Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 5 No. 19, June 2001
Stephen Charbonneau
A Documentarian's Call to Arms
On Vaughan's _For Documentary_
Dai Vaughan _For Documentary_ University of California Press,
1999 ISBN 0-520-21695-4 215 pp. 'Documentary reality is a
construction; and some of the viewer's blood goes into it'
(87). It is rare to find a book on
nonfiction film that is, overtly anyway, emotional and
intellectual, bombastic and scholastic, personal and
restrained. But Dai Vaughan's recently published collection
of essays, _For Documentary_, is an intensely provocative
read to which I found myself constantly either shaking my
head in disapproval or nodding in unrestrained enthusiasm.
The quote above, I believe, offers a glimpse into Vaughan's
tendency to make strong intellectual points with the energy
of a propagandist. The result is an impassioned work that
will hopefully promote further debate regarding the status
of documentary film and video, both aesthetically and
socially. Vaughan's status as both a scholar and
a producer of documentaries empowers him to offer readers a
unique and polemical collection of essays on nonfiction
form. Most interesting is his ability to draw upon his
production experience in such a way that it enhances his
scholarly project. Note, for example, the way Vaughan cites
his experience as an editor on the _Space Between Words_
documentary series to make a point about objectivity and
subjectivity. Moments of apparent technical pragmatism (such
as when a sound recordist can't pick up the words of a
teacher in the midst of a noisy classroom) are shown to
construct a particular interpretation of the situation. Had
circumstances been marginally altered, perhaps an equally
legitimate but radically different conclusion could have
been reached. In similar instances throughout his book,
Vaughan refers to his experience as a film editor to
underscore both the fluidity with which meaning arises from
documentaries and the fruitless struggle to stop the
subjective from emerging out of the objective. Defining the documentary is one of the
key projects of the book and Vaughan does so with
originality and insight. He insists on determining the
character of a documentary not in terms of any formal
elements or claims to objectivity, but from the vantage
point of the spectator. 'A crucial fact about the definition
of documentary', he notes, is that it is characterized as a
'mode of response' by the viewer (58). And such a response
would perceive the image 'as signifying what it appears to
record' (58). By arguing thus, Vaughan enables the discourse
on documentary to transcend banal distinctions between
subjective/objective and fiction form/nonfiction form. As a
result, the definition of a documentary is opened up on the
formal front to allow for many different kinds of films, as
long as they embody at their core a direct relationship to
the 'pro-filmic' for the viewers (59). The implications of this view are
further addressed in his chapter, 'The Aesthetics of
Ambiguity'. Vaughan acknowledges that this definition hardly
makes a film student's job any easier. He notes the
inevitable 'implication that [documentary] is blind
to the falsity of labels' (59). If the documentary film is
founded upon the viewer's perception of the images as being
connected to the real world in some fashion, then a betrayal
of that trust is always imminent. And, Vaughan emphasizes,
it will always be the viewer's job to determine the
authenticity of a documentary 'on the basis of signals
intended or unintended' (59). An obvious strength of Vaughan's
definition is its refusal to rely on formal elements alone.
Suddenly, fiction films that appropriate visual cues from
the documentary no longer frustrate our definition of the
latter. Recent films such as _The Blair Witch Project_
(1999), _Best in Show_ (2000), and the earlier _Bob Roberts_
(1992) can remain categorized as fiction with ease because
they merely play with our understanding that documentary
retains a professed authenticity betwixt that which it
records and that which is real (the use of stars in the
latter two examples highlights this playful quality). And,
conversely, Vaughan's definition creates space for
nonfiction films that hijack fictional strategies. The films
of Errol Morris (_The Thin Blue Line_, _Fast, Cheap, and Out
of Control_) come to mind, with their heavy reliance on
formal elements such as slow motion, color, and camera
movement. In addition to his definition of the
documentary, Vaughan's discussion of formal tools such as
the zoom and slow motion are illuminating. This is the case
particularly when one considers the fact that, more than any
other type of film, the documentary has been straitjacketed
by critics in terms of stylistic formulas. But what
Vaughan's aesthetic analyses demonstrate is that documentary
film is very much compatible with so-called fictional
strategies. His chapter on the zoom effect,
'Rooting for Magoo: A Tentative Politics of the Zoom Lens',
is an excellent meditation on the unlimited applicability of
a particular technology. Vaughan traces the history of the
zoom effect's varying interpretations, which encompasses
everything from 'spatial dislocation bordering on the
supernatural' to 'journalistic endeavour' to 'bad manners'
(145). But while there is a wide spectrum of variation in
the development of the zoom effect, Vaughan is able to
discern a fundamental essence that renders the device most
compatible with the nonfiction film. And that essence has to
do with the zoom effect's implicit affinity for spontaneity.
