Notes from Atlantis
Last week, we linked to Sarah Hoyt’s essay on the resilience of cultural memes from the immediate aftermath of WWI that have stayed permanently entrenched in the left’s collective thinking. Since she wrote that she’s currently fascinated by the British interwar-era, I sent her a link to the episode of the early 1970s Thames television series The World At War that focused on the British home front during WWII. As I mentioned in a post from the day after Christmas, if you want to see Britain’s welfare state being formed, and its healthcare nationalized and socialized, even as England was busy pulverizing a giant welfare state with plenty of national socialism of its own, it’s an interesting segment — probably more so to an American viewer than a British one.
As I’ve written before, The World At War was made at the perfect time — television documentary techniques were sufficiently developed by 1969 when production on the series began to tell the story properly, and it was only a quarter century after WWII concluded, and enough survivors were still around, still sharp, and able to appear on camera. But of equal importance is that it was made before political correctness had sapped the cultural confidence of the West. If the BBC or Thames’ successor network were to remake the The World at War today, it would have a very different tone to it, probably far closer to Oliver Stone’s “Springtime for Hitler and Stalin” Showtime series than the BBC would care to admit.
Also, the interviews and the contemporary non-newsreel footage were shot in color. We take that entirely for granted now, but when the show first went into production, color TV was still a new phenomenon to many English viewers; BBC2 had only begun broadcasting in color in 1967, and BBC1 not until 1969. It’s tough to conceive of something like Monty Python‘s Flying Circus as being shot in black and white, but as late as 1967, its immediate predecessor, a show with the classic title of At Last, the 1948 Show, was a monochrome production.
Another influential British documentary series from that era, which may well have influenced the style and quality of The World at War, would also have a very different tone were it made today. In fact, it probably couldn’t be made today. To help promote the BBC’s embrace of color television, in 1968 the network commissioned a 13-part documentary series titled Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark — or simply Civilisation, as it’s almost universally called.
Civilisation debuted on February 23, 1969; to further advance the acceptance of color TV, each episode featured luscious cinema-quality photography of globe-hoping historical locations and numerous key pieces of art and sculpture, with all sorts of stately camera moves, all shot on 35mm film, rather than the cheaper-looking 16mm format or videotape. (Many, perhaps all of the episodes, are currently available in full-length form at YouTube, but the series is available on Blu-Ray, and in terms of cinematography, it’s worth it.)
It’s fascinating, in 2013, witnessing the ongoing collapse of our own culture — and in particular, the complete collapse, decades ago, of what was once called “middlebrow culture” – to watch a show titled Civilisation – that itself is from a civilization that effectively no longer exists. At the very least, the network that created the series no longer exists in the same form (QED).
Kenneth Clark is lucky he’s not around now, he’d be suicidally depressed and unhappy to see what has become of things.
I don’t know if he would be suicidal; he seemed pretty tough. Some of the best parts of the series are his viciously derisive personal commentaries.
He would have been especially horror-stricken by the rampant Islamization of the UK and the EU.
wall even then for intelligent people to read. The surprise might be that things have gotten so bad so fast — back then I thought several centuries would have to go by before we descended to our current 2013 level of decadence, but not so because here we are a mere 44 years later.
something that is rolling downhill gains momentum, a gigantic ocean liner once disabled suddenly upends and disappears into the sea. we are atlantis. there is no one who can find us anymore. it doesn’t take long for despots and fascists and mobs to rule. that is what our founders knew and why they warned us to be eternally vigilant. it is all we had to do. and we didn’t do it.
I wish that this author had mounted a critique of populism, which infests what some call the pseudo-left. It is most evident on popular tv shows, and though the writing is often gripping and engaging, there is ideology on display for those who can read it. I regularly try to decode these shows, which generally reflect New Left and primitivist anti-imperialist ideology. See http://clarespark.com/2012/03/16/index-to-blogs-on-popular-tv-shows/. High culture was always restricted in its appeal.
In 1969, it was very obvious civilization was crashing.
