World War Too
Because this medium was made for liveblogging PBS miniseries. Not that I’ll be making a habit of it.
The Civil War was an achievement because Burns found new ways to make video history of a time before archival footage existed, also a time with no living survivors to interview. Burns and The Civil War have their critics, but the series was a great achievement. I’ve now seen about two hours of evidence that Burns has nothing to add to the much more worked genre of WWII documentaries. We’ve seen decades of battle documentaries, years of social-history documentaries, hours upon hours of archival footage and endless lines of interviews with, well, old people. All Burns gives us is some more of it all.
Worse than being nothing new, it’s even bad art, worse than your bog-standard Hitler Channel special. The social history is tepid and even timid. Burns references racism and gender roles, and alludes to the savagery of the Pacific theater, but without much power. Minutes on segregated units; minutes on the internment of Japanese-Americans; now some material on Mexican-American participation in Carlson’s Raiders. But Burns is committed enough to Greatest-Generation hagiography that the social history lacks force. Since there’s no screen time given to Japanese veterans, long after such interviews and footage became standard, and there’s only the mildest and most Whiggish treatment of America’s internal fault lines, it lacks not just comprehensiveness but conflict. The engine of The Civil War was the tacit back and forth between Shelby Foote and Barbara J. Fields – white vs. black; War Between the States vs. Died to Make Men Free. There was the extensive focus on black soldiers on the Union side, till then uncovered in semi-popular media. The Civil War was not “balanced.” The film didn’t pretend to find Southern apologias for secession compelling. But it embraced the Southern perspective as an American one, a tragic vision that propelled the film through its nine hours of Matthew Brady pans and maps and celebrity voiceovers. The War has nothing similarly compelling.
I won’t feel like I’m missing anything tomorrow night when I switch on the season premiere of Heroes instead. The one compelling interview, ironically, was with one of the Latino vets in the last arc of tonight’s episode. Almost certainly this was some of the material added at the last minute after protests by Latino activists.
Comment by Nicholas Beaudrot —
September 24, 2007 @ 12:21 am
Yet, Baseball and Rock & Roll received relatively decent reviews. Why is The War so much worse? Because the topic is much more covered than even baseball?
Comment by bad Jim —
September 24, 2007 @ 5:13 am
It did remind us of “dugout Doug” and the Bataan death march. It may not note that the Germans who surrendered at Stalingrad met much the same fate. War is shit.
Comment by Hesiod —
September 24, 2007 @ 7:53 am
Jim hit the nail on the head. Last night on the History Channel, I watched a documentary about General Jodl, the Chgief of the German Staff at the end of WWII.
It was far more interesting and compelling than Burns’ effort. The biggest reason was that it interviewed former Jr. members of Hitler’s and Jodl’s satff!
It also presented Jodl as a man who often stood up to Hitler and told him his military plans were “crazy.” In fact, he counseled that the Germans should surrender after the D-Day invasion. But, Jodl still believed in the opbjectives of the war and condemned those who tried to assasinate Hitler as traitors.
I agree that the biggest probelm with “The War” was the choice not to feature Japanese veterans — at least in the first part, which primarily focuses on the Pacific theater. Ironically, and perhaps unintentionally, he dehumanizes the Japanese.
I do think, though, that there is a set up for something later on. I think Burns’ big reveal will be about US atrocities committed during the course of the war. Especially against the Japanese. And he wants to set the Japanese up as “evil,” so that when he does pull that out of his bag, it is less controversial.
There is already some of that justification going on with the story about how the Japanese on Guadalcanal tortured US commandoes. The response of the commander was to allow friends of those tortured and kill to take the few Japanese prisoners they had in tehir custody out into the jungle and “take care of them.”
I also sense Burns is trying to show how the coverage of that war was different from the standpoint of the press than more recent wars. Casualty figures were withheld from the public. Atrocities were covered up.
The number of ships sunk were covered up. Etc.
I’m not sure what point he’s making, except that maybe the impossibility of having thatmuch relative unity about a war ever again. WWII was sui generis, and it was unique.
Comment by Hesiod —
September 24, 2007 @ 7:58 am
I think Burns also had to wrestle with the sheer enormity of the material available. So, he filtered it through the lense of four US communities.
I think that was a mistake. I also see the absence of any WWII historians as a weakness. He may have thought it was unnecessary given the amount of footage and living witnesses. But, the whole enterprise lacks historical perspective.
I am also wondering whether Burns will cover dissent? How about isolationists on the Congress?
Comment by matthew hogan —
September 24, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
Lawrence Olivier narrating the World At War (aka how the British won WWII with help from Americans and Russians) is the standard to beat.
Comment by fnook —
September 24, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
Fair points all around, and lord knows I’m sick to death of Tom Hanks going on and on stating the obvious about the glory of WWII vets (my grandpa was a POW for over 2 years and never really recovered). But…but the documentary footage is mesmerizing, and it’s a good second choice to the season premiere of Heroes, which my wife won’t let me watch since we haven’t seen the final episode of last season.