A RICH AND RIVETING TABLEAUX

While eating my take-away Macdonald's lunch by the Tamar River across from the University of Tasmania on a warm and windy spring afternoon I listened to an interview with Ken Burns who, in the 1990s, became famous for his American history TV documentaries. Burns talked about his making of The Civil War, Baseball and Jazz as well as new programs not yet screened. Given the importance of history to my poetry in the last ten years and its ongoing importance to my work I found the comments of Mr. Burns on the topic of history particularly relevant to my poetic project. Burns moved me sufficiently to write this poem, this fourteen line piece, this sonnet. He also moved me to invest more in the autobiographical work I have been engaged in for nearly seventeen years and to try to get some books out of the library at the university on early explorers, so impressed was I by his discussion of his film on the explorers Lewis and Clark and the comparisons and contrasts of their experiences to my life as a Baha'i pioneer. -Ron Price with thanks to ABC Radio National, "Interview with Ken Burns," 2:30-3:00 pm 24 October 2002.

History--and this poetic--
becomes, partly, curiously,
what I wish it and thus
an agent in my transformation.
Knowing where I've been
becomes the basis for
knowing where I'm going.

It also becomes something more--
a rich and riveting tableaux of events,
if not to others, at least to me,
the author of this narrative,
this drama which is my life,
its record of the past
for the instruction of the future.

Ron Price
25 October 2002

Ken Burns has churned out some documentaries that have had a good deal of personal meaning--not only to me but to millions of others.
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BASEBALL AND THE BAHA’I FAITH


When a series of programs about baseball, a series called The Big Picture, began to unfold on television, I quickly came to realize the remarkable similarity between the story of baseball and the story of the Baha’i Faith, both of which grew up in the modern age. Indeed, there are many organizations, activities, interests which were born and developed in this modern age, say, since the French and the American revolutions. The points of comparison and contrast between the great charismatic Force which gave birth to the Baha’i Faith and its progressive institutionalization on the one hand, and the origin and development of other movements and organizations on the other, is interesting to observe. -Ron Price with thanks to Ken Burns, “Baseball: Part Two,” ABC TV, 18 February 1999.

They both grew through
forces and processes,
events and realities
in the late eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries:
baseball and the Baha’i Faith
grew along their stoney and tortuous paths,
the latter out of the Shaykhi School
of the Ithna’Ashariyyih Sect of Shi’ah Islam.
And it would be many years
before the Baha’i Faith would climb
to the heights of popularity
that baseball had achieved
quite early in its history.
Baseball was a game whose time had come,
a hybrid invention,
a growth out of diverse roots,
the fields and sandlots of America,
as American as apple pie.
And the Baha’i Faith was an idea
whose time had come, would come,
slowly, it would seem, quite slowly
in the fields, the lounge rooms,
the minds and hearts
of a burgeoning humanity
caught, as it was,
in the tentacles of a tempest
that threatened to blow it apart.

Ron Price
17 February 1999

It has been 16 months since my last post on this thread--so I'll say a little more about good old Ken Burns....Ron Price, Tasmania...

PUSHING THINGS TO THE LIMIT

Sandy Kaufax, arguably the best pitcher ever in the major leagues, when he retired in 1969 at the age of 31, had the most strikeouts. He used to use heat treatments for his arm, pain killers and anti-inflammatory injections of cortisone before each game as well as ice water after the game. He was just beginning his years of success and popularity when I became a Baha’i in 1959 and began moving away from baseball in 1962. In that summer of 1962, I was beginning to see baseball as a refuge from social involvement, from the social concerns that had bedevilled American society in the 1950s and 1960s, a form of non-involvement, incompatible with serious interest in society, a form of pastoralism as Ken Burns points out in his television series Baseball produced in 1999. Burns points to many Americans who saw baseball as too passive and dropped their interest in it and becoming activists, involved in some social issue. The following poem, a vahid, makes some comparisons between Kaufax and myself. -Ron Price, Pioneering Over Three Epochs, 8 August 2000.

