Ken Burns' American Revolution

 

     With The American Revolution everyone’s favorite documentary maker Ken Burns (aided by co-directors Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt) has done it again.  The series is entertaining and enlightening, using judiciously researched words, often from correspondence, and a wide variety of images to relate the story of this country’s struggle for independence.  The sound track is too often cloyingly nostalgic or elegiac (as it was in The Civil War) and might have used more eighteenth century tunes, and the visuals suffer from the fact that photography was yet in  the future, leading to the frequent repetition of certain portraits (such as Benedict Arnold’s) as well as an overuse of maps (though they are informative in reporting of battles).  In spite of such quibbles, the programs remain eminently watchable for their entire twelve hours. 

     And even the reasonably well-read non-historian will learn a few things.  Though every school child knows of loyalists, the traditional nationalist story of our origins is slow to admit to what an extent the Revolution was a civil war.  This has led to a vague but satisfying notion that the fight was us against them and to the suppression of incidents of vigilante action like the sadistic treatment of customs official John Malcolm who in 1774 was twice tarred and feathered.

     The most significant revelation was perhaps the fact that both enslaved Africans and native peoples had reason to expect better treatment from the British than from the colonists, leading some members of these groups to choose to fight on the side of George III.  For their own strategic reasons, even before the Americans had risen in arms, Britain had sought to minimize conflict with the indigenous tribes by forbidding settlers to cross the Appalachians.  On the other hand many Americans had significant interest in westward expansion, some in order to gain land of their own and some, who had been in a position to secure a claim to western lands, to realize huge profits.  George Washington was a leading example of this second group. 

     While the Southern colonies blocked early abolitionist attempts in the Constitutional Convention, and the issue was divisive even in the North, the British army offered freedom to enslaved persons who escaped to their lines and enlisted in their cause and a good many accepted the opportunity.  Both Indians and African-Americans pursued their own interests, just as colonists and English were doing, though both non-white groups were to suffer long past this country’s founding; indeed, neither has achieved equality yet today. 

     Further, Burns makes it clear that the rebels might never had won the war had it not been for the support of France and, to a far lesser extent, Spain.  Not because they supported the ideals of the revolution, but purely due to their centuries-old rivalry with Great Britain, these European powers played a significant role in convincing the English Parliament that they should settle this dispute in order to deploy their forces elsewhere to defend their expanding empire.   

     Some of our patriotic clichés survive.  The fact is that the American Revolution was the first major rejection of monarchy and feudalism, though the British king had lost significant authority in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  In spite of baronial Southern planters, much of America’s leadership was in the hands of middle-class tradesmen -- a silversmith, a brewer, a printer.  As long as land remained available, if one does not consider the fate of its aboriginal inhabitants, a new arrival who had nothing in Europe might become a property holder here and, before long, could aspire to gentility.  Eliminating birthright aristocrats may have made America seem crude and vulgar to some two hundred and some years ago, but it was a step forward in human rights.

     The viewer gets a lively sense of the significance of George Washington’s contribution.  His demeanor alone impressed everyone as noble and dignified, encouraging all to defer to him.  His giving up first the supreme military authority and then the presidency, though it was only to return to trying to amass a greater fortune through business dealings, was rare and praiseworthy among revolutionary leaders. 

     And the rebellion of people, most of whom were in more or less adequate circumstances but who were inspired by a call to liberty indicates what power the concept had in those days when it was so exciting and new.  Ken Burns’ The American Revolution seems timely indeed at a time when many Americans seem to be turning toward authoritarianism and it is necessary once more to raise the banner militantly declaring that in America we want no kings.

