I want to begin by saying that I was amazed at the quality and sheer quantity of footage and photos Ken Burns managed to find for his The War. I could definitely see myself using the photos and footage he found to supplement future lessons on WWII. However, it is also clear that there was an intent to the “FUBAR” episode we watched. I found myself asking, “What is the goal of the film?” “What is he [Burns] trying to achieve?” According to an interview in “Echoes of War“, Lynn Novick says that they wanted viewers to be able to “gain an understanding of what war really is.” I think this video does achieve this. It shows the reality of how unpredictable war is. However, it shows more than that. It also portrays a very specific message about soldiers and leaders of war.
It portrays soldiers as the real heroes. It emphasizes their sacrifice, while also emphasizing the incompetancy of the leaders. It portrays the leaders as unaware of the reality of what the soldiers were actually facing (either unaware or ambivalent). They show how soldiers weren’t valued as they should have been, but seen as expendable. Burns achieves this “heroization” of the soldier by portraying thema s the all American – your dad, brother, friend, neighbor. They built up the back story (sometimes interviewing people who knew the soldier) before emphasizing the horror of what the soldier faced, how he suffered, and sacrifices he (and his family) made.
I also happened to watch The Longest Day (aptly named since it is a 3 hour film) this weekend, which tells about Normandy from the Allied and Axis perspectives. This provided an interesting contrast, because this film portrayed the Allied leaders in a positive light. However, The Longest Day portrayed the German leaders in a similar way that Burns portrayed American military leaders. Like Burns did with Americans, this film portrayed Axis leaders as incompetent, unaware of the actual reality of the soldiers on the field, and unwilling to give the supplies necessary for the soldiers to be successful. Also, Burns and The Longest Day were consistent in showing how the soldiers were viewed as expendable. It is interesting that about thirty years later, Burns would shift the view and portray American military leaders as Nazi military leaders had been portrayed previously. So, it makes me wonder…was this the initial intention of the film? Did Ken Burns set out to make a film that portrayed soldiers and their leaders in a certain way or is this where his findings led him?
It would seem like on some level it had be a conscious decision because of what he left out of The War. In an interview in “We Live in a Digital World,” Burns says that they had “hundreds of hours of interviews, hundreds of hundreds of hours of still photographs and thousands of hours of footage.” So how did he choose to include what he did and exclude the rest? He didn’t talk about successful military campaigns – only ones that were admittedly mishandled. Thus leading viewers to assume that this was the norm. He also portrays the American soldiers as heroic because it is easy to see the Germans and Japanese as the obvious bad guys. So, the film talks about American casualties, but never mentions the Japanese or German casualties. It is also interesting that he makes a point to include the stories of a Japanese American soldier and an African American soldier, portraying them as no different than any other soldier. Yet, he doesn’t mentions that Japanese Americans were being sent to internments in the U.S. – so why wasn’t this covered as part of the back story? He never discussed the fact that the U.S. had segregated armed forces at this time. So, more than likely, this African American soldiers wouldn’t have served along side the other soldiers that risked their lives.
Would this have changed the message of the film? I don’t know. However, it is also clear that Ken Burns doesn’t present all the details. Does this make it any less useful? Does this make it a less adequate picture of what war is about? Does this affect its usefulness as a tool of public history? How about in the classroom? I don’t know think because the film becomes not useful in the classroom simply because it doesn’t show all the details. It simply means the teacher has a responsibility to help her students see these limits in the film ( and hopefully identify these shortcomings in all sources).