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

[John W.]

At 03:50 PM 10/7/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>It was generally asserted that irony was over after 9-11, but John it 
>seems didn't get the memo.

The memo I received, and discarded, was the one that said that common sense 
has no place in a post-911 world.


>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.

Yeah, I did miss that.  Didn't CHOOSE to miss it, just missed it.


>Each is a strong if futile plea that that not happen again.

I DID get that part.  Not sure how.  Amazing how that works.


>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.

Depends on which lesson you're talking about.  Anti-war books were not 
terribly popular on the eve of World War II.  I'm not sure their 
unpopularity had a great deal to do, directly, with the "failure of 
historical and political analysis", unless you're talking about the 
universal failure which dogs us in all places at all times, present company 
excluded.  People who failed to serve in W.W.II sometimes got yellow 
stripes painted around their houses.


>(The CPUSA went from a pacifist to a pro-war position in the summer of 
>1941, with the German attack on the Soviet Union.)

Another failure of proper historical and political analysis, 
apparently.  Or am I missing something?


>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.

In the broadest possible definition of the term, yes.  Everything is political.


>As Mark Twain pointed out, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does 
>rhyme.  --CGE

Very much like Burns' film, Twain's remark substitutes pithiness and an 
appeal to the common sensibility for any sort of deep, detailed contextual 
analysis.  But it has its place in the discourse, apparently.

John Wason



>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> 
>>>