Jorge Mariscal: Fire Ken Burns!

From Scripps Howard News Service:

PBS and Ken Burns still don't get it.

After months of negotiations with Latino advocacy groups, academics, veterans and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the powers that be at PBS and their house director, Ken Burns, fail to understand the real issues at stake in his exclusion of the Latino experience in his World War II documentary "The War."

In an article published May 5 in The New York Times, Burns continued to make self-aggrandizing and ignorant statements.

According to the Times, Burns called his 14-hour series, scheduled to be shown during Hispanic Heritage Month in September, "a sort of epic poem and not a textbook."

He must be kidding. Several weeks ago, Burns compared his film to the U.S. Constitution. Now he says it's sort of an epic poem.

If he knew anything about epic poems, he would know that they were composed with the goal of representing an entire community's historical experience. They had nothing to do with an individual artist's personal vision. The singer of the Iliad or the Poem of the Cid was simply a vehicle for a shared collective experience.

Clearly, Burns is not interested in any of these things. He has his individual "vision," which cannot be tampered with. He is a self-righteous romantic who has no business and not enough knowledge to chronicle an event as momentous as World War II.

No one in the group that raised questions about the film asked Burns to turn it into "a textbook." Let him be as lyrical and non-narrative as he wishes. No one wants to deprive him of his artistic freedom. But he has no right to invent a history of the war that excludes a community that paid a very high price for its participation.

The Times article stated: "Mr. Burns, who was not at the meeting (between PBS executives and Hispanic leaders), said he found it painful that the controversy was erupting over a film in which he explores an episode of American history that brought citizens together."

Burns is pained by the controversy. Then why doesn't he stop his pain by doing the right thing? Is his "vision" more important than an inclusive account of the war? It was his flawed "vision" and sloppy research (not those who raised legitimate questions) that created divisions.

While it is certainly true that World War II brought the American people together, Burns needs to go back to school to learn about events like the Zoot Suit Riots and the Felix Longoria case. World War II was not as utopian for some communities as Burns thinks it was. He didn't do his homework.

Burns should either fire his researchers or fire himself. As long as PBS continues to take money from the public treasury, it should fire all of them.