Search - American Experience: The Alaska Pipeline on DVD

I enjoyed this for no particular reason.

Jeffery Mingo | Homewood, IL USA | 06/29/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The American Experience doesn't limit itself to famous people or wars. Like their episodes on the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, this focuses on an edifice. The work spends approximately 10 minutes on the fight not to get the pipeline built, but then the rest of it concerns the manufacturing of the item.

I don't really care for science. This work was tailored to viewers like me: it focused on the human aspect, not the technical matters. The narrator says close to nothing about chemical elements and physics concepts, and that ol' boring stuff. This work spoke about Alaska residents, indigenous Alaskans, women, etc. I was in diapers when all of this was happening, but I've seen enough "Good Times" reruns to know the character James Evans, Sr. died working in Alaska and this non-fictional work gives the context for that fictional plot twist. This work makes union members look like the most conniving and unethical people around. However, if the viewer listens carefully, it also says capital basically said, "We'll pay you a lot and let you act a fool so long as you don't have strikes or do anything else that will slow production!"

This documentary could not predict the future. However, right now, the country is seriously two steps away from doing more oil collection in Alaska. If this pipeline works well, then shouldn't we be able to build more of them without killing animals and increasing global warming? This work never really says if oil prices in the US went down due to the pipeline and I wish it would have connected those dots."