The Intelligent Deserve to Die

We really do. We're not doing much good because we're too busy trying to figure out who's smarter.

I've accepted that I'm never going to be able to fully apreciate a lot of the movies that are out there because I'll never again be able to experience a film from the perspective of the common movie-goer. I'll never be able to see film for it's pure spectacle. I understand film on a level that makes the understanding of the commoner inaccessable to me. I was thinking about hte failing of Marxism and a lot of different theories and criticism. My problem with critics is that they often take an exclusive ownership of media, that because they can criticise it on a level of ideology that is invisible to the common viewer, their understanding is greater. The problem here is simply that that's not true. Critics seek to define culture, analyse what it is, and classify it. But they simply cannot define culture, because the very act of defineing it instead creates a sub-culture that is accessable only to those who have been initiated into the vocabulary of the sub-culture. Back to Marxism: the failure of Marxism lies in it's exclusive vocabulary and sub-culture. In order for the revolts to happen, people would have to be initiated into the vocabulary and ideas, but teh very process of initiating people into the sub-culture destroys the environment required for the revolt to take place. The problem I have with critics and acadamia in general is that there is this assumption that what they are doing is in some way definative, or even truly descriptive. Acadamia is incapable of truly describing culture because the very act of beig initiated into the vocabulary of critique incapacitates their ability to truly understand the culture. Second thing is that they rarely turn around and ask themselves "are we actually contributing?" The few that do ask that either become revolutionary geniuses or naysaying pariahs, or both.

The additional problem is that there is an entire branch of art that does the same thing with essentially the same assumptions.

The Problem of Standing Aorund Too Long

Lately I've been noticing a trend in critical theories, and really any sort of theoretical socio-politi-cultural field. It basciacally runs down that after a field has been arund for a length of time it develops a robust body of literature and hypothesis. Eventually this body of knowledge and thought will actually become a hinderment to the development as a field because the academic process begins to mandate wading through an ocean so deep and wide that talented, smart, intuitive people begin to get lost in the depths, thier innovative ideas crushed under the pressure of making sure that they're not saying somethign that's already been said.Film is startinf to reach a similar threshold, where it's very hard to convince someone that you've got a new and unique idea because they want to stick it in one of the billion existing boxes that stuff has been filed in. This is kinda what's at the heart of the "you can't do that" school of literary criticism. If somone great didn't do it, it can't be done. In most fields, if Marx didn't say it, or if you havn't devoted your life to figuring out if Marx said it, you can't do it.

Caveat Empor

In addition to the animated documentary spoken of below, there will also be a film that uses the most documentary methods then unabashedly, and consciously, manipulates the footage into somethign that isn't only a lie, but is a fiction.

Eat What We Feed You

Posted by Brenda @ 11/11/2004 01:08 PM PST

I always wind up reading the comments. It's like watching a car crash. I. Just. Can't. Look. Away.

Then I get angry because there are all these people who state things as fact that aren't fact. ("Documentaries are OBJECTIVE! This isn't a documentary because it has a bias!") And I get mad.

Posted by Lemon @ 11/11/2004 02:57 PM PST

Do remember though that in some critical paradigms documentaries are meant to be objective, and anything that is not is not a documentary. they just ignore the fact that every time you choose to shoot one thing and not another, you have made an editorial decision. However, it's a lot safer, and not entirely faulted, in more moderate paradigms to exclude things with such an overtly heavy bias such as propaganda. just because these people aren't measuring up to your idea of how film classification and criticism should be built doesn't make them wrong. It's not a standardized system.

Posted by Brenda @ 11/11/2004 07:12 PM PST

Defining documentary is extremely problematic, so stating any standard of classification as FACT is dumb to begin with, but saying that something's not a documentary because it has a bias does make them wrong. How does an extreme bias make something less a documentary than a slight bias?
Triumph of the Will glorifies Hitler, yes, but it IS comprised of shots of real events, not staged for the camera, so it's a documentary. (There aren't even any real lies in it. The film isn't even narrated. It's just scenes of Hitler speaking and the Nazi party on parade and the Hitler youth being youthful. In other words, it's DOCUMENTING what was happening.)

I'm not talking about some crazy-complex system of classification based on snooty academic theory and years of film study. I'm talking about a fairly basic, agreed-upon definition.

Posted by Lemon @ 11/11/2004 08:42 PM PST

Yah, but some would put propaganda, regardless of wether it was staged or found into a class of its own. Intent, my dear, remember intent. Extreme biases manipulate the information to a point that regardless of how or where you got your footage, your message disregards that. Every live action film is documenting something, even if it's documenting actors pretending to be people they're not. That is then biased and manipulated into a fictional story. If we were to pull the camera back further to a less involved point and show the lights and crew and wires and mics, we wouldn't think we're watching Tyler Durden, we'd think "I'm watching Brad Pitt pretend he's Tyler Durden while people record it." So I suppose the question then comes in: can you make an animated documentary? If you can, then the simple fact that you're just filming a parade and not having people pretend they're in a parade doesn't cut it as for saying "documentary". Intent.

Posted by Brenda @ 11/12/2004 12:52 AM PST

Technically you can say that everything is a documentary, because you're always documenting SOMEthing (and there are theorists who have), and narrative film is just a group of conventions we've come to see as fictions.

You couldn't have a totally animated documentary, unless maybe you were using the animation as historical documents to bolster whatever it was you were trying argue or explain.

