I haven’t seen Jazz either, nor am I anything more than a happily ignorant consumer of the music, so I can’t make much of a judgment there. Still, it makes me think of the essay I just read in Air Guitar about Chet Baker. Basically Dave Hickey talks about Baker’s life, etc, and how he was critically maligned by the mainstream press for being a drug-user and blowing a promising young career as a crooner, and by most professional Jazz Critics for essentially honing his style of standards rather than venturing into new territory. It’s hard to serve either master, and I’m skeptical of the meaning of latter-day jazz.
My sense from the critique of the War you link to is that it seems overtly politicized (e.g. “Latinos are excluded from the story,” as if this were an intentional discriminatory choice; and the implication that Burn’s film features only White Males, which isn’t true).
The lack of comprehensive perspective is something he speaks to in the interview both from a formal aspect — they were pursuing local communities, specifically those with good archival records — and from a higher level, in that it’s impossible and in many ways undesirable to attempt to “get everything” in any single work. Any honest global accounting of WWII would be more about Russia than us, etc.
It seems clear to me that Ken Burns doesn’t attempt to deliberately confront or create change around issue or race or class — there’s no activist agenda — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. His stuff is very Main Street, Mom, and Apple Pie, true, but on the other hand radical polemics generally make bad histories (e.g. Howard Zinn) and worse documentaries.
Finally, from what I know of his work and process, I don’t think he’s the kind of documentarian who assembles (forces) the pieces to fit his/her own idea (e.g. Dig!), but, rather more like Errol Morris, is willing to let the human subject(s) guide the story.
Hmmm...
I haven’t seen Jazz either, nor am I anything more than a happily ignorant consumer of the music, so I can’t make much of a judgment there. Still, it makes me think of the essay I just read in Air Guitar about Chet Baker. Basically Dave Hickey talks about Baker’s life, etc, and how he was critically maligned by the mainstream press for being a drug-user and blowing a promising young career as a crooner, and by most professional Jazz Critics for essentially honing his style of standards rather than venturing into new territory. It’s hard to serve either master, and I’m skeptical of the meaning of latter-day jazz.
My sense from the critique of the War you link to is that it seems overtly politicized (e.g. “Latinos are excluded from the story,” as if this were an intentional discriminatory choice; and the implication that Burn’s film features only White Males, which isn’t true).
The lack of comprehensive perspective is something he speaks to in the interview both from a formal aspect — they were pursuing local communities, specifically those with good archival records — and from a higher level, in that it’s impossible and in many ways undesirable to attempt to “get everything” in any single work. Any honest global accounting of WWII would be more about Russia than us, etc.
It seems clear to me that Ken Burns doesn’t attempt to deliberately confront or create change around issue or race or class — there’s no activist agenda — but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. His stuff is very Main Street, Mom, and Apple Pie, true, but on the other hand radical polemics generally make bad histories (e.g. Howard Zinn) and worse documentaries.
Finally, from what I know of his work and process, I don’t think he’s the kind of documentarian who assembles (forces) the pieces to fit his/her own idea (e.g. Dig!), but, rather more like Errol Morris, is willing to let the human subject(s) guide the story.