I pioneered that summer,
as Sandy Kaufax was beginning
to make it big as the best pitcher
ever in the major leagues. I moved
down the road with my folks to Dundas
where they helped form what may have
been the first LSA in that little town;
and then into Hamilton near the university
where for three years(1963-1966) I was
the only Baha’i on campus; and then down
to Windsor where I learned about Eskimos
for the big move up, up to Frobisher Bay;
and then closing out the decade in Whitby,
Toronto, King City and Picton. You retired,
Sandy, to save your arm and I slipped overseas
to a sweet, new life and its attendant, continuing
and seemingly inevitable stretches of my psychic-arm
to the limit; it was body chemistry, Sandy, and some
inner desire to take things, push them, to the edge

Ron Price
8 August 2000

My comment here is somewhat tangential, but for me it has a relevance and I post it--eight months after the previous one.. the thread keeps going...Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania
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Until the time of my late teens, the world of biography in cinema, biopics as they were and are called, presented history’s causes as clearly explainable and just as clearly shown. Those in power, and those who possessed authority, accepted change, in the good part of the world at least, because clearly shown decisions to stay put or innovate were arrived at through democratic consensus, fueled by the common good. Ultimately, Hollywood’s version of history showed that no choice was made without the support of the ultimate arbiter: the great common sense of “the people.”

Brokered through open and democratic debate, these leaders and their innovations and achievements were thus “shown” to have evolved towards the natural shapes and values for their times. Most importantly, these films suggested that change occured through the agency of individual intervention, through strong leaders. The rest of us, who were not on the same level with these exalted beings but who knew them as wives, brothers, and neighbors, could only admire or oppose them, follow their commands, be their audience and community. I don't want to go into too much detail and analysis here for there are many books that serve that purpose, but I will say one or two more things.

If debates about history’s truth status are never resolved; if contemporary writers are mired in a diversity of views and a sea of relativism, Hollywood’s strategic claim—that their biopics “possess” the truth—and its deployment in a variety of discourses about both film and biography, is difficult to accept at the least. Surveys of people's experience of studying history in school and in life tell us that they find it “dull and irrelevant.” Hollywood is guilty of contributing its own share of dullness and irrelevancy to our national pool; there are areas where historians fail, but intrepid Hollywood excels. Hollywood knows how to make people “feel connected and stay connected.” It is all part of the vast carnival which makes up American commercial amusement. The “true” story of a figure we have chosen to celebrate and condemn, has played and continues to play a significant part in determining how our culture constructs its notions of fame, and what it takes to be a celebrated figure. Thus the whole environment in which entertainment is made and experienced has changed since the time I became a Bahá’í in 1959. In the same way, the world in which fame was figured has changed as much as the capacities we have to store and retrieve our thoughts about this change. Literary and artistic reputations change like the wind and exist within such a myriad mosaic of coteries that it seems just about pointless to be concerned about how influential one's work is, the extent of one's popularity, the degree of one's literary merits, the stridency or enthusiasm of one's critics, one's genius or stupidity, one's intelligence and wisdom or the sterility and tedium of one's writing.
_______________enough!_________________________

I guess I should have posted the new thread here. Any of you new mods, please feel free to move my query over here. Apologies.

oh wait, nevermind. What the hell is this thread about?

quote:

Originally posted by Maximum Jack:
I guess I should have posted the new thread here. Any of you new mods, please feel free to move my query over here. Apologies.

oh wait, nevermind. What the hell is this thread about?

Too late, I already deleted your other thread.

My bad.

You can start it again if you want.

Ken Burns' new documentary "The War" started last night. Thoughts? (preferably not relating the Baha'i faith )

quote:

Originally posted by Maximum Jack:
Ken Burns' new documentary "The War" started last night. Thoughts? (preferably not relating the Baha'i faith )

I completely forgot it started last night!

Oh well, I'll probably record them all and then watch them at my leisure. Hopefully it doesn't last longer than the actual war did

I watched most of the first installment of "the war" last night, ironically right after watching Saving Private Ryan on like TBS or something. I was drifting in and out of a nap during the whole thing - unrelated to the program, I was just worn out from being in the sun all day, still had a hang-over from Saturday night, etc. It was mostly a re-tread of what has been said before countless times on history channel shows or from general history courses, but the images and accompanying personal testimonies were intriguing. The pacing is extremely slow and it's not over saturated with facts, which I've actually found to be more helpful in digesting the raw time line and history of "the war". I don't think I'll go out of my way to watch the rest of it, but I enjoyed what I've seen so far.

I just finished episode #2. So far I have been fascinated. First of all, I really like that they are spending lots of time with the stuff that was going on back home. Secondly, I like that it doesn't get bogged down in the military history. There are still five episodes to go, but I hope it sort keeps going the way it's going. Real people telling their stories. It is really putting a face on this war for me. I mean we know it was the good fight, but war is still hell.

quote:

Originally posted by Maximum Jack:
I just finished episode #2. So far I have been fascinated. First of all, I really like that they are spending lots of time with the stuff that was going on back home. Secondly, I like that it doesn't get bogged down in the military history. There are still five episodes to go, but I hope it sort keeps going the way it's going. Real people telling their stories. It is really putting a face on this war for me. I mean we know it was the good fight, but war is still hell.

