Ken Burns Tries to Mollify the Hispanic Activists

I haven't had a chance to see the first installment of Ken Burns' The War which aired last night. I hope to get to that today. I referred yesterday to complaints from The Hispanic Congressional Caucus over a lack of representation in the film of Hispanic servicemen. I wasn't aware until watching the news last night that Burns had responded to the protests by adding material to his already completed film. This story ran back in July:

BEVERLY HILLS, California: Ken Burns, criticized for overlooking the role of Hispanic soldiers in his new World War II documentary, said nearly a half-hour of footage on Hispanic and American Indian veterans is being added to the film.

Profiles of two Hispanics will conclude the first and sixth episodes of the roughly 15-hour, seven-part "The War," debuting Sept. 23 on PBS, Burns told a news conference. An Indian soldier's story will be at the end of episode five, he said.

"There's been a hot political battle, and we tried to rise above and take the high road and respond as best we could," Burns said.

"It doesn't alter the vision of the film that we made and completed a year and a half ago," he told a meeting of the Television Critics Association.

Altogether, about 28 minutes have been placed at the conclusion of the installments but before the credits, he said.

Of course, nothing Burns could have done would have been enough to mollify the activists. There were protests at the PBS studios in Los Angeles last night, and their spokesman decried the use of only 28 minutes of extra footage. It will be interesting to see if the additional footage becomes obvious since it will clearly be out of character from the remainder of the 15 hours of film.

Talented filmmakers like Burns have a vision for their films, and I can't believe he was very happy about twisting that vision to try and keep the naysayers at bay.

UPDATE: I watched Part I and it was obvious that the Hispanic section had been added as an afterthought. Part I seemed to be coming to a close at Christmas of 1942. Bing Crosby had sung, and there was another poignant song that seemed to be wrapping that evening's show up. However, there was a rather abrupt jump back to November of 1942 so they could introduce two Hispanic Marines from Los Angeles. L.A. is not one of the four cities that the series concentrates on, and although there was some interesting information about Carlson's Raiders, the Hispanic piece did not advance the storyline at all and was clearly added after the fact.