Customer Reviews

Biography - Sitting Bull [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

PACKING FROM THE SHIPPER VERY GOOD ... AND TIMELY RECIEVED THREW THE HOLIDAYS
VERY SATISFIED WITH SERVICE . MOVIE I LIKED IT BUT WASN'T IN DETAILED ENOUGH
HAD GREAT FACTS, BUT SLID OVER ALOT OF LITTLE FACTS THAT MAKE A ALOT IN DIFFERENCE
OF HISTORY THATS BEEN RECORDED. SO OVERALL I LIKED WHAT THIS FILM DID PRESENT
OUT TO HISTORIANS AND THE PUBLIC. I GIVE IT A GOOD RATING

This is perhaps one of History Channel's better biographies, although it lacks much detail. For example, Sitting Bull was with Buffalo Bill's Wild West for a season, and that receives scant mention. It was actually an eventful time in his life. Still, they had only 50 minutes.

At the very least this may pique the viewer's interest in Sitting Bull, one of the more remarkable figures in American history. I was annoyed by the narrator speaking of the U.S. Calvary. Is it too fussy of me to ask that the term be properly pronounced? Calvary is where Jesus was crucified. Cavalry refers to men on horseback--which the 7th Cavalry was. When I hear that sort of error in a scholarly piece, I start wondering about the accuracy of everything else.

This documentary taught me some important stuff. The Lakota called whites "longhairs": I would have thought they would think of them as "shorthairs" compared to their long braids. It turns out that Sitting Bull did not participate in Custer's Last Stand; he just foresaw it in a vision. The Lakota thought gold was useless; I thought gold's shininess appealed to all humans, thus its value, even in Ancient Egypt.
One big problem is that this documentary begins by focusing on Lakota culture and Red Elk and ends by describing a massacre that took place after Sitting Bull's assassination. Thus, little of this work focuses specifically on Sitting Bull.
The documentary says, "The Lakota were tolerant of alternative lifestyles" and then it describes acts of masochism (that one interviewee incorrectly calls sadism) during Sun Dances. However, in Walter L. Williams' "The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Cultures," an ancestor of Sitting Bull said she thinks he had a two-spirited, or transgendered, wife. Thus, Sitting Bull may have been what we would now call bisexual, yet the documentary never brings that up.
This A&E work must have been made at the same time as their work on Crazy Horse. Understandably, Crazy Horse avoided the Western practice of photography. However, since Sitting Bull didn't oppose it, we have all these varied, descriptive photos of him to this day. The same white interviewees in the Crazy Horse work were interviewed here, but the Native American interviewees were different people.

Disregard that last review,Sitting Bull Rules in this A&E Biography.It's a must see!!

This video biography is a departure from the normally well-done A & E series. It has very little to commend it, offering nothing new and making several grievous historical errors, especially in the closing narration. Poor history and even poorer biography.