Gettysburg Documentary
Hebe Newnam
Gettysburg is a 2011 American Civil War television]documentary film directed by Adrian Moat that was first aired on May 30, 2011 (Memorial Day) on the History Channel. This two-hour documentary film, narrated by actor Sam Rockwell, commenced a week of programming by the History channel honoring and commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War. Gettysburg showcases the horror of the pivotal 1863 Battle of Gettysburg by following the stories of eight men as they put their lives on the line to fight for what they believed in.
On February 9, 2011, President and General Manager of History channel, Nancy Dubuc, announced the channel's partnership with the Civil War Trust and the National Park Foundation for GIVE 150, a massive educational and fund-raising initiative to enhance Civil War education nationwide, and to protect and preserve battlefields and other key sites from this pivotal period in American history.[2] Dedicated to highlighting the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War an entire week of programming will be set aside featuring various new and old episodes of shows showcasing the war.[3] In 2011 Civil War Week will commence on Memorial Day Monday with war themed episodes of Pawn Stars followed by the television premiere of Gettysburg. Throughout the week there will be new episodes of American Pickers, reruns of Brad Meltzer's Decoded, Modern Marvels and other various shows, along with the premiere of Lee & Grant a television documentary film directed by John Ealer.[4]
Wanting to entice young and middle aged men to watch the Memorial Day special, senior director of consumer marketing at History Ann Marie Granite, went back to Microsoft's Xbox 360 to help promote the film. Features allow users to compete for prizes by downloading free market content from the Xbox Live store, other features include an interactive map of Gettysburg that provides historical background on each day of battle and campaigning videos that showcase the movie.[6]
Internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns will return to Gettysburg for a festival celebrating his nearly five-decade-long career. Joined by friends and collaborators, Burns will present excerpts and full-length films that examine fundamental themes of freedom and democracy, consequential elections throughout history, and our shared identity as Americans.
The Majestic Theater Box Office sells tickets for events located at the Majestic Theater ONLY. All tickets available at Will Call. Print at Home and mobile delivery is not available for this event.
As a reporter and then editor, I always thought that was true in many but not all cases. But I became convinced of it when I became the ombudsman at The Washington Post in the fall of 2000. Around that time, if memory serves, CBS television sports had to acknowledge that it had been dubbing recorded bird sounds as background during lulls in the broadcasting of golf tournaments. Some golf enthusiasts who were also bird-watchers questioned the network after they heard chirping of birds that were not indigenous to the states where the tournaments were being held.
In his letter, de Groot wrote that he "was appalled to hear a version of Mr. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, presented in sonorous tones, that was modified (his emphasis) in verbiage in several places. I feel it is very wrong to present or sponsor such a thing. Not only were the changes, in my opinion, less effective than the original, but to so modify a speech is, in effect, to lie about history. . .Such egotistical arrogancy has no place in history and should be avoided insofar as possible."
Like most things, this is complicated. Mr. de Groot did not point to specific changes in his letter. I got a transcript of the address as spoken in the program's script (I've included it at the bottom of this posting) and compared it to the address engraved on the South Wall at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
There are, in fact, several discrepancies. I found six of them; none that would leap out at you but changes, nevertheless, to one of the most eloquent and enduring speeches ever made. And that speech was only ten sentences long.
A couple of the changes involve the words "here" and "it." For example, where the TV script reads, "We have come to dedicate a portion of it. . ." the Memorial Wall version says, "a portion of that field." The most significant change in comparing the two comes in this sentence from the script which says, "It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have so nobly carried on." The version of this sentence on the Wall reads: "It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced."
The complication in this matter is also a historic one because there are five known, hand-written manuscript and draft copies of the address, each one named for the person who received it from President Lincoln and each one containing some differences in wording and punctuation. There are also slightly differing contemporary newspaper accounts, which is also understandable since there were no recordings. And Lincoln may well have deviated from his prepared text to insert words as he spoke. It is felt that may explain how the words "under God" appear in some versions but not in all. So, modern scholars, according to many researchers, disagree as to its exact wording.
But the Hay Copy of the speech does not include the phrase "under God," yet the documentary version of the speech does include that phrase and some of the newspaper accounts of the speech indicate reporters heard that as well.
I asked if the producers had actually specifically chosen to use the Hay Copy rather than the much more widely used Bliss copy and, if so, why? Darling said that the Bliss version of the address is in the companion book to the documentary series (on page 226) but that, "unfortunately, after 23 years since the film's research, the process by which the filmed version was selected has been lost."
So, since millions of people over more than two decades have undoubtedly seen "The Civil War" television series, this leaves us with what may arguably amount to a PBS/Ken Burns version of the Gettysburg Address. This would be one that is not based on the precise verbiage that most Americans are familiar with (the Bliss Copy) and that is most widely used as the standard text, but based more closely on the earlier Hay Copy, made around the time of the actual speech, plus some phrasing, especially "under God," that is not in the Hay draft but that Lincoln may have inserted spontaneously. Or perhaps we should call it the de Groot version in recognition of the alert viewer who called this to our attention.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that their nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
I am bad at teaching people to play Sid Meier's Gettysburg. Time and again I struggle to explain the tactics the game wants you to use, or how you should approach a scenario. When I was streaming with Ren, she eventually just tossed up her hands and explained that the fundamental concepts of the game were opaque to her, and it finally dawned on me that Gettysburg assumes that you already know all this stuff. Whatever side you play in a scenario, you are being invited to inhabit a character in an American passion play, approaching it with an understanding of what each moment represents in a story whose lines you know by heart.
That was a safe bet when it came to designing a game in 1997, which might have been near the peak of the Civil War's recent presence in popular culture. The 1990 Ken Burns documentary had ignited a wave of interest that would only really begin to wane as World War II / Greatest Generation nostalgia eclipsed it. But in the early 1990s, the odds of catching a random Civil War documentary on TV were high, and if you walked into a major bookstore you'd eventually be greeted by a table laid-out with Civil War histories and coffee table books. Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels received a reappraisal and captured the imagination of a very different public than the one that scorned it when it was published in the 1970s, and it was adapted to film with 1993's four-hour epic Gettysburg, a film which also captures the pinnacle of Civil War reenactment culture while the preponderance of gray hair in the ranks hints at the hobby's coming decline.
When the producers attempted to recapture the magic a decade later with the cloying Lost Cause sentimentality of Gods and Generals, it backfired horribly and put a late period on 1990s Civil War nostalgia. In some ways its ham-handed attempt to both morally exculpate and restore to their professional pedestals Lee and his lieutenants anticipated the way that Civil War history, for so long a safe culture war victory for white supremacy, would be thoroughly reconsidered and tied much more directly to Reconstruction and Jim Crow in the popular imagination.
But Sid Meier's Gettysburg is about a shared, popular understanding of Gettysburg as not just a pivotal battle of the Civil War but one whose course and outcome was so contingent on famous accident and infamous miscalculation as to invite unlimited speculation. The scenarios themselves are unveiled with briefings that are more memetic than informative: poor Harry Heth's march for shoes, Buford's long wait for Reynolds, Longstreet's plea for a flanking maneuver, Sickels' advance into the wheat field, the Union's stand among the rocks of Devil's Den and Little Round Top, Lee's desperate conviction and Pickett's doomed charge at Cemetary Ridge.
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