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Theorizing Documentary
Michael Renov, Michael Renov
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eBook - ePub
Theorizing Documentary
Michael Renov, Michael Renov
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A key collection of essays that looks at the specific issues related to the documentary form. Questions addressed include `What is documentary?' and `How fictional is nonfiction?'
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Informazioni
1 Introduction: The Truth About Non-Fiction
DOI: 10.4324/9780203873083-1
In the realm of the cinema, all nonnarrative genresâthe documentary, the technical film, etc.âhave become marginal provinces, border regions so to speak, while the feature-length film of novelistic fiction, which is simply called a âfilm,ââthe usage is significantâhas traced more and more clearly the kingâs highway of filmic expression.Christian MetzâSome Points in the Semiotics of the Cinemaâ1
Once one has distinguished, as does the entire philosophical tradition, between truth and reality, it immediately follows that the truth âdeclares itself in a structure of fiction.â Lacan insists a great deal on the opposition truth/reality, which he advances as a paradox. This opposition, which is as orthodox as can be, facilitates the passage of the truth through fiction: common sense always will have made the division between reality and fiction.Jacques DerridaâLe Facteur de la VĂŠritĂŠâ2
The detour signs are up on the kingâs highway of filmic expression. In critical circles, royalism has been deposed anyway; the assumption that dominant cultural forms or theoretical approaches should enjoy the intellectual right of way has been challenged. A new consensus is building. Attention is being directed toward reality-driven representations from an ever-wider array of sources: journalistic, literary, anthropological. It may well be that the marginalization of the documentary film as a subject of serious inquiry is at an end. After all, the key questions which arise in the study of nonfiction film and videoâthe ontological status of the image, the epistemological stakes of representation, the potentialities of historical discourse on filmâare just as pressing for an understanding of fictional representation.
As we are reminded by Ana M. LĂłpez in her essay in this volume (Chapter 8), one crucial gesture of postcolonial discourse has been its radicalizing of notions of core and periphery, frequently resulting in the discovery of the margin at the centerâs core. Taking at face value Metzâs pronouncement that the documentary is a âmarginal province,â this collection makes a contribution toward a new valuation of the core and periphery of film and television studiesâor, better yet, offers a deconstructive appraisal in which the terms of the hierarchy, fiction/nonfiction, are first reversed then displaced.
For, in a number of ways, fictional and nonfictional forms are enmeshed in one anotherâparticularly regarding semiotics, narrativity, and questions of performance. At the level of the sign, it is the differing historical status of the referent that distinguishes documentary from its fictional counterpart not the formal relations among signifier, signified, and referent.3 Is the referent a piece of the world, drawn from the domain of lived experience, or, instead, do the people and objects placed before the camera yield to the demands of a creative vision?4 Narrativity, sometimes assumed to be the sole province of fictional forms, is an expository option for the documentary film that has at times been forcefully exercised: the suspense-inducing structure of Flahertyâs Nanook of the North; the day-in-the-life framework of the city symphonies such as Man With a Movie Camera, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and A Propos de Nice; the âcrisis structureâ of the Drew Associatesâ films. How do we begin to distinguish the documentary performance-for-the-camera of a musician, actor, or politician (Donât Look Back, Jane, Primary) from that of a fictional counterpart (The Doors, On Golden Pond, The Candidate)?5 The ironies and cross-identifications these examples invoke ought to suggest the extent to which fictional and nonfictional categories share key conceptual and discursive characteristics.6
Indeed, nonfiction contains any number of âfictiveâ elements, moments at which a presumably objective representation of the world encounters the necessity of creative intervention. Among these Active ingredients we may include the construction of character (with Nanook as a first example) emerging through recourse to ideal and imagined categories of hero or genius, the use of poetic language, narration, or musical accompaniment to heighten emotional impact or the creation of suspense via the agency of embedded narratives (e.g., tales told by interview subjects) or various dramatic arcs (here, the âcrisis structureâ comes to mind). Many more examples could be offered: the use of high or low camera angles (whose effects have been conventionalized in fiction film and television), close-ups which trade emotional resonance for spatial integrity, the use of telephoto or wide-angle lenses which squeeze or distort space, the use of editing to make time contract, expand, or become rhythmic. In every case, elements of style, structure, and expositional strategy draw upon preexistent constructs, or schemas, to establish meanings and effects for audiences. What I am arguing is that documentary shares the status of all discursive forms with regard to its tropic or figurative character and that it employs many of the methods and devices of its fictional counterpart. The label of ânonfiction,â while a meaningful categorization, may, in fact, lead us to discount its (necessarily) fictive elements. It would be unwise to assume that only fiction films appeal to the viewerâs Imaginary, that psychic domain of idealized forms, fantasy, identification, reversible time, and alternative logics. A view of documentary which assumes too great a sobriety for nonfiction discourse will fail to comprehend the sources of nonfictionâs deep-seated appeal.7
With regard to the complex relations between fiction and documentary, it might be said that the two domains inhabit one another. Philip Rosen examines that co-habitation (described by him as âa generally undiscussed kinship between mainstream cinema and the original documentary traditionâ) in his essay, âDocument and Documentary: On the Persistence of Historical Concepts.â Rosen argues that meaning arises through a process of sequentiation which is constitutive of historical discourse; it is also a key ingredient of documentary theory and practice since Grierson. For Rosen, narrativity emerges as a fundamental condition that binds together all three representational practicesâhistory, documentary, and the fiction film.
