What we watch

I don't usually enjoy watching a lot of TV, but in the early days of having a baby when I'm breastfeeding around the clock, and especially when it's unbearably painful and I need something to distract me (mental anesthetic, I call it, and books don't quite cut it), I watch the TV (or more accurately, the computer) all the time. With Diana, I watched four seasons of 30 Rock, plus Zulu, Funny Girl, and Hello, Dolly! plus a few documentaries. With Liam it was The West Wing (four seasons!) and Ken Burns' Civil War and Baseball documentaries. (Here's a tip: for pleasant dreams and restful sleep, don't watch a 9 hour documentary about the Civil War unless you enjoy falling asleep to the sound of maimed and dying men and horses.) I tend to watch a lot of documentaries. A LOT. Most of my sentences start with "I saw this documentary about..." My thinking is that if I'm going to waste time watching something, I might as well be learning. Here's what I've been watching since having Matthew:

Mitt
A Netflix original about, obviously, Mitt Romney. (How many other people do you know with the name 'Mitt'?) I really wish this had been finished and released before the 2012 election. One of my more trivial qualms about Mitt Romney was that he seemed dry, wooden, and completely without personality. I wish documentaries like this could be released about candidates in every election. I really enjoy getting to know the people I'm voting for. (Or not.) Joseph put it pretty well: while it didn't reveal Mitt Romney to be a stunning intellectual infinitely more worthy of running the country than President Obama, he did seem genuinely smart, with a good business sense, and a friendly personality kind of like a dad from church. I think this could have helped him in the election. It also made me realize how grueling it is to run a political campaign. There is no way I'd want to invite that kind of stress and scrutiny into my life. Suddenly I feel a little bit sorry for politicians.

More Than Honey
A beautiful documentary that compares local, small-scale apiaries to large-scale operations and looks at the decline of bee populations worldwide and the implications for agriculture. Suddenly bees seem delicate and precious, and large-scale cross-country bee pollinating operations look horrifying. Tell me you can't sympathize with the old Swiss bee-keeper and his lovingly cared-for native bees over the giant truckload of bees that become collateral damage in the industrial honey operation! It made me want to plant bee-attracting plants all over my yard and it made Joseph want to start bee-keeping. We will be buying local honey from now on!

Wild China
The BBC has a talent for beautiful cinematography. This five (I think?) part series is gorgeous and a treat to watch. I even learned some new things about China, which I appreciated. TV documentaries usually just cover the same information over and over again. I'd even have let the kids watch this.

It's a Girl
Here's something to know about me: I like learning about other cultures, and I don't know whether it's just the nature of cultural documentaries or the nature of the subject matter, but I end up watching the absolute saddest films. This was the first in a series of eye-opening, terribly depressing documentaries I watched. I was crying within the first 60 seconds. I first learned of female gendercide after having Diana. It was shocking to be holding my precious baby girl, warm and safe with people who loved her, while other baby girls around the world were being killed or thrown away. This documentary is about the danger of being born a girl in parts of the world with strong cultural male preferences, especially India and China. Baby girls are aborted (sometimes, even more sickeningly, against the mother's wishes as in China), killed shortly after birth, abandoned, or enslaved. There are literally millions of missing baby girls in these countries, causing the gender ratio between men and women to become dangerously and unnaturally skewed. The title reflects the fact that three of the most dangerous words that can be used in relation to a baby in these places are: "it's a girl." And it shouldn't be so. It SHOULD NOT be so. Cultural differences be damned, a human being is not less deserving of life because it's a female. This is an issue that has become near to my heart as a woman, as a mother, and having a little girl. Watch this documentary and then, if you have the stomach, watch Half the Sky. More importantly, if these documentaries inspire you, do something!

