I watched the HBO documentary Right America: Feeling Wronged over the weekend. Filmed by Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Right America chronicles McCain supporters on the 2008 campaign trail. In my opinion, the documentary was funny...but mostly disturbing. With a target audience of Obama voters and with a goal of making them feel superior, the younger Pelosi pokes fun at people with different (often racist) perspectives and attempts to stereotype all conservatives in this light.
Each segment focuses on a specific voter, campaigner, or group of voters. Throughout, almost every subject comes across as close-minded or bigoted in some way. For example, one woman, a suburban mom, treks through her neighborhood, questioning each homeowner about his/her voting plans. At the final home, she sees an Obama-Biden sign. Her jaw drops. She then snidely comments, "Well, two lesbians live there." End scene. Another segment occurs at a Nascar Rally. A group of drunken men with Confederate flags on their pickups yells out against a "black president." Viewers also see a montage of McCain supporters toting anti-Muslim/anti-Obama posters and t-shirts. Only one voter without racist leanings is highlighted in the documentary. His segment is also the shortest.
Clearly more than one non-racist conservative/Republican voter exist, and more than one appeared on the McCain campaign trail, begging this question: when does a "documentary" become more of a mockumentary? The film, though "real," reminds me of This is Spinal Tap or Best in Show. Genre lines have blurred. Indeed, the film Borat plays with this blurring, but it is more obvious in its approach. Viewers do not necessarily feel superior to Sacha Baron Cohen's victims; instead, they feel more superior to his silly character. Bill Maher's Religulous is also a documentary that blurs the lines; however, I would argue that the title, in itself, indicates to the audience that the documentary is an exaggeration, a close-up glimpse at extreme viewpoints. Right America: Feeling Wronged does little to guide audiences toward that extremist view. It's presented as the "norm" within this section of society. And this "norm" is presented to viewers so they (if not on the "right") can laugh at (and condemn) people with these political beliefs. But is it fair to present this mockery in the form of documentary?
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Hmm - I'm not sure this is a question of fairness, although I do think there is an important distinction between mockery and documentary. I think it might be a question of rhetoric; the director doesn't expect anyone to question the perspectives she displays. Thus not only is she insulting the conservatives through her portrayal, she is insulting the intelligence of her liberal audience, and the very bi-partisanship that the Obama campaign emphasized. The more I delve into rhetoric scholarship, the more aware I am that rhetoric is, at its very core, more effective on the less intelligent (I suppose that does make it "unfair").
ReplyDeleteThis weekend I read Jon Ronson's _Them,_ a nonfiction book about his adventures with various extremists who believe that a small cartel of people are ruling the world and its money. While reading the book, I was impressed about how Ronson was able to present the extremists with an even hand, he make even the most crazy have a humanity I haven't seen elsewhere. Even though he is Jewish and obviously didn't believe in the conspiracies or extreme positions, he managed to get inside the heads of the leaders, including the KKK and militant Muslim groups.
I think too many documentaries of the type you describe lack this sense of heart and compassion. I mean, just because we disagree with someone's political beliefs doesn't mean they are an ignorant bigot. And even if they are ignorant bigot they are still human. When we make other people into an objectified "THEM" we lose all sense of proportion and understanding. It's a scary process.
Hi, Lauren,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like an at once interesting and annoying documentary. As far as where the line is in documentaries, I think you've got a really interesting question that needs a lot of discussion, and is similar to the "how much fiction can a memoir have before it's no longer a biography/memoir?" question. My personal response about the mock/documentary is that a narrator (or some sort of authorial intrusion)makes a big difference for me. I can get cues from their delivery whether the things I'm looking at are supposed to be farces or if I'm supposed to take them seriously. I would be really interested to know if Pelosi's daughter offered any narration or commentary or if she edited together a bunch of people to look silly all on their own. If she interjected some perspective on what problems people like these can cause, or even how they developed the attitudes they have, then I would say her work was a documentary instead of a mockumentary. But the idea of a mockumentary is interesting in and of itself. What I think of as mockumentaries aren't really "mentaries" at all because they are so highly fictive. Best in Show and Borat use the documentary film style, but with hired actors and a larger script presence. If you're making a documentary that mocks "real life" or that purports to be a slice of life but is in actuality highly edited, then I think you're right to ask about fairness. It doesn't seem ethical. Incidentally, the best documentary I've seen to this point (haven't seen Man on Wire yet) was Capturing the Friedmans. I liked it so much because it dealt with a crime but was so objective in its treatment of the crime that you really still couldn't tell how the crime was committed at the end. You couldn't blame anyone, so there was really a sense of ambivalence the likes of Flannery O'Connor and Swift.
I agree with all of the above comments. Some documentaries or mockumentaries should really insult their audience's intelligence. As in any argument, it is only a good one if you present the best arguments for both sides. So like someone wrote above, this movie is far too slanted. I actually haven't seen this particular movie, but I've seen enough like them I think to know what you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem in stating that I am a mixed voter, but I side with republican ideals mostly. It's really scary when each side of the political spectrum just starts making fun of the other side using really shallow reasoning. The only real way to make an argument is with mutual respect. Without that, no one is going to change any minds. As far as preserving "mutual respect" in mock-u-mentaries, all that is needed is both sides taking equal hits. No cheap shots allowed.
This goes for both sides. We should all hold critics by way of mockumentary to this standard unless you think that comedy is nothing more than a brain-gellatinizing medium that conjures up images of the gulu commercial with Alec Baldwin (which is sort of a sad view point). We're all deeper than that I hope.