In two startling boxing documentaries – Dan Klores and Ron Berger's Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story, and Ken Burns' Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson – JOHN SPRY finds there's plenty to warrant the sports arena becoming a regular fixture on the festival circuit.


RON BERGER and Dan Klores frame Ring of Fire around one event: the death of boxer Benny "Kid" Paret at the hands of Emile Griffith in a title fight broadcast live on television in 1962 from New York City. With a broad stroke and many interviews with participants, Griffith's sexuality and identity is also broached, sometimes obliquely and other times directly.

The documentary also broaches many issues relating to boxing, the commercial viability of sports, cultural history and the place of an alternate sexual lifestyle in the sporting arena (which is still under analysis today in boxing and other sports), as well as the techniques used in documentary filmmaking.

Ring of Fire plots the course of the accidental discovery of Griffith while working in the New York garment district by his trainer and managers, through to his rise in notoriety as an excellent boxer, and ultimately welterweight champion. In fact by the end of his career, he lost and regained the championship title six times.

Throughout there are two main threads that run the course of the film: the allegations that Griffith is a homosexual, and from this, Paret's death during the welterweight championship at the hands of Griffith. These two plot points are also inextricably linked and at the conclusion of the documentary there is at least some closure for Griffith in terms of Paret's death. This takes the form of Paret's son wanting to meet Griffith and talk with the man who was in the ring with his father the night he died.

Whilst this particular documentary doesn't offer any real answers about Griffith, especially in terms of his own sexuality, the filmmakers have chosen to also include material relating to the sport of boxing as a commodity as well as an identity for those in lower socio-economic groups, illustrating that this was a method of escape from their surroundings into a better life. Ring of Fire is an interesting factual text, and as well as being attractive for those viewers with an interest in boxing as a sport, with the film staying clear of the heavyweight division as well as other more notorious boxers of the time.

Ring of Fire identifies the type of people that made boxing their way of life as fighters and illustrates why they stayed to the possible detriment of their health – and in the extreme case of Paret – their very own survival. As the film progresses and moves towards its fateful scenes, it is shown that although Paret was beaten terribly by Griffith during the fight, he also took a heavy beating the previous week and was forced to fight Griffith by his manager because of the purse on offer.

There's no doubt that like most boxing texts there is a definitive racist element in the relationship formed between the fighter and the trainers/managers. There is a hierarchy at work that is intimate in its complexity; that at once is totally illogical yet natural and accepted as the way the commercial boxing operates. This accepted hierarchy forces the boxer, who does all the work and takes most of the risk, to be at the bottom of the heap, with the manager who does less work at the top as well as having the majority of the say in all aspects of the boxer's life. Although the paradigm of race would change from white to black managers (i.e. with the coming of managers and promoters such as Don King), the boxer still remains at the bottom of a very long ladder. This hierarchy is illustrated in the situation of Paret being forced to fight Griffith in a state not far removed from a bad beating, as well as the manager taking most of Paret's earnings at the time of his death. This left Paret's widow with little in the way of resources for her and her son, leading to her having to raise their child in a Miami ghetto.

As television became a popular medium for sports broadcasting enjoyed by more and more people, there was a demand for varying sports, one being boxing. After the death of Paret there was public demand for the sport to be removed from television, and it was consequently not shown on major networks for years to come. Berger and Klores' film explores this as well as the very personal story of Emile Griffith. How successful this documentary is in answering any questions is ultimately in the hands of the viewer, however one thing is clear: that you'll be all the better and more understanding of boxing after meeting Emile.


KEN BURNS' latest documentary centres on the pivotal years of early 20th century boxer Jack Johnson (arguably the greatest sportsman of his era), his slow rise to fame and fortune, as well as the eventual decline of his career and life. The documentary also focuses on the inherent racial attitudes in society and the difficulties in a popular black man attempting to live his life on his own terms.

In a time before mass communication, television, popular music and reality programming dominated the globe, there was a period where being heavyweight boxing champion meant more to the public than their own daily lives, and this documentary explores the idea through the now infamous Jack Johnson. Boxing was a sport of the people in the US and the rest of the Western World in the early 1900s, simply because of choice in society. At the time, many future professional sports that were to become a phenomenon in their own right were still in their infancy and trying to set themselves up as workable businesses or enterprises. American Football, Basketball and Baseball would in their own time come to dominate the sporting and national landscape, but in this specific period of history it was boxing that all class, culture and religion of people could associate with.

