Civilisation

As relevant now as ever as our civilisation is exhausted and giving way to the machines.

With AI, in a Terminator future, without the paradox of time travel - there is no hope for Arnie coming back to save us, time, the fourth dimension makes it impossible.

Made a long time ago, 50 years or so, using queens English and eloquent speech. It shows us we are doomed, every civilisation destroys itself after a few thousand years, mayans, Egyptians, Romans.

We don't have long, enjoy it while you can.

It's a fascinating documentary series, 4 hours to let you know where you came from, and where you are going to.

Totally superb. The truth is that for all the current foolish complaints about the patriarchy and white privilege etc, etc ad nauseam the facts will outlive the children's current outrage.

Here is a reminder that the west has so much to be proud of. Britain especially. We are where we are today because of the success and adoption of the British and the wests systems of government, an independent judiciary, standardized weights and measures, universal education, invention, financial institutions, etc, etc.

Without the west's civilization life will be nasty, brutish and short to quote Hobbes. This cracking documentary shows the results of supporting "from the river to the sea" and the superb developments that resulted from the terrible colonizers.

There have been many fine video lecture series by prominent cultural figures, from Joseph Campbell to Robert Hughes, but for me, the finest is still the first, Kenneth Clark's landmark, "Civilization, A Personal View". The sub-title is important, for Clark's survey of western civilization through its art and architecture is certainly opinionated. And this gives the series a wonderful intimacy that previous televised surveys never approached.

Not only is there a wealth of information and insight in this beautiful production, but there is Kenneth Clark himself. A scholar of culture and art, admirer of Ruskin and student of Bernard Berenson, he was director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the National Galley in London, as well as pioneering arts commentator for radio and television in the UK. Kenneth, Lord Clark, raised to the peerage for his achievements, is perhaps the greatest impresario of art of the 20th century.

"Civilization, a Personal View" has been criticized by some art critics as being a bit "facile". I disagree. Clark's argumentation is always reasoned, never arbitrary. It certainly is facile for pop commentators to repeat the old tourist-pleasing but phony assertion that Michelangelo designed and built St. Peter's dome. It is Clark who points out that St. Peter's dome is the work of Giacomo della Porta, not Michelangelo. Is it facile for Clark to confess that when he was young he scorned Frans Hals out of snobbery, but later, "as I grew older," began to appreciate Hals's "convivial" figures? Facile indeed. Everything Clark says carries weight.

Aside from questions about Clark's personal views - he ends Civilization at the beginning of the modern era, not because he ran out of film but because he didn't care for modernism - it cannot be denied that he delivers them in such a lucid, congenial and engaging manner, that only the pedantic and churlish could fail to be delighted with a dapper, eloquent, beautifully spoken gentleman's tour through western history. Where else do pronunciations like caPITalism and usages such as "lie of the land" sound so wonderful than from the lips of this erudite Scotsman?

"And please allow me two minute's digression on the subject of tulips." I love it!

Clark's series is by far the best televised course in Western Civilization ever created. I doubt if it will ever be surpassed. There are two men I dearly miss having met before they died - Joseph Campbell and Kenneth Clark. Upon meeting Clark in "Civilization, a Personal View," I think you'll understand why.

A documentary covering the history of western civilisation from the Dark Ages to the mid 20th Century, "Civilisation" is a wide-ranging glimpse at the story of Western culture primarily through art. Art historian Kenneth Clark presents and writes in this BBC produced television series which first aired in 1969 in 13 episodes. Dapper, articulate and self assured, Clark narrates with learned interest the shifting and storied saga of European art and its influence. With footage of picturesque scenery, historic edifices, mostly famous art work and stirring Classical Music as a soundtrack the series is a pretty panoramic scope on why Western civilisation has been the foremost in the world up to the present. Whether discussing Michelangelo, Raphael, Da Vinci and the turbulent times and artistic opulence of the Italian Renaissance; Voltaire, Rousseau and the age of reason in the Enlightenment; the retreat back to nature and the resurrection of the divine in the Romantic era as artistic titans like Byron and Beethoven brought back the soul in man; and the advent of science and business in the modern era which the Industrial Revolution started bringing with them unprecedented wealth, luxury and power together with unprecedented depths of poverty and squalor.

For a documentary that calls itself "Civilisation" the film is surprisingly disappointing in its gap-filled state. One would think that one of the first obvious acts Clark would have done would be to include an episode on Greco-Roman civilization being the origins of the subject at hand. Strangely there isn't one and Clark mentions it only in patches here and there throughout the series. Topics outside of art are also focused on like literature, music and science so it's strange that there's no mention of groundbreaking inventions like the camera, aeroplane, automobile and the computer which are among the West's greatest and most distinct contributions to civilization and world history. The series differs from modern documentaries by eschewing the commonplace standard of interviewing numerous experts and personalities related to the topic at hand in favor of Clark solitarily carrying the entire documentary on his own. While this tones the film to a quiet, stately presentation of languid and glacial grace the energy, liveliness and vivacious pace of contemporary documentaries that modern viewers are used to will be sorely missed and can devalue the work to a tedious and agonizing slow crawl of a bore.

One of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful documentaries, spawning other hit TV series of its kind, "Civilisation" was a gateway to the masses on the value and aesthetics of art and its importance and relevance. Colorful and informative, "Civilisation" may well prove the fighting and perhaps irrefutable paradigm on why "The West is the best".

Watching the series in China, it makes me all the more proud of my heritage. The last comment is a good one; let Clark introduce himself to you, just as one reads a Herodotus or Suetonius- to be in the presence of a knowledgeable and engaging friend. having visited many of the places shown, it's also a marked benefit that the series was filmed in 1969, when travel was truly the domain of those seeking enlightenment before our days of package tours. And how clear and lucid are his discussions of culture and history! Often I found myself anticipating his next sentence from my own classes I teach, but am left feeling pedantic and plebeian by comparison. Although the BBC continues to be a source of wonderment through its historical live-action recreation series such as Auschwitz, Pompeii and the Attenboroughs, this is truly of its time when there was no need for gimmicks or embellishment. www.tracesofevil.blogspot.com