III. TOWARDS
AN OPERATIONAL DEFINTION OF DOCUMENTARY:
“Naming matters. Names come with
expectations; if that were not true, then marketers would not use them as
marketing tools. The truthfulness, accuracy, and trustworthiness of
documentaries are important to us all because we value them precisely and
uniquely for these qualities. When documentaries deceive us, they are not just
deceiving viewers but members of the public who might act upon knowledge
gleaned from the film. Documentaries are part of the media that helps us
understand not only our own world, but our role in it, that shape us as public
actors.”
Patricia Aufderheide, “Documentary Film- A Very Short Introduction”[1]
III.1. What is Documentary?
Having
viewed the current state of documentary from the macro perspective of the
digital revolution, let us now narrow our focus and direct our attention to the
form and aesthetic conventions of documentary itself. As is often the case with
revolutions, one of the unfortunate side effects of the digital revolution has
been a tendency on the part of some to either deny or ignore the value of past
history or traditions.
In
the case of documentary, this is particularly unfortunate, because there is a rich
documentary tradition dating back to the end of the 19th century
that is arguably still of great relevance event today. Finding a definition of documentary from
within that tradition that would apply both to analog and digital documentary
would help make that case to the new generation of Digital Natives mentioned in Chapter I.
However,
there are a few major obstacles.
Perhaps the chief impediment is that fact that
while documentary is a universally recognized cinematic form, an agreement on
exactly what is, and what is not, a documentary has proved elusive throughout
the course of cinematic scholarship from the early 20th century to the present
day. Indeed, the issue has frequently been
the subject of heated controversy.
For example, the noted American documentary
theorist Bill Nichols has posited that there are three ‘commonsense assumptions’ in all documentaries:
1.
Documentaries are about
reality; they’re about something that actually happened.
2.
Documentaries are about
real people.
3.
Documentaries stories
about what happens in the real world.[2]
One
of the problems inherent in Nichols' definition is that the definition of
reality itself has been a classic conundrum for philosophers since ancient
times, a conundrum which has yet to be resolved. As is well known, new
scientific discoveries in the 20th centuries have constantly forced
us to radically re-assess our perceptions of reality, shattering in the process
all hope of a deterministic world view.
We
are now limited to defining our reality as the currently accepted scientific
definition of that reality, fully aware that the definition will soon be
subject to modification. For better or for worse, we find ourselves in an indeterminate
universe, where the only constant is change; as the ancient philosopher
Heraclitus put it: “All entities move and
nothing remains still.”[3]
In
the cinematic world, the issue of what constitutes accurate or acceptable portrayal
of reality has also been a hot potato since newsreels began to recreate
historical events for the camera in the earliest days of the cinema up until
the present day. For example, in 1898,
travel was expensive and time-consuming, so staging the sinking of the
battleship Maine in Havana harbor in some bathtub in New York made perfect
sense, at least from a producer’s point of view. At that time, there were no
ethical standards for documentary, since the medium had yet to be defined.
Today,
of course, if a news correspondent is reporting from Baghdad, he or she has to
physically be in Baghdad, and not in, say, New York or London with a digital
green screen backdrop. Similarly, if a Richard Attenborough BBC special on
wildlife intersperses, without a disclaimer, images of animals shot in zoos
with the same animals in the wild, there is a major scandal, and the BBC has to
promise to identify all faked scenes on air, and, to never to do it again.[4]
However, contemporary educational channels
like The History Channel ( and others)
are now full of dramatic re-enactments of historical events, and few object.
It would appear, then, that some re-enactment is tolerable, as long as it is
acknowledged, and not deceptive. Nichols
addresses this issue when he elaborates on his first assumption:” Documentary films speak about actual
situations or events and honor known facts; they do no introduce new,
unverifiable ones. They speak directly about the historical world, rather than
the allegorical one.”[5]
It
might appear that Nichols accepts the re-staging events, as long as they honor
“known facts”, but then, in his
clarification of his second assumption, he
writes,” Documentaries are about real
people who do not play or perform roles.”[6]
Here,
it would appear he has ruled out re-enactment, but again, he employs highly
subjective terms such as “real”, not
to mention “play or perform roles” .He
further adds to the confusion by observing that Robert Flaherty’s legendary “Nanook of the North “(1922) ‘can be said to be one gigantic
reenactment, yet it retains significant documentary qualities.”[7]
According
to Nichols’ own stated criteria, it would seem that “Nanook of the North” would definitely not qualify as a documentary;
however, he then skirts the issue by not following his argument to its logical
conclusion – that Nanook of the North is not, by Nichols’ definition, a documentary.
Instead, the question goes unanswered, and that raises further questions.
For
example, how exactly would Nichols differentiate between Flaherty’s “Nanook of the North “and F.W. Murnau’s “Tabu “ (1931) ?
