Word: yorks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...With reporting by Bernard Baumohl and Aixa M. Pascual/New York and Adam Zagorin/Washington
...Reported by Jerry Hannifin and Mark Thompson/Washington, Brad Liston/Orlando, Stacey Perman/Mina and Jane Wulf/New York...
...because both illustrate this paradox. Ken Burns' Not for Ourselves Alone (Nov. 7-8, 8 p.m. E.T.), the story of women suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, shows we would not be what we are without people fervently, sometimes blindly proselytizing--religiously or otherwise. Ric Burns' New York (Nov. 14-18, 9 p.m. E.T.) answers that neither would we be so without people--and a city--devoted to simple secular success...
...York's focus is as sweeping as Ourselves' is intimate. "New York was based upon greed," says the late Brendan Gill in the 10-hour documentary. Unlike the colonies settled by religious persecutees (and persecutors), New Netherland was run by the mammoth Dutch West India Co. (Imagine Microsoft building Seattle.) And the city remained dedicated to the godless buck as it became British, then American--though not always for the best, as Jacob Riis' horrifying photographs of immigrant poverty powerfully illustrate...
This approach is even more egregious in New York, which renders a hard-core town as easy listening. Besides the trademark pans of photographs and prints, Ric Burns uses copious aerial shots of the city, glimmering, filled with butterscotchy light--but lifeless. Through seemingly Vaselined lenses, however, a picture emerges from both these works of the long, fruitful tension between evangelical idealism and secular mercantilism. Ken and Ric Burns have managed to sing America. If only they wouldn't sing it to sleep...