An exchange of a couple e-mails today with a friend of mine led to the light bulb of “why” going off in my head.
To me, by just talking about the U.S. in World War II in any depth, and especially not talking about the Soviet contribution, is of a piece with the degree of American exceptionalism Burns has in many of his other documentaries.
Look at “The Civil War,” for example. Burns went fairly light on the racial foundation of secession; one of his primary interlocutors was Shelby Foote, who was considered by some historical critics to almost approach Douglas Southall Freeman-lite status on interpretation of — or defense of — Southern attitudes during the Civil War. Of course, Burns did not have anything about Reconstruction as part of his epic; when he finally did get to it, it was just a two-hour “American Experience” show on PBS, almost as if Burns had finally succumbed to pressure.
Sidebar: For more on Foote’s attitude to the Confederacy, see this interview from the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour of his opinion of South Carolina flying the Confederate flag. I quote:
The flag is a symbol my great grandfather fought under and in defense of. I am for flying it anywhere anybody wants to fly it. I do know perfectly well what pain it causes my black friends, but I think that pain is not necessary if they would read the confederate constitution and knew what the confederacy really stood for. This country has two grievous sins on its hands. One of them is slavery - whether we'll ever be cured of it, I don't know. The other one is emancipation - they told 4 million people, you're free, hit the road, and they drifted back into a form of peonage that in some ways is worse than slavery.
So, you have Foote saying, in essence, the Confederacy really wasn’t all that bad. Foote later accuses flag-criticizers of “hiding from history.” On emancipation, he nowhere mentions either southern resistance to it, via the Klan founded by Foote’s Civil War hero, Nathan Bedford Forrest, or southern co-option of it via “Redeemer” governments.
When I first watched “The Civil War” I was more conservative than now, and while I had read some of Foote’s history, I hadn’t heard background comments by him, or analysis of him. As I grew more progressive, and added that up with Burns’ initial failure to tackle Reconstruction, that’s when Burns really started going downhill in my estimation.
My friend said he thought Burns was showing the ugliness of war enough that his wife thought Shrub, our beloved George W. Bush, ought to be tied down and forced to watch.
I replied that I thought Burns was painting WWII battlefield mayhem more in the light of tragedy than ugliness.
Beyond that, if Uncle Walter Cronkite voicing over same-week, if not same-day, Vietnam fighting on the CBS Evening News, rather than six-decade-old newsreel action, isn’t enough (and wasn’t enough for draft-dodging Shrub) to see the ugliness of war, nothing is.
Especially given the attitude of much of the GOP, beyond Shrub himself, toward war, I said I found Burns’ indulgence of American exceptionalism potentially dangerous.
To put it more kindly, if you want “The Greatest Generation” on emotional steroids, “The War” is good, even great. If you want an educational documentary about the full scope of World War II and its place in world history, “The War” gets a B-minus at best. Now, if you want a “Greatest Generation” take, that’s fine. But I was hoping, against hope, for something more. (And please don’t tell me Burns couldn’t do more within his time constraints.)
Doorknob help us if Burns decides to do a documentary on the Gulf War (or the Mexican War, dipping back into history).
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