There is a fairly clear difference between filming actuality and manipulating it to your own ends and having scripted, rehearsed, staged scenes in which actors pretend to be people other than themselves.

It's not intent we're talking about, my dear. It's methods.
Extreme bias distorts, but the image retains authenticity. (Also, what's extreme bias? Bias you don't agree with? Who gets to designate when something is extreme bias? It doesn't seem like something that could be applied in any standardized way.)
Something can be a documentary AND propaganda. (See: Why We Fight (Capra directed for the military in WWI, is technically a documentary as it uses newsreel footage and supplementary information like maps, even if the map of Japan is animated to look like a dragon at one point)).

The whole problem is that documentary has been somehow roped into implying some kind of objective truth, when that's not how actual documentary film works at all.

Posted by Lemon @ 11/12/2004 01:24 AM PST

realize that definitions can, have, and will continue to change over time as the dominant interpretation changes (note dominant, that means that cliquish people like us who sit around and bicker about deeper, more precise meanings, have very little say if the mass majority decide to take it one way) and currently in film it looks as though (to my delight) that intent is more important than method. People have grown up thinking of documentaries as informative movies about beavers and magpies, or what the Egyptians wore to work.

If you use any new footage (as in you go out and shoot your own) you have not only made an editorial decision, but you have contrived a situation. I don't think the line between unscripted actuality and scripted falsehoods is quite that clear. If we were to stick with Lumiere and Melies, then it would be, but we live in a world of mockumentaries, editorials, Blair Witch, Survivor, and infotainment. Technically Survivor is pretty close to documentary as it's just footage of real people going through a number of activities that have been set up for them, much like if you were following a life in the day of a sports star. It's documenting them playing a game. That's less of a lie than them flying in a dead seal so Nanook could "kill" it for their documentary. Something can be pure fiction and be propaganda (see The Wizard, pure Nintendo propaganda) or it can be almost pure "found footage" and not be a documentary, such as Blair Witch where the only scripted scene was the final few minutes.

So, we'll chalk this one up to the creation of two new schools of thought: the Crombian Methodologists and the Olsonian Intentionists. One method dictates classification, the other intent (taking into account professed intention versus real intent) overrules what something is. But, of course, I'm more concerned with making new films over classifying and deconstructing made films, so that makes me less concerned with wether or not there "can't be an animated documentary" and more concerned with proving that there can be.

Viva la revolution!

---

The point of this conversation is not so much for one or the other to prove themselves right and the other wrong (well, okay, it is) but is rather to diagram the opposing viewpoints about film theory. Frankly, I don't really like most literary criticism of any kind that doesn't take in due regard the creative process and the differences of approach. As a person who imagines himself as being creative, I take an offense to a group of non-artists (or failed, frustrated artists) standing back and wrestling interpretive clout and the right to define from me simply because they've spent their life "studying" the medium rather than actually building it. It's really quite a new phenomenon in all accounting, and it's not limited to just film. Essentially they help prove that the best works are those that defy classification i.e. cause the most arguments in classrooms. So, with that, someday there will be an animated documentary.

My elbows only bend one way

I'm not really sure what my intent is with starting this post. I've got a gut full of feelings that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I loved having you here even if it was for only a short time. I hate having you gone. I'm terrified about "things". I wish I had better words to describe it than that, but such does not seem to be the case. Smashing Pumpkins' song Beautiful just came up on random play. I'm haphazardly typing this out before I take off for work, and it seems to be doing me some good. As I talk, as I open up and just let all this flow out for the world to see, I can feel it all slowly draining out of me. I've got pictures of you and old journals here. I just flipped open the green one and it landed on the day that my mom found the letter I was sending to Greaves and the day that you found out about the ring. I was scared at that time too. I was scared to talk to my parents. I was scared to talk to your parents. I was scared that I'd scare you off. Some things I'm always scared of. Some things the scaredness wanes. I'm waning in my scaredness. I'm feeling better. I'm finding my feet again. I'm feeling like me again.

We're going to try and make this simple

So, I just got my film essay back with a nice C on the back page and about two-grams worth of explanation why. My problem with this goes largely back to the fact that there was very little guidance as far as what was expected of us, or that this was a rather open, interpretive assignment. However it appears that secretly we have been held to a rather strict marking rubric which we are not privy to. all of this hails back to my original complaints about the class that it lacks focus and purpose. As a consequence I've decided to do a little more research on exactly who our teacher is. Donna Brunsdale is part and partial responsible for bringing us the films Waydowntown and A Problem With Fear as-well as a feature of her own direction called Cheerful Tearful which is either "amazing Canadian film making" or "pretentious tripe" depending on wether or not you believe the purpose of film is to actually tell a story or just watch someone sit in a room. Professor Brunsdale apparently believes that effective storytelling is inherently evil, at least from what the bytes taken out of the above article would tell. I'm pretty sure this isn't quite true, as becomes apparent from her class and also from her other projects. She has a love for film, that is quite apparent. She's just not very good at it. As becomes apparent from the reviews of the two features that people have actually seen (Waydowntown and A Problem with Fear) projects that she is involved with are generally okay ideas that simply lack purpose or focus. I'll not comment on the reviews of Cheerful Tearful as there really is only the one and it's written by the people who typically eat up this NFB anti-Hollywood stuff. I'm now intrigued to find a copy of Cheerful Tearful aswell as to ask whatever happened to her second feature project, Shopping. It is also interesting to note that Gary Burns is her husband. In class today she claimed some writing credit for Waydowntown, which could easily be part of Mr. Burns'.