What made you want to get involved in current controversy surrounding the Showtime/Smithsonian deal? 
Wednesday April 26, 2006
Ken Burns is arguably the most successful documentary filmmaker of American history. (The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, etc.) In fact, with over fifteen finished films, three more under way, two Oscar nominations, and three Emmys on his shelf, Ken Burns is arguably the most successful documentary filmmaker in American history. Michael Moore may make more headlines for his movies, but Burns is so renowned in the film community that the slow-panning “Ken Burns Effect” is now an official term in filmmaking and video editing software. His Peabody Award-winning nine-part series The Civil War is considered among the greatest documentary works ever made. Much of The Civil War is based on Burns’ careful and devoted attention to hundreds of historical documents in public archives at the Smithsonian – access which may soon be dramatically curtailed, a decision which Burns recently spoke out against at a panel at the Center for American Progress.
Ken Burns sat down with Campus Progress to talk about documentaries, the Confederacy, and the Smithsonian controversy.
What made you want to get involved in current controversy surrounding the Showtime/Smithsonian deal?
I’m just against secret deals and particularly secret deals that seem to limit everyone’s access to material. I’ve used the Smithsonian as a resource in nearly every film that I’ve worked on over the last 30 years. The idea that they have made a deal with Showtime that could possibly curtail my, or more importantly, every other filmmakers access to material if they didn’t play ball with Showtime is an anathema. This is a public institution; it’s so beloved. And it’s ridiculous. We just have to bring some air into this matter and clear it up. I have nothing against the Smithsonian having a deal with Showtime, I just think it has to go through a review process, there have to be public hearings, and it can’t be exclusionary- this is exclusionary.
Is this your first taste of political controversy? Are there other political or social issues that motivate you?
Well, I’ve been gassed, and beaten up, and I’ve voted and I’ve spoken out. I hold a lot of views but I tend to try to speak to everyone when I make my own films. I feel that one of the problems, quite often, with activist documentaries is that they tend to speak to the choir. And I’ve been really mindful of the need to try to speak to as many people as possible and particularly address those who may not be from my own political persuasion so that we could end up back in a country that isn’t so dialectically preoccupied with red state, blue state, black/white, conservative/liberal young/old, male/female all those things that divide us.
I’m always astounded by the prevalence of confederate flags and confederate memorabilia in the South and the frequent controversy that surrounds the issue. As a someone who is tremendously knowledgeable about the Civil War and as a Northerner, what do you make of that? Do you consider it a symbol of racism?
A lot of my relatives fought for the confederacy, but some fought for the north as well. First of all, the Civil War was, in addition to the biggest thing that has ever happened within this country by far, a deeply psychological event. There is an ultimate paradox at its heart, that in order to become one we kind of tore ourselves in two. Before the Civil War, when we referred to our country we said the United States “are,” and now we say ungrammatically the United States “is.” So the war in a funny way made us a one thing. We used to speak of a union and then we became a nation. A union is a collection of things and a nation is one thing. So there are deeply important psychological issues that continue to reverberate about the Civil War.
But the point you bring up about the confederate flag is a hugely disturbing thing. The confederate flag was adopted by many of the states as their flag, not before the Civil War, not during the Civil War, or not even in the immediate period afterwards, that much misunderstood period called Reconstruction. Those flags were instituted in the 1950’s and there’s only one thing that happened in the 1950’s that would have caused the southern states to add the confederate flag. They took one of the battle flags, and it wasn’t even the most popular confederate battle flag, and made it the symbol of segregation and resistance to civil rights and codified it in their flags. In that regard I find that the enthusiasm for the confederate flag today is both misplaced, misunderstood, and absolutely a symbol of racism.
Would you agree with those who see the confederate flag as a symbol of treason?
It’s really hard to go into that because of these deep psychological things. One of our most beloved generals in all of our history and lore is Robert E. Lee. Well, Robert E. Lee is, on technical terms, responsible for more loyal American deaths then either Hitler or Tojo. That gives you pause, and you begin to understand the nature of the Civil War as essentially a war with oneself. When families fight and then come back together, certain outer laws get ignored. You fight with your brother and have a fistfight or something and in a way that is what happened with the Civil War. So to go as far as to call them treasonous is to fall into the same ploy as the Right Wing does when it makes its various lists of enemies. I think that those who still find, in the confederacy, a safe haven are completely misguided and more sad then you could possibly describe as treasonous.
Your documentary Unforgivable Blackness told the story of Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion who broke many of the racist taboos of his day. That documentary, while about sports to some extent, also speaks to larger social, economic and racial issues. Your baseball documentary also brings up some bigger picture issues. Could you speak to why you chose those subjects and why you felt that they had a bigger story to tell?
I don’t think you can involve yourself in American History without bumping into this question of race, and it manifests itself all the time. When we tend to think of history, when we think of it at all, we think of it as wars and generals and presidents and that kind of political military narrative. It’s really important to shake that up to remind us that huge social changes occur outside that classic political military narrative. Sport is a really important way to gauge where we’ve been as a country. I felt that particularly baseball, and boxing is another one of them as well. So in Unforgivable Blackness, it was just an opportunity, once again to scratch the surface of American history and find this ongoing question of race. You use whatever you can.
In this case you’ve got a figure who was as dynamic a figure in his day as Muhammad Ali was in his. This was a person who fought the establishment as Muhammad Ali did, who sort of was despised by a huge segment of the population, but he did it 50 or 60 years before Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali’s great sacrifice, as we’ve now come to understand it, occurred in a decade dedicated to civil rights. But more African-Americans were lynched in the first two decades of the twentieth century then any other time in our history, and that was the period Jack Johnson did his soul defying acts of individuality and consciousness of race.
