Most people are put off by documentaries and nonfiction books because they fear they will be educational, especially the mind-numbing kind of education they were exposed to when sentenced to 13 years of hard learning back in their K-12 prison days. And yes, many documentaries and nonfiction books are as painful as classes back in high school. However, and I mean a really big however, some documentaries and nonfiction books are mind blowing far out fun and entertaining – if you get off on learning about new things about this world and reality. A good documentary should educate, but a wonderful documentary will entertain, and a great documentary will inspire.
As I have gotten older, I have become jaded to normal television entertainment. It takes Breaking Bad quality to make me watch fictionalized television shows, so to fill up my old TV watching time I’ve turned to documentaries. I’ve discovered if I can find the right documentaries I’m far more entertained than by watching 98% of fictional television shows. More than that, I’ve discovered that watching a great documentary is uplifting for my mood, even if it’s about a depressing topic. And the best documentaries inspire me with hope. Documentaries can be elixirs for the soul.
For instance, last night I watched Touching the Wild on PBS Nature, about Joe Hutto spending seven years with Wyoming mule deer. It took Hutto over two years of patiently following a herd of mule deer daily before they accepted him. Eventually, he got to know them so individually that he named them.
Touching the Wild is about more than making friends with wild animals. It’s an extremely profound philosophical work, about existence and death, about mind, language and intelligence. One of the things that I’ve been learning from all of these documentaries is science is discovering that that animals are much closer to us mentally than we ever wanted to believe. We are not God’s chosen creature. We have no right to claim dominion over all the other creatures of this planet. Nor can we claim our intelligence makes us superior.
I am not a religious man, but this film was Biblical in its impact. Strangely, I had seen Noah this weekend, and it makes you wonder if there was a creator, if he wouldn’t despise humans and want to wipe us out. Christians babble on endlessly about being saved from sin, but I think it’s a childish cop-out to want to be forgiven. We need to stop sinning to atone for our sins. Watching Touching the Wild is like walking in Eden, we can blame the serpent all we want, but it is humans that are destroying paradise.
I was going to write this essay by listing dozens of great documentaries I’ve seen lately, but that would be too wordy I think. I think instead I should tell you how to find great documentaries. The highest qualities documentaries on TV are on PBS. The next best source is streaming Netflix. For instance I showed my friend Olivia Samsara yesterday that’s from Netflix. She was blown away.
Cable TV has a lot of channels with documentaries and nonfiction shows, but most of its crap. Sorry, but it’s true. Some of it’s okay, but be careful. The History Channel has such great potential, and sometimes it even has good shows, but all too often it has suspect information. I wish it was peer reviewed by actually historians. It would be great if actual Ph.D. historians had a chance to evaluate their documentaries in follow-up shows, because it would be enlightening to teach folks how they are being misinformed. The History Channel has some good shows among the schlock, like The Universe, but they aren’t as well made as the science shows on PBS. They tend to endlessly repeat the same animations and information. Fox has redeemed it’s news division with Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a 13 episode series currently appearing on Sunday nights, that would make Carl Sagan choke up with pride for his protégé Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Like I said, PBS is where it’s at, when we’re talking about documentaries on regular television. Currently Wednesday nights are called Think Wednesday, that start with Nature and NOVA, and follow up a three part series called Your Inner Fish, based on Neil Shubin’s book of the same name. Your Inner Fish should give creationists apoplexy and intelligence designers their worst nightmares, but for people who understand evolution it’s a thing of beauty. If only Darwin could have lived to see it.
NOVA has been running a series on animal intelligence and last night show was about dogs. Anyone who loves dogs should watch it, especially if you’ve wondered why your favorite pet knows when you are coming home. By the way, if you have a Roku, get the PBS channel, and you can watch these shows if you missed them. The Roku PBS Channel keeps current shows around for a few weeks like Hulu.
Throughout the week, PBS has fabulous documentaries. Just take a chance and try some of them out. They cover every subject you can think of, and more than you can’t.
The variety of documentaries at Netflix streaming is practically endless. New ones appear faster than I can keep up. If you add one to your queue, Netflix will recommend ten more on the same topic. Often when I add one documentary, I’ll end up adding eight or ten because Netflix is good recommending more that fit my tastes. And if you aren’t a documentary junky, you’ll be surprised by how many documentaries are being made each year. Just look at four music documentaries I recently watched. The variety of all documentaries makes the word diverse quaint.
I’m not much of a traveler, so documentaries are my lazy-ass way of traveling the world. I’m also on the shy side, so documentaries let me meet people I never would in real life. But you have to be careful, some documentary film makers are very persuasive, and it’s easy to be convinced into believing bullshit. We’re so used to fiction, that we accept what we see on TV. That’s bad. Being educated can be thrilling, and it doesn’t have to be boring.
What you really want, is to be inspired. And sometimes you’ll find inspiration in the strangest places. I’m not into fashion, but I found the documentary on Bill Cunningham, a fashion photographer for the New York Times, who is in his eighties and rides a bike around Manhattan, as very inspirational. That’s the best thing about documentaries – seeing stories about people who stand out in their effort to achieve their ambitions. Quite often I watch shows about people that overcome so many obstacles that aren’t in my way and still do things I only dream about. They make me want to be a better person.
If I’m feeling blue and watch an inspiring documentary, my mind and soul will be uplifted. If I’m feeling tired and watch a great documentary, I’ll be energized. There’s more to TV than cop shows and sitcoms, and before reality shows, there were documentaries – shows about the real reality.
JWH – 4/17/14
Auxiliary Memory 
Netflix has opened a whole new world to me in terms of documentary watching. Prior to subscribing, I would occasionally watch them on PBS, online, etc. but since getting Netflix, I’ve become a documentary fanatic…particularly with regards to subjects of great interest to me such as “The Universe” that you mention. I often take notes as I watch them (yes I’m a dork that way) so that I can research things of interest in further detail elsewhere once I’m done watching. I agree completely Jim – documentary watching may be good for our mental health. Certainly they’re a great and often entertaining way to learn new things as you point out.