Safe-Keeper
12th May 2008, 05:11 PM
I've watched this excellent documentary (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/)several times, and thought I should make a forum thread on it. It was intended mostly to be a discussion on the documentary itself, but as I started writing this, I realized it could also cover this other question I have, something that struck me when I watched the movie and suddenly felt the way I imagine conspiracy theorists feel after their first viewing of Loose Change.
I've always thought of Tienanmen Square as this incident of a group of students demonstrating in the square, tanks and infantry mowing them down, end of story. Oh, and there was this guy standing in front of this one column of tanks on their way to quench the demonstration. Then this documentary comes along and delivers a story of tens of millions of protesters from every walk of life in four hundred cities and widespread street battles. It also shows footage in which the tank man not only stands in front of the tanks, but actually climbs on top of one of them. In other words, if this documentary is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, then so much of what I've learned of the massacre, including from actual textbooks, has simply been wrong.
So the topic of the thread, I guess, is: If the doc is accurate, how come educators can't get the story straight? How come we in the West have such a flawed view of what happened in those weeks (yes, months)?
I've always thought of Tienanmen Square as this incident of a group of students demonstrating in the square, tanks and infantry mowing them down, end of story. Oh, and there was this guy standing in front of this one column of tanks on their way to quench the demonstration. Then this documentary comes along and delivers a story of tens of millions of protesters from every walk of life in four hundred cities and widespread street battles. It also shows footage in which the tank man not only stands in front of the tanks, but actually climbs on top of one of them. In other words, if this documentary is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, then so much of what I've learned of the massacre, including from actual textbooks, has simply been wrong.
So the topic of the thread, I guess, is: If the doc is accurate, how come educators can't get the story straight? How come we in the West have such a flawed view of what happened in those weeks (yes, months)?