Photo by Jovaughn Stephens on Unsplash
Truth Be Told: The Cultural Work of Documentary Film
By Geoff Carter
Elements of photojournalism, creative non-fiction, cinematic prose poetry, muckraking, and biography have all been crowded—by those who love categorization—under the vast umbrella of what is known as documentary film. Features like Bowling for Columbine, Harvest of Shame, Icarus, and Thirteen. are films that, in the great journalistic muckraking traditions, investigate social injustices, sometimes fomenting actual political change.
Others, like Shoah, Ken Burns’ The Civil War—along with other works in his oeuvre, Night and Fog, and Apollo 11 serve as historical artifacts, documenting significant and sometimes disturbing episodes from our past. Other films like Woodstock, The Last Waltz, and Stop Making Sense are celebrations of not only of different sorts of music, but also the cultures from which they sprang. The Roosevelts, Moonage Daydream, Navalny, and Grizzly Man exemplify yet another sub-genre of documentary film: the biography.
And—there’s more—yet another distinct of documentary variant defies straight description. Films like Koyaanisqatsi or Gods of Mexico are almost imagical examples of prose poetry, images that describe the vibe and sensibility of specific peoples and times.
So, this begs the question what the common factor is in this vast array of non-fictional “true stories”? Why do they all fit—albeit not always comfortably—under the documentary categorization? What is the appeal of seeing reality on film?
In her scholastic work Sensational Designs, Jane Tompkins coined the term “cultural work”, which defines the impact books and films have on culture. She maintains fiction (or film narrative) works as a way for “providing society with a means of thinking about itself, defining certain aspects of a social reality which the authors and their readers shared, dramatizing its conflicts, and recommending solutions” (200). She also avers that fiction—as well as cinema—cannot be divorced from the culture from which it sprang, a point-of-view that differs with traditional modernist definitions of art.
So, we can ask ourselves, according to Tompkins’ rubric, what cultural work is done by these documentaries. In short, how they are a reflection of our society, and also how they provide us with different ways of thinking about ourselves.
The most obvious answer to these questions is that documentary film first and foremost provides viewers with information, facts, and narratives about social issues, crimes, inequities, and injustice. Harvest of Shame documented the exploitation of migrant workers in the 1960s. Sicko exposed the inequities and horrors of the modern health care system. Thirteen explored the deliberate and wicked expansion of the privatized penal system and the measures taken to make sure every cell was full. These are works of investigative journalism and photojournalism, informing the public of illegal and immoral practices of the powers that be. These are whistleblower films.
Others, like The Civil War, frame history in compelling narratives that engage and draw the viewer into the past. Ken Burns, the creator of this renowned series, is a master of presenting personalized narratives that draw the audience from the vast arena of history, the stories of generals and presidents, into the personal—and often horrifying—experiences of those who lived their wartime experiences on the ground—in the mud. Using journals, letters, and other artifacts, Burns was able to construct intricate and emotionally riveting stories of the men and women who lived through this terrible time in American history. Like Shoah and Night and Fog, historical documentaries are not only educational cautionary tales; they are testaments to the evil that exists in the hearts of us all. The men who ran Birkenau and Andersonville were not so different that any of us. They were good soldiers. They followed orders.
Biographical documentaries can serve much the same purpose. Moonage Daydream (while perhaps a bit overblown and overwrought), provides some fascinating insights into the mind and spirit of David Bowie. The Roosevelts (another Ken Burns product) humanizes historical and nearly mythic figures of the American past. Obscure facts about the emotional and physical struggles of these leaders serve as paragons to public service and social justice. The very fact that today’s leaders seem to have placed the welfare of their constituents on the back burner as they pay homage to billionaire special interest groups should give every American pause. It didn’t use to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Another sort of glimpse into the past lends more of a generalized gestalt into the hearts and minds of past (not long past) cultures. For me—a proud boomer—watching Woodstock or The Last Waltz is sort of an excursion into the nostalgic fog of my misspent youth. The fashions, the jargon, the attitudes, and the idealism of the sixties is perfectly preserved in Woodstock. While The Last Waltz—directed by Marty Scorsese—was a product of the seventies, its line-up of musical icons is testament to an age of brilliant, and largely unfettered, creativity as well as a tribute to a rapidly fading moment in American cultural history.
The last category of films is much more esoteric, relying only on images, rhythmic editing, stylized filming, and abstract content to create films that reflect sensibilities and inner vibes of a people or a culture. Koyaanisqatsi, the Hopi term for “world out of balance”, uses a plethora of images contrasting the constant hustle and repetitious circuits of everyday life with the rhythms and tranquility of the natural world. The film contains no dialogue and only very sparse messaging. The audience has to work to find the message, although it is right in front of them.
The same is true for the film Gods of Mexico, a documentary composed of carefully composed frames of Native Mexicans framed by sequences of hand worked salt harvesting and artisanal silver mining. Again, there is minimal dialogue, and—particularly in the opening sequence—many of the tasks performed by the workers are baffling and mysterious. Why is he digging a hole on the top of that mesa? What are they sifting out in those pools? There are no answers. The riddle simply exists—we have to figure it out.
Gods of Mexico and Koyaanisqatsi are educational not in a traditional sense, but in more of a Socratic sense. The viewer questions the text, the images, and her own experience to come to an understanding of who and what these people—and by extension ourselves—really are.
These categories may seem a little contrived, and like most classifications, they really are. Moonage Daydream is a biography but is also very much a window into the cultural vibe of the seventies. A Disturbance is the Force offers a view into the cultural implications of the Star Wars phenomenon but is also funny as hell.
So, what cultural work do documentaries really do? They certainly educate. They entertain. They incense us. They inspire us. They can do all these things because they purport to tell us the truth, limber and elusive as that term might be. A non-fiction film is assumed to be (not always rightly) more reliable than a narrative fictional film, although as Mark Twain once said, “It’s no wonder truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
However, traditional documentary film labors under this same constraint. Investigative and historical documentaries have to make sense. Biographies—for all human vagaries—also must make sense. Even A Disturbance in the Force made sense. Sort of. But newer documentaries seek to convey truths outside of facts and statistics and description. They are seeking to convey elements of sensibility and intuition—a syntax of the subconscious.
As much as we can truly isolate or understand truth, it is as varied as each of our own lived experiences. Documentary film shadows truth and can sometimes capture it. It can replay history, it can create paragons and icons, and it is beginning to create a vocabulary of the inner self. Truth is stranger than fiction.
“Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered….”
–Albert Camus