HISTORICAL MEMORY NEGOTIATED: LATINO/A RHETORICAL …

[Pages:154]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 Mej?a, 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 Mam? Yita, the memory of Fortino S. Quintana (1926-1995), and to mom.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Jaime Mej?a for his mentorship. Through Dr. Mej?as 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 Mej?a, 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. Mam? Yita, Mom, T?a Carol, y T?a Woshie, ustedes me han dado una educaci?n que no se aprende de los libros sino de ejemplo. De ustedes aprend? a luchar para lograr mis sue?os. 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, coraz?n, thank you for holdin it down and for always finding my smile. Tu eres mi h?roe. 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

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCING THE RHETORICAL SITUATION

As the role which historical documentary films play in shaping the publics 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

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the 14.5-hour, six-year-in-the-making, PBS-supported Burns documentary in the films 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 Gal?n, 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 Lumi?re as marking the beginnings of documentary film, specifically with works such as Workers Leaving the Lumi?re Factory, Arrival of a Train, The Waterer Watered, The Gardener, and Feeding the Baby (83). Nichols states that "Lumi?res 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

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