Speak of it: The Burns Option

I have had the privilege for nearly half a century of making films about the US, but I have also made films about us. That is to say the two letter, lowercase, plural pronoun. All of the intimacy of "us" and also "we" and "our" and all of the majesty, complexity, contradiction, and even controversy of the US. And if I have learned anything over those years, it's that there's only us. There is no them. And whenever someone suggests to you, whomever it may be in your life that there's a them, run away. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment, which brings me to a moment I've dreaded and forces me to suspend my longstanding attempt at neutrality…

That’s Ken Burns addressing graduates and their families and friends and faculty and administration at Brandeis and also us. This one’s easy. You can watch and listen on Youtube here. Or you can read the transcript here.

I’m glad the fact of the speech is trending and getting headlined here and there, but I so wish this might mean lots of people would read or listen to the whole thing. Some gems:

“Insecurity makes liars of us all.”

“Leadership is humility and generosity squared.”

“Denounce oppression everywhere.”

“Convince your government, as Lincoln understood, that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land.”

That last one, and of course all the words he gives us, provide the context—think word nest—in which he takes a public risk I hope will serve as an actionable example to lots and lots others who admire or would like to be associated with Ken Burns. To not speak specifically of the horrible things is to succumb to what Burns refers to as “self imprisonment.” That’s letting fear dictate behavior. That there is often the real threat to be confronted. The real enemy to be fought, as Sinead O’Connor taught us at great cost to herself. Fear is the enemy within. Fight the real enemy. This is the work.

Ken Burns overcomes that enemy in his fashion by declining the sometimes catastrophically beyondist posture of attempted neutrality. There comes a time to let it go. He’s visibly uncomfortable, but…this is leadership. Humility and generosity squared plus the risk of perhaps dropping a mask for a moment in public and on camera.

And notice how he never says the name of “the opioid of opioids.” There’s a lesson in skilled speech here. Not naming the presumptive nominee sidesteps giving undue energy to an unclean spirit. Burns won’t make the headline writer’s job easier. Why court misunderstanding? Why not make the work of those tasked with targeting you a little harder?

As many readers of Dark Matter will know without being told, the still-at-large individuals standing next to Ken Burns are Clarence Thomas and David Koch. Burns has offered comment on the image through a spokesperson. The longer story behind it, which involves a wooded gathering in California tied to what I refer to as the Harlan Crow network, can be accessed in a lengthy and illuminating piece by ProPublica.

When the photo surfaced, I let myself remember that I once attended a weekend retreat in Maryland where I was asked, upon arrival, to not publicly disclose who was in attendance. To this day, I’m not entirely clear on who payed for my travel and accommodation. I’m no Ken Burns, but I say this to note that I can see how the desire to get good work done and people I care about paid could place me in a photo op I’d wish to publicly clarify later. Association is currency.

I bring this up to imagine some context for what I refer to as the Burns Option. When it comes to the taxpayer-funded white supremacist terror movements which preceded Public Servant 45 and took a more demonstrably threatening turn in the minds of many on January 6, 2021, I’ve watched friends and family and peers and public figures offer a wide variety of reactions and responses. Conflict avoidance, I know more feelingly with every passing day, costs us everything.

The pull to stay out of it, however, is strong. Why risk upsetting someones—there are so many someones—who might come for me directly or through intermediaries? The incentives to avoid being perceived (or tarred) as “political” or “woke” or “biased” are powerful but so are the incentives to be someone who didn’t play along to get along in dangerous times. To do the next brave thing is, in one sense, to audition for the future. Our times call for moral precision. I wonder if the circulation of the image in the ProPublica served to incentivize Ken Burns’ recent move to speak more plainly and publicly of what he knows.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until is faced.”

That’s James Baldwin speaking. Burns indicates that Baldwin’s witness comes to our aid with a realization like this: “The enemy is often us. We continue to shackle ourselves with chains we mistakenly…[imagine as] freedom.” Time to face up to where we are together with others. We diminish ourselves when we don’t.

So…I think of the Burns option as the overcoming of lies through the overcoming of fear out loud and in front of others and sometimes on camera. Don’t flee the incoming data. Register it. Acknowledge it. Speak of it.

Ken Burns has a strong brand for a reason. It’s stronger for me today. I draw strength from it that I didn’t know I had. He gives me courage remotely.

The screen matter above is from an out-of-print book by Corita Kent. “Evil may be not seeing well enough.” This pairs well with the whole of Burns’ speech which isn’t even mostly about a white supremacist sexual predator who once commanded the United States military trying to avoid criminal prosecution by bullying elected officials and career Republicans into reducing their moral legacies to the size of his own bodily fear. As I understand it, the speech is about being a free person who sees and says and reconsiders and sees and says and acts. Shared life. Undivided life. Group courage. There is no them.

I must now share two versions of one song by one punk band.

“Invisible.”

“Invisible.”

Thanks for granting me a hearing, y’all.