In
both cases, the director shot his own story with local amateur talent on exotic
locations. In other words, they both made what might be called fiction films
shot in a neorealist style. As
Murnau’s biographer Lotte Eisner wrote,” The
old argument about whether it (Tabu) is a documentary or a “feature film” is
pointless. Murnau did not set out to observe native customs or record them in
scientific detail. He was an artist who had set out with the endless European
nostalgia for beauty and the sun. What he sought, he found. And he transformed
it and gave us a glimpse of it.[8]
Robert
Flaherty was a paid collaborator of Murnau’s on “Tabu”; according to Flaherty’s brother David Flaherty, the
difference between the two related more to dramaturgy and aesthetics, rather
than cinematic method. Eisner cites as evidence the differing treatments on the
same subject written by each, but also notes that the two shared writing
credits on the final film, with Murnau credited as both director and producer.[9]
Regrettably,
there is no mention of “Tabu” in
Nichols’ book, but he does write that Vittorio
DeSica’s “Bicycle Thieves” (sic) can also share these qualities with “Nanook”
without being considered a documentary at all.”[10]
Unfortunately,
Nichols does not elaborate on why one is a documentary, and the other cannot be “considered a documentary at all.” Since
he himself states that “Nanook of the North” is not only fiction,
but is a “gigantic reenactment”, it
would appear that, by Nichols’ definition, the film widely recognized as the
first American documentary, is not a documentary at all.
Perhaps Nichols is showing due deference to an
iconic figure in American documentary history, but he does not appear to be
employing consistent criteria.
What
one can say in Flaherty’s defense is that one can hardly pass judgment on the
documentary ethics of his work ex post
facto; when he was making his pioneering work, there were no critical
criteria for evaluating documentary in the United States. Flaherty was simply
working on uncharted territory, and doing his creative best to tell a story he
wanted to tell.
As
noted previously, terms like “real” are
highly subjective, and can be defined almost at whim. A classic cinematic
response came from the late great Italian director Federico Fellini when he was
castigated by ideologues for apparently abandoning the Neorealist ethic in
films like “La Dolce Vita” (1960) and “8 ½ “(1963):’ Realism is a
bad word. In a certain sense, everything is realistic. I see no dividing line
between imagination and reality. I see a great deal of reality in imagination.”[11]
So
where does this leave documentary?
In
academic circles in Western Europe and the United States, the post-modern
critique of photography and other depictions of reality became popular towards
the end of the Twentieth Century, causing considerable debate.
In “Collecting
Visible Evidence”, for example, American documentary theorist Jane M.
Gaines summarized the evolution of this post-modern position when she wrote
that there is no “real” world to depict, and that the only reality that we can
be sure exists are the images that the artist has created. Hence, “true”
documentary becomes impossible .[12]
However, for the broadcaster, the
documentarian, and the media consumer, there is another, even larger context to
consider: our collective consciousness and our collective understanding of that
reality. Patricia Aufderheide, former Board Member of the Independent
Television Service in the United States and Founder-Director of the Center for
Social Media of American University in Washington, D.C., offers another
perspective when she puts the concept of “reality
“ in the context of mass communications: “Reality is not what is out there, but what we know, understand and
share with each other of what is out there. Media affect the most important real estate of all, that which is
inside your head. Documentary is an important reality-shaping communication
because of its claims to truth.”[13]
In
other words, the relationship between
the reality being represented in a work of art, such as a documentary, should
not be conflated with the internal realities in the minds of the viewers
consuming that documentary. They are separate, and distinct realities,
although they are not mutually exclusive.
III.2.
Definitions from the Historical Tradition:
Unfortunately,
there is not a general consensus among cinema historians regarding the etymology
of the term documentary .
Nearly
all do agree that the early works of the French Lumiere brothers shot in 1896
are documentary in nature‚ since they were motion picture images of daily life
at the time - workers leaving a factory,
a train arriving at a station, soldiers on military drills ; there has never
been any suggestion that the Lumiere brothers staged any of these events for
the camera, though they did produce some obviously staged comic skits. In the last years of the 19th
century, Lumiere associates traveled around the world, introducing their new
camera, the cinematographe, and the
film medium to countries like Sweden, Russia, Algeria, Egypt, India, Australia
and Japan. Along the way, they shot the first documentary footage of those
countries.[14]
However,
while there is little dispute today that the Lumiere brothers were the first
documentarians per se, the term documentary did not exist at the time, The
film medium was in its infancy, and was still seen by most people as a
novelty.
Dutch
documentary historian Erik Barnouw states that the earliest recorded use of the
term documentary was by a Polish
cinematographe operator named Boleslaw
Matuszewski in book published in Paris in 1898 with the title “Une Nouvelle Source de l’Histoire”. According
to Barnouw, Matuszewski proposed a “cinematographic
museum, or depository ‘for material ‘of a documentary interest…slices of public
and national life.”[15]
[1] Patricia Aufderheide ( Documentary Film- A Very Short Introduction )Oxford University
Press, 2007, p.4
[2] Bill Nichols (Introduction to Documentary) Second Edition, Indiana University
Press 2010, pp,7-10
[3]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus
[5]
Bill Nichols ( ibid)p.8
[6]
Bll Nichols (ibid) p.8
[7]
Bill Nichols (ibid) p.13
[8]
Lotte Eisner,(Murnau) University of
California Press, 1973, p.204
[9]
Lotte Eisner (ibid) p.218
[10]
Nichols ( ibid) p.15
[11]
Federico Fellini ( Fellini on
Fellini) Delacorte Press, 1976, p.152
[12]
Gaines ( ibid) p.2
[13]
Aufderheide, (ibid.)p.5
[14]
Barnouw ( ibid)p. 27
[15]
Barnouw (ibid), p.28
