Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Thus in 1996, three years after
The River Ran Red
was broadcast across
Pennsylvania, WGBH's
TheRichestManintheWorld
enjoyed a national PBS re-
lease, using many of the same images, sounds, music, quotes and re-enactments
demonstrated in
The River Ran Red
. Yet even using much of the same source
material, the differences in editing and narrative structure made the message
quite different. The different use of two images, described here, demonstrate
how the perspectives of the two filmmaking groups molded the visual and
historical record to suit their respective causes.
A portrait of young Andrew Carnegie with his brother Thomas, taken
shortly after their arrival in America, is used in both films.
The River Ran Red
cut out Thomas altogether, zooming in slowly to a close-up of the youthful
industrialist-to-be: “Carnegie was a poor weaver's son when he left his native
Scotland in 1848. By the 1880s he had become one of America's leading in-
dustrialists.” In contrast,
TheRichestManintheWorld
usesthesamephoto
full-frame to illustrate the psychological pressures being placed on Andrew
Carnegie by his mother in the lean years before migrating to America. The
narrator discusses Margaret Morrison's utter embarrassment at her poverty
and the failure of her husband to move the family up the local social ladder:
“The Boy would have been extremely conscious of this. Andrew would feel
the pressure of his mother's shame as well as the preference she showed his
brother Tom.”
A stereographic image of Homestead, with children in the foreground, the
town and mill in the distance, is used in both films to introduce the town.
For
The River Ran Red
, the town is introduced directly after a montage on indus-
trial hazards and injuries. “Homestead was radically different. Work in the mill
was just as hazardous, but steelworkers had built a powerful union which gave
them a say in hiring, wages and how jobs were done.”
TheRichestManinthe
Wor l d
, on the other hand, uses the image behind the following: “The town
itself was foul. Garland wrote of 'great sheds out of which grim smokestacks
rose, with a desolate effect-like the black stumps of a burned forest of great
trees.”' Interestingly, this exact quote, penned by novelist Hamlin Garland in
1894 (two years after the strike was broken), is used at the end of
The River Ran
Red
to build a picture of the ultimate effect of Carnegie's policies on the town.
Clearly, images and words from the past can become re-coded to project
whatever the filmmaker desires. With
Te rmi na l Time
we intend to subvert the
Generals by turning the “cookie-cutter” loose on the entire past millennium
of human history. By incorporating audience feedback,
Te rmi na l Time
allows
the audience to manipulate the framing of the documentary and to interro-
