Evgenia Kutsa - qualifying paper, 2011 by ukma journalist

THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORTS OF UKRAINE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF ‘KYIV-MOHYLA ACADEMY’ Faculty of Social Sciences and Technologies The Program 0302 Journalism

QUALIFYING PAPER

FACT AND FICTION DICHOTOMY IN MOCK-DOCUMENTARY By EVGENIA KUTSA Superviser

Yuriy PANIN Senior Instructor

Co-Superviser

Dariya ORLOVA

Approved for thesis defenсe by the Head of Department

Eugen FEDCHENKO, Ph.D (signature)

Kyiv – 2011 МІНІСТЕРСТВО ОСВІТИ І НАУКИ,МОЛОДІ ТА СПОРТУ УКРАЇНИ НАЦІОНАЛЬНИЙ УНІВЕРСИТЕТ „КИЄВО-МОГИЛЯНСЬКА АКАДЕМІЯ” Факультет соціальних наук і соціальних технологій Напрям підготовки 0302 Журналістика КВАЛІФІКАЦІЙНА РОБОТА на тему

ДИХОТОМІЯ ФАКТУ ТА ФІКЦІЇ У ПСЕВДОДОКУМЕНТАЛІСТИЦІ Виконала

КУЦА ЄВГЕНІЯ ІГОРІВНА

Науковий керівник

Юрій ПАНІН старший викладач

Науковий консультант

Дарія ОРЛОВА

Робота допущена до захисту

Євген ФЕДЧЕНКО кандидат політичних наук, доцент

(підпис)

Київ – 2011

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. A GENERAL OVERVIEW: NON-FICTION AND FICTION

1.1 Documentary: Its Factual Discourse and Cultural Placing

1.2 Recent Transformations of the Documentary Genre

1.3 Genre Differentiation in Fact-Fiction Forms: Docudrama, Mockumentary

CHAPTER II. STYLISTIC AND STRUCTURAL TOOLS OF A ‘MOCKING AGENDA’ IN MOCK-DOCUMENTARY

2.1 Parody

2.2 Critique and Hoax

2.3 Deconstruction

CHAPTER III. THE ROLE CONSTRUCTED FOR THE AUDIENCE

3.1 Evaluation the Reality Status of Mock-documentaries by the Spectators

3.2 The Methodology of the Research: the Qualitative Techniques

3.3 Woody Allen’s mock-documentary Zelig as an object for research

3.4 The Results of the Research

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FILMOGRAPHY

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION ‘Some artists turn from documentary to fiction because they feel it lets them come closer to the truth, their truth. Some, it would appear, turn to documentary because it can make deception more plausible'. Erik Barnouw [3, 349]. The area of fact-fiction forms is a comparatively under-theorised sphere of media-studies – even though there has been a considerable number of those text produced within the last few years. Fact-fiction forms are those screen forms, both film and television, which engage elements of documentary aesthetics but do not fit to the full extent into most existing definitions of ‘documentary’. This work addresses a specific group of fictional screen forms – mock-documentaries – which mimic documentary modes in order to represent a fictional subject. The Thesis aims to examine the relation between mock-documentary and the factual discourse of documentary. This relation presupposes all the possible influences of mock-documentary towards the factual discourse of documentary. Within the study the focus will be put on how viewers evaluate the reality status of mock-documentaries, how they distinguish and correlate the elements of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. Such recognition and differentiation of real and invented by the viewers will work as key to understanding on how mock-documentaries create the credibility and reliability among its audience. Understanding the nature of the content is the crucial issue regarding the mock-documentary genre. Most mockumentaries are targeted at discovering the film’s ‘fictional identity’, in other words, viewers are expected to understand the fictional element of the film. Therefore, the audience should be aware of mocking or exaggerating features of mock-documentary genre. The small number of mockumentary forms aim to dupe the spectators intentionally, confusing them by 3

its ambiguous characteristics, but as a rule – in mock-documentaries the fictional elements (or fake sequence) are not applied for misleading the viewers. Still their main goal remains exposing the fictional identity of the film. The purpose is to explore the main characteristics of mock-documentary, the way it poses itself towards the most popular forms of documentary genre and the credibility degree from the viewers’ side. This purpose foresees the accomplishing of such tasks: - to define the basic features of documentary so to reveal the connection between documentary and mock-documentary; - to examine the main codes and conventions that are identified with documentary, and which also constitute the general documentary style; -

to identify the mock-documentary hybrid form and its relation to the factual discourse of documentary;

