Thanksgiving With Eskimos (Part 2: Moore Please)
The Interactive Documentary arrived with the advent of the same portable equipment as the Observational Documentary, but came from a slightly different perspective. The goal of these films was to break the barrier of the silent recorder, and to become more involved and engaged with the subject of the documentary through interviewing and editing techniques, etc. Instead of using the "voice of God" approach, the filmmaker could recount earlier happenings by showing older footage (Nicholas, pg. 44-51).
The newest form in the genre, the reflexive documentaries build upon the Interactive approach, and differ from the other forms because they implement deliberate filmmaking techniques. Arnheim wrote (Arnheim, pg. 69) that, "for anything to be a work of art, the medium employed must be obvious in the work itself. It is not enough to know that one is looking at a reproduction. The interplay of object and depictive medium must be patent in the finished work. The idiosyncrasies of the medium make themselves most felt in the greatest work of arts." (Or perhaps they just like seeing themselves on screen.)
Either way, the reflexive documentary chooses to unfold events in a self-aware fashion. These films do not try to conceal the conventions within the film medium (Nicholas, pg. 56-63). Instead, the filmmakers want to have the audience realize they are only watching a film, hopefully to get them more involved in what is being depicted on the screen, as opposed to being "force fed" these supposedly "truthful" images.
So as time has passed since the work of pioneer filmmaker Robert Flaherty, the maker of "Nanook of the North," the documentary as it emerged from the 1920s clearly differed from both the actuality and the fictive feature in many ways. Although Flaherty was criticized for interfering too much in his pioneer film, his style was relatively unobtrusive when compared to the more self-reflective and interactive documentaries to come.
Indeed, an ever-increasing number of documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock would insert themselves into their politically charged films (like Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and Spurlock's Super Size Me), rarely concealing their own personal biases in the process. In a strange way, this technique was praised as a more honest approach, and critics hailed the film's for laying out their own biases fairly early on in the films instead of trying to remain neutral, which some say is an impossible task in filmmaking. From a purely journalistic side however, I must question the integrity of these filmmakers, and wonder whether they are less representative of the truth and more representative of only the filmmaker. For entertainment value however, there's no doubt that new documentaries have the Eskimos beat, and for now that's why people go to movies…entertainment, not enlightenment.
Bibliography
1.) Bill Nichols, ‘Documentary Modes of Representation', in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp.32-75
2.) Barnouw, Erik, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd edition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
3.) MacDougall, David, ‘Prospects of the Ethnographic Film', in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp.135-150
4.) Jeffrey Geiger, ‘Nanook of the North', in Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, eds. Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 2005), pp. 118-137
5.) V.F. Perkins, ‘The Sins of the Pioneers', in Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 9-27
6.) Arnheim, Rudolf, Film Essays and Criticism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997)
7.) Roche, Conny. "A New Look at Flaherty's Documentary Art." http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb05-4/lampe05.html
8.) Hall, Mordaunt, "Moana Film Review," in New York Times. (February 8, 1926)