The Ascent of Man is a 13-part companion piece (by design) to Clark’s Civilization, which looks at our scientific progress through time (obvious play on the title with Darwin’s Descent of Man)…The Ascent of Man is beautifully filmed and presented, and although from the early ’70′s still topical and touches on the same themes you bring up and that were presented in Civilzation, like what you discuss in your (as always) excellent post…..
In the last episode of the series, The Long Childhood, Dr. Bronowski (an eminently decent man) talks about our (as in our civilization) “loss of nerve” and “retreat from knowledge”….he uses John Von Neuman to illustrate some of his points here (or “Johhny” as he knew him)….interesting take on the problem.
All episodes are available on Youtube and I highly recommend them…(for what that is worth).
I viewed both of these serials when I was younger. Subsequently I have purchased them on DVD. I have also given a copy to a nephew so he will benefit from these non-revisionist points of view.
John Armstrong delves into this in nice detail in “In Search of Civilization”. He cites Clark’s trip to America and the thousands of cheering fans he spoke to…Clark was almost embarrassed by the hype and felt the fans were missing something important, were focused on the wrong object – and perhaps were coarsening civilization even further. If I remember correctly, this even brought him to tears.
I, like Armstrong, feel we are advancing materially, but certainly not spiritually – and a civilization needs proportionate doses of both.
Tried to watch it, back in the day and again, more recently. I find it impossible to get past the ‘Austin Powers dentition’. I keep getting sucked into the train wreck and losing sight of the big picture. Someone needs to do a Ted Turner and teethorize him.
Are you this shallow for everyone you meet?
What is the mark of civilization? If Kenneth Clark were to have been confronted by a particularly brilliant Jesuit with the accusation that he was “the slave of that pernicious zeitgeist [the enlightenment]” how would he have responded? Probably by replying “let’s talk about it,” and then vigorously but civilly defending the enlightenment position. The issue would not have been I’m right and you’re wrong and get off the field; it would have been let us reason together. The loss of that ethos – and could it be more clear that that ethos has been all but lost? – marks the descent of man.
Unfortunately, blu-ray version of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation is region B/2 format. It will not play on US region devices.
The excellent hardcover book based on the series and available at Amazon is readable in the States:
http://www.amazon.com/Civilisation-Personal-View-Kenneth-Clark/dp/B0016XQ7LQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358176449&sr=1-2&keywords=civilisation+kenneth+clark
I recall, while at the University of Toronto, going to the Toronto Metro Library to rewatch the show on videotape (having seen it on television numerous times years earlier) upon Sir Kenneth’s death. I recommend another of the genre: The Music of Man w/ Yehudi Menuhin. Well worth your time, and more dapper.
So: “John Derbyshire rather acidly described his appearance as a Mike Myers caricature of a courtly English gentleman…”
Well, I hope Derbyshire is as handsome as Paul Newman at his prime, because in my view only the Clark bad front teeth part would hold water[P.I.] Oh oh. Stones thrown from glass house alert:
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/
Actually Sir Kenneth had a pretty good jaw, as does Derby. Clark wrote the entire narrative of ‘Civilization’ and read it before the camera on site of the major art and architecture works of the Western World. He does have the most wonderful accent that English has ever produced (IMO), clicking his single r’s and trilling the doubles, for example. Add that to a most remarkable depth and breadth of erudition, common sense, and creativity. Quite a package.
I am watching the entire series again (thanks to Ed letting us know it is available on YouTube.) I start 7 of 13 tomorrow. What a pleasure. Were the 70s really that long ago?
To those who wonder whether such a series could be done today, I offer the works of documentarian Ken Burns, the closest match/but unmatch that comes to mind. Burns’ history of baseball and Civil War seem no more to me than Progressive propaganda on parade. As for Michael Moore? Pahleeze!
Or else he would have worked to prevent the sad decline in standards by his example and his teaching.
For my money, The Ascent of Man is an even better exemplar of what we have lost. Jacob Bronowski, despite having lived through the worst of the 20th Century, still believed in human progress, that we were on the upward spiral.
…and yet in the UK and the US we watch Downton Abbey with relish. If we were that culturally destroyed, Julian Fellowes would never have bothered to write it and public televison would never run it. PBS reported that the first night of season three just set an all time PBS viewership record. No, I don’t care for PBS and its not so disguised biases, but the crap is far worse on the major networks.