- to study the main ‘mocking tools’ of mock-documentary – its parodic and satiric characteristics; - and finally to understand the ways the audience is conscious of the fictionality of the media-product, and whether the genre demands the ’media-literate viewer’ for its acceptance. The object of the research is mock-documentary as a genre. The subject of the research is the exploitation of factual discourse elements in mock-documentary and its reception by the audience based on the case of Woody Allen’s Zelig (1983). Theoretical framework Since the concept of mock-documentary is relatively new in film studies theory and continues to develop and mutate, not much research has been made into this precise issue. The consistent analysis by Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight, entitled Faking It: Mock documentary and the subversion of factuality [45] is one of the basic theoretical sources of this study. Roscoe and Hight denominate and define 4

different categories of mock-documentary films and their position vis-àvis audience and creator, mainly through sporadic references. Along with this basic study works of the following authors have also been used: Bill Nichols, Derek Paget, Carl Platinga, Del Jacobs, Paul Ward, Juhasz and Lerner, Alan Rosenthal, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others. Methodological framework of the research is specified by its purpose and tasks. The study is based on the qualitative methods of research as they act as an effort to better understand peoples’ interpretations of their experiences. Because qualitative methods are so effective at examining processes, they are appropriate for understanding the studied phenomena – the credibility degree. For adequate exploring the depth and complexity of the researched question focus group methodology has been applied. Choice of the focus group approach is largely explained by its potential to encourage discussion among group members, and stimulate generating ideas that would not have been available otherwise. For evaluating the reality status of the proposed screen form an approach, comprising three independent perspectives, is suggested: a. a pragmatic perspective concerning the product type (‘fact’, ‘fiction’, and ‘hybrids’); b. a semantic perspective concerning product content (degrees of credibility); c. a perspective of model referring to the (perceived) realism of the product (formal features and their effects on degree of involvement). Under all three perspectives, any media product involves cues that orient the potential viewer toward its ontic status and credibility of content. This model is then applied to film transcending the traditional boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, the Woody Allen’s mock-documentary Zelig and its reception. The reason Zelig is chosen as an object for research among other mockdocumentaries is explained by the fact that this film represents a more seamless 5

simulation of documentary genre than others do – therefore is more appropriate and interesting for evaluating its reality status. The significance and topical value of this study is focused on the frequent employment of these kinds of narratives and their acceptance within mainstream cinema and television during the recent years. The narrow verge between fact and fiction stimulates the emergence of new hybrid genre forms and increasing popularity among the audience. In this respect there occurred a need to explore how audiences interpret these media products. Much of the discussion concerning mock-documentary has concentrated on whether the viewers are duped by this mixing of fact and fiction and further implications of this. Therefore, the potential of this work is highly imposed by rapid changes in media environment. Within this respect this Thesis might be a source for future researches. The structure of the work is adequate to the set aim and tasks, reflects the sequence of its realisation. The Master Thesis consists of an Introduction, three Chapters and corresponding Subchapters, Conclusions, Bibliography, Filmography and Appendix (Tables and Figures). Chapter 1. is devoted to situating the documentary form, revealing the complex characteristics of this genre and its relation to the fiction-based forms. Since mock-documentary ridicules the documentary narrative, it is essential to understand the way documentary is being constructed and interpreted. In Subchapter 1.1. the general overview of the genre, including the historical background, the modes of documentary are to be examined. Here is also made an attempt to define ‘the factual discourse of documentary’ which refers to the documentary’s claim of representing reality. In this meaning ‘the factual discourse of documentary’ is a set of assumptions and expectations which form the basis of the documentary genre. The main aim of this chapter is to form a comprehensive understanding of the role of documentary within the mock-documentary genre.

