Elementary Stuff
- Episode aired 1997
IMDb RATING
8.2/10
14
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Where in the World.....?
Like all other episodes of this peregrinating series, it's all over the place, leaping from one discovery to another by the most fragile bridges. There's no point in trying to lay out the logic in a review, so I'll just say that each is as informative as the next.
Burke, the happy, balding host, makes an observation that was news to me. One look at the Houses of Parliament and you think, as I did, "My God, that's an ancient building." Actually it's not. It was built in the 1840s after the old houses burned down and employed a fake Gothic style more extreme that anything found in the 1340s, curlicues and ringlets and halos and pointless spires.
I'll add another moment of discovery. In the 18th century the English were "Disneyfying" Scotland. It was forbidden to wear the tartan, speak Gaelic, or wear a sword. So before it could all disappear, a Scotsman named MacPherson rushed around writing down the old folk tales and songs in the original Gaelic. The reason I lit up at that point is that, as an anthropologist, I realized that what MacPherson was doing for Scottish culture was almost exactly what anthropologists and linguists were doing for the American Indian tribes that were dying off around the turn of the century and shortly after. MacPherson cooked his books but Franz Boas wouldn't dream of doing anything like that.
This episode and maybe others in the third iteration of this series is a bit different from the earlier ones. Burke works himself or his image into more of the displays. Some scenes are shot with an undercranked camera that speeds up the action. None of that is really necessary. The episode is as good as any that's come before.
Burke, the happy, balding host, makes an observation that was news to me. One look at the Houses of Parliament and you think, as I did, "My God, that's an ancient building." Actually it's not. It was built in the 1840s after the old houses burned down and employed a fake Gothic style more extreme that anything found in the 1340s, curlicues and ringlets and halos and pointless spires.
I'll add another moment of discovery. In the 18th century the English were "Disneyfying" Scotland. It was forbidden to wear the tartan, speak Gaelic, or wear a sword. So before it could all disappear, a Scotsman named MacPherson rushed around writing down the old folk tales and songs in the original Gaelic. The reason I lit up at that point is that, as an anthropologist, I realized that what MacPherson was doing for Scottish culture was almost exactly what anthropologists and linguists were doing for the American Indian tribes that were dying off around the turn of the century and shortly after. MacPherson cooked his books but Franz Boas wouldn't dream of doing anything like that.
This episode and maybe others in the third iteration of this series is a bit different from the earlier ones. Burke works himself or his image into more of the displays. Some scenes are shot with an undercranked camera that speeds up the action. None of that is really necessary. The episode is as good as any that's come before.
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- rmax304823
- Oct 19, 2016
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