Prohibition: la nouvelle série de Ken Burns

Après des séries sur la guerre de Sécession, le baseball et le jazz (toutes des bijoux...), Ken Burns s'attaque à la prohibition (1920-1933), une cause noble qui aura de terribles conséquences. Les américains qui mofient rarement leur constitution l'ont fait deux fois pour cette seule question.

"Has any piece of legislation had a more intoxicating effect on the American imagination than the 18th Amendment? That was the law that banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol from 1920 until its repeal, in 1933. Prohibition helped put the roar into the Roaring ’20s: speakeasies, hip flasks, bootleggers, bathtub gin, Al Capone. It proved to be a gold mine for popular culture, too: the original “Scarface,’’ “Some Like It Hot,’’ “The Untouchables,’’ and on and on.

Yet this is a tricky subject for a documentary - let alone one that extends over three nights and runs 5 1/2 hours, as Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s “Prohibition’’ does. It doesn’t faze them, though. The series presents an often-engrossing look at a unique The ’20s marked the birth of modern mass media, which means there’s a lot of material to be drawn on: newsreels, radio broadcasts, tabloid front pages, let alone countless photographs for Burns to pan over in his trademark fashion. Yet the era’s familiarity threatens to make any examination of it seem cliched and/or tired. And a serious treatment is really asking for trouble. Show all the blazing tommy guns and shuttered breweries you like, but underlying the battle between dries and wets was a set of conflicts far harder to present visually: country vs. city, native vs. immigrant, evangelical vs. secular. Those conflicts are inherently abstract, yet they defined Prohibition - and some of them remain as vexing today as they were 90 years ago.cultural moment in America, when high-mindedness was in the saddle yet lawlessness was never so pervasive. “Prohibition’’ starts Sunday on Channel 2, continues Monday, and concludes Tuesday.

La suite:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2011/09/29/sobering-time-for-america/kjkYAl4IfeH6346axGMtSM/story.xml