Screen Australia's definition of ‘documentary’ follows that used by ACMA,
specifically ‘a program that is a creative treatment of actuality other than a
news, current affairs, sports coverage, magazine, infotainment or light
entertainment program, and corporate and/or training programs’ (Screen Australia 2009, p. 2).
The elusive definition of the documentary genre is imbued in discussions of the principles of truth and reality. For documentary academic, Bill Nichols (2001, p. 1), “every film is a documentary,” as “even the most whimsical of fictions gives evidence of the culture that produced it and reproduces the likenesses of the people who perform within it”. To serve as a functional way of analysing the genre, Nichols isolates the dualities of fact and fiction, to establish that the documentary deals primarily within non-fiction.
Coined in 1802 as a derivative of the word ‘document’ (L'Etang 2004, p. 33) it was ‘The Moviegoer” and New York Sun film critic, John Grierson, who originally applied the word ‘documentary’ to cinema in 1926 (Jack, 2007). As Grierson (1932) noted in The First Principles of Documentary:
“Documentary is a clumsy description, but let it stand”.
Within the genre there are six narrative styles which categorise a documentary’s ‘modes’ as: Expository, Participatory, Reflexive, Performative Observational, and Poetic (Nichols 2001, p. 99). However there is also another category, the ‘docu-drama’ or ‘docu-soap’, commonly utilized on television (TV), but not considered a valid form of documentary as it blends fact with fiction. Other forms which exploit the documentary style are the ‘docu-fiction’ or ‘mockumentary’ films which rely upon the devices of documentary to provide the appearance of authenticity to support an otherwise fictional story.
The most commonly used style is the ‘expository’ mode of documentary, where the narrative unfolds as dictated to the audience by the spoken word in terms of a commentary laid on a voice over track, referred to in the genre as ‘the voice of God’. As author Stella Bruzzi (2000) explains:
“The ostensible purpose of the ‘voice of God’ model is to absent personality and any notion of the internal monologue, to generalize, to offer an omniscient and detached judgement, to guide the spectator through events whilst remaining aloof of them.”
An example of this ‘voice of God’ commentary can be seen in many nature films such as The March of the Penguins (2005), with Morgan Freeman as the narrator, or in the BBC’s nature series collections starring Sir David Attenborough, such as the 2008 release of Life in Cold Blood. Although there is narration present within Attenborough’s nature documentaries, they are also participatory in nature. This is because Attenborough does not simply narrate the story, but appears within it by directly addressing the audience through brief interludes in ‘piece to cameras’ (PTC) on location.
For example, in his series, ‘The Private Life of Plants’ (1995), Attenborough makes a point of appearing on camera when discussing the carnivorous ‘Trumpet Pitcher Plant’ (Sarracenia flava), to point out to the audience how the plant attracts and traps it prey. “The reward itself is under here,” says Attenborough, as he runs his finger along the plant’s secretory structure and tastes it, describing the plant’s bait as “sweet nectar”.
This participatory mode of documentary is however not to be confused with the ‘performative’ and ‘reflexive’ modes, which Nichols revised from what was originally the ‘interactive’ and ‘self-reflexive’ modes during his first work in documentary classification (Nichols, 1988).
An illustration of how the participatory mode differs from the performative and reflexive modes can be seen in the role of the ‘documentarian’, and how they portray themselves in the documentary. In the participatory mode, the documentarian is seen as detached - engaging with the world only to describe it to the audience in the third person, and interacting within the documentary on behalf of the viewer in terms of interviews, or as seen in Attenborough’s case, with the environment.
In the reflexive and performative modes, the use of pronoun language is employed to address the audience as though in direct conversation, as the audience follows the documentarian on a ‘journey’. In both modes, the audience is made aware of the documentarian’s presence and the fact that they are embarking upon a process – a viewing of the documentarian’s journey.
These two modes differ in how that ‘journey’ is presented to the audience. The performative makes use of subjective information and personal perspective to creatively represent ‘reality’ in a process that requires the documentarian’s direct first person involvement, while the reflexive does not personally indulge in the abstract to communicate its message but instead follows a strategic agenda of self exploration to examine and present information, remaining as the presenter.
One such reflexive mode of documentary is the Root of all Evil? (2006), written and presented by secular scientist Richard Dawkins, which originally aired on UK TV station Channel 4. Within the first two minutes, Dawkins makes his position clear to the audience in a PTC:
“As a scientist I’m increasingly worried about how faith is undermining science. It’s something that we must resist because irrational faith is feeding murderous intolerance throughout the world. In this program, I want to examine two further problems with religion. I believe it can lead to a warped and inflexible morality, and I’m very concerned about the religious indoctrination of children.”
Anthropology Professor, Jay Ruby, notes the nature of reflexivity when posed in film (Ruby, 1980):
“…being reflexive means that the producer deliberately, intentionally reveals to his audience the underlying epistemological assumptions which caused him to formulate a set of questions in a particular way, to seek answers to those questions in a particular way, and finally to present his findings in a particular way.”
To differentiate between the reflexive and performative modes, consider Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004) documentary in contrast. When Spurlock embarks upon his own journey to exploit fast food chains, he places himself (and his health) as the central subject of the documentary by embarking on a 30 day ‘McDonald’s only’ diet and conditioned lifestyle. Prior to beginning his self experimentation, Spurlock introduces the audience to this notion:
“What would happen if I ate nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days straight? Would I suddenly be on the fast track to become an obese American? Would it be unreasonably dangerous? Let’s find out.”
