[Peace-discuss] "The War" by Ken Burns

[John W.]

At 04:41 PM 10/7/2007, Laurie wrote:

>Carl,
>
>While your points have validity, both you and John fail to notice one
>significant factor.  Ken Burn's work purports to be a historical documentary
>while the other works referred to by John are anti-war novels.  Novels make
>no claim to historic or "factual" accuracy or any degree of completeness of
>perspective and coverage; documentaries do either implicitly or explicitly.

Naw, I didn't fail to notice it.  At the end of the day, though, a 
documentary (historical or any other kind) is still a "work of art" that 
requires many, many choices on the part of the artist/filmmaker.  How to 
portray events.  What to include and what to exclude.  In that I'm sure we 
all three agree.

Ken Burns couldn't make a film about The History of Everything.  He chose 
to tell the story of World War II from the point of view of the ordinary 
soldier, as opposed to the perspective we always get, that of the generals 
and the politicians.  In that characteristic it's a bit like Howard Zinn's 
"The People's History of the United States", though of course less 
detailed.  Since the ordinary soldier has only a limited perspective, 
rather than an overview of all the events taking place simultaneously, 
that's the perspective we got in the film.  "I was there at Normandy, at 
Anzio, at Iwo Jima, at the Battle of the Bulge; this is what happened to 
me; here's what it felt like."  The hope is that a composite view of 
hundreds of ordinary soldiers will give us some sense of what World War II 
felt like for those, now dying rapidly, who experienced the horror up close 
and personal.

While we don't get the total historical background - that Allied policies 
following German's defeat in World War I led inexorably to the rise of the 
Nazis, etc., etc. - I think it would be the rare viewer who emerges from 
the documentary thinking that War Is a Good Thing.  It would be nice, 
perhaps, if those infantry soldiers could, while recounting the horrors of 
the Bataan Death March, give us at the same time a succinct lecture on the 
Rise of Japanese Hegemony Caused by America's 'Discovery' of China in the 
mid-19th Century.  But that's another documentary for another day.

Yeah, we do get a certain sense from Burns' film that World War II - given 
the unexplained confluence of myriad historical events that led up to that 
"day that shall live in infamy", granted - was a War That Had to Be Fought, 
relatively speaking.  But we still know, at the end of the film, that War 
Is a Bad Thing, to be avoided at all costs if possible.


>As a side note, it appears to be a characteristic of Americans to take
>things out of setting or context and treat them in isolation as
>atomistically as possible, ignoring the interconnected and interrelated
>aspects within the general context historic or otherwise.

It may be a characteristic of Americans, but it also seems to be a function 
of being human - the quality of existential aloneness.  What did I do 
earlier this evening, Laurie, and how is that going to affect your life in 
the weeks and months to come?


>Our esteem for
>immediate gratification is only trumped by our lack of historic perspective
>and acknowledgement of interdependence.  We also have a propensity to reify
>what typically are abstract typifications and treat those typifications as
>concrete factual objects and events.  Thus history becomes an ahistoric and
>acultural series of finite events rather than an infinite continuum of
>ongoing processes and phenomena.

Or else it becomes an infinite continuum of ongoing processes and phenomena 
which are interpreted in radically different ways by different people, as 
different aspects of the continuum are emphasized or de-emphasized by said 
individuals.  The five blind men and the elephant come to mind.


>In part, this may stem from the positivist
>philosophy that underlies the scientific method and enterprise which the
>Western world has totally embraced and popularized as well as the Western
>world's (as exemplified by the US) focus on empirical science and practical
>engineering and away from theoretical science and analytical interests.

So I guess that five Chinese historians, say, would all interpret, say, the 
Cultural Revolution in precisely the same way?  Or am I missing something?

