Flannery film debuts on American Masters
Dr. Elizabeth Coffman edits a portion of her award-winning documentary, Flannery. Photo by Sydney Owens.
| March 11,2021 |
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By Genevieve Buthod
School of Communication professor Elizabeth Coffman, Ph.D., will debut her documentary, , nationally on the PBS show American Masters on Tuesday, March 23. It is scheduled to appear locally at 8 p.m. on WTTW-Channel 11 in Chicago.
The American Masters showing follows Coffman winning the first ever Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in October 2019 for her feature-length documentary about famed Southern Gothic writer Flannery O鈥機onnor.
The award came with a $200,000 prize, and was chosen for first place out of 80 different film submissions. The documentary was a project initiated in 2011 by producer, co-writer and co-director the Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J.
The American Masters showing is a big step following a year of nationwide virtual screenings of Flannery during the pandemic. Coffman reflected on this and other experiences over the past year in a conversation with author Genevieve Buthod.
How does it feel to have Flannery screened on ?
I鈥檓 delighted! American Masters generally has an audience of about a million people on television. It鈥檚 a big leap going from a regional broadcast to a national show that has that kind of reach. It鈥檚 during Women鈥檚 History Month, which makes me very happy. I hired as many women as possible on the film鈥攃omposer Miriam Cutler, wonderful animators, editors. Also lots of great Chicago film crew鈥攎y DP and sound design partner Ted Hardin, editors, sound mixers, researchers, publicists. All in Chicago!
As a filmmaker, what does it mean to you to win the Library of Congress/Lavine/Ken Burns Prize?
Winning this prize was one of the best things that has happened in my life. As a filmmaker, I don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 going to get any better than that. Someone let me know about the Ken Burns Prize and suggested I apply for it. I got our application in on the last day of the deadline.
I was waiting in my office for the phone call from the Librarian of Congress, when the call finally came from Carla Hayden--that my film Flannery had won. So I jumped up and down, screamed, ran out of the office. Dean Hong Cheng hugged me, I got to celebrate with everyone. That was in 2019.
We got to go in October of 2019 and accept the award at the Library of Congress. While accepting I said, 鈥淭his is better than winning an Academy Award.鈥� It truly was a beautiful event. Besides Ken Burns, all kinds of national political figures were there, representatives from Georgia, former generals. It was a big Washington, D.C. event for the first year of the award. Burns and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden presented the award, which I accepted for me and for my co-producer, co-director Mark Bosco, S.J.
We made good use of the Library of Congress and the National Archives during the making of the film. I鈥檓 on the board of the Media Burn Archive here in Chicago and they helped us restore footage as did the Chicago Film Archives. I love archival footage and hired two great archival researchers, Pat Lofthouse and Laura Cohen. They were able to find footage from Georgia from that era. We have footage of people who had infiltrated the Klan. I鈥檓 from Jacksonville, Florida, so I really wanted to research and capture what was happening in the south, in Georgia, particularly during the 1950s and 60s.
The white nationalists were often the same people who went to church on Sunday. These were the people who, if they got upset at a Black person looking the wrong way, that person鈥檚 life could be in danger. That鈥檚 the situation Flannery O鈥機onnor grew up in. But there were all these people pushing in both directions during that time--not everyone in the south was a Ku Klux Klan member. There were plenty of people (like my parents) who were pushing for integration. I wanted to give that sense of both sides fighting in the south at the time. O鈥機onnor was writing about it all, in her own particular 鈥渟earing鈥� style鈥攁s Joe Scarborough describes her writing.
For myself and other first-time viewers, what do you hope will be the main takeaway?
One of the main takeaways that I hope will happen is that people will see how relevant Flannery O鈥機onnor is today. We鈥檝e just come through a year of racial reckoning, with the George Floyd murder and protests, as well as the January 6th insurrection. The characters and the stories she was writing are really appropriate to read right now. As mentioned, is reading Flannery O鈥機onnor. Nick Cave quotes her name in his new 2021 album, Carnage. Her use of dialogue and rhythm are poetic, musical. These are examples of how relevant and engaging her fiction still is. The characters she was writing about help to explain what鈥檚 going on in America right now. It鈥檚 a history of a certain kind of U.S. denial-- religious hypocrisy and racism.
A lot of musicians appreciate Flannery O鈥機onnor-- Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams (both have music in the film). I鈥檓 hoping that for the uninitiated, when you hear the music over the credits, you鈥檒l hear Nebraska--the Bruce Springsteen song that he wrote after reading O鈥機onnor. I really hope that people will try to see why so many musicians and artists like her writing. I hope our documentary engages the storytelling in a way that encourages people to read her further. Our goal from day one has been to get people to read her literature.
Where should a brand-new reader of Flannery O鈥機onnor begin?
I would recommend the stories that people read in high school or college, like 鈥淎 Good Man is Hard to Find.鈥� That title is from the Bessie Smith song of the same name, and we have that song in the film as well. The short story 鈥淕ood Country People鈥� is one I would recommend. In that story, there鈥檚 a female character who is college-educated, she鈥檚 the know-it-all college Yankee. Then there鈥檚 the so-called 鈥渨hite trash鈥� characters who aren鈥檛 that educated, who use the n-word. Characters are brought low by events that happen, but the person who may learn the hardest lesson is often the person with the most education. No one in O鈥機onnor鈥檚 fiction gets off easy. I think people can engage with her storytelling in a lot of different ways.
Do you have a particular favorite among her short stories?
