Reply #6: I have a love/hate relationship with Burns ...

[RoyGBiv]

I give him credit for inspiring popular interest in various historical subjects and at the very least suggesting why it is important that we understand these things. His current project on National Parks is a good example. It is important that the public know the origins of how these parks came to be and the struggles they faced.

Similarly, I like the fact his Civil War production placed so much focus on the plight of the enslaved and formerly enslaved. His series is probably more responsible for the popular mind even being aware that blacks actually fought in that war than any other individual. Even in the historical establishment -- or perhaps I should say especially in the establishment -- the focus was on the institution of slavery itself rather than the individuals affected by it. The story of slavery has been told in many forms, but mostly it boils down to studying now dead white men and whether they were oppressors or the agents of freedom. Ken Burns' documentary did more to establish that the enslaved established their own agency and fought for their own freedom. He didn't get into the detail, of course, but he lit a spark that allowed those note steeped in the minutia to begin to understand these things.

But one can rightly question the kind of understanding he offers. A lot of it is hokey. It's too narrow in many ways, creating false impressions. Some of it is flatly wrong. Again with the Civil War series, he entrenched the incorrect idea that Shelby Foote is a historian, a notion that Foote himself denied. Foote was a story-teller, and a good one. He gets a lot of things right, but he gets a lot of things wrong as well. He too can provide false impressions. Indeed, I think many direct analogies can be drawn between Foote's Civil War series and that of Ken Burns.