John Wason



> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-
> > bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of C. G. Estabrook
> > Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 3:51 PM
> > To: Peace-discuss
> > Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] "The War" by Ken Burns
> >
> > It was generally asserted that irony was over after 9-11, but John it
> > seems didn't get the memo.
> >
> > He also apparently chooses to ignore the strong implication of both
> > novels, that the situation that causes the protagonist's suffering
> > arose
> > from a failure of historical and political analysis.  Each is a strong
> > if futile plea that that not happen again.
> >
> > However tacit, Trumbo's political lesson was so clear that the book was
> > removed from publication, probably by Trumbo himself (an anarchist who
> > joined the US Communist Party during WWII), on the eve of US entry into
> > the war.  (The CPUSA went from a pacifist to a pro-war position in the
> > summer of 1941, with the German attack on the Soviet Union.)  A few
> > years earlier Remarque had had his German citizenship revoked because
> > of
> > the political implications of his books.
> >
> > Burns' apparently apolitical approach is of course thoroughly
> > political.
> >
> > As Mark Twain pointed out, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does
> > rhyme.  --CGE
> >
> >
> > John W. wrote:
> > >
> > > I've just recently read two anti-war novels written many years ago:
> > > Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, and All Quiet on the Western
> > Front
> > > by Erich Remarque.  They too are failures, unfortunately, because
> > they
> > > also don't delve deeply into exquisitely detailed historical and
> > > political analysis, but merely present the human effect of war.  It's
> > > appalling, really, that so many authors and filmmakers don't
> > recognize
> > > the obvious necessity of proper, correct political analysis.
> > >
> > > John Wason
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > At 01:45 PM 10/5/2007, you wrote:
> > >
> > >> [Burns' account of WWII appears to bear as much relation to the
> > facts
> > >> as TV sitcoms usually do to family life.  Here's a typical critique.
> > >> For a partial corrective, see
> > >> <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/196709--.htm>  "On the Backgrounds
> > >> of the Pacific War: The Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste."  --
> > CGE]
> > >>
> > >>         Critique, "The War" by Ken Burns
> > >>
> > >> Don't know how many readers here spent 14 hours over the past couple
> > >> of weeks watching the PBS documentary on World War II by Ken Burns.
> > I
> > >> think I have now seen it all -- given our local TV's rebroadcasts, I
> > >> think I have pieced in the parts I missed initially.  I expected so
> > >> much more, and I feel deeply disappointed.
> > >>
> > >> I have three big objections.  The First is the decision before the
> > >> documentary was really made to avoid or eliminate any discussion of
> > >> both politics, political leadership, and strategy and the makers of
> > >> strategy which would be the military leadership.  For the most part
> > >> the documentary managed this, which contributes to it's failure.
> > >> Without a political framework virtually none of the combat makes all
> > >> that much sense.  For it is persons in power through political means
> > >> that have the ability to attack this today, and something else
> > >> tomorrow -- and there is no way to comprehend a war without the
> > >> element of who was in power, and who had the political means to
> > direct
> > >> combat.  Ken Burns lost this one before he began if he made that
> > >> decision early on.  (Does one think one eventually will be able to
> > do
> > >> the History of the Iraq war without really comprehending the nature
> > of
> > >> the Bush Administration?)
> > >>
> > >> This Documentary was advertised as about the impact of the War on
> > >> various local communities -- Luverne Minnesota, Waterbury Conn.
> > >> Sacramento Calif, and Mobile Alabama.  What did we really learn
> > about
> > >> these communities?  Well, they all were letter writers, and they
> > >> followed the news and they collected scrap metal -- but we learned
> > >> little else.  Minnesota Public Radio talked with some of the Luverne
> > >> Witnesses, and they were disappointed that Burns had not included
> > >> their community canning operation.  They actually replaced
> > commercial
> > >> canned commodities with their efforts.  Corn, Beans, Beets, Peas,
> > >> Tomatoes, Potatoes, Carrots, -- they canned it all, and exchanged
> > with
> > >> other communities who could do peaches and cherries further south,
> > and
> > >> they were proud of this accomplishment.  It got left out.  If the
> > >> Documentary was to be about the Home Front -- this was a huge part
> > of
> > >> it, and they apparently are upset that it was dropped from the film.
> > >>
> > >> Third, in line with the promise that the Documentary was to be about
> > >> the home front, I expected it to include much more about
> > sociological
> > >> change.  The Documentary went out of it's way to avoid this.  Part
> > of
> > >> this is the timeline used in the film.  The Period for the war
> > begins
> > >> with Surprise Pearl Harbor, and ends with the surrender of Japan,
> > the
> > >> implications of change did not become apparent in this timeline. Not
> > >> only does this avoid all the politics, and the process by which
> > >> Americans moved toward war from let's say their position at the time
> > >> of the fall of France in June, 1940, or the Nazi Attack on the
> > Soviet
> > >> Union in June, 1941, to the position of probable support (by 66%)
> > for
> > >> war in October, 1941, (last poll before Pearl Harbor), it totally
> > >> avoids discussion of the dynamics of that change.
> > >>
> > >> Otherwise, I object to Ken Burns periodization.  For the vast
> > majority
> > >> of the combatents and the victims, the war began in 1939 -- but
> > Burns
> > >> sticks with the American Timeline that begins Dec. 7, 1941.  I
> > object
> > >> to his failure to comprehend that American Generals such as George
> > >> Marshall were convinced that there would be another World War as
> > early
> > >> as about 1923, because the conclusion of World War One had been so
> > >> flawed, and they saw the seeds of the next one in the failure of
> > peace
> > >> making in the wake of the first.  Burns decision not to insert the
> > >> positions of politicians and Generals into the mix because it was
> > >> politics or strategy means that those watching his documentary are
> > >> denied both what they knew and anticipated.
> > >>
> > >> Likewise, Burns ended his work at least with reference to Europe
> > with
> > >> the surrender, and then a short shot of Potsdam.  Marshall's
> > doctrine
> > >> was that wars were about politics, and that the conclusion of a war
> > >> was about finding a means for fixing the politics. on your terms.
> > that
> > >> had caused the war.  If you failed at that, forget the glory of your
> > >> combat victory.  In my mind this is the only principle that applies
> > to
> > >> Iraq even at a distance.  By not dealing with Occupation, and the
> > >> aftermath, Burns essentially blanks out the possibility of drawing a
> > >> useful comparison.
> > >>
> > >> But what really bothers me is the Burns Trademark on this totally
> > >> inadequate film.  I know all too well that these days, High School
> > >> Teachers do not really teach the Civil War -- they give the kids
> > hours
> > >> of Burns films on that subject.  I fear that will happen with this
> > >> latest effort.  And this latest effort is profoundly off key.
> > >>
> > >> <http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/10/critique-> 
> the-wa.html>