The American Experience

This week I had the pleasure of seeing a documentary entitled "The American Experience: Coney Island". It was not very long - short, sweet, and to the point. This is probably the first documentary I've seen in a couple weeks that wasn't centered around a personal story at some point. Most of the documentaries that I've seen this semester have been about a certain someone's personal journey or insight into a situation that very little is known about. This film was about Coney Island as a big picture. It went into deep detail about the history and first days of the Island as an amusement park and narrated everything that was important or monumental in the years prior. It wasn't much longer than an hour but it was an interesting look at how people were made in spectacles. An example of this is the Midget City, the Bearded Lady, siamese twins, people with all sorts of fascinating deformations and diseases, and so on. All of these attractions are what made Coney Island what it is and I recommend this film to anyone interested in knowing what's up. -pruitt