Archivists on the Issues is a forum for archivists to discuss the issues we are facing today. Today’s post comes from Burkely Hermann, Metadata Librarian for the National Security Archive and current I&A Blog Coordinator. There will be spoilers for Kiff and other animated series he will be discussing in this post.
In a recently-aired episode of Kiff, an animated musical comedy series, entitled “Career Fair”, the two protagonists, Barry Buns and Kiff Chatterley (voiced by H. Michael Croner and Kimiko Glenn respectfully), are given a summer job at Table Town’s city hall. They find it boring, believing they are just “pencil-pushers”. In order to achieve quicker results, they cut corners and shred the necessary forms in order to cut through the red tape, completing tasks to help those in the Table Town, such as installing a traffic light and marrying a couple. At the end of their first day, their boss, Glarbin Gloobin (voiced by Steve Little), city manager of Table Town, tells them they are “so good” at filing paperwork that all the forms they “completed” will be filed the next day in the “archive”. The latter is stereotypically portrayed as a somewhat disorganized stack of boxes in another room, which Gloobin describes as “beautiful”. After he leaves for the day, Kiff and Barry try and cover their tracks, deciding, without much thought, to shred every box and piece of paper in the archive with the shredder, resulting in massive record destruction, including vital records, like the town constitution. Eventually, Kiff comes to her senses, realizes they did a bad thing, but instead of confessing, she, and Barry, lie, statig they were robbed. Predictably, this does not work as the shredder explodes, and Gloobin realizes they shredded all the documents. As the episode comes to close, the townspeople thank Kiff and Barry, while Kiff says that city hall is about helping people, instead of “mindless” paperwork, the former employees (who had quit their jobs) come back to work, and the shredded paper continues to rein down like confetti.
Unfortunately, the episode has a bad lesson: repercussions for Kiff and Barry are slim, apart from Gloobin firing them, as there is no accountability for their mass destruction of the city’s paper records. Furthermore, those at city hall clean-up their mess, having the time-consuming job of piecing together the shredded papers, which has become confetti. As a result, the episode’s plot necessitates a focus on the value of preservation, record management, current practices, history of record destruction, and other pop culture depictions which are diametrically opposed to what is shown in Kiff.
Records management in archives, and other institutions, often involves identification, storage, retrieval, and circulation of records. This also necessitates record disposal, defined as records transfer, primarily of noncurrent records, to their final location at an archives or resulting in destruction. It is usually determined on a records retention schedule. Disposal contrasts with record destruction, which the Society of American Archivists (SAA)’ Dictionary of Archives Terminology defines as a disposal process which “results in the obliteration of records.” Kiff and Barry did not follow any process, meaning there was no maceration, but shredding, pain and simple, a form of destruction without abandon. Furthermore, shredding, apart from limits to what can be destroyed and maintenance of secure records storage, has the additional issue of creating paper which cannot be “easily recycled”. Preserving records is important, especially in legal cases. Some even discourage do-it-yourself document shredding. [1]
Historically, shredding of documents has been criticized, especially during ongoing litigation, including accusations of shredding by organizations which push for stronger records retention, like the ACLU, or by elections officials, accused of destroying ballots. Some politicians have even used shredders in order to illustrate their desire to “destroy” a policy of their political opponents. [2] One historical example that sticks out is explained within A People’s History of American Empire: Iranian women piecing together documents shredded by U.S. Embassy employees, prior to Iranian take-over of the embassy in Tehran in November 1979. The takeover began the Iran hostage crisis. The documents found in the embassy revealed information about U.S. foreign policy of supporting the repressive Shah, and published by the Iranian government in 77 volumes entitled Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den. [3]
There have also been some recent examples. For instance, in October 2022, the U.S. Army noted, in a now-deleted post, the destruction of over 19,000 boxes of “expired records…at relatively no cost” in Kasierslautern, Germany, with the records changed into toilet paper. In addition, in April 2022, the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) admitted to shredding documents in a coal ash legal case. Advocates, like Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, have argued that the administration of the former president, who has been called a “paper-shredding present”, had a major problem with record preservation. In Blanton’s view, it went beyond improper shredding, with a “deliberate failure” to create necessary records.
Previously, in 2008, Treasury Department officials shredded FOIA requests improperly (while delaying those same requests), the Bush Administration shredded hard drives in the early 2000s, and thousands of United Nations documents, including those about the Oil-for-Food programme in Iraq, were shredded. Other notable examples include destruction of evidence by the Union Bank of Switzerland showing the company owned stolen property once owned by Jews during the Holocaust, and reported “shredding parties” during the Iran-Contra scandal. [4] The latter included “stacks of memoranda and messages” destroyed by Oliver North as part of the cover-up during the scandal. At present, many municipalities host and/or support paper shredding events for their residents.
Kiff is not alone in having characters engage in record destruction. Hermes Conrad, the resident bureaucrat in Futurama for the Planet Express crew, did so in the Season Six episode “Lethal Inspection”, burning his own former employee file. Hera programmed data destruction in an episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Double Agent Droid,” to prevent the “wrong” people from getting the data (the Empire). In the comics, Jocasta Nu, the stereotypical archivist in Attack of the Clones, purged the files of the Jedi temple archives/library, to prevent the Empire from getting their hands on the records. At the same time, destruction was only implied infamously in Attack of the Clones, requested by Marceline the Vampire Queen in an episode of Adventure Time (it never transpired), and in an episode of The Crown, it is noted that the German Nazis destroyed many of their records so people wouldn’t be unaware of their misdeeds.