There are some good trends.
1)Colleges offer such obvious, fraudulent courses and degrees. The good news is that it is getting so expensive that we might go back to trades in high school and degrees in college for engineering, science, medicine etc. and true liberal arts. Young folks taking on $200,000 in student debt to study transgender Mongolian poetry and thus not being employable can not last.
2) We are nearly bankrupt as a nation due to entitlements and the handing out of goodies for votes. Some states and surekly the nation will go bankrupt causing the dollar to collapse. A failed Treasury auction might start it, who knows.This is most likely to happen in the next 4 to 6 years. After that we will be forced to go back to sane policies that are affordable. The rest of the world will not bankroll us and the dollar as the resseve currency will not return.
I began watching this series last week. It is a treasure.
Nice article. Clark’s inability to answer the question “What is civilization?” shows that even he was not immune to modern subjectivism. Contrary to Pearce’s assertion, Clark is miles away from the intellectual self-confidence of true children of the Enlightenment such as Newton, Locke, and Jefferson. It in only relative to our current nihilistic culture that he seems — and is — so much better.
(Incidentally, Pearce’s use of “child of the enlightenment” as a pejorative shows him to be in fundamental opposition to America’s founding values. If any nation can lay claim to the expression “child of the Enlightenment,” it is the United States of America.)
I’m not sure that the BBC has really changed. It was always a patrician organization which thought it knew what was best for hoi polloi, and that was whatever the establishment of the day considered Worthy. In Clark’s day, it was enlightenment civilization; today, it’s the New Establishment shibboleths of Pan-Europeanism, Greenism, Healthism, etc. In other words, the Corporation’s values haven’t changed at all – it’s the fount of all wisdom; the arbiter of Quality, unsullied by common commercialism; the national fireplace; the Envy of the World, and all that kind of garbage – but those of the people running it have, utterly.
Of course it’s changed; realize this irony: the children of Monty Python would never allow such a show on their TV today. It was fine to attack their elders, but they don’t and won’t allow such a satirical lens turned on themselves and their multicult fantasy world.
Thank you for this essay. Your work is always very good.
Whenever I hear of things that the left would not “allow” to be done today, I can’t help but ask how they are supposed to stop anyone.
It is more the case that some people lack the moral courage to do the right thing in the face of opposition.
Well, there’s that little matter of financing it. As we’ve seen recently in the case of the gun manufacturer whose corporate account was frozen by Bank of America, if you cross the aristocracy, they can destroy your ability to get anything done.
I just finished watching that series in Nov. Good show. It’s apparent that Kenneth Clark’s show heavily influenced James Burke’s much more accessible “Connections” and “Day the Universe Changed” series. Or perhaps the BBC just liked the format.
I watched the series a few years ago on VHS (from the public library), but it has since been re-released on dvd (also at your local library). Sir Kenneth Clark was also prescient of his own future as a convert to Catholicism. While discussing that fifty year period of the 12th and 13th centuries when great cathedrals were erected, he admitted it was something of a mystery to him that an England and Europe that only recently had been a collection of castles and hovels suddenly leapt into an almost unimaginable future of architecture of great artistry, crafstmanship and beauty. Perhaps only faith explained it. And civilization confidence is a lesser species of faith. Perhaps even flows from it. While watching an old episode of the Twilight Zone (The Hunt by Earl Hamner) on Youtube, there appeared a vintage Ad Council message that began with a Redstone rocket blasting off and then a voiceover saying that it was faith that allowed America to accomplish great things. This was followed by an encouragement for viewers to attend the church of their choice. This was 1962. The Ad Council spots of the Obama administration always have a hint of America’s failings or prejudices. Such as the radio spot with the little girl asking her mom why their neighborhood isn’t as “diverse” as mom’s workplace.
Excellent piece as always, but with two caveats. He was most emphatically not an English gentleman but a Scot, very much a Scot. His accent would have been typical of upper-class Scots, though I’m sure he could also speak the “mither tongue.” His family fortune came from the Clark Thread factories, including those established in the US. And Mr Pearce does not quite know his history. In Clark’s old age, as he neared death, and after his superb studies and comments on the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation, he converted to Roman Catholicism. As an American Catholic of Scots descent, I can assure you and Mr Pearce that no Scot would take such a drastic step lightly. Scotland is even now as for centuries a wretched place to be Catholic.