In the Subchapter 1.2 some of the recent transformations of the documentary genre will be examined and the ways in which documentary has reacted to those various changes will be explored. We are interested here to study the ways in which the new transformed forms have widened the fundamental assumptions of documentary, and have assimilated a range of codes and conventions apart from those usually associated with the genre. In the next Chapter those fiction forms which are characterized by a blurring of the line between fact and fiction are discussed – a feature that marks such screen forms as ‘drama-documentaries’ and ‘mock-documentaries’. In this relation we examine the nature of the distinctive relations which those both forms construct towards the documentary narrative. The scope of mock-documentary, historical backgrounds of the form are going to be examined in this chapter as well. Chapter 2 outlines the stylistic and structural tools of a ‘mocking’ agenda in pseudo-documentary genre, which Roscoe and Hight (Roscoe & Hight, 2001) define as ‘degrees of mock-documentary’: parody, hoax and deconstruction. Those constructive elements are essential for understanding the function of mockdocumentary. The final Chapter is focused on practical research the aim of which is to explore the way viewers evaluate the reality status of mock-documentaries, how they distinguish and correlate the elements of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. In this context, one of the central questions here is how mock-documentary builds a truth claim of documentary, and how it creates this reliability among its audience. The full volume of the works is 68pages, 59 of them – main text and 9 pages of Appendix where there the Questionnaire, Tables and Figures are situated. Bibliography consists of 59 positions.

CHAPTER I. A GENERAL OVERVIEW: NON-FICTION AND FICTION 1.1

DOCUMENTARY: ITS FACTUAL DISCOURSE AND CULTURAL PLACING Pioneer Scottish film-maker John Grierson first applied the term

‘documentary’ in 1926. This definition was used to describe Robert Flaherty's film ‘Moana’ about life in the South Seas. Grierson coined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’. This characterization simultaneously distinguishes the documentary from the fiction film (not thought to be primarily a treatment of actuality) and the non-fiction film (not thought to be creative or dramatic) [44, 105]. Erik Barnouw, who wrote one of the most popular books on documentary film history, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, defines this genre by the films' place in history and societal use. Barnouw distinguishes documentaries from earlier nonfiction films (which were known as travelogues) by their incorporation of a narrative structure and use of multiple close-ups [3, 18]. The use of narrative and close-ups came directly from the influence of fiction film, and one result of their use was a clearer manifestation of the filmmaker's point of view [6]. Since that time documentary had been variously defined as ‘a dramatized presentation of man’s relation to his institutional life’, as ‘film with the message’, 8

as ‘the communication, not of imagined things, but of real things only’, and as films which give up control of the events being filmed’[13, 81]. Terminological confusion often results from various uses of the word ‘documentary’ and the phrase ‘nonfiction film’. In its most expansive sense, a nonfiction film is any film not fictional, for example, instructional films, advertisements, corporate films, or historical or biographical documentaries [44, 105]. Platinga points out that although the distinction between nonfiction film and documentary cannot bear much theoretical weight, it might be useful to think of the documentary as a subset of nonfiction films, characterized by more aesthetic, social, rhetorical, and/or political ambition than say, a corporate or instructional film. Documentary has a privileged role within the cinema genres gradation since it should present true-life, objective and accurate picture of the socio-historical reality. ‘Documentary suggests fullness and completion, knowledge and fact, explanations of the social world and its motivating mechanisms’ [38, 174]. This claim presupposes the direct relation between the documentary image and reality. The image and its record are regarded as being one and the same while there is a direct connection between the cinematic image and the referent (social world). Documentary film, in the words of Bill Nichols, is ‘one of the discourse of sobriety’ that include science, economics, politics, and history – discourses that claim to describe the ‘real’, to tell the truth. Yet the documentary film, in more obvious ways than does history, straddles the categories of fact and fiction, art and document, entertainment and knowledge [16, 80]. Bill Nichols suggests six subgenres or modes of the documentary: expository, observational, poetic, participatory, reflexive, and performative [39, 99-138]. These subgenres appeared at a particular time, some have come and fallen out of favor, and all are subject to the vagaries of fashion and critical practice. Yet films

