Tom Hanks has said the new documentary series The American Revolution pushes back against a version of history “made by the people in power.”
The Forrest Gump actor, 69, voices a number of historical characters in the new six-part PBS series from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt.
Deadline reports that while speaking at the New York premiere on Thursday night, Hanks argued that “it’s a very basic kind of thought process” that establishes “the only narrative that is acceptable” is “made by the people in power who want to guarantee themselves to be in power.”
He added: “We know better. And you do not get that unless you understand the conversation that we’ve had about slavery.”
While Hanks did not mention Trump by name at the event, he did use the opportunity to argue that an understanding of how much progress America has made is what makes the country great.
“Look how often, and by often I mean 51% of the time – 49% you’re wrong, but 51% of the time we steered toward the right way of making a more perfect union,” said Hanks. “And that describes how far we have come! I’m a proud American … that comes out without a doubt when you look at history with enough dispassion to understand, we did not know better then, but we do now.”
Also speaking at the event, Burns added that American history benefits from an understanding of the violence involved in the founding of the country. “Nothing is diminished by showing the violence,” he said. “Those ideas, those big ideas are not diminished by telling the story. How are you so threatened by knowing that part of the story?”
Trump continued on his social media site Truth Social: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
A couple of weeks before he attacked the Smithsonian, President Trump removed funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which helped pay for PBS. The organization has since announced it has been forced to shut down.
Burns, however, said that PBS “urged us, but also permitted us to dive deep, unafraid of conflict.”
He added that “PBS is not going anywhere” despite the loss of significant funding.
