We must preserve classic works
The popular arts are always trying to survive the never-ending lust to create new works and forget those that are often masterworks. Yet, to the world, what we have created is a form of soft-diplomacy, a twisted, incredible kaleidoscope of the United States. To millions, our popular arts are America.
The massive holdings of film, recorded music, news, TV programs that exist in corporate archives are really treasures and, sadly, like all treasures have suffered looting and destruction. That’s why the aborning center at Vanderbilt University, funded in part by the great generosity of Michael Curb, may be on to a wonderful and new approach to help existing private and public efforts be more successful.
Bill Ivey, former head of the National Endowment for the Arts and longtime head of the Country Music Foundation, thought of the creation of such a center during his Washington stint.
In essence, Ivey seeks to forge a new synthesis between the private world of the pop arts and the great wealth of corporate America. History indicates how radical his idea is and also how much promise it may hold.
Private efforts, such as those by Ted Turner through his Turner Classic Movies, and the American Film Institute, have worked to restore and save film before it’s destroyed by its chemistry. The archive at the University of California at Los Angeles is highly regarded.
All of these efforts – and there’re many others – still don’t marshal the necessary resources needed to save the legacy.
Part of the concern is ownership. The American Broadcasting Co. has been recording our history on film, videotape, and now digital cameras, since the birth of commercial television. A few years ago, in what was deemed a cost-cutting move, ABC decided to ditch its archives because the rent to store the massive collection was too expensive.
Enter Ted Koppel, the journalist-intellectual, who went to the corporate suite to fight to save the archive. Wisely, he argued that the repository could be a moneymaker by building solid documentaries to sell to educational institutions. He proved to prophetic when the network produced “The American Century” based on the film archives. Keyword: Money.
In the world of newspapers, some of the greatest design in its history was done in the great, sensational, yellow newspapers by that force of nature known as William Randolph Hearst. Libraries holding those great pieces of history are systematically destroying them because of space limitations. I’m unaware if an angel has been found to find a new home for them and preserve them as part of the newspaper’s most flamboyant era.
Now, take it to the extremes. One view is that much of the older material is a space or economic burden. Another view – democratic, to be sure – is that these are voices and views of America through its artists, regardless of medium. It appears that Ivey’s idea is to bridge those two views with the center.
Perhaps a brief story will suffice. French intellectuals were talking last week about the love-hate relationship between the United States and France. Our histories have been intertwined before we were a nation. One opinion struck me as most illuminating: The United States, he observed, didn’t intellectually matter until after World War II.
Today, French youth, he said, can’t get enough American pop culture, regardless of what the government feels about America’s first-strike posture. That’s why we must find ways to save these works. To many in the world, they are America.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)