A zoom is suggestive of improvisation on the part of the
camera operator. It is an action that breaks with principles
of continuity editing by calling attention to the hand
behind the camera. But by asserting that the zoom effect
tends to signify the 'unrehearsed', Vaughan underscores the
risk inherent in its use (147). Since documentary is defined
by the 'viewer's attribution of relevance to the anterior
event', the deployment of the zoom and the viewer's
reception of it is a very precarious situation
(148). Vaughan also conducts a fruitful
comparative analysis of slow motion techniques in two
different documentaries, both of which are concerned with
the Olympic games. One, Leni Riefenstahl's _Olympische
Spiele_ (1938), deploys the device in conjunction with low
camera angles to add dramatic weight to an event (in this
case, the pole vault). The competition is transformed into
an operatic performance in which the rhythm and sensation of
the athletic endeavor is to be marvelled at. The other, Kon
Ichikawa's _Tokyo Orinpikku_ (1965), embraces slow motion to
further the sense that the athletic event is a de-mystified
product of human labor. Vaughan notes how Ichikawa's film
uses slow motion throughout the build-up for, and the
aftermath of the event (a marathon in this case). The use of
slow motion in this regard tends to characterize an Olympic
event as an attainable human goal, rather than as a sphere
solely reserved for larger-than-life super athletes. As a
result, Ichikawa's film arrives at a rendering that is
entirely antithetical to Riefenstahl's, despite the fact
that they are both resorting to the same formal device, slow
motion. The textual analysis engaged here by
Vaughan is welcomed by this reader, particularly for its
ability to underscore a quite obvious, yet often neglected
point. And that is that formal strategies, like slow motion,
can produce a variety of effects depending on the context in
which they are deployed. Vaughan writes: 'Slow motion, like
most other elements of film language, is capable of being
invested, by its function within a given text, with meaning
peculiar to that text . . .' (96). Perhaps this sentiment is
slightly at odds with his essentialist reading of the zoom
effect, but it is an important point nonetheless. Lastly, another key theme that emerges
out of Vaughan's essays is technology. Shifts in the means
by which documentaries are produced have spawned debates and
proclamations concerning the new aesthetic that inevitably
results from technological advances. For example, D. A.
Pennebaker's innovations with regards to the portable
recording of on-site sound fostered the 'direct cinema'
movement of the sixties whose adherents included Frederick
Wiseman (_High School_, _Basic Training_) as well as
Pennebaker himself (_Don't Look Now_). Such innovations
granted a documentary film crew increased mobility and
spawned a refusal in some nonfiction filmmakers to overtly
'author' their films through stylistic flourishes and
distracting voiceovers. And the degree to which production
conditions impact nonfiction films is much greater, Vaughan
argues, than the degree to which they impact the stylistic
strategies of fiction films (63). One can understand how
this is so by returning to Vaughan's definition of the
documentary film. If it is the case that a documentary film
is a film in which the viewer perceives a direct
relationship between the image and the real world, then the
reality of technological constraints -- at the moment of
filming -- plays a determinative role in fostering that
relationship. One anticipates illusion from fiction film,
whereas one anticipates a form of reality from nonfiction
film. This necessarily liberates fiction film to transcend
production restraints in whatever manner deemed necessary
(for example, dubbing sound and dialogue into a scene in
post-production that was unattainable at the time of
shooting). While, on the other hand, adhering to the
limitations of production conditions helps foster the
viewer's belief in the reality of the image, which is
critical for a documentary. In keeping with the theme of
technology and the documentary film, Vaughan also turns his
attention to digitalization and its ramifications in his
essay entitled, 'From Today, Cinema is Dead'. This was the
most frustrating and disagreeable essay in the whole book.
The language in this essay grows rather apocalyptic and
simplistic in its rush to heed the pitfalls of
digitalization. While noting that manipulation has been
inherent to photography since day one, Vaughan asserts that,
with the aid of digitalization, we are increasingly
approaching a state of affairs in which we will no longer be
able to rely upon the 'privileged relation between a
photograph and its object' (188). And when that happens,
Vaughan continues, it will have been 'because the
accumulation of countervailing experiences . . . have
rendered null that 'trust' for which the idiom has simply
been our warranty. And once we have lost it, we shall never
get it back' (189). Vaughan even goes so far as to question
our ability to sustain a democratic progressive movement in
light of the diminishing causal relationship between an
image and its referenced. Note these closing
comments: 'If I am right, then documentary is
the taproot of cinema, even of those forms most remote from
it; and if this were allowed to die, all else would wither.
It is more than possible that the cause is already lost,
along with that of social progress with which photography
and documentary have throughout their existence been
strongly identified' (192). These remarks are unfounded and
extremely melodramatic in my opinion. Despite the fact that
Vaughan acknowledges that distortion and misrepresentation
have been intrinsic to photography since the beginning
(187), he insists on prophesying the end of our trust in the
image. But even if this were the case, would it really be
the horrible case-scenario he describes? I doubt it. Given
the monopoly powerful interests enjoy over society's images,
I believe the reality of digital manipulation renders overt
the distortion and misrepresentation that dominant interests
have always enacted upon the image. The loss of the
so-called 'trust' in the image is a two-way street. In
effect, it could mean that we, the viewers, would perhaps
develop a healthy skepticism towards what we see. Aside from a few frustrations with the
book, _For Documentary_ is ultimately a stimulating read
that forces the reader to hone and rethink their perspective
on nonfiction film. Each essay feels fresh and pertinent to
the present state of affairs in the global film industry. At
a time when we need passionate arguments for the continued
investment (financial and creative) in the nonfiction film,
_For Documentary_ offers a persuasive foundation from which
such arguments can build. A better testimony to the
importance of the documentary film is difficult to
imagine. Portland, Oregon, USA Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_
2001 Stephen Charbonneau, 'A
Documentarian's Call to Arms: On Vaughan's _For
Documentary_', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 5 no. 19, June 2001
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n19charbonneau>.
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