Over the last couple of years, there has been an upswing in the popularity of documentary films at the box office with films like March of the Penguins, and Supersize Me. What do you think accounts for that change?
I actually think that whether we’re dramatic film or documentary film producers, we are dealing with the same Aristotelian poetics; that is to say that we’re all figuring out what the essence of drama is. One is a fact-based drama and one is a fiction-based drama and we’ve seen that those fiction based forms are tired. You know now we have “Die Hard 4” and “Death Wish 12” and “Spiderman 2” and all of this stuff we don’t need. I think that what we’ve found is that the documentary film has always had its voice and its now finding its audience. Before it was just the old traditional route of film festivals and limited theatrical runs or if you were lucky some obscure cable broadcast but now there are massive cable opportunities, internet possibilities, and then the world then these magnificent theatrical runs that sometime outpace the carefully marketed Hollywood product which is good news for everybody
So, were you surprised to be an iMovie effect?
I wasn’t because I was asked in advance by Steve Jobs from Apple. Initially, I said I don’t do product endorsements. And I still don’t but he made arrangements to give film equipment to deserving non-profits that I designated.
Before you mentioned your distaste for the right wing’s penchant for list making. We’re currently working on an academic freedom campaign in response to David Horowitz’s new book listing 101 ostensibly “dangerous” professors. We’ll soon be releasing a report that documents the dozens and dozens of factual errors in the book.
Well, Horowitz’ biggest mistake in that book was making a list to begin with. People in the vast middle can make lists. They can list their favorite underwear or their favorite chocolate. But when people on the far right or left make these kinds of lists it rings of a sort of totalitarian exclusion.
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Comments
I really thought that Ken Burns and Ric Burns are the best thing since French Toast, but now it’s a positive thing. This opens him up for me in a good way.
— Gail Lelyveld - Apr 27, 11:59 AM - #Thank you so much for the best interview I’ve read this year. The depth of research Burns has done is mind-boggling and his documentaries do us a huge service. Great interview choice. Keep it coming.
— Marylin Olds - Apr 27, 08:03 PM - #I used to make bowls of chicken noodle soup on summer afternoons and watch the Civil War on the local PBS station with the fan whirring faintly overhead. I recently had to read Du Bois’s “The Souls of Black Folk” and then Lincoln’s Address at Gettysburg. The writing was so emotionally charged that I went out and picked up a copy of “The Civil War.” I was stunned by not only the vast wealth of information, quotes, and photographs, but also the detailed attention to distinctly American quirks. The use of music, the letters, sounds of battle, phrases, and dialects all gelled as particularly American – not just bumper sticker on the SUV, ‘these colors do not run,’ jingoism either. The real grit of what it means to fight and die for an idea. Funny that you interviewed him just after I watched the movie for a second time. Makes me like him all the more.
— Gordon Hall - Apr 30, 08:04 PM - #Ken burns is an ungreatfull RACIST PIG. It is incredible that in the 2nd world war and his new documentary he does not includes LATINOS. For that MR BURNS you are an ungreatfull MF.
— jose Morales - Apr 9, 11:13 PM - #Burns says that he omitted Mexican-American veterans because he wanted his documentary to be “universal.” He’s a racist who makes it clear that he really doesn’t think that Americans can be of Mexican descent.
He thinks Mexican-Americans vets were figting a different WWII defending a different America. He doesn’t understand that they fought and died defending the freedom that he enjoys today. And what freedom…getting millions of dollars to make government movies without any oversight.
I don’t want my tax dollars spent on an ingrate like Burns. — Michelle - Sep 28, 03:07 PM - #I think the problem in thinking with #4 and #5 is that the men who gave their lives for our country in WWII weren’t Latino Americans, Afro Americans, Irish Americans or any other hyphenated version. THEY WERE AMERICANS. Period. They fought to defend your ability to call yourself American. Don’t dishonor them with this racist dribble. Join the melting pot, drop your hyphen and become AMERICAN.
— Jon - Aug 24, 08:47 AM - #Since when do white and black stories represent all Americans? Burns had to fix his flimsy racist work because Hispanics stood up and helped him see the light. Enough of this revisionist, who wants to edit out Hispanics from American culture. We have been here since this country came into being and don’t plan on moving any time soon…
— Joseph - Aug 25, 12:59 AM - #That includes a major contribution to the WWII effort.
Since when do white and black stories represent all Americans? Burns had to fix his flimsy racist work because Hispanics stood up and helped him see the light. Enough of this revisionist, who wants to edit out Hispanics from American culture. We have been here since this country came into being and don’t plan on moving any time soon…
— Joseph - Aug 25, 12:59 AM - #That includes a major contribution to the WWII effort.
Since when do white and black stories represent all Americans? Burns had to fix his flimsy racist work because Hispanics stood up and helped him see the light. Enough of this revisionist, who wants to edit out Hispanics from American culture. We have been here since this country came into being and don’t plan on moving any time soon…
— Joseph - Aug 25, 12:59 AM - #That includes a major contribution to the WWII effort.
Since when do white and black stories represent all Americans? Burns had to fix his flimsy racist work because Hispanics stood up and helped him see the light. Enough of this revisionist, who wants to edit out Hispanics from American culture. We have been here since this country came into being and don’t plan on moving any time soon…
— Joseph - Aug 25, 01:00 AM - #That includes a major contribution to the WWII effort.