Burns' and Lovick's Vietnam

     PBS has cut me off. After I watched three episodes of the Vietnam documentary Ken Burns made with Lynn Novick, the online site of this “non-commercial” institution demanded payment to see another. It was one of the rare times, less often I think than once a year, that I am prevented from seeing something by lacking television through broadcast, cable, or satellite. I saw, nonetheless, enough to make a few observations.
     This production is significant because Mr. Burns’ reputation guarantees that this version will be definitive for a generation. Youth to whom the experience of the war is remote will shape their ideas through this single retelling. And the Burns production machine does not disappoint its fans. The film, long as it is, is immensely watchable. Research assistants have combed the archives for apposite pictures and films so that even events that could not have been photographed are illustrated in what seem to be relevant images. Talking heads give the viewer what passes a reasonable facsimile of all perspectives, though I would have preferred to have seen a larger number of people interviewed and fewer repetitions of the same personalities. The editing is brisk and smooth, and the product is easily digestible, too easily for my taste.
     One of the axioms of the sixties movement was that objectivity was an illusion, that all works inevitably have a point of view, just as their makers do, and that the story-teller who adopts a pose of impartiality is deceiving either self or consumers. A responsible documentary maker will do better to acknowledge rather than deny bias, so that watchers may allow for it. Those who claim to show both sides equally inevitably have a hidden agenda, virtually always in defense of the status quo.
     In the years since the war opinion has shifted to such an extent that no one now defends the failed American involvement as justifiable. Anti-war protestors are now acknowledged to have been correct in their analysis of the uprising as a nationalist struggle while the USA played the unattractive and ultimately untenable role of attempting to prolong colonial rule. An apologist for the war effort today to have even a semblance of credibility must substitute indirect and emotional arguments for historical facts.
     It is only by ignoring America’s imperialist motives that the filmmakers can claim that the war was “begun in good faith” and “went wrong” in some mysterious way for which no one can be blamed. The documentary is careful to claim atrocities by popular revolutionary forces in order to give the illusion of balancing the clearly tyrannical rule of the Vietnamese collaborators like Thieu and Ky. Though it can pass for even-handedness to the casual observer, this treatment in fact obscures the very real difference between the patriots who fought to rid their country of foreign invaders and the front men for neo-colonialism.
     It is precisely Burns’ and Lovick’s skill at capturing the audience by presenting engaging little narratives that allows them to ignore the larger facts of the conflict. The sound track features folk-style popular music from the era to illustrate the soldiers as well as the protestors, providing a general liberal-seeming wash over the entire picture. The popular country and Motown tunes of the day are absent, and one would never guess how marginal the position of dissenters remained until 1969 or 1970.
     Through the first three episodes the series follows a single exemplary soldier, clearly one destined to be killed in combat, a certain “Mogy” Crockett whose family is so atypical that he has not only a cute and comic nickname – his ever-so-well-put-together mother tells us she inspired his patriotism by reading him Shakespeare’s Henry V as a bedtime story. “Mogy” is a highly motivated Cold Warrior, educated and gung-ho about killing Communists. Would it not have been preferable to have focused on some more typical draftee, indifferent about the war but accepting of the draft? The narrative of the documentary as it stands implies that the war was fought by sincere but mistaken enthusiasts. Even a Special Forces veteran to whom I spoke recently said that a week in country was enough to convince him the war effort was profoundly misguided and headed for defeat.
     Similarly, the politicians are generally depicted as reluctant prosecutors of war policy, always feeling forced to widen and apologize for the war while at the same time keeping many aspects of it secret from the public. Of course it is necessary to understand the motives of the ruling class during this period, but the film’s account would suggest that American leaders were victims of circumstance, blundering perhaps, but trying to do the right thing, when they were in fact mercilessly seeking to impose American control over a small and distant land.
     Further, the filmmakers portray Ho as the steady and benevolent “uncle” of his own mythology while blaming Le Duan for the harsher Stalinist aspects of North Vietnamese policy as though history relies in the end on personalities.
     Burns and Lovick shrink from calling Vietnam an imperialist war which is the only accurate term. It was fought to maintain American control over what had been a French colony. The government’s own deceit is evident in clips of John Kennedy’s usually smooth rhetorical flow turning bumbling and unsure as he tries to claim that we are not simply replacing one colonial system with another. But that was precisely the plan. The USA became committed to defeating the Vietnamese shortly after killing Lumumba and overthrowing Arbenz and Mossadegh; it then supported right-wing dictatorships around the world which suppressed all civil protest, leading to the rise of armed insurrectionary movements on every continent.
     Perhaps seeing the remaining seven episodes would alter my view of the series. I doubt it. An honestly engagé account of the war would have far more integrity than this sentimental picture in which everyone seems to be morally equivalent, all doing their best as violence and untold suffering unaccountably mounts as though Americans and Vietnamese alike were stalked by some mysterious and pernicious Nemesis. That view may even in the twenty-first century be more acceptable to Americans than the reality of leaders set on American hegemony over a smaller, weaker nation and an army of dupes, forced into harm’s way by Congressmen whose own sons had better things to do than slog through Southeast Asian jungles.