Why I Haven't Seen Many Documentary Films

Original Picture

I have a very small history with documentary films, so perhaps I haven't seen enough to form a proper opinion about this yet. I've seen two George Washington, an Augustus Caesar, and a Thomas Edison documentary. Both Washington documentary films I was forced to watch in elementary and high school. These documentary films were, by all accounts, boring- because of how censored they were in order to adhere to the school's curriculum. There was nothing mentioning the harsh guerrilla tactics George Washington employed, but boy did the film hammer home the fact that he is the "father of our country" because some war stuff happened and we won in the end. Both school documentaries brush off the war as something that was easily won, when in fact Washington's leadership, brilliant as it may have been, barely tipped the scales in America's favor- it was an extremely hard fought and close victory. Washington himself said that we (the revolutionary colonists) were "trembling for the fate of America, which nothing but the infatuation of the enemy could have saved; we should not have remained all the succeeding winter at their mercy" when he was forced to retreat over the Delaware (shsu). So these boring and misleading school documentaries left a sour taste in my mouth whenever I thought about watching one in my free time.

 While you can say this was just something the directors had to do to stay within the bounds of school education, every documentary I've seen so far has had obvious bias. After thinking about it a little, it isn't very surprising that documentaries are biased- they are supposed to show the person or group in the best light possible. So documentary "bias" (if you can call it that) isn't inherently a bad thing. I remember being awed at a History Channel documentary I watched of Augustus Caesar. However, after doing a little independent research I saw that a lot of the things he is accredited for happened because of someone else. The most prominent example I can think of that most people will know is one of Augustus' famous quotes "I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble" where he quite clearly is taking credit for Rome's bolstered economy (TQP). While its true that Rome certainly got richer while he was in power, this was mainly due to Julius Caesar's previous successful conquests in Gaul. Not to say Augustus wasn't important, but the documentary was obviously missing a few facts. Same thing with Thomas Edison, the film showed him as a brilliant businessman and thinker who brought wide-spread electricity to the modern world. However, his title of "Father of Electricity" is a stolen one. He subverted and used Nikola Tesla's ideas and innovations while simultaneously smearing his name. The reason why we can have those small and efficient power lines all around America is because of Tesla, yet he is given the boot in favor of Edison.

In the end, I think that's why I don't like documentaries- they don't tell the full story. I like to hear both sides of a story, and to hear about both the good and bad aspects of a famous person. I believe that learning about what struggles overcame a person and how they bounced back from them to end up on top again shows the person in a much brighter light than only learning about their achievements. Washington won an impossibly outnumbered revolution, Augustus isn't the sole reason Rome was able to expand her borders again, and Edison stole alternating current from Tesla. Every great person has faults, but it is a part of who they were and how they came to be the person that is so famous now that we have documentary films about them! We shouldn't hide these important facts just because they aren't as pretty as some others. To sum everything up, the reason I haven't seen many documentary films is because every one that I've seen has blatantly ignored important facts about the person the film was about; I don't like being told strictly one side of a story, I want to know the full and exhaustive story.

Works Cited:

• Washington, George. "George Washington on the Problems of the Militia." George Washington on the Problems of the Militia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Militia1.html>.
• Caesar, Augutus. "The Quotations Page: Quote from Caesar Augustus." The Quotations Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2015. <http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24364.html>.