In his Autobiography, penned in his seventies, Benjamin Franklin conceded: “There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself … Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”
Despite being older than Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Company by a generation, Ben Franklin is the most modern of America’s founders. He was also one of the few revolutionary leaders from humble roots—Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine being the other exceptions. The son of a Bostonian soap maker, Franklin took huge pride in his rise as a printer-journalist, scientist, diplomat, and statesman. What he lacked in humility he made up for in self-awareness. He recalled as a young man making “a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues.” Ranging from temperance to frugality, from industry to moderation, Franklin kept a running tally of these virtues, marking off, “by a little black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed respecting that virtue upon that day.” Humility revealed itself the most consistent of his failings. This exercise in self-accountability, Franklin wryly called the “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” Franklin was infuriating; he was vain—but he was often disarmingly witty. Fixing himself up in the Philadelphia publishing business, young Franklin rose to fame under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, peppering his Poor Richard’s Almanack with the sort of folksy aphorisms that made these inexpensive volumes runaway bestsellers: “Fish and visitors stink in three days.” “God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.” “The greatest monarch upon the proudest throne, is obliged to sit upon his own arse.” “One of Franklin’s greatest inventions,” opines biographer Walter Isaacson in the new two-part PBS documentary, “is that American style of homespun humor—somebody whose pricking at the pretensions of the elite.” This “cracker barrel sensibility,” Isaacson insists, laid the foundations for subsequent American humorists such as Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Combined with Franklin’s business and political acumen, not to mention his scientific genius, such sensibility made Franklin America’s first modern celebrity—the first cultural hero whose fame spanned the Atlantic. Ken Burns seems destined to tell the story of Benjamin Franklin. Like the Sage of Philadelphia—but behind the lens rather than in the public eye—Burns has blazed his unique sensibility on public understanding of America’s history. All the Burns hallmarks are present: the sonorous narrator (Peter Coyote); the stirring music; the slow panning, zooming camera angles; the constellation of actors, historians, and biographers. Franklin himself is voiced by the Broadway actor Mandy Patinkin with gravelly dignity. Knowing the identity of the actor, however, made me half-expect to hear Franklin break into song at every unexpected turn. Other parts are voiced by Hollywood stars including Liam Neeson and Paul Giamatti, the latter reprising his role as the testy John Adams from the 2008 HBO miniseries of the same name. The gallery of historical talking heads is similarly first-class, featuring such luminaries as Isaacson, Gordon S. Wood, Joseph Ellis, Joyce Chaplin, H.W. Brands, and the late, great Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn in one of his last public appearances. Viewers expecting a home run won’t be too disappointed. In truth, Benjamin Franklin is not the best Ken Burns documentary, but it seems churlish to gripe when the standard is so consistently high. Burns’s masterpieces—from The Civil War to more recent treatments of the Vietnam War and of Country Music—spin familiar strands into a rich tapestry of American history. They work best on an epic scale. Clocking in at four hours, Benjamin Franklin is certainly thorough, but lacks the panoramic qualities of Burn’s longer work, rooted in the experiences of ordinary American men and women. Reportedly, Burns is at work on a new multi-part retelling of the American Revolution, scheduled for release in 2025 and the 250th anniversary of the War of Independence. In this case, Benjamin Franklin may be only a foretaste of this bigger project, but fans of Burns’s unmistakable style will still enjoy this fresh look at an American icon. *** Currently, Benjamin Franklin is free to stream online at pbs.org (no annoying ads; no subscription required): https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/benjamin-franklin/ Grade: A-
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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