I agree with you that it doesn't get bogged down by the history and somewhat closely follows the individual stories. But at times it feels like it will just come to a complete stop. Slow and deliberate, perhaps too much so. It does make it seem like everything the soldiers and civilians in the war endured was hell on earth, not so much the "good" fight. I'm glad there is mention of the civilian casualties, especially when it went into discussing the huge loss of German civilian lives in the inaccurate and deliberate American bombing of entire German cities to "break the will of the people". I think the strategical messes and absurdity that the whole situation that pursuit of the "righteous victory" created can be unfairly overshadowed by the later revealed terrors of the Nazi regime. I think I'll tune in tomorrow - should be approaching D-Day...gradually.

quote:

Originally posted by pixiestame:
But at times it feels like it will just come to a complete stop. Slow and deliberate, perhaps too much so.

I think that is pretty much Ken Burns MO. He really takes his time telling the story so that it wil impact the viewer emotionally. But I agree, at times it feels choppy when he goes back and forth between stories or starts a new storyline.

quote:

I'm glad there is mention of the civilian casualties, especially when it went into discussing the huge loss of German civilian lives in the inaccurate and deliberate American bombing of entire German cities to "break the will of the people".

I thought the documentary was careful to say it was the British who were bombing the German cities to "break the will of the People"? I remember it that way, because I was sort of skeptical that the U.S. was only going after military targets. On a related note, Burns also goes out of his way to dehumanize the Japanese. This may go hand and hand with my limited knowledge of the Pacific Theatre, but in the first two episodes I can certainly see why Americans were able to hate the Japanese.

quote:

Originally posted by Maximum Jack:
On a related note, Burns also goes out of his way to dehumanize the Japanese. This may go hand and hand with my limited knowledge of the Pacific Theatre, but in the first two episodes I can certainly see why Americans were able to hate the Japanese.

I think that the balance to this is the way he absolutely humanizes the Japanese-Americans, and their unconscionable experiences in the internment camps. Something tells me that as the fight approaches the home islands, and the atomic bombs, we're going to hear more about the suffering of the Japanese civilians.

quote:

Originally posted by kendocubano:

quote:

Originally posted by Maximum Jack:
On a related note, Burns also goes out of his way to dehumanize the Japanese. This may go hand and hand with my limited knowledge of the Pacific Theatre, but in the first two episodes I can certainly see why Americans were able to hate the Japanese.

I think that the balance to this is the way he absolutely humanizes the Japanese-Americans, and their unconscionable experiences in the internment camps. Something tells me that as the fight approaches the home islands, and the atomic bombs, we're going to hear more about the suffering of the Japanese civilians.

Yes, you are absolutely right. It's just that I've heard the story about the internment camps many times before. I was just sort of taken aback by the brutality of the Bataan Death march and the way prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese (civilians too) in general. I didn't mean for it to sound like a critique. I appreciate the honesty. Oh, eight minutes til showtime!

Though I watched the remainder of "the war" sparingly and only saw the first two episodes in full, I wanted to comment on something I think the film expertly "beat us over the head" with: that vets felt that they were expendable during the fighting. I saw Ken Burns interview on Conan O'Brien a few nights ago and one thing he emphasized was the culture of sacrifice and collectivism that permeated America, not just the armed forces, during WWII.

I don't want to get too far into a political argument, but I think the film (especially clips from the later episodes) also shows how really sometimes the American military leaders treated ground troops and airmen as tools and canon fodder. Every time I tuned in there seemed to be some story about how a general greatly underestimated the enemy resistance and ordered these Marines or soldiers to take a "tactically" useless island, village, or bombing target.

I'm sure those serving today feel this loss of individuality, and in some sense expandability (especially with military leaders admitting that the surge would likely lead to more American deaths), but I wonder to what extent that same political and military leadership mentality persists. After watching some of "The war", I can certainly understand the literal level of Yossarian's reluctance to follow orders (sorry for the random tangent... Catch-22 is my favorite novel).

*another random tangent: Now that I finally upgraded to HD-DVR service I can record some of the series when it re-airs this Sunday. Hooray!