecure anxious person doing it using my name.
"You can never say enough good about Leonardo." ?? Somebody certainly has Leonardo issues. Maybe Ken Burns. Maybe Philip Kennicott.
Whatever.
I thought Isaacson's book was terrific! I knew nothing about the art of the era, and only a little bit about the political and social developments, but the book really made me want to learn more.
"Leonardo was white, and religious" and possibly gay.
"We've got Elon!"
Elon is no Leonardo. He's just an over-hyped businessman. He's smart, as many are, but he's not brilliant, as few are, and as Leonardo was.
A very funny parody in the style of Ken Burns documentaries, The Old Negro Space Program,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6xJzAYYrX8
Robert Cook can never resist proving he knows nothing about the subject he chooses to pontificate upon.
It is a virtual law of Nature. If Robert Cook wrote it, its relationship to reality is null and void.
The Renaissance, above all else, flourished because of a lack of controls placed upon it. Progress is an innate human quality, it is our form of evolution, and really it can only be halted by closed minds.
Even more astonishing about Renaissance Italy is that many of the then geniuses were from the immediate area around Florence, which had a population of around 70,000 during that time. One only has to think of a similar-sized city in the current world to realize how extraordinary that period and location were.
Can’t trust them Leo’s.
Since you people reminded me of the show, I sat and watched the first hour. It's competent and not as slow as much of Burnsstuff is . . . I'll probably watch the rest over time.
I did have to wonder about the statement that Leonardo loved and learned from the Flemish masters: when the heck did he see the works of the Flemish masters?
"And polymaths come along fairly regularly. The late Richard Feynman was one of them"
He was good in 'You Bet Your Life'.
Maybe Kennicott would like a TikTok. Surely some high school girls can be counted on to make a twenty-five second interpretive dance of Leonardo's life.
"Elon is no Leonardo. He's just an over-hyped businessman. He's smart, as many are, but he's not brilliant, as few are, and as Leonardo was."
Strange. All the brilliant people think Elon is brilliant but the Althouse Blog resident unreconstructed Stalinist does not agree, which makes Robert Cook a Walking/Talking Perfect Example of Dunning-Kruger on display.
But only a perfect example.
If Leonardo isn’t safe, no one is safe.
I’d watch that…
But that never stops him. Plucky little fellow.
Leonardo was almost certainly gay, and quite flamboyant about it. Both his personal records of his spending and contemporary accounts note his extravagant and unusual wardrobe and the boys he squired about town.
Little known fact; while he is well known for his artistic works that have survived down to the present day, he actually supported himself for several years as a set designer for his various patrons' entertainments.
Also; the reason why the Mona Lisa is in Paris is because he refused to deliver it to the person who originally commissioned it. Instead, he carried it around with him for the rest of his life, making adjustments and changes to it. His final patron was King Francis I of France; when Leonardo died Francis took possession of it. France has had it ever since (and thank God it survived the French revolution).
If this election taught us one thing, it's that hammering a candidate about their opposition to abortion can no longer by itself turn an election.
Actually, Leonardo was quite a good engineer.
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