The World Before Her
This was an interesting documentary partly because it was something I wouldn't normally have picked and knew little about. It contrasts the worlds of Western-style "Miss America" type beauty pageants, which are increasingly popular in India, with conservative fundamentalist Hinduism. I don't know a lot about Hinduism, I suppose, and certainly not ultra-conservative Hinduism. The irony is that women and girls at fundamentalist Hindu camps talk about how the Miss India contestants are enslaved to perverted Western ideas of beauty and worth while following a very conservative vein of their religion that basically restricts their value to marriage and child-bearing. I thought this was a well constructed documentary that wasn't afraid to ask hard questions.

First Circle
This documentary took a look at the foster care cycle in Eastern Oregon and Idaho. It wasn't super well-funded, or else the filmmaker wasn't extremely experienced, but the subject matter was interesting to me. I would almost be interested in fostering kids, and I know others who would, but for the illogical and confusing foster care system. A child's best place is with their own family- and it's heartbreaking that you can see that these kids want to be with their parents, even when they're making some pretty big mistakes- but if that's not the safest place for them, they should be able to be taken in by a stable family, if only temporarily. Unfortunately, the convoluted world of foster care means that qualified families are sometimes driven away or turned down.

Dirty Wars
The creepiest stuff you don't want to think about. This one was about the growing and increasingly unfocused war on terror. I thought this 2014 Oscar nominee was very well constructed. It plays out like a mystery-drama. Like the Bourne Identity without the action. Joseph didn't like that it presented events in a very conspiratorial way, as if mysterious forces were trying to conceal facts at every turn. But the part we both agreed was the most interesting is that it included information that we had never heard before and that is genuinely disturbing. Regardless of how you justify things in the beginning of the documentary, toward the end you get this uncomfortable feeling that our country may be meddling in some deep, murky slightly evil factions around the world. This is a good conversation-starter. I suggest watching it with someone for that reason.

The Square
Another Netflix original and 2014 Academy Award nominee about the protests in Egypt during the Arab Spring. It follows a group of protesters present at the original uprising in Tahrir Square. After their initial success in ousting Hosni Mubarak, you get to watch the difficulties that follow in setting up free elections and the discontent and outrage over the abuses of power by the subsequently elected president, Mohamed Morsi. I think it's always interesting to get a more in-depth view of events that appear in the news, especially when you can watch interviews with people who are participating on the streets. And it's inspiring to watch the passion these people have for justice and for their country.

Tell Me and I Will Forget
Do you like blood, gore, and senseless violence? Do you enjoy the depressed and overwhelmed feeling that comes from being confronted by giant, seemingly unsolvable problems? Then this may be the documentary for you! The title comes from a quote with origins that are hard to track down. It goes, approximately, "Tell me and I will forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand." What I understood from the documentary is that Johannesburg is one of the worst cities on earth and I would never ever want to visit it ever. Ever. How can so many people be so terrible to other people? Years after the end of apartheid, desperate circumstances have led to a huge increase in terrible violent crime in Pretoria and Johannesburg. This documentary follows paramedics in the area as they struggle to help the sick and injured despite overwhelming demand for their services and incredible lack of supplies and resources. These people and their passion for helping others seem to be the only bright spots in a place that is characterized in all other ways only by crime and violence. The film also examines the differences in the country's dual luxurious private and underfunded public medical systems. On the one hand, I'm glad to have learned about some of the challenges faced by other people in the world- and it was particularly interesting to Joseph having spent 10 years as an EMT. On the other hand, you get to see that the world is a terrible place with terrible things happening in it. Very interesting and very depressing.

Somm
Mostly thanks to Joseph's influence, we finally watched a documentary that wasn't sad, depressing, or horrifying! What a welcome change that was! Somm is about candidates training for the Master Sommelier exams. I was surprised to find out that there was such a thing as a sommelier, which is basically someone who has been professionally trained to know literally everything about wine. It far surpasses wine nerd and delves into a level of knowledge and scrutiny I can't imagine anyone would ever need to know about wine. But this documentary follows at least four sommeliers in the world who are studying for the Master Sommelier exame, which has one of the lowest pass rates in the world. A sometimes funny, interesting look at people who have devoted their lives to a single subject.