We have an outtake up on the American Masters site, as one of the . O鈥機onnor wrote this short story called 鈥淎 Late Encounter with the Enemy.鈥� It鈥檚 a parody of the Atlanta premiere of the film Gone with the Wind, which was a huge Hollywood success. I really liked this outtake, because I grew up in the south, where, as a white person of privilege, watching Gone with the Wind on television, unfortunately, happened all the time. O鈥機onnor鈥檚 story makes fun of it. It鈥檚 about an old Confederate veteran who was paraded at the Gone with the Wind event in Atlanta, which was a segregated event. Actress Hattie McDaniel, who won an Academy Award for her part, was not allowed to attend. O鈥機onnor wrote this story about how white people romantically pictured the south, how they romanticized the Confederate flag. She did a great job deconstructing that romantic racist nostalgia. 鈥淎 Late Encounter with the Enemy鈥� is one of my favorite stories, but it鈥檚 not critically acclaimed in the same way as her others.
Flannery O鈥機onnor was a devout Catholic, and a complex person and writer. How do you think her Catholicism informs her writing?
A lot of people don鈥檛 even know she was a Catholic. Her writing was violent and vivid, whether about people or nature. In her writing, we get these people who are hypocritical, who were racist and went to church, who used the n-word a lot. People can see how deconstructive what she was doing is. There aren鈥檛 any saints in her writing. The sinners may deserve redemption, but it doesn鈥檛 come easy. She was a witness to the worst of humanity and wrote about it in a way that was engaging and thoughtful.
I grew up as Protestant in the south. I knew O鈥機onnor because she was a great fiction writer, a storyteller. I did not personally know that she was such a devout Catholic until I made this film. She writes a lot about Protestants in her fiction; there鈥檚 not a lot of Catholics in her storytelling but there are underlying theological ideas that O鈥機onnor writes about in her nonfiction. I wanted a film that could relate to everybody, people of all faiths鈥攁nd make it to national PBS.
O鈥機onnor said she was writing for people who don鈥檛 believe in God. With the story of Jesus, the story of martyrdom, the story of sacrifice, we learn that even the least among us, the betrayers, can be seen with great empathy. Those who seem morally most lost. I don鈥檛 think that is particularly Catholic or Protestant, I think that鈥檚 the story of Jesus. O鈥機onnor was into Catholic theology, she praised it and talked about it in her writing, but she really wanted to be a great writer, like Dostoyevsky or Kafka. Her storytelling gets to certain moral instincts and weaknesses. She was not a sentimentalist. She has moments of humanity and recognition in her stories. For her, it comes from an understanding of the Christ story.
Flannery O鈥機onnor has been accused of racism in the past. Do you think there is any truth to those claims?
Paul Elie鈥檚 New Yorker article, claims that he鈥檚 looked at new research, and that she was indeed racist, and essentially, the implication was that decades of O鈥機onnor scholarship and our film were going too easy on her. His article was a little disingenuous. We certainly did know the 鈥渞esearch鈥� and felt we addressed it in a balanced way in the film. For the American Masters broadcast, we added back in O鈥機onnor鈥檚 story 鈥淭he Geranium鈥� that she wrote in graduate school, that鈥檚 all about white racist characters who were confronting their own insecurities with Blackness. Our thesis in the film is that O鈥機onnor was confronting her own questions and feelings about race, class and difference from the very first stories she published. And did so throughout her life. But our film also presents actions and comments that O鈥機onnor made about James Baldwin, as well as her feelings about 鈥渢he society I live in鈥� so the viewer may draw their own conclusions. We open the film with a warning about the use of potentially damaging language鈥攍ike the 鈥渘-word鈥�--which may be hard to hear and certainly difficult to read; language that the filmmakers鈥擬ark and myself鈥攄o not support.
Do you think we can have more nuanced conversations about racism in the past? Can we add more depth to how we understand O鈥機onnor as a person and as an author?
We have already been hosting discussions about race, disability, faith and craft with O鈥機onnor鈥檚 work. Soon, Loyola University in Maryland is hosting a whole series of webinars about this which will include a . All of the people who will be speaking are in the film. And Mark Bosco and I will also be doing a conversation about it. The president of the university will be moderating the discussion. So they aren鈥檛 just backing away from O鈥機onnor鈥檚 potential 鈥渞acism,鈥� nor the questions about this article, they鈥檙e having a discussion about it. In 2020, after the New Yorker article, Loyola Maryland changed the name of the dorm they had named after Flannery O鈥機onnor; it鈥檚 now called Sister Thea Bowman Hall. At the time, a bunch of writers, including Alice Walker, wrote a letter to the president of Loyola University of Maryland asking them to not remove O鈥機onnor鈥檚 name from the dorm. And now the university is confronting that question, instead of running away from it, so people can decide for themselves.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
The discussion around her work has remained timely because of what鈥檚 been happening in the United States in the last year and a half. I think she鈥檚 still relevant to read and talk about today, especially with this great reckoning that the U.S. is still trying to have with race. O鈥機onnor has also written about immigration. She has a great story called 鈥淭he Displaced Person鈥� about Polish immigrants who came to the south after WWII (I recommend that one too!) It鈥檚 about race, immigration, and difference. How people of different classes look down on each other. She highlights the tension between classes probably even more than the tension between white and Black. You see tensions between insiders and outsiders, too. People look down on each other for lots of reasons, like race, class, religion. It鈥檚 the American caste system, in the way that author Isabel Wilkerson might put it.