As similar as the style of the two introductions might be for both Dawkins and Spurlock, the reflexive Root of all Evil? presenter continues to present the documentary, arguing his case along the way, yet Dawkins does not become religious in the process. Spurlock on the other hand, is immersed in the process, as the subject of an experiment. To further illustrate the contrast, in the Muslims and America (2005) episode of Spurlock’s reality TV series 30 Days, Spurlock immerses himself in religion as he experiments with life as a Muslim-American citizen.
The performative mode of documentary is a relatively new addition to Nichol’s documentary classification, in which he has strictly kept separate from Reality TV and instead directs others towards Paget’s (1998) work in “the specific case of docudrama as a form or genre” (Nichols 2001, p. 182). In docudrama, the lines are blurred between fiction and non-fiction, as seen in the re-enactment of the Peter Falconio murder mystery in Joanne Lees: Murder in the Outback (2007), based on a real life investigation fraught with controversy, many inconsistencies and much speculation. Newcomb (2004, p. 738) further clarifies the docudrama’s stance in blending documentary with dramatic performance:
“The docudrama should be distinguished from fictional dramas that make use of reality as historical context but do not claim that the primary plotline is representing events that have actually occurred.”
In this sense, dramatic representation is juxtaposed with actuality, differing from the observational style of documentaries which survey events, and, as seen in the previous modes, also seek to interact within them to represent actuality, as opposed to creating events entirely from fiction.
The observational mode is present even in the early origins of cinema, such as in the first films of the Lumière Brothers and the travelogues of Burton Holmes in the late 19th Century. However, in Robert Flaherty’s work Nanook of the North (1922), what was hailed during that time as the first film to ever illustrate “better than anyone the first principles of documentary,” Grierson (1932), was actually a re-enactment due to the original footage being destroyed by fire (Flaherty, 1922).
From these beginnings the observational mode of documentary developed into ‘Direct Cinema’, which is distinct from the participatory mode of ‘Cinema Verité’, arising from the late 1950’s through the development of lighter and more portable recording equipment (Ellis & McLane, 2005). Often referred to as the “fly on the wall” approach, the observational mode does not seek direct involvement within the documentary, but steadfastly remains a method of surveillance, with the resulting footage cropped to speed up the portrayal of the narrative.
An example of the observational mode can be seen in any of Fred Wiseman’s films, and the differences between Direct Cinema and Cinema Verité become apparent when Wiseman’s films are compared to the participatory mode of the War Room (1993), a documentary on Bill Clinton’s presidential election campaign, which, although observational in many respects, becomes participatory through interviews engaging the subjects being filmed.
While the observational mode strictly adheres to presenting footage filmed in actuality, and the docu-drama administers forms of creative licence in its narrative, it is the poetic mode of documentary that bridges the gap by presenting footage in its actuality, yet editing in such a way that creative licence is achieved through the displacement of the narrative by removing the linear form of the three act paradigm.
The poetic mode is demonstrated in the films Baraka (1992) and the Quatsi trilogy of films by Godfrey Reggio (1982, 1988, 2002), where scenes of actuality in nature and the built environment are spliced together in a visual montage to the rhythms of a musical score. As Corner (2005) notes on the typology of documentary aesthetics, “It is the interplay of artefactual design and subjectivity that generates the aesthetic experience”.
Observational in its filming, absent of explanatory commentary, and literally instrumental in the assembly of an artistic visual soundtrack, the essence of the poetic mode of documentary is captured by Baraka’s premise, branding the DVD as: “A world beyond words”.
As varied as the modes of the documentary genre may be, through applying Nichol’s (2001) method of separating fiction from non-fiction, a functional analysis can be achieved. Further reductionism of categorising aspects of the documentary genre into modes also assists in the critical analysis of distinguishing the aspects which typify the vast amount of documentaries that have been produced since the early origins of cinema.
However this is not to say that all documentaries follow a specific format, or fall into a specific category. With documentary, as in all genres of cinema, there are overlapping genres, which Hawkins (2000, p. 27) refers to as “slippage”, as “not only is there slippage between genres, but there is slippage between evaluative classifications, as well”.
In the documentary genre this ‘slippage’ can be seen in many films, such as the Endless Summer series by Director Bruce Brown (1966 & 1994), the films of Michael Moore, and even in the earliest of works by pioneers such as Dziga Vertov and Robert Flaherty, “who quite clearly mix documentary and fictional elements” (Langford 2005, p.261).
Therein lies the debate between the documentary as fact over fiction, the depiction of truth, and the neutrality of documentaries as windows to reality. Filmmaker Jill Godmilow avoids this issue by substituting the term ‘films of edification,’ “because I think the best way to describe this group of films is by their stance. All non-fiction films claim to edify. (Whether they do or not is another matter.)” (Godmilow as cited in Horne & Kahana 1998, p. 2).
Therefore in this light, the nature of documentaries, their purpose and their classification, whether a blend of genres falling into mixed-modes, or specifically crafted to mould itself into a category, still remains ever elusive, as “every documentary is different because it is individually crafted” (Chapman 2007, p. 3).
A full list of references are available here
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