Ana M. LĂłpez writes about a Brazilian television mini-series, âAmerica,â which offers a view of the United States that eschews the authoritative, constructing its object from âa distinctly in-between position: in between cultures and nations, the political and the poetic, the past and the present, the documentary and the fictional.â LĂłpezâs focus on the deployment of specific aesthetic strategies within âAmericaâ places the series within the context of postmodernist discourse. Scholars have rarely enlisted such art-based paradigms for their discussions of work derived from the historical world, regardless of the degree of artfulness. Susan Scheiblerâs discussion of Wim Wendersâ Lightning Over Water draws on ordinary language philosophy to describe the filmâs complex weave of constative and performative elements as Wenders tracks the actions and pronouncements of filmmaker Nicholas Ray during his final days. That analysis helps to explain the border status that the film cultivates for itselfâbetween life and death, documentary and fiction, homage and exploitation. The work of Rosen, LĂłpez, and Scheibler demonstrates that the common bonds between fiction and nonfiction may be illuminated with concepts drawn from historiography, postmodernist theory, and philosophy.
Brian Winston finds that the discourse of science has repeatedly been called upon to legitimate the documentary film and to set a standard for the fiction film. According to Winston, the early and public claims for photographyâs status as scientific evidence were based on the sense that the photochemically produced image was a fully indexical sign, one that bore the indelible imprint of the real. Photographyâs social utility followed from its ability to take the measure of things with verifiable fidelity; it could thus be likened to other scientific instruments such as the thermometer or hygrometer.8 A comparable claim, now more metaphysical than scientific, was made by Andre Bazin more than a century later: âPhotography does not create eternity, as art does, it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.9
Paul Arthurâs âJargons of Authenticity (Three American Moments)â takes as given a âtangled reciprocityâ between documentary practice and the Hollywood narrative, then focuses on the special status of the documentary achieved through its claims to discursive authority. Such claims, triumphantly mounted at particular moments (the late thirties, the late sixties, the late eighties), are, to be sure, historically conditioned and responsive to particular situations. Yet, all of these peak moments of the American documentary film share a defining oppositional relation to Hollywood that shapes the very contours of documentary authenticity. Bill Horriganâs commentary on various AIDS-related documentary practices offers a mix of meditation and historical insight, most specifically toward the ways in which the field of independent media has been challenged and transformed by the AIDS crisis. Horrigan finds in the artistsâ response to the epidemic a ârenewed credibilitâŚ. [for] the importance of people owning and being able to determine the terms of how they are visually represented,â with the legacy of feminist film practices figuring strongly. As a curator and critic, Horrigan has helped to organize and make public the richly variable outpouring of AIDS-related work since the mid-1980s; here, he offers a measure of tribute to that work while reflecting upon the discursive and political contingencies that have shaped it.
This focus on historical matters in a book entitled Theorizing Documentary should come as no surprise; an historical consciousness is essential for an analysis of the conceptual foundations of documentary film and video.10 Such an analysis must place the domain of nonfiction texts and practices within a century of cinematic forms as well as their photographic precursors. Indeed, the roots of cinema are co-terminus with documentaryâs own: Muybridge, Marey, the Lumieres. In the commercial cinema, however, the cameraâs preservational powers soon were devoted largely to the recording of dramatic performances, then star turns, and their infinite reduplication for the entertainment of mass audiences.11 This by-now shopworn account of the development of the narrative filmâs hegemony demands to be reframed, given the increasingly dominant position of nonfiction television in the current marketplace.12 It is all the more ironic that, even while televised nonfiction forms multiply exponentially, the documentary film continues to struggle for its public identity and financial viability. PBSâs summertime series âP.O.V.,â one of the few existing outlets for independent work, continues to be the target of conservative reaction; it has been termed âprovocative with a liberal tilt,â due in no small measure to its broadcast of such work as Marlon Riggsâ Tongues Untied and ACT-UPâs activist video, Stop the Church.13
Struggles over documentary have taken many forms; I have already alluded to those of the academy (e.g., the critical marginalization qua Metz) and the marketplace. An economically rooted aversion to the documentary form finds expression in some unexpected discursive arenas. To wit: controversy has surrounded the documentary nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in recent years, the claim being that the most popular or ground-breaking documentary films such as The Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, Truth or Dare, and Paris is Burning have failed to receive Academy recognition. Some have suggested that a kind of double standard for documentary remains in effect whereby success by any measure, financial or aesthetic, goes unrewarded. One suggested solution, issuing from Miramax Films (distributers of several of the films in question), addresses the very name âdocumentary.â In an open letter to the Academyâs executive director, Miramax suggested that the category become âbest nonfiction filmâ so that the ânegative connotationsâ of âdocumentaryâ could be jettisoned.14 This stigma demands to be read symptomatically.