There is a question of defining documentary – whether it should be regarded a genre or a style. Early documentarists such as Grierson and Flaherty considered documentary as an artistic venture, a creative seek due to which the factual material was presented as an expressive narration. Later, during the 1960s and the Direct Cinema movement, the concept of ‘creative interpretation’ was denied, and replaced by the rhetoric of naturalism, the idea that documentary should capture reality as it unfolded, as if the camera were absent [57, 112]. This concept of ‘pure’ reality can be observed in ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentaries, and later development of ‘docu-soap’. Some critics have classified documentary as a genre (Britton, Kilborn and Izod), although they see the difficulties in creating the criteria by which actuality programming can be classified and distinguished from fictional texts. One of the approaches is to define documentary considering its close relation to fictional texts. This method presupposes the existence of a binary opposition of fact and fiction, with documentary on one side, and drama on the other. According to this approach documentary is considered as factual with the direct objection to the imaginary world of fiction. Another approach is predicated on the existence of documentary as a factfiction continuum, when the text is constructed on the basis of both fact and fiction discourses. This thesis is close to the Nichols’ description of documentary as ‘a fiction (un)like any other’ [37, 113]. Nichols mentions the technique in which documentary (like fictional text) constructs narratives and uses similar codes and conventions to build the picture of social world. Documentary doesn’t suggest an unmediated view of the world, nor can it play the role of mirror of the society. It rather produces certain visions of the social world – like any fictional text does. Nevertheless, Nichols’ description suggests both aspects – the similarity between documentary and fictional texts and difference between them. 10

Carl Platinga disagrees that this difference is expressed by the role of documentary to retranslate the social world [44]. Even though we may agree that documentary representations are as constructed as fictional ones, the stance that documentary takes toward the social world is one that is grounded on the belief that it can access the real. Platinga names this an “assertive stance” [44, 40]. ‘Facts’ and ‘truth’ in documentary Such a description is closely connected with the concepts of facts, objectivity and evidence. Raymond Williams studies the exploitation of the objective/subjective dichotomy forms in the mid nineteenth century and points out that it was the time when the concept of ‘objectivity’ was emphatically used the concept of ‘fact’ [56]. This argued the concept of ‘subjectivity’ which was connected with the individualistic view of the reality. Such a definition of objectivity forms the central idea of positivistic discourse and underlines the ‘realist’ tradition in art and cinema – mainly ‘documentary’. The concept of ‘fact’ has raised many discussions in the contemporary social discourse. Facts were identified with the concept of truth, in the same way as objectivity has been considered complementary with ‘facts’ and ‘truth’. As Bhaskar notes, ‘facts are real and we are not free to invent them, but they belong to the realm of epistemology and are discovered through theoretical paradigms and are historically specific social realties’ [quoted in MacLennan, 33, 26]. Therefore, these two researches abstract the concept of ‘reality’, but this ‘reality’ can be reachable only through social knowledge; regarding facts, the situation differs – they do exist but can be perceived only by the means of interpretation. According to the positivist discourse facts are speaking for themselves, they are self-evident and act as ‘evidence’ to retranslate the objectivity of social world. Thus, Wittgenstein’s assertion “The world is the totality of facts, not of things” (1921) might well be rendered as the idea that facts are free from subjective interpretation – and therefore more trusted within society. In the past documentary has played on the concepts of facts and truth, affirming that its photographic 11

feature is appealed for capturing the reality. The camera became the tool of pictorial representation trough which the world could be precisely documented and recorded. Regarding the question of camera role, Winston points out that the public recognition of the camera as a precise recorder of reality was constructed by its association with such scientific tools as the barometer and thermometer. These devices were supposed to give truthful and objective measurements, so too the camera – the accurate and credible recorder of natural world. ‘Beyond art, beyond drama, the documentary is evidential, scientific’ [57, 127].

1.2

RECENT TRANSFORMATIONS IN DOCUMENTARY GENRE Documentary as a genre and as a concept is inherently unsettled and

constantly goes trough certain transformations. Due to the historical reasons documentary became able to quick adoption of some external influences. One of the most significant changes brought the emergence of television and its new broadcasting contexts. As Roscoe and Hight write, media convergence and digitalisation have presented new marketing opportunities for documentary filmmakers, together with the prospect of a global audience [45, 24]. Although there are many analogues between documentary texts which are written for the cinema production and those for television, their typical institutional contexts have concluded into some fundamental distinctions, including the expansion of certain traditions and styles. Cinema and television acting as opposites to a certain extent have formed a dichotomy of high and low culture, elite art and populist replication. These discourses have influenced in shaping the documentary form across the two media. In a specific way, cinema and television comprise two divergent institutional contexts for documentary production and acceptance.

