Latino/A Rhetorical Reception to Ken Burns‟ the War
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HISTORICAL MEMORY NEGOTIATED: LATINO/A RHETORICAL RECEPTION TO KEN BURNS‟ THE WAR THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of Texas State University-San Marcos in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of ARTS by Yazmin Lazcano, B.A. San Marcos, Texas August 2009 HISTORICAL MEMORY NEGOTIATED: LATINO/A RHETORICAL RECEPTION TO KEN BURNS‟ THE WAR Committee Members Approved: ______________________________ Jaime Armin Mejía, Chair ______________________________ Octavio Pimentel ______________________________ Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez Approved: __________________________________ J. Michael Willoughby Dean of the Graduate College COPYRIGHT by Yazmin Lazcano 2009 DEDICATION To the World War II-generation of Latinos and Latinas as well as to their children who continue to battle for their inclusion in U.S. historical narratives. This thesis is also dedicated to Mamá Yita, the memory of Fortino S. Quintana (1926-1995), and to mom. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Jaime Mejía for his mentorship. Through Dr. Mejía‟s guidance I gained the valuable experience of learning about excellence by pushing myself to do the best I could from start to finish of this project. Without the extreme generosity with his time, the quality of this thesis would have been greatly compromised. I also thank my entire thesis committee: Jaime Mejía, Octavio Pimentel, and Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez for their reading of and feedback on this thesis under numerous time constraints. At one point or another I have been a student of each member of my thesis committee and I am grateful for the ideas they have introduced me to which have served to shape my thinking. Mi familia. Thank you for the support and encouragement you all have given me my entire life. Mamá Yita, Mom, Tía Carol, y Tía Woshie, ustedes me han dado una educación que no se aprende de los libros sino de ejemplo. De ustedes aprendí a luchar para lograr mis sueños. Principalmente, gracias por tanta fe en mi y por tanto amor incondicional. To friends who have encouraged me and to those who have been there to help me weather the storms throughout this project, thank you so much. Jeff, corazón, thank you for holdin‟ it down and for always finding my smile. Tu eres mi héroe. The letters and press releases I analyze in this thesis were obtained through the Defend the Honor web site. This manuscript was submitted on June 4, 2009. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCING THE RHETORICAL SITUATION .......................................1 II. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE WAR AND LATINO/A AUDIENCE MODES OF RECEPTION ..............................................................................14 III. SETTING PRECEDENT: HISTORICAL MEMORY, KEN BURNS, AND WAR ..............................................................................26 IV. RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF BURNS‟ THE WAR ....................................41 Episode One, “A Necessary War” December 1941-1942 ..............................46 Episode Six, “The Ghost Front” December 1944-March 1945 ......................94 Episode Seven, “A World Without War” March 1945-December 1945 ......101 V. LATINO/A VIEWER RECEPTION TO BURNS‟ THE WAR ......................105 CONCLUSION: LESSONS LEARNED .........................................................................134 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................142 vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCING THE RHETORICAL SITUATION As the role which historical documentary films play in shaping the public‟s historical memory increases, so have their viewing audiences taken on larger roles, by, for instance, participating in the final production of the films themselves. This relationship between documentary filmmaker and viewer—with its consequent imprint on the final product, or filmic text, has important cultural implications for society at large. Although scholarly attention on audience reception studies within the field of documentary film theory continues to grow, researchers have yet to examine the rhetorical responses of United States Latinos/as to documentary film in general and historical documentary film in particular. The problem my thesis aims to examine is broadly concerned with how historical memory is rhetorically negotiated by several groups. Specifically, my study examines the following groups: the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which supports large-scale national documentary film projects; Ken Burns, the documentarian; and the viewing audience, in this case, a diverse range of Latino/a community leaders taking issue with the controversial absence of Latinos/as in Burns‟ World War II documentary, The War. The following discussion briefly describes the rhetorical situation which resulted from the original exclusion of Latinos in Burns‟ documentary on WWII. The Latino community first became aware that Latinos/as were in fact not meaningfully included in 1 2 the 14.5-hour, six-year-in-the-making, PBS-supported Burns documentary in the film‟s initial screenings in late 2006. After the initial refusal by Ken Burns and PBS to edit the film, both sides did an about-face in the spring of 2007 and agreed to involve documentary filmmaker Hector Galán, a Chicano documentarian, to produce segments featuring Latino soldiers. The final version of The War includes relatively brief segments on two Latino soldiers and one on a Native American, representing the addition of two ethnic groups initially absent from the film and totaling approximately 28 minutes. The added segments, included in episodes one, five, and six, follow the originally-included episode segments and precede the episodes‟ credits. What is at stake in the rhetorical situation described above is how to characterize the different forces‟ participation in the process of crafting a national identity through a historical memory, with and through a documentary film on WWII. What follows thus begins the process of analyzing this rhetorical situation surrounding the production and revision of The War. This analysis will show how documentaries work to construct a national identity through a constructed historical memory. In Introduction to Documentary, theorist Bill Nichols traces the beginnings of documentary filmmaking as originating through two routes: by examining the image and examining the filmmaker. Nichols cites the late nineteenth-century work of Louis Lumière as marking the beginnings of documentary film, specifically with works such as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, Arrival of a Train, The Waterer Watered, The Gardener, and Feeding the Baby (83). Nichols states that “Lumière‟s films seemed to record everyday life as it happened” (83). The new opportunity these films afforded ignited a passion in filmmakers around the world to record life in its countless 3 representations. The intersection of image and filmmaker, Nichols states, “attained a purity of expression in the act of documentary filming” (84). The term “documentary,” explains Patricia Aufderheide in Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, was coined by John Grierson, who used it to describe American filmmaker Robert Flaherty and his film Moana (1926) (3). It is Flaherty‟s particular definition of the term “documentary,” however, which has proven resilient because of its adaptability throughout time: “artistic representation of reality” (Aufderheide 3). Since then, documentaries have arguably increased in popularity and have therefore increased in importance in terms of their influence and implications for changing society. The documentary film medium also boasts the representation of reality—a most coveted commodity. As evidence that the medium draws in big business, Aufderheide points to the relatively recent rise of reality television shows as well as the television documentary beginning in the 1990s, which by 2004, she states, was responsible for generating billions worth of annual revenue worldwide (4). The argument that documentaries are powerfully influential is also supported by their appearance in court cases as evidence (Errol Morris‟s 1988 The Thin Blue Line). Also, David Bossie‟s alleged use of his 2008 documentary, Hillary: The Movie, as political advertising during the presidential campaign was recently argued over before the United States Supreme Court. The debate over this documentary‟s influence focused on what Bossie‟s film represented—either a political attack advertisement subject to campaign finance laws or a documentary protected by the First Amendment. Historical documentaries have also been influential in the school classroom, as they continue to be used as a teaching tool. In fact, in the introduction to The War: An Intimate History, 4 1941-1945, the companion book to Ken Burns‟ documentary written by Geoffrey C. Ward, Burns states that one of the reasons he would choose to do The War is because of the lack of knowledge high school students in the U.S. demonstrate on the subject (xvi). The creation and dissemination of educational materials accompanying The War to U.S. schools are further evidence of the role historical documentaries have come to play in the teaching of U.S. history. Because of the growing influence documentaries continue to have in disseminating knowledge, it is important to briefly relate the relationship between historical documentaries and the crafting of historical memory. In “Wreckage upon Wreckage: