Documentary Ethics

Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s documentary Born into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004) raises many provocative issues about the ethical concerns involved in documentary filmmaking. One particular problem is discussed in the assigned article by Frann Michel. Michel offers a scathing critique of Briski and Kauffman’s film, suggesting that the documentary perpetuates a colonialist view of India. The poor children of the Sonagachi district are presented as “others” in need of rescuing from their situation, and the only people capable of offering this help are the western filmmakers (instead of, for example, local activist or social resources and support systems). Moreover, Michel contends that Briski and Kauffman “succumb to some of the failings typical of documentaries and other research projects by outsiders, especially when, as so often, the outsiders are more privileged in their access to resources – the wealthy researching the lives of the poor, westerners researching the lives of those in the developing world” (55).

Michel’s point brought to my mind the title of an article on documentary ethics by Calvin Pryluck: “Ultimately We Are All Outsiders.” What are the implications of seeing nonfiction filmmaking from this perspective? Does this mean that documentary filmmakers can only make films about themselves in order to escape the problems mentioned above? Do you agree that documentarists are always “outsiders” when filming? Is it ever possible for a filmmaker to make a documentary about someone else without risking exploiting or rendering exotic his/her subjects?

Another issue that is relevant to any analysis of Born into Brothels is the question of the moral obligation of the documentary filmmaker, an argument taken up in the assigned article by Ellen Maccarone (and a question we began to debate when we talked about To Be and To Have). Does the documentary filmmaker have a moral, ethical obligation towards his/her subjects? Is it morally acceptable for documentary filmmakers to intervene in the lives of his/her subjects? What happens when this intervention causes harm to the film subjects? Is this harm justified if it potentially leads to a greater good?

Non-fiction filmmaking in the Postmodern Era

Since this week’s topic involves an examination of documentaries “in the Postmodern Era,” it’s useful to begin our discussion by determining the definition of “postmodern.” It’s a phrase that has been thrown about in popular culture for years, but what precisely do we mean when we say that something is “postmodern”?

Scholar Fredric Jameson famously theorized the postmodern in his 1991 work Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (and yes, get ready for a brief VM200 Media Theory and Criticism refresher). Jameson identified 10 characteristics of the postmodern, and claimed that the following features inform our contemporary lives:

1. Aesthetic populism (there is no difference between “high” and “low” culture anymore)
2. Depthlessness (everything is reduced to an image, flatness, the primacy of the surface)
3. Waning of affect (Our emotional responses to our cultural phenomenon is changing, now our emotions are impersonal and free-floating)
4. The end of the subject/ego (there is no more individuality, no more unique style, no more unified concept of identity)
5. Pastiche (a “cut and paste” decontextualization and recycling of artifacts from the past, collage; there is nothing original being create)
6. “Historicism” over history (we are disconnected from our past, our history no longer bears any resemblance to our current experience, we can only “signify” the past without ever being able to access it)
7. Nostalgia (our longing for the past, our attempts at recapturing idealized visions of what the past was like - whether these visions bear any resemblance to what the experience was actually like has no relevance)
8. Schizophrenia (the fragmentation of the self, feeling disconnected from your lived experience, the breaking down of the “signifying chain”, free-floating and unrelated signifiers)
9. Radical Difference (everything in life is a “text” that we read and it only gains meaning through how it is different - and not how it is the same - as everything else)
10. The Hysterical Sublime & Our Relationship with Technology (technology now seems to dominate our daily existences to such an extent that we have an ambivalent relationship with it; we simultaneously experience euphoria, delight, and marvel AND we are terrified by it; our human brains also can’t begin to fathom the implications of technology and all of this leads to the feeling of the hysterically sublime)

Given the above list and what you know about postmodernism, do you think that postmodernism has affected recent documentary filmmaking? If so, how? Can you give examples of recent non-fiction films that you consider to be “postmodern”? Do agree with film historian Lucia Ricciardelli when she characterizes Errol Morris’ The Fog of War as “a paradigmatic example of American postmodern documentary films” (35)? Why or why not? How does viewing the work through a “postmodern lens” help us understand how Morris (re)presents McNamara and history?

Social Actors or Movie Stars? Documentary Subjects

Given its complicated legal history, To Be and To Have challenges the definitions and audience expectations of documentary cinema. What is (or should be) the purpose of nonfiction films? Should they educate, turn a profit, or be a mode of artistic expression for the filmmaker (or all/none of the above)? Are the documentary subjects “co-authors” of the film, and should thus receive monetary compensation and film rights? Or is paying documentary subjects absolutely taboo, since it “would be to treat them as an actor, and that would be the death of documentary filmmaking” (according to Philibert’s lawyer, Claire Hocquet, as quoted in the assigned Bruzzi chapter)? Are the film subjects “social actors” or are they movie stars? Who ultimately controls the “image rights” to a documentary? And do documentary filmmakers have an obligation to their film subjects? If so, what kind of obligation? Financial? Artistic? Moral? Legal? Lisa Leeman explores some of these questions in her article “Money Changes Everything - Or Does it?” (also assigned for Monday’s class), and I am curious to hear what you all have to say on this topic. Given our class discussions so far this semester (especially our passionate debate about Michael Moore in Monday’s class), it seems that many of you expect documentarians to treat their subjects with respect and to present them in a “factually correct” light (in other words, many of you expressed the viewpoint that documentaries are responsible to educate their audiences and not to misrepresent their subjects). But what exactly does this entail? How does a documentary filmmaker go about fulfilling this mission? What happens when your film subject objects to his or her cinematic representation after the film is screened? Who has the final say in situations like these?

Fear in the Post-9/11 World

Love him or hate him, you can’t talk about 21st century documentaries without discussing Michael Moore. This week’s film, Bowling for Columbine (2002), is the first documentary we’re watching together that was completed after September 11th. Moore’s film raises many of the issues that are addressed in Trembling Before G-d (albeit from a different perspective), such as the tension between the public and the private, and the relationship between the filmmaker and the film subjects. Bowling For Columbine also seems particularly relevant at the moment, given the contemporary debates regarding gun control in light of the shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the attack on U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords a few weeks ago.

When thinking about Bowling for Columbine, consider the following questions:

• How does Moore present the events of the Columbine High School massacre?
• How does one find a balance between the Constitutional right for each citizen to own guns and protect oneself, and concerns regarding public safety?
• What is the role of media in our society, according to Moore? How do his ideas about the media fit in with what Moore thinks about freedom of speech in our country, as presented in the film?
• How does Moore present history in the documentary (both U.S. history and the U.S. role within global politics)?
• According to Moore, what is the link between violence and economics in our society?
• What is Moore’s relationship with the victims of the Columbine shooting? Do you think he’s exploiting his film subjects? Why or why not? When (if ever) do “the ends justify the means” within the realm of social activism cinema?
• What are the effects of the past on the present, according to the film?
• Do you think that the events of 9/11 have changed the ways nonfiction media “represents reality”? If so, how? Do you agree with Christian Christensen when he writes in one of our assigned articles that “the events of 9/11 provided a starting point for an interesting phase in documentary film-making”? What do you think about the criticisms that he addresses, such as the emphasis of the events of 9/11 “as some type of milestone for documentary film was to place the United States (yet again) at the centre of our understanding of popular culture and media in general, and documentary film specifically [...]”?

I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on these issues...