From the very emergence of cinema, and story films in particular, documentary was alleged as an alternative screen form and moreover – as an antithesis to studio Hollywood films. Grierson argued that documentary should be considered as an art form rather than populist genre, and as a site for auteurist expression (Corner, 1996) [45, 25]. Another distinction concerns the question of attitude – the documentary and its audience accordingly was posed with considerable touch of moral superiority in relation to the films produced be the Hollywood-based film industry. A.William Bluem sees the television documentary as a product of two influences:

the radio documentary programs of the 1930s and the overall

nonfiction film tradition. The first television documentaries were essentially newsreels that provided on-the-spot journalistic coverage [4, 280]. The variety of the new elements common to documentaries produced for television can be traced to the new characteristics of more technological media forms. Jack Ellis and Betsy Mclane point out that in regard to the content of documentaries, three major types predominated throughout the 1950s and 1960s in USA. First is the documentary based on the newsworthy subject, something that is of current, widespread interest. This is television’s major contribution to the evolution of documentary subjects and forms, a genre in which it has been uniquely effective [14, 190]. Second are the historical and often nostalgic subjects of the compilation series and programs. Lastly there is what could be called ‘human interest’, the curiosity we all have about others, their personalities, and their problems. This sort of content is most manifest in use of direct cinema. Critiques of metanarratives Apart from institutional changes, documentary has also faced more extended conceptual changes from postmodernist discourse. The concept of metanarrative was introduced and criticized by Jean-Francois Lyotard in his work ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979)’ [32]. According to the advocates of postmodernism, metanarratives have lost their power to convince 13

stories that are told in order to legitimize various versions of ‘the truth’. With the transition from modern to postmodern, Lyotard proposes that metanarratives should give way to ‘petits récits’, or more modest and ‘localized’ narratives. The postmodernist critiques of metanarratives challenge the authority of science and faith in facts as well. On the contrary of previous discourses which indued the science with the ability to solve social and individual problems – the postmodernist one is seeing the science as only one discourse amongst many that has the ability to interpret the reality and give the sense to social, historical, political and individual practices. This questioning of scientific authority has a variety of implications towards documentary. First documentarists underlined the close connection between the documenting the reality and the discourses of science. The critique of metanarratives offered by Lyotard and other postmodernists brings the changes into established canons of documentary – and these changes are straightforwardly connected with the discredit of science. Documentary (like science) was considered to be able to record and retranslate the actual truth, the facts as they are. The postmodernist critique shows this claim to be untenable; documentary can only ever present a truth, not The Truth [45, 28]. So in other words, documentary can’t hold the position of the mediator of the metanarrative any more (The Truth), it can only document the ‘petits récits’ or ‘localized’ narratives (a truth). Another change is related with the social mission of documentary. The discourse of modernity through its project of enlightenment and social progress, claimed that role of documentary is not only to represent the real world, but also to change it. Postmodernist discourse argues this approach releasing the documentary from this responsible task. These changes became the key points in understanding the transformations within the documentary genre. However, these transformations led to the emergence of new representational approaches that have deliberately opened up lacunas between the ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. In blurring these dissimilarities, the 14

documentary has acquired a range of styles that potentially challenge the basics of this genre. It has also enabled documentary develop itself in the variety of specific ways – adopting the certain strategies and concepts that have been immanent for postmodernist discourse, such as parody, deconstruction and hoax.

1.3

GENRE DIFFERENTIATION IN FACT-FICTION FORMS; DOCUDRAMA, MOCKUMENTARY

When using the term ‘fact-fiction forms’, we mean those visual examples (film and television texts) which maintain elements of documentary aesthetics but do not fit into existing definitions of ‘documentary’ to the full extent. Both dramadocumentary and mock-documentary are fictional forms which construct specific connections with the documentary genre. Also there are other common characteristics which associate them both into these genres: drama-documentary and mock-documentary are considered to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and at the same time are complicated for determining its reality status by the audience. Docudrama The term drama is applicable in two rather different ways to documentary material, even if both ways are finally related. First of all, it can be used to indicate the exciting, intensive character of an event; and second, it can be used to indicate enactment (professional or otherwise, variously rehearsed or not) in front of the 15

camera. Corner (1999) points out that the approach of ‘dramatized documentary’ begins with a documentary base or core and uses dramatization to overcome certain limitations and to achieve a more broadly popular and imaginatively powerful effect [11, 35]. The two definitions ‘documentary drama’ and ‘drama documentary’ are both widely used, but there are doubts which term is more accurate. Paget suggests that as well as being hyphenated, they have been routinely contracted (‘docudrama’, ‘dramadoc’) and periodically sidelined in favour of neologisms (such as ‘faction’, briefly fashionable in the 1980s) [41, 97]. Moreover Derek Paget defines those terms showing the distinguishing features between them: Drama-documentary is a form which stays closest to the actual historical events and personalities. One of the significant aspects is the chronological sequence of events – from a real historical occurrence. The drama is used to overpass the gaps in the narrative and provoke argues and anxiety about essential issues. But nevertheless drama-documentary tends not to interrupt the realistic narrative (or at least minimize such interruption), it still doesn’t apply documentary codes and conventions. Documentary drama on the contrary uses fictional sequence of events and personalities to illustrate historical issues. But it doesn’t necessarily accord with realistic narrative. Documentary codes and conventions here are more stylistic elements rather than structural – they might be presented non-naturalistically. Fiction is grounded on realistic background (actual events and characters), and then, invented stories are built on this ‘true plot’. Dramadoc (more used in UK) and docudrama (more used in USA) are shortened definitions for television programs which use drama-documentary methology. Paget [41, 61] notes that dramadoc/ docudrama has almost always set out to do one or more of the following: 16

a. to re-tell events from national or international histories, either reviewing or celebrating these event; b. to re-present the careers of significant national or international figures, for similar purposes as ‘a’; c. to portray issues of concern to national or international communities in order to provoke discussion about them; d. to focus on ‘ordinary citizens’ who have been thrust into the news because of some special experience; e. to provoke questions about its form. As Lipkin [31, 371] points out docudrama argues with the seriousness of documentary to the extent that it draws upon direct, motivated resemblances to its actual materials. As fictions, docudramas offer powerful, attractive arguments about actual subjects, depicting people, places and events that exist or have existed...it is on the basis of its close resemblances to actuality that docudrama argues for the validity of its metaphors. Many filmmakers conceive drama-documentary as a film genre that covers the same area as documentary, even though many of them underline that its distinguishing features are more connected with the content, but not the form. For example, it might use the accepted historian narratives and fill them with emotional context making the historical figures more convincing. For this purpose drama-documentary can apply such documentary material as: original footage, news extracts or photo stills. But at the same time drama-documentary doesn’t use the codes and conventions of documentary – even though it may utilise historical footage (or reconstructions of historical events), drama-doc doesn’t ‘look’ like a documentary. If mentioning the conventions of drama-documentary then it’s necessary to note that most of them are taken from realist drama. For example: multiple camera set-ups in actual locations, ‘key lighting’, sound recorded for maximum clarity of narrative flow, continuity editing (minimizing interruptions to narrative flow) and 17

non-diegetic music dubbed over during post-production to influence mood [45, 49]. Concerning the audience expectations – then it’s needed to say that viewers take drama-doc with similar approaches to those of documentaries, in the meaning that they are conceiving it as a truthful reality which is grounded on an awareness of factual discourse and correlated to it codes and conventions. Lots of argues around drama-documentary have concentrated on whether viewers are duped by the mixing of fact and fiction and the potential assumptions of this. Petley[42, 32] emphasizes that this was always a weak line of argument more often than not constructed to reinforce calls for greater control on the media. Adding to this discussing the BBC’s Producers Guidelines [5, 26] contains statements arguing that viewers should be informed as to what exactly is factual and fictional in any one programme so as to avoid confusion or any chance of the public being misled.