Anyone familiar with Ken Burns and his many documentaries (such as The Civil War, Baseball and The West) will immediately recognise his style and approach to the subject(s) under scrutiny. Firstly, there are the famous voices at work, narrating the unfolding story dramatically, as well as voices assuming the personas of actual people involved in the extrapolation of the plot. An example of this can be found in the thoughts and writings of Jack Johnson himself, narrated throughout the documentary by Samuel L. Jackson. Secondly, the entire documentary is divided into sections, each announced by an inter-title that is almost always referred to directly within the segment. Thirdly, each segment is framed and given context within a specific timeframe, city or country. Fourthly, the use of texts from the time such as silent films, novels and newspaper articles are utilised by Burns to give the documentary a feeling of authenticity, as well as giving the viewer an intense feeling of experiencing events unfolding for the very first time. Fifthly, interviews with boxing experts, eyewitnesses, fans of boxing and Jack Johnson himself are used to create perspective. All these narrative aspects of Burns' methodology open up a subject to an audience that may have no contact with the sport of boxing or any of its iconic personalities, as well as allowing by virtue of the text an insight into not only the mind of Johnson, but the minds of those people involved directly and indirectly with his life and times.

Unforgivable Blackness is divided into two separate and very distinctive sections: 'The Rise' and 'The Fall'. Both episodes have two similarities, and that is the boxing, as well as the division of society into (literally) black and white. This was enforced by the rampant racism that existed at the time as evidenced in newspaper articles.

The first section focuses on the sport of boxing in the early stages of the 20th century and concurrently, the progression of Johnson as a young man and his development growing up, fighting in underground clubs, and eventually gaining respect from current black fighters. This would in turn lead to some form of formal recognition from the dominant white and popular establishment. As a viewer we witness the steady racist elements not only in general white society, but also the anti-black feelings in the established power structures of the era. It becomes apparent that no matter how much Johnson wants to prove himself with a shot at the heavyweight title, no current white champion is willing to risk losing to a black fighter, thereby preventing the chance that a black man will ever be viewed as being superior to a white man.

The second section focuses on Johnson's life after his successful defeat of the current champion and what he would continue to do as heavyweight champion. We're shown Johnson living with and in affairs with white women, as well as being viewed as a problem and an obscenity by white people throughout most of the US. This is compounded by the fact that Johnson lives his life in the spotlight while wasting much of his money and buying himself out of any problems that occur. As well as many affairs, Johnson faces charges from the legal fraternity, has to flee the US and travel the world for paying fights. Upon his return to the US after losing his title in Cuba, Johnson goes on to live a life full of adventure before dying in an automobile accident on his way to perform in a vaudeville show. There is an epilogue that involves Muhammad Ali and his similarities to Jack Johnson; especially in terms of the way Ali, like Johnson, was persecuted for wanting to live his own life.

Unforgivable Blackness highlights the struggle and uneven framework of power and influence that existed in the US in the early part of the 20th century. In fact because of the rise in influence of the US and the fall of British Colonialism, it's easy to see why the heavyweight title could be fought for in Australia, and how the paradigm of capitalism over colonialism was fast approaching. With the odds against Johnson becoming the heavyweight champion in a world dominated by one culture, as well as the entire media world rallying against him, it's also easy to see why he's such an important, dominant figure in African-American history along with Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King – to name just three in the struggle for the acceptance and rights of African-Americans. This of course was bolstered when Jackie Robinson through Branch Ricky would become the first black player in Major League Baseball as part of the New York Giants in the 1950s.

The title of the documentary is interesting as it refers to the way in which the public referred to Johnson not by his prowess in the ring, but by the mere fact that he was black. It seems that from the evidence many did not have issues with him being a great boxer or being confrontational in and out of the ring; the problem was that he was black. This was the sin that is unforgivable.

This, like Burns' other documentaries, gives the world of today a glimpse and a second-hand experience of life in America just on a hundred years ago. We can only dream (in the next millennium and as New Zealanders) of what this world was like, with almost none of today's technology present. Although conditions in most parts of the 'Western' world are nothing like the open racial prejudice that existed in the US at the time, it is possible to identify with the way in which minorities were treated. One need only look to another Burns documentary, Ken Burns' Baseball (1996), where the focus for much of the series is on the segregated Negro Leagues, as well as the first black player admitted to the Major Leagues and his struggle for equality almost forty years after Jack Johnson and his own fight to equanimity. Burns' film not only proves that Johnson was a great fighter and a larger than life character; as the son of slaves he knew his place in society was not a given, that he was standing on the shoulders of giants, and that in time there would be others to take his place and use his shoulders to reach higher and further than anyone could ever know.