I should also mention that the acidulous Derbyshire was not up on his details either. It was at the end LORD Clark, not Sir Kenneth.
I will be ensuring that my kids see both “Civilization” and “The World at War”. Thank you for bringing them to my attention.
I see a lot of “what can be done” commentary in articles and comments regarding the progressive indoctrination in schools. Getting kids to watch these series might be a good start. Everything has to start somewhere.
How to get modern kids to sit still long enough to watch them? Parents, figure out a dammed way and don’t whine about it. Use the summer break, pay them for watching it if need be. Ask them questions and have discussions as you go. Don’t abdicate your responsibilitiy for your kids’ education to the progessive school system. The first place you have to dig in and fight is against the progressive school system’s influence on your kids. Do Not. Adbicate.
Sorry to ruin your sotto-voice jeremiad but there are a whole slew of factual errors in it. As someone who watched World at War on ITV first time around and Civilization on BBC 2 on its repeat in the mid 70′s I well remember the cultural world that created these programs. And a quick look at the recent schedules for BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3, and the TV schedule for BBC 2 and BBC 4 will show you that middle brow culture is alive and well in the UK. Not quite as self-confident as it was back in the 50′s or 60′s, but still holding its own against the cultural barbarians on Channel 4 and BBC 3. Its only in the US middle brow culture has died. The PBS and NPR I first heard and saw back in the 80′s still had a sense of its Blue Network heritage but by the late 90′s that was all gone. The same goes for the big market newspapers. They stopped being serous almost two decades ago.
Other factual errors. It was Lord Clark not Sir Kenneth. This was very important to his son Alan, who wrote the most wonderfully indiscreet political diaries of the 20′th century. The welfare state in Britain was created by the pre Great War government of Asquith. All Attlee did was implement the Beveridge Report which ironically enough was written by a Conservative. The real disaster of the Attlee years was the nationalisation of large chucks of British industry. Pretty much every industry Attlee and later Labour governments nationalised (or “rationalised” in the ’60′s) was gone within a generation.
The other good news in the UK on the modern culture front is that all those brutalist architectural monstrosities that spread an urban blight across the country from the 1950′s to 1980′s were so shoddily built that they have prematurely reached the end of their useful lifespan. These buildings are so universally hated and unloved that they are now being demolished with alacrity. No one is willing to pay the large amount of money to refurbish them. They would rather knock them down. With a bit of luck you will have to search long and hard, with a Pevsner to hand, to find any of these atrocities against culture in the not too distant future.
History is not a straight line, its a series of gyres, endless backtracking. With a bit of luck the next backtrack will erase most of the worst excesses of the post Great War cultural nervous breakdown.
– thank you for this. My prepper friend thinks we are in the End Times whilst I believe it is the Second Dark Ages. I have emailed this essay to him. I first viewed CIVILIZATION when it was presented on the BBC. How I miss Lord Clark!
Last day I commented here on the decline of journalism in America, and I left a link about hats, “The Hat Makes the Man.” I did that sort of in reference to the graphic above of the man in the nice hat. Today I would like to leave another link about hats, though I am not actually a hat salesman, to give my take on the man who makes the hat as man (one among many) who makes civilisation.
The Colosseum was a charnal house in its day; and it is we who make it civilised. We do that by appreciating its architecture and by valuing our erudition, in short by being ourselves civilised. But we restore it to its ugly origins by showing up there dressed like Vandals.
The graphic above says much, if semiotically. That matters. Even the worst scene can be dignified by a dignified man. Even the worst gain something from dignity, if only a sense of shame at their inability to be better men. That is civilisation, according to me so briefly.
If I may, here is a bit more about my take on hats.
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2011/12/man-makes-hat.html
I surprise no one has brought up Niall Ferguson’s three part series, “Civilization.”
Ferguson does a pretty good job of the five factors that have defined Western Civilization.
Typo: SIX factors