Guns, Germs, and Steel
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DVD Cover Information
Brand: Warner BrothersDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 165 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-07-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: National Geographic Video
Movie Reviews of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Movie Review: Man on a mission.
Summary: 4 Stars
The documentary Guns, Germs, and Steel is a look at the reasons why different cultures have acquired vastly different amounts of the world's wealth. Professor Jared Diamond looks at this issue of the haves and have-nots through the lens of a theory he has proposed; this theory holds that accidents of geographical location and the availability of useful plants and animals, rather than any intrinsic differences in intellectual ability, are the factors which explain the inequalities. Having an abundant and nutritious food supply gave certain peoples the leisure time to develop industrial arts such as steel-making, which led in turn to an even greater advantage. Close association with domestic animals provided another advantage of which the owners weren't even aware - an immunity to many diseases which they carried to unprotected peoples they invaded. Professor Diamond recognizes no other factors, such as being cleverer or more inventive, in his account of why Europeans gained such a disproportionate share of the world's wealth. The emphasis in this documentary, then, is to debunk the idea that European settlers gained the upper hand through initiative, bravery, or intelligence, for according to his theory, all races contain these qualities in equal amounts. This idea that there is no difference in abilities among various peoples is presented as axiomatic, a first principle on which the rest of his theory is constructed. To illustrate his theory, the documentary goes on location to show the differences geographic and climatic factors have made in cultures. By means of re-enactments of incursions by Europeans, Professor Diamond tries to show how factors other than racial differences account for the success of these incursions. When the Europeans went into lands such as central Africa, which were different from those that had fostered their growth, their efforts at colonization floundered. But due to their established technological abilities, they were still able to plunder the wealth of the land through the subjugation and forced labor of the natives. I looked up Professor Diamond's credentials on several websites, and it is evident that he is not one to be taken lightly. An accomplished linguist, an evolutionary biologist, a geographer, an environmentalist, he has won many awards and recognitions from the academic world and authored several books. The primary implication of his thesis is that less technologically and economically advanced peoples are not to be held responsible for their lack of success, nor are the successful ones to be commended for theirs. This is no doubt true to a great extent, but I wonder if there is not some ideological activism inserted into this presentation. After all, if some peoples had acquired genetic mutations which facilitated the workings of their brain in such a manner to give them an advantage, this would still be no basis for concluding that such people had earned this advantage, or that they were entitled to more of the world's wealth. Evolution, from the information I have gleaned from books on the subject, has effectively been an opportunistic and amoral process conferring adaptive advantages not to the deserving but to the strategically placed. Even within the same cultures there is always a wide divergence of capability, so why should there not be a divergence of overall ability between cultures? This divergence of ability would not imply any absolute quality of superiority. Even if, though contrary to Professor Diamond's theory, Europeans had more innate technological ability, the idea that they were more deserving could(and should) still be held up to scorn. Perhaps Professor Diamond is partly right, mostly right, or completely right. I'm not qualified and don't have the evidence at hand to say. But I think legitimate questions could be raised to challenge his central concept, and if solutions to the problem of unequal wealth are proposed, they should be based on objective analysis and not ideology. Whether you find yourself agreeing with or doubting Professor Diamond's theory, you will be prompted to think about the issue, and that has merit in itself. There is an unfortunate amount of repetition in the documentary, largely due to the carryover between the three episodes.
Summary of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book and national best seller, Guns, Germs, and Steel is an epic detective story that offers a gripping expose on why the world is so unequal. Professor Jared Diamond traveled the globe for over 30 years trying to answer the biggest question of world history. Why is the world so unequal? The answers he found were simple yet extraordinary. Our destiny depends on geography and access to: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Weaving together anthropology and science with epic historical reenactments, Guns, Germs, and Steel brings Diamond's fascinating theories to life, and moves beyond the book to bring his ideas into the present day.Is the balance of power in the world, the essentially unequal distribution of wealth and clout that has shaped civilization for centuries, a matter of survival of the fittest. or merely of the luckiest? In Guns, Germs, and Steel, UCLA professor (and author of the best-seller bearing the same title) Jared Diamond makes a compelling case for the latter. Diamond's theory is that the predominance of white Europeans (and Americans of European descent) over other cultures has nothing to do with racial superiority, as many have claimed, but is instead the result of nothing more, or less, than geographical coincidence. His argument, in a nutshell, is that the people who populated the Middle East's "fertile crescent" thousands of years ago were the first farmers, blessed with abundant natural resources (native crops such as wheat and barley, domesticable animals like pigs, goats, sheep, and cows). When their descendents migrated to Europe and northern Africa, climates similar to the crescent's, those same assets, which were unavailable in most of the rest of the world, led to the flourishing of advanced civilizations in those places as well. Add to that their ability to control fire, and Europeans eventually developed the guns and steel (swords, trains, etc.) they used to conquer the planet (the devastating diseases they brought with them, like smallpox, were an unplanned "benefit" to their subjugation of, for instance, Peru's native Incas). Spread out over three episodes and two discs and presented with National Geographic's usual style and thoroughness, the program uses location footage (from New Guinea, South America, Africa, and elsewhere), interviews, reenactments, maps, and Diamond's own participation to support his thesis. And while one might disagree with his conclusions, there is no doubt that Guns, Germs, and Steel is a provocative, classy piece of work. --Sam Graham
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