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With networks and streamers seeking to create compelling content, many have found the answer in true stories. But with the surge in documentaries, it can be hard to sift through what’s worth your time. Each month, Well Documented provides an inside look at a documentary and others you should add to your queue.
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‘White With Fear’ (PBS, PBS.org, PBS app)
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In “White With Fear,” director Andrew Goldberg meticulously lays bare the callous and dangerously racist political strategy used by conservatives over the last 60 years. From former Presidents Nixon and Reagan to President Trump, Republicans — aided by Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing media — have consciously sought to win votes by stoking fear in white voters.
Goldberg’s film argues that the right, using the language of white supremacy and relying on distortions, lies and misinformation campaigns against Black people, then Muslims and immigrants, have turned the GOP into a racially driven, hate-filled party of grievances.
Before its PBS debut on Tuesday, Goldberg spoke about his film and its goals. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are you hoping to convey?
I’m a journalist, not an activist. I want to impart the truth, as opposed to changing people’s minds. But there are an enormous number of people who know none of this and a lot of those people are the ones being manipulated. Their voting and purchasing decisions are being driven by these strategic and, at times, overtly racist tactics. Our job is to educate those people about how they’re being pushed around like pawns.
I would also be happy if other members of the media would recognize how they too are used.
Did you worry about giving voice too often to pronouncements by the likes of Trump and Stephen Miller?
A lot of people don’t want to hear Trump and Miller talk and there’s also the question of platforming too much of it. We tried very hard to find sound bites that demonstrated our points clearly, using enough examples to support it, but to not overdo it. I always say you want the narrative to move forward, not sideways.
Reagan was a master of the dog whistle, while someone in the documentary notes that Trump uses more of a “train whistle.” Is naked bigotry about Mexicans, Haitians and “fine people on both sides” more likely to backfire long-term, among independents at least?
The fallout instead happens around large scale actions that affect a lot of people. COVID affected Trump, and I think the economy and the war with Iran will affect him. But I think we’ve learned Trump could probably even go further in what he says. There just doesn’t seem to be fallout from that.
The show discusses intimidation, violence and hate crimes against Muslims after 9/11 and against Asians after the COVID-19 outbreak, for instance. Is the right’s rhetoric responsible for that?
I was careful not to formally assert the level of causation. That’s a complex and slippery slope. Correlation and causality is something for statisticians, political scientists and sociologists. I think it’s fair to say that those acts of violence come from hatred and that hatred grows immensely from our political leaders’ rhetoric. It would have been irresponsible to say the violence is due to what was said but it would also be irresponsible to say the violence and what was said have nothing to do with each other.
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‘Ghost Elephants’ (NatGeo, Hulu, Disney+)
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“Ghost Elephants” is a Werner Herzog film so, unsurprisingly, the titular characters play second fiddle to a man on an arduous quest, with fascinating digressions along the way.
Naturalist Stephen Boyes believes massive elephants live undetected on a remote plateau in Angola; they’d be descendants of a giant pachyderm hunted and killed 70 years ago that now resides in the Smithsonian.
“I’ve spent my life living in a dream I’ve never had,” he says, cryptically of his desire to finally travel thousands of miles to search out these creatures and check their DNA. “Sometimes these dreams come true.”
Herzog depicts the bushmen who aid Boyes as dignified, diligent and intelligent without romanticizing them while capturing the rugged beauty of the African landscape. And he’s always Herzogian — an ethereal scene of an elephant in water feels like a dream sequence, while in a DNA lab scene, the camera shifts from the elephant skull to a table nearby as Herzog, in his distinctive voice, comments on its contents, “I was puzzled by the array of dead birds,” before moving on.
But the heart of the film is Boyes’ quixotic search, aided by trackers and anthropologists, and eventually, a regional king. Boyes acknowledges that he doesn’t know if he prefers to find the elephants or to chase the dream for the rest of his life. “Maybe that’s better.”
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‘Born to Bowl’ (HBO, HBO Max)
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It’s unlikely that “Born to Bowl” will do for bowling’s ratings what “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” did for F1, but this five-part A24 series is deftly entertaining. Creators James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte (“McMillions” and “The Big Conn”) take the bowlers seriously as people even as the series brings a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the sport itself. An opening montage, with Liev Schreiber’s narration and the “Ride of the Valkyries” lending ironic gravitas, traces the history of bowling from ancient times up through “the Jesus,” replete with a John Turturro clip from “The Big Lebowski.”
Explorations of the history of bowling balls (and, yes, their sacks), the two-handed bowl (who knew?) and different oil patterns on lanes (again, who knew?), illuminate the sport’s genuine nuances without ever making too big a deal of it all. Instead,the life stories and the struggles and successes of bowlers like Kyle Troup and Anthony Simonsen become the series’ beating heart.
The post ‘White With Fear’ and two other documentaries to watch right now appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