This differs from R2-D2 in the Star Wars franchise who is an unintentional archivist of sorts, as he is never memory wiped. As a result, he remembers all the events through the entire series, which he witnessed, despite the fact he was destroyed at least once. Kiff is diametrically opposed to the emphasis on records preservation in Hilda. Alfur repeatedly explains the value of rules, regulations, and proper filing. Perhaps he would sing the bureaucrat song along with Hermes, who mainly follows the book, apart from record destruction in “Lethal Inspection”. Coming back to Kiff, neither Kiff nor Barry are following the SAA’s core values which encourage expansion of access and usage opportunities for records, promotion of transparency, mitigation of harm, implementing environmentally sustainable techniques for preserving records, and other suggestions. These values further state that archival materials should provide “digital and physical surrogates for human memory”, something which Kiff and Barry blatantly ignored and stamped upon.
Kiff glosses over one of the worst results of document shredding: it is said to be one of the “most effective ways” to protect businesses, individuals, or other organizations by extension, from “its extremely negative effects”. Even so, the episode may have roots in historical reality. The series was created by Lucy Heavens and Nic Smal, who grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. The episode could be referencing burning of tens of thousands of books by the apartheid government in South Africa from 1955 to 1971 in Iscor furnaces, and further shredding, and burning, of “hundreds of archival documents and public records” in the same furnaces in the early 1990s. [5] As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission put it in Volume 1 of their report, the story of apartheid is, “amongst other things, the story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation’s memory”, which included censorship, banning, confiscation, and other actions.
Even if the episode is based on the the above-mentioned historical reality, the fact that Kiff and Barry are barely punished, with few consequences for their actions, does not send a positive message about the value of record preservation. Furthermore, the stereotype of a dusty, dirty, and unorganized archive is perpetrated, something which harms the profession, its institutions, and archivists themselves. Neither is the value of retention, i.e. the specific amount of time a record is kept, emphasized, since Kiff nor Barry follow any guidance on how to properly shred documents. Hopefully, future series, animated or not, emphasize the vitality of preserving and retaining records instead of what is depicted in Kiff.
Notes
[1] “Why shredding is not a good idea?,” Super What, Jan. 17, 2023; “A Document Retention Guide from Shred-it,” Shred-it, Dec. 27, 2017; Kennedy, Charles H. “Secure Records Disposal: Is Not Shredding Ever A Good Idea?,” Iron Mountain, accessed Mar. 14, 2023; Zuckerman Law Whistleblower Practice Group, “Shredding The Documents? Evidence Preservation Issues Highlighted in employment discrimination case,” National Law Review, Nov. 8, 2017; “Delete At Your Peril: Preserving Electronic Evidence During The Litigation Process,” FindLaw, Sept. 25, 2018; “Document Destruction Should Not Be Left to Chance,” Shred-it, Apr. 12, 2021; “Part 1. Organization, Finance, and Management, Chapter 15. Records and Information Management, Section 3. Disposing of Records,” Internal Revenue Manuals, Internal Revenue Service, accessed Mar. 14, 2023, see 1.15.3.1.1 (08-04-2017) (1), for mention of shredding. Also, the book Records Management for Dummies states that some companies have a “shred-all policy” for their records.
[2] Strom, Stephanie. “Concerns at A.C.L.U. Over Document Shredding,” New York Times, Jun. 5, 2005; Jay, David. “Carbon County resident says video shows ballot shredding; state investigating,” Q2, Feb. 20, 2023; Todd L. Nunn, Michael Goodfried, and Ted Webber, “Chapter 2: Preservation of Electronically Stored Information“, accessed Mar. 14, 2023, p. 20-21, 31, 40; Garrity, Kelly. “GOP senator: Only way to improve Biden’s budget ‘is with a shredder’,” Politico, Mar. 12, 2023. Also of note is part of Texas Local Government Code Title 6 which states that any records with restricted public access can only be destroyed by “burning, pulping, or shredding” them.
[3] Konopacki, Mike and Paul Buhle. A People’s History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008), 232-233.
[4] Blanton, Tom and Nate Jones. “Spy Chief James Clapper Wins Rosemary Award,” National Security Archive, Mar. 24, 2014; Blanton, Tom and Lauren Harper. “White House Failure to Document Heads of State Meetings Violates Records Law,” National Security Archive, May 7, 2019; Blanton, Tom and Nate Jones. “Justice Department Wins Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance in 2011,” National Security Archive, Feb. 14, 2012; Blanton, Tom and Lauren Harper. “Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Wins Rosemary Award,” National Security Archive, Mar. 18, 2015; Blanton, Tom. “2010 Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance Goes to Federal Chief Information Officers’ Council,” National Security Archive, Mar. 12, 2010; Blanton, Tom, Meredith Fuchs, Kristin Adair, Catherine Nielsen. “Treasury Wins 2008 “Rosemary Award” as Worst FOIA Agency,” National Security Archive, Mar. 14, 2008; “Iran-Contra Revisited,” National Security Archive, Sept. 5, 2014; Fuchs, Meredith. “Ruling on Preservation of White House E-Mails Awaited; New Law Proposed to Address Destruction of Electronic Records,” National Security Archive, Apr. 17, 2008; Blanton, Tom and Lauren Harper. “Federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council Wins Rosemary Award,” National Security Archive, Mar. 18, 2015; Sanger, David E. “Swiss Bank ‘Regrets’ Shredding Wartime Documents.” New York Times, Jan. 15, 1997.
[5] Dick, Archie. “How the apartheid regime burnt books in their tens of thousands,” Quartz, Oct. 25, 2018; Bell, Terry. “Apartheid-era secrets now in ashes,” IOL, Jul. 30, 2007; “Op-Ed: How (and why) the apartheid regime destroyed tens of thousands of books,” University of Pretoria, Oct. 31, 2008; “Apartheid’s history in shreds,” Mail & Guardian, Oct. 23, 1998.
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