While Brechtâs call for âpleasurable learningâ would seem to resonate with documentaryâs etymological roots (the Latin docere meaning âto teachâ), for many, Brechtâs concept remains an oxymoron. In psychoanalytic terms, one component of the spectatorâs cinematic pleasure involves the play of projection and identification with idealized others who inhabit the filmed world. Can expository forms designed to foreground issues and to propose solutions (with varying degrees of self-consciousness) ever hope to mobilize the forces of desire available through exclusively story forms? The notion of an explicit âdocumentary desire,â a desire-to-know aligned with the drive for an enabling mastery of the lived environs, is one which is explored in my essay, âToward a Poetics of Documentary.â As I am at pains to demonstrate, however, the cognitive requirements to which documentary discourse responds in no way exhausts its functional domain. The expressive capabilities of nonfiction forms, too frequently overlooked, account for an aesthetic dimension which isâon historical as well as conceptual groundsâconstitutive.
One of the chief concerns of recent film scholarship has been that of psychoanalysis. Only rarely has nonfiction been the subject of psychoanalytic criticism, due, perhaps, to assumptions of a baseline of rationality and conscious inquiry which govern the making and reception of documentary film in contradistinction to the unconscious (Imaginary) substrate which cuts across and enlivens fictions.15 I cannot offer here any more than a preliminary indication of documentaryâs claims to the turf of psychoanalytic criticism.16 It is important to note, nonetheless, that the pleasures of nonfiction are every bit as complex as those which have been attributed to fictional forms and far less understood. And, historically, it has been psychoanalysis which has addressed itself most decisively to questions of pleasure. Recent work such as that undertaken by Judith Butler has begun to suggest, however, that, with regard to the body and its representations, psychoanalytic approaches have installed a kind of cerebral detour from the corporeal.17 Documentations of the body, as performative, analytic, or meditative vehicles, have been one sector of nonfiction practice since Muybridge. Bill Nicholsâ essay in this book (Chapter 10) suggests that recent documentary films have begun to activate new conceptions of the body as the subject of cinematic representation. His attention to the inscription of an embodied, corporeal history in this work points to a lively current of resistance against the Griersonian model âin which the corporeal I who speaks dissolves itself into a disembodied, depersonalized, institutional discourse of power and knowledge.â
Of course, it is unwise to generalize any uniform laws of construction for nonfiction film and video and the essays contained in these pages have refrained from doing so. The recourse to history demonstrates that the documentary has availed itself of nearly every constructive device known to fiction (of course, the reverse is equally true) and has employed virtually every register of cinematic syntax in the process.18 Documentary filmmakers since the days of Flahertyâs Nanook have frequently chosen to build stories around the heroics of larger-than-life figures plucked from their ârealâ environsâin short, to narrativize the real. To return to the Derrida quotation with which we began, there is the sense that truth, as understood within the Western philosophical tradition, demands the detour through fictive constructs. The truth of aesthetic forms in the classical mode has been rendered through a kind of âcrucible effectâ in which reality is subjected to the heat and pressure of the creative imaginationâthe passage of truth through fiction. According to Derrida, Lacanian psychoanalysisâand the philosophical tradition which it supportsârepresents truth through two indissociable paradigms: as adequation or as veiling/unveiling. In either case, truth is co-implicated with speech (âpresent,â âfull,â and âauthenticâ speech).19 Derrida, for his part, disengages âtruthâ from ârealityâ: âWhat is neither true nor false is reality.â For if âtruthâ entails speech, it also implies a speaking subject. Derrida, in his critique of âtruthâsâ logocentric roots, thus draws attention to its constructed (and propositional) character and in so doing is able to distinguish it from âreality,â which, though cognitively constructed, entails no necessary assertion or claim. Reality simply âis.â (The distinction between the âtrueâ and the âr...