Ken Burns
Last night’s performance, if that’s the word, by filmmaker Ken Burns at the Equinox Resort in an appearance sponsored by the Northshire Bookstore certainly lived up to its billing. Burns, as everyone must know by now, is the main force behind the new PBS series on World War II — “The War” — that captured millions of viewers during its run in September. It’s a worthy follow up to his earlier productions — his 1990 “The Civil War” being perhaps the most notable, but his other pieces on jazz, baseball, Thomas Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark expedition, among others, were equally excellent — and it’s good news that another series on National Parks is already well into production.
Burn’s influence on the genre of historical documentaries is so vast people are already using the term “the Burns effect” - the slow panning of an old photograph to create the illusion of a movie when dealing with a subject that predates movies. That’s called impact.
Live, in person, Burns is an animated, articulated speaker clearly passionately involved with his subjects. He spoke with great feeling about the making of the World War II piece, and how deeply it affected him. Stirring the long-suppressed and often painful memories of veterans of often harsh combat requires a deft touch and extreme sensitivity, which Burns carried off with the right mix of sensitivity and respect while bringing forward often uncomfortable truths. What I found among the most thought provoking bits of his discussion was the degradation of the teaching of not only this, but other history, to the younger generation of Americans currently in schools. That’s a critique that could have been leveled 10, 20 or 30 - probably 100 years ago. It’s one I’m sensitive to as a former history teacher in my short-lived career in education. I loved the subject in school, so it’s often hard for me to understand why everyone else doesn’t as well. The movement of great historical forces, political personalities, warfare, and later on, economics, is all just fascinating.
And yet Burns cited as one of his primary motivating influences behind the making of “The War” an alarming sense that recent high school graduates were even more historically illiterate than they used to be. Many don’t even know who our Allies were, much less some of the micro-details about the conflict and how it influenced the next 40 plus years through the end of the Cold War. It’s influence, of course, is still being felt today.
Burns attributes the decline of student interest to a move away from story narrative as a basis for interesting kids in the study of history — it’s become too dry and academic, one is left to suppose — a surprising outcome given the emphasis on all kinds of social histories - gender, race, class, etc. that emphasize the role of the common person. Another problem is that Americans seem to have a built-in bias against history - if we worry too much about the past, we miss what’s coming next. I don’t know if we’re any different from other cultures in this regard — undoubtedly some revere and place more emphasis on understanding their national or cultural past than we do.
Many others have bemoaned this lack of interest in things of the past — “that’s history” goes the common refrain — and there’s no point in me belaboring it again. The idea of narrative being supplanted makes some sense to me, but more significant is that lack of interest in both past history and present history in the typical American home. When was the last time you and your family sat around and discussed anything historical — from something involving popular culture or politics? And the other piece is a passionate teacher. A talented passionate teacher is a prerequisite to instilling interest in their students — too many times, it seems, that’s not there. There may be a lot of reasons for that, not all of them the fault of the classroom teacher, who has a very tough job.
All in all, an enjoyable night. What did the rest of you think?