I feel that more review of Hemingway's short stories could have been teased out for the viewer. There's a reasonable set represented -- "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," "Indian Camp" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" -- each carrying a weighty theme: courage/betrayal; the pain of birth and death; egotistical nostalgia, respectively. But to reach a new generation, it might have benefited us to know more about the differences in production between writing short fiction and novels. Key in on the process, as the kids say today. But also, Burns-Novick might have said more about the early outdoorsy "nature" tales that make up much of the Nick Adams sequence. These stories show a different side of Papa, as a kid, full of a deep sensitivity to the natural world and its wonders. You enjoy his descriptions of fishing and camping. And "The Killers" is instructive of a fighter who won't sell out (I assumed) and now waits in bed for the fight Furies to come for him and kill him for not taking a dive. It's what the fascists do. And, my favorite Hemingway story (sad, I know), "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" in which an old man seems to need a way of coping with the nothingness (nada nada nada) that consumes us in the end and by which we may actually share a brotherhood of understanding. Or not, and be consumed by the darkness alone.
Also, how could any production of Hemingway's life and writings not emphasize the so-called Hemingway Hero -- coded and stoical, absorbing the gut punches of reality and struggling to find its meaning and express it, exhibiting "grace under pressure." Why not include it? We used to say we believed in this stuff. That it was the very essence of what a Great Man was. Do we still believe this? A fuller exploration of an answer might tell the viewer if Hemingway's worth the read anymore, since so much of his simple-seeming prose, especially in his longer work, is a delivery system for his message, his Code.
Burns and Novick also provide some intriguing glimpses into the previously unknown interior of Hemingway's feminine mystique. We're teased with his early gender proclivities, brought on by an overbearing mother who would dress him the same as his sister. Apparently, cross-dressing and cross-sexual roleplaying was a quiet feature of his marriages. Why bring this stuff in? I wondered. No psychosexual analysis is forthcoming. We're not force fed the notion that he was "over-compensating" and that the lions he shot at were Burt Lahr's Coward, or any other twattle. I don't know, felt like a gratuitous diss, a bone of contention thrown toward dogmatic feminists to interrogate and un-Great Man him. Although, who could blame them if they waterboarded Papa over the she-wanted-it story, "Up in Michigan." Without a paddle.
(Burns-Novick do speak to the gender identity issue in an Esquire piece.)
Speaking of teaching Hemingway, no matter how you come down on his enduring value vis-a-vis American letters, he will continue to be taught to kids mostly indifferent (god help us, if girls saw any value in his portrayal of their realities) to his message and, these days, too hip to be square, to go with short, simple, clear prose -- not if their tweets are any indication. Maybe we can take an emoji poll of the Great Men (and women too). Luckily, PBS, which wants to do its bit for MAGA for the middle class (MCMAGA), offers educators and students tools and kits and links and winks and excerpts and testimonials and maybe even multiple choice quizzes (as part of the national standards, I didn't check). Or we could have them write short essays on Papa. LOL
Critics are beginning to tire of Ken Burns' hold on PBS. Most of his detractors say that even though it's quality stuff he continues to put out, other folks can do it too. What Burns did with Jazz was cool, but maybe it's not his story to tell -- it's a version, but there are others, if the money's made available. Tax-payer money. Plus pledges. Recently, an NPR (PBS radio), as if to show it can do its own policing, ran a piece, "Filmmakers Call Out PBS For A Lack Of Diversity, Over-Reliance On Ken Burns." A letter signed by many concerned filmmakers reads in part:
How many other 'independent' filmmakers have a decades-long exclusive relationship with a publicly-funded entity? Public television supporting this level of uninvestigated privilege is troubling not just for us as filmmakers but as tax-paying Americans.
It's a good point. Burns may have grown stale pushing Americana to viewers wealthy enough to write out checks at pledge time. Not every public viewer is able to write a check. I myself once considered hitting up PBS for a loan.
The series can be streamed online for free at PBS: Hemingway.
(Article changed on Apr 30, 2021 at 6:37 AM EDT)
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