Documentary

TRUTH OR DARE: THEORETICAL AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Observational films seemed more truthful in large part because they were not constrained by earlier technological limitations that often required more overt manipulation. "Dramatic reconstruction" was conventional in documentaries concerning people and events before the invention of the camera. Early documentaries, like Biograph's Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius (1905), often used scale-model replicas in place of actuality footage in films. The March of Time , which began in 1935, freely combined actuality footage with dramatized sequences in a style that Henry Luce, head of Time, called "fakery in allegiance to the truth" (Barnouw, p. 121). The ideology of observational documentary has become so standard that its stylistic conventions, such as the jerky movements of the handheld camera, noticeable changes in focus, and the graininess of fast film stock, have become the common techniques for representing a "reality effect" in fiction film and on commercial television in both dramatic shows and commercials.

Nevertheless, questions concerning the camera's physical presence, along with the issue of whether and to what extent the camera exploits or documents its social actors, have been hotly debated issues concerning both Griersonian-style and observational documentary. Films such as Portrait of Jason and the Maysles brothers' Grey Gardens (1975), about an eccentric mother and daughter who live as recluses in a decaying mansion, foreground these ethical issues because of the filmmakers' apparent encouragement of their social actors to display themselves for the camera. But in fact ethical questions have surrounded the making of documentaries since the genre's beginnings.

Although the immediacy of observational cinema made the stylistic conventions associated with the Griersonian tradition seem outmoded and ideologically suspect, manipulation in documentary inevitably is a matter of degree. For although documentaries are factual, they are never objective or ideologically neutral. Aesthetic choices such as the selection of camera position, angles, and movement; lighting; and editing make the expression of point of view or perspective unavoidable, even if unintentional. Just as the "fly on the wall" aesthetic of the Drew filmmakers was compromised to some extent by the commercial imperatives of television, so the nature of the film medium ensures that the hand of the maker must always work over the raw material on the editing table. Dead Birds (Robert Gardner, 1965), which aimed at being an ethnographic study of the Dugum Dani culture in New Guinea, is almost embarrassing today for the degree to which it presumes to attribute values and thoughts to the people it presents as characters in a narrative.

The debate around documentary film's moral obligation to be objective, or at least fair, has been rekindled by the recent and commercially successful films of Michael Moore, who makes no secret of his political views but rather speaks out on political issues. His first film, Roger & Me (1989), the most commercially successful documentary to date, established Moore's trademark approach, a combination of an unabashedly personal tone, his own provocative verité presence, and a strong sense of humor. He has been attacked for manipulating facts and for violating ethical proprieties, as when in Bowling for Columbine (2002) he ambushes the actor Charlton Heston, then president of the National Rifle Association, questioning him about his culpability in the accidental death of a child by gunfire.

Although for many viewers documentary still means objectivity, today it is much more commonly accepted that documentaries are inevitably biased. This is probably less a postmodern crisis in signification than the result of

the proliferation of camcorders and a greater increase in basic visual literacy. Yet it is symptomatic that many documentaries of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, such as The Thin Blue Line (1988), seek to uncover ambiguities of truth rather than a unified, singular Truth. Stylistically, nonfiction films are now employing a more pronounced mixing of modes, combining elements of fiction and documentary, or creating an ambiguity concerning their documentary status, as in Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991). British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield places himself squarely within his films as a character seeking the truth about his subject, whether about the murder of grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain in Kurt & Courtney (1998) or the female serial killer Aileen Wournos in Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), but never quite finding it. Broomfield's quandary as a documentary filmmaker bespeaks contemporary viewers' loss of faith in the ability of documentary film to provide unequivocal truths.

Documentary film also has been critiqued from postcolonial and feminist perspectives. Robert Flaherty's films have come to be seen as examples of a white Eurocentric perspective imposed on other cultures. This colonizing gaze informs much of the history of travelogues and other documentary filmmaking; it is particularly egregious in the films of Martin E. Johnson (1884–1937) and Osa Johnson (1894–1953), such as Simba: The King of the Beasts (1928) and Congorilla (1932), which paraded "primitive" natives in front of the camera for comic relief along with local fauna. Luis Buñuel's Las Hurdes ( Land Without Bread , 1933), an audacious documentary about an impoverished region of Spain and its inhabitants, is regarded as one of the first films to be aware of the imbalance of power between First World filmmakers and their less wealthy subjects. T. Minh-ha Trinh, a teacher and theorist as well as a practicing filmmaker, has employed a variety of expressive techniques in documentaries such as Naked Spaces: Living Is Round (1985) and Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) to give voice to women in other cultures.

Documentary filmmakers have sought to use documentary politically to help create a sense of shared purpose, to offer the legitimation of subcultures through the presentation of recognizable images that have been marginalized by mainstream or dominant culture. In the 1950s Quebecois filmmakers discovered that training the camera on themselves facilitated the Quiet Revolution, the province's discovery of itself as a new and distinct culture within Canada. The heightened political polarization of the Vietnam era influenced the pronounced partisanship of many documentaries, as in the work of Peter Davis ( The Selling of the Pentagon , 1971; Hearts and Minds , 1974). The introduction in the 1960s of video porta-paks and public access of local cable TV allowed for grassroots concerns to be heard. Some filmmakers, such as Emile de Antonio (1920–1989), established themselves as counter-culture heroes by making documentaries that exposed government corruption ( Point of Order , 1964, about the 1954 Army-McCarthy Senate hearings) or challenged official policies ( Rush to Judgment , 1967, about the report of the Warren Commission).

Much contemporary documentary practice continues to be politically engaged, and some films— Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976), The Panama Deception (Barbara Trent, 1992), The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003)—are able to find limited commercial distribution. Documentary film's appeal has filtered down to mainstream popular culture in the television exposé form, in such shows as 60 Minutes , the most successful nonfiction series in television history, and on reality-TV. Subcultures and various interest groups have used the documentary successfully to help develop a sense of identity and solidarity. In the 1970s feminist documentary filmmakers developed a distinctively intimate, "talking-head" style that promoted the shared rediscovery of mutual experience with the viewer, as in With Babies and Banners (Lorraine Gray, 1978) and The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Connie Field, 1980). Documentaries about gay sexuality, such as Word Is Out (Rob Epstein, 1978) and The Times of Harvey Milk (Epstein, 1984), appeared with the emergence of the gay movement in the 1980s. In Tongues Untied (1990) Marlon Riggs (1957–1994) explored issues of gay black identity. Since the 1980s many documentaries have addressed AIDS, chronicling the struggles of its victims and promoting awareness.