Mockumentary This non-fiction form of media product has been classified with a variety of terms;

‘faux

documentary’

(Francke,

1996),

‘pseudo-documentary’,

‘mockumentary’, ‘cinéma vérité with a wink’ (Harrington, 1994), ‘cinéma unvérité’ (Ansen, 1997), ‘black comedy presented as in-your-face documentary’, ‘spoof documentary’ and ‘quasi-documentary’ (Neale and Krutnik, 1990) [45, 1]. In the Thesis we tend to use the term ‘mock-documentary’ or ‘mockumentary’ for several reasons: a.

it reflects the origin of a pre-existing form (documentary)

combined with a semantic construction (mock) familiar to the audience; b. the word ‘mock’ has two conceptual meanings (to ridicule and to imitate) which both construct parodic agenda of documentary genre. 18

Therefore, mock-documentary is a ‘fact-fiction’ form which has a tight connection to both drama and documentary. It not only exploits documentary codes and conventions but also builds a specific coherence with the discourse of factuality. In other words it takes a fictive position toward the real world, applying documentary aesthetics to ‘mock’ the emphasizing discourses of documentary. So

situating

itself

between

fictional

and

factual

conventions,

mockdocumentary is collocated together under the experimental ‘docufiction’ definition with other hybrids like docudrama or reality television that form together with television and film represenations’ most fundamental aesthetic dichotomy.

The notably indeterminate field of ‘docufiction’ is still not

conceptualized enough in academic literature – the difficulties emerge with a comprehensive understanding of ‘docufiction’ and its elements due to the potential feature of hybrids to resist a direct definition, and similarly to the great amount of forms and practices that are covered by the categories of ‘reality television’, ‘docudrama’ and ‘mockumentary’. Not unlike documentary, these categories are rather to be conceived of as ‘open concepts’ (Wittgenstein, 1958) that lack an essential meaning and embrace several different modes and dimensions [34, 233]. Mockumentary films particularly subvert the authoritative, didactic, omniscient, ‘formal’ voice (Plantinga, 1997) that is often related to the ‘expository’ documentary (quite literally deployed through the voice-of-God commentary), or the assertions of objectivity and transparency typical of fly-on-the wall observational cinema. Moreover, ‘exposition’ and ‘observation’ are the principal modes of documentary realism (Corner, 2003), which is essentially part of the mock-documentary project. This particular feature of mock-documentary is similarly apparent in the television forms that are emerging today [34, 232]. Mock-documentary’s agenda is eventually to parody the potential implications and expectations usually affiliated with factual discourse, to ‘mock’ the status of documentary’s distinctive codes and conventions. This mocking is usually applied as a form of critical commentary on contemporary culture: it might 19

be a parody of popular icons with the society, political critique or even the parody of documentary genre itself. As Roscoe and Hight [45, 50] remark in regard to mockumentary film, the form has a tendency to adopt the codes of those documentaries that most plainly bear the marks of the so-called ‘Classic Objective Argument’, i.e. the classical generic forms associated with discourses of objectivity and rationality (in Nichols’ terms, the ‘Classic Objective Argument’ refers to the ‘expository’, ‘observational’ and ‘interactive’ modes of documentary representation.). This ‘Classic Objective Argument’ is posed as most closely accomplishing the objectives of the documentary – in this meaning – presenting an accurate and unmediated picture of the reality. In the same understanding, this pattern applies a similar fashion to the classic realist narrative in fictional texts. These modes (expository’, ‘observational’ and ‘interactive’) are also commonly targeted by mock-documentary, most apparently because their codes and conventions can be easily replicated. One more reason for these replications is the fact that these modes are posed as morally superior in their portrayal of the social world. Mockumentaries have a tendency to accept and adopt an archetypical distinctive form rather than admitting the complexities of the genre itself. Here we need to emphasize the key point – the documentary modes of portraying the reality are easily recognisable. That’s the reason why assumption of documentary codes and conventions is applied not so much to ground the argument in the reality or to strengthen affirmations to truth, but rather to suggest critical commentary. As Roscoe and Hight [45, 50] also underline, many mock-dockumentaries treat the generic form as given, while others incorporate a more explicit degree of reflexivity within its parodic exercise. They also argue that appropriation inherently constructs a degree of latent reflexivity towards the genre. Concluding this chapter, we need to underline two generic features of mockdocumentaries and drama-documentaries which are indicative for both genres. Drama-documentary has a tendency to accentuate the connection with documentary, placing its work as a journalistic venture. The main idea here is to 20

present ‘truthful’ and factual background. Mock-documentaries, on the contrary, foreground their fictionality, playing and challenging with the documentary. At the same time mock-documentaries don’t look for validity trough the association with the genre.

CHAPTER II. STYLISTIC AND STRUCTURAL TOOLS OF A ‘MOCKING AGENDA’ IN MOCK-DOCUMENTARY GENRE 2.1 PARODY The parodic origin in mock-documentary is one of the central and in order to understand pseudo-documentary’s ‘mocking agenda’ it is essential to examine the function of parody within the form. Paul Ward underlines the connection between mock-documentary and parody. He determines mock-documentary’s placing at a conjunction of comedy and documentary [55, 101]. In A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms, Linda Hutcheon questions traditional conceptions of parody, pointing that ‘parody changes with culture’. Hutcheon suggests a broad definition of parody characterizing it as ‘an extended form, probably a genre, rather than a technique (cf. Chambers 1974), for it has its own structural identity and its own hermeneutic function’ [24, 19].

In the later edition of the same work Hutcheon widens a myriads attitudes towards the concept of parody defining it as a ‘form of repetition with ironic critical distance, marking difference rather than similarity’ [24, 12]. A ‘bitextual synthesis’, parody is ‘not parasitic in any way’, though its inherent ‘critical distance’ has ‘always permitted satire to be so effectively deployed through [parody's] textual forms’ [24, 13-14]. Regarding the satire – its functions are conceptually different from the ones parody possesses. Satire’s target is located outside of what traditionally has been considered as textuality (social and political reality), whereas parody's target is textual, ‘less an aggressive than a conciliatory rhetorical strategy, building upon more than attacking its other, while still retaining its critical distance’ [24, 43; 22, 14). As Platinga notes ‘the terms ‘satire’ and ‘parody’ are often used as synonyms, but have slightly different meanings. Both involve the imitation of and ironic commentary on another discourse. Yet satire implies ridicule of its target, while a parody need not devalue its object, but may range from an ethos of condemnation to one of homage and celebration’ [43, 321]. The literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin defined parody as a natural development in the life cycle of any genre: a genre will always reach a stage where it begins to be parodied. Bakhtin noted that parody is inherently a ‘double-voiced discourse’, and total subversion of its subject is always ambiguous; after all, ‘parodic art both deviates from an aesthetic norm and includes that norm within itself as backgrounded material’ [2, 324]. Parodying the original When discussing the parodic art it’s important to mention the concept of ‘original’ as the basis of parodic transformation. Frederic Jameson states that ‘the art of parody depends on the tension between the known original and its parody 22

twin.’ A parody must transform the original, altering it to give new meaning and in the process create a new work. In this relation it’s necessary to mention again ‘meta-narratives’ theory of Lyotard. In his book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) Lyotard argued that society has lost faith ‘meta-narratives’, grand belief systems like religion, political ideology, and even cultural forms like architectural style or cinematic genre [32]. This means that postmodern culture tends to parody the conventions of earlier forms. Adding to this Margaret Rose notes that postmodern texts are characterised as being intertextual, reflexive and consumed by knowing audiences [48]. Pastiche In relation to other intertextual genres, parody is ‘unlike more monotextual forms like pastiche that stress similarity rather than difference . . . pastiche usually has to remain within the same genre as its model, whereas parody allows for adaptation’ [22, 33, 38). Moreover, pastiche unlike parody, often completely engages a set of conventions without necessarily forcing a critical distance. Still, ‘unlike imitation, quotation, or even allusion, parody requires critical ironic distance’ [22, 34]. Fredric Jameson defines pastiche as ‘the random cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of stylistic allusion.’ This is partly the result of overexposure. Jameson describes pastiche as ‘blank parody’. This means that rather than being humorous or satirical, pastiche has become a ‘dead language’ unable to satirize in any effective way. Whereas pastiche used to be a humorous device, it has become ‘devoid of laughter’ [26, 17]. Parodic documentary

As Hutcheon notes, a ‘parodic agenda’ would not call for ‘subversion’ or ‘ridicule’, but rather, critical commentary. It is, therefore, important to point out that the fictional documentary does not require mockery or indulgence towards documentary film [24]. Jordan Lavender-Smith adds that in practice, the parodic documentary might borrow