Can something be political and poetic? This is just one of the questions that we seek to answer in my studio for this semester: The Art of Persuasion with Liam Ward.
Documentary as a form is both inherently truthful and manipulative. It is truthful through what it seeks to capture and the indexical quality of its imagery, whether it’s an observational documentary like the French documentary “To Be and To Have” (Philibert, 2002), a compilation documentary such as “Now” (Alavarez, 1965) or even an animated documentary, “Waltz with Bashir” (Folman, 2008) which uses indexical audio instead of imagery to the same effect. In this way, documentaries sign a contract, if you will, with the viewer, the viewer understanding what they’re getting from the documentary – the truth. But documentaries are also inherently manipulative as they seek to sell an idea or an opinion on a particular issue to their audience. If there wasn’t an opinion to be sold, what would the point, or reason be to make a documentary? Through this indexical quality that documentary has and the inherent manipulation present within the genre, documentary skates an interesting line between its place in the realm of truth and its agenda for social change; because of its indexical quality it exists within the concrete sense of the truth, but it also exists within the socio-political debates in which it seeks to advance an idea or opinion.
As documentary is essentially the advancement of an argument, there are many questions as to how to treat the subjects of such films in order to get their message across in a truthful, human way. In an ethical way. Bill Nichols explains that the best way to treat subjects in documentaries ethically is to give them “agency” (Nichols, 2001). “human agency:… agents must be active… actions are part of the natural order, and… intentional actions can be explained by the agent’s reasons for acting.” (Mayr, 2011). Through giving a subject agency, a filmmaker essentially allows the subject to represent themselves in the argument and tell their own story, allowing the audience to identify with the subject, as opposed to dehumanising them through treating them as a whole rather than an individual, as well as victimising the subjects and detaching them from the issue (particularly through voice over), such as in “Housing Problems” (Grierson, 1935). Thomas Waugh also posed, through his “committed documentary” (Waugh, 2011) that the documentary form is inherently committed to social change. The committed documentary (often involving increased collaboration with the subject) becomes a part of the topic in which it seeks change, allowing it to foster greater social change.
Nichols and Waugh posed, respectively, that documentaries should give their subjects agency as well as advance an argument to promote social change. In this way, a documentary can be both political and poetic, as it remains truthful to the experiences of the subject and gives them greater agency through allowing them to express and not just simply telling their story. Through allowing the individual to express, the political agenda of the film is also advanced, allowing for social change to be promoted at greater levels.
Some examples of the Bill Nichols’ poetic mode:
Joris Ivens – Regen (Rain, 1929) from Avant-Garde Cinema on Vimeo.
Sans Soleil Trailer (1983) – Chris Marker
Blight (1996) – John Smith
– Lanir, Lesley. 2012. “Charles Sander Peirce: Symbolic, Iconic, and Indexical Signs”. Available at: http://www.decodedscience.org/charles-sanders-peirce-symbolic-iconic-and-indexical-signs/23013
– Nichols, Bill. 2001. “Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde”. Critical Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Summer, 2001). pp. 580-610.
– Waugh, Thomas. 2011. “Why Documentary Filmmakers Keep Trying to Change the World, or Why People Changing the World Keep Making Documentaries”. The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film [Visible Evidence Series, Volume 23], University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. pp. 24– 41.
– Mayr, Erasmus. 2011. “Understanding Human Agency”. Oxford Scholar Online. Available at: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199606214.001.0001/acprof-9780199606214