monty burns, he ain't

i just finished watching the 7th dvd in ken burns' "jazz" documentary series. for anyone who's seen any of burns' other work, like "baseball" or "the civil war," i can assure you that this work holds up to (and in my opinion, surpasses) those efforts.

it seems to me that burns has a unique talent for tracing individual biographies through large, chaotic systems, without removing the individual from the system. this allows him to illuminate the seminal characters inside of a gigantic story while cohesively emphasizing overriding societal patterns and how they both affect and are affected by these characters. for instance, the way in which he demonstrates louis armstrong's origins' effects on the development of his genius is astounding in both its clarity and depth. simultaneously, he paints an excellent panorama of the ripples of louis' innovations throughout music and society.

i think that burns' mastery of this technique places him in a perfect position to chronicle those things which are uniquely american... like jazz... or baseball... or the civil war. taken individually, each of these documentarieses do an excellent job of chronicling the development and maturation of a particular set of events through the changing social climate of the country. taken together, these works encapsulate the innovative and resilient power of american ideology, and further demonstrate how this ideology often appears chaotic, random, and even terrible when viewed in small windows, but ultimately leads to constant improvement and discovery in the long-run. it's a beautiful phenomenon, and one so large that is difficult to comprehend all at once... thanks ken burns, for your peculiar genius.

-ALW