The executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning “American Masters” series insisted on removing a scene critical of President Trump from a documentary about the comic artist Art Spiegelman two weeks before it was set to air nationwide on public television stations.
The filmmakers say it is another example of public media organizations bowing to pressure as the Trump administration tries to defund the sector, while the programmers say their decision was a matter of taste.
Alicia Sams, a producer of “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse,” said in an interview that approximately two weeks before the movie’s April 15 airdate, she received a call from Michael Kantor, the executive producer of “American Masters,” informing her that roughly 90 seconds featuring a cartoon critical of Trump would need to be excised from the film. The series is produced by the WNET Group, the parent company of several New York public television channels.
Stephen Segaller, the vice president of programming for WNET, confirmed in an interview that the station had informed the filmmakers that it needed to make the change. Segaller said WNET felt the scatological imagery in the comic, which Spiegelman drew shortly after the 2016 election — it portrays what appears to be fly-infested feces on Trump’s head — was a “breach of taste” that might prove unpalatable to some of the hundreds of stations that air the series.
But the filmmakers have questioned whether political considerations played a role. They have noted that earlier this year, according to Documentary Magazine, which first reported the “American Masters” decision, PBS postponed indefinitely a documentary set to air about a transgender video-gamer for fear of political backlash.
Sams pointed out that their film had already been approved for broadcast — the filmmakers agreed it would be shown at 10 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., so that certain obscenities would not need to be blurred or bleeped — and that the call came a week after a Capitol Hill hearing in which Congressional Republicans accused public television and radio executives of biased coverage (the executives denied that accusation in sworn testimony).
“If PBS cannot protect the free speech of its content creators and subject matters without fear of retribution from members of the government who may find their views displeasing, then how can it strengthen the ‘social, democratic and cultural health’ of the American people?” Sams and four other producers and directors wrote to PBS and WNET executives last month, quoting from PBS’s mission statement.
“Rather, your actions will have a chilling effect on the free speech of artists, filmmakers and journalists who have long looked to public media as a platform for all Americans,” they added.
A statement from Spiegelman was appended. “It’s tragic and appalling that PBS and WNET are willing to become collaborators with the sinister forces trying to muzzle free speech,” he wrote.
Segaller acknowledged the pressures facing his station, but insisted politics had not played a part in its decision: “I don’t think we’d have made a different decision if it had been a year earlier,” he said. PBS referred an inquiry to WNET.
This month, Trump accused NPR and PBS of producing “left-wing propaganda” and, in an executive order, instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to end federal funding for them as allowed by law. The chief executives of all three organizations have challenged the legality of the move, which could decrease public media’s revenue and alter their relationships with member stations.
The filmmakers acknowledged that “American Masters” had the right to demand the change under their licensing agreement. They acquiesced, Sams said, because the change would not affect the movie which they own, for distribution elsewhere. The documentary, in uncut form, had already played at film festivals and run theatrically at Manhattan’s Film Forum and elsewhere, and is currently available on the streaming service Kanopy.
The film chronicles the life and work of Spiegelman, 77, whose graphic memoir, “Maus,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The book narrates his parents’ experiences in the Holocaust and his latter-day reckoning with them — famously depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats.
In their letter, the filmmakers highlighted the irony of editing a film about Spiegelman, given that — as the documentary shows — “Maus” has been subjected to book bans in recent years.
The removed scene features Spiegelman reading a short comic he drew about Trump in late 2016. It was printed in a magazine that his wife, Françoise Mouly, The New Yorker’s longtime art editor, and daughter, the author Nadja Spiegelman, self-published and distributed at the “Women’s March” protest shortly after the 2017 inauguration.
“Even a TOWER full of Tic Tacs can’t mask the toxic stench of Fascism!” the cartoon begins. It also features a swastika drawn into the border between panels.
Defunding public television would further constrict the viability of topical documentaries, said Thom Powers, the founder of the DOC NYC festival, where “Disaster Is My Muse” premiered last fall.
“The underlying question is, who is in the speaking-truth-to-power business today?” Powers said.
Marc Tracy is a Times reporter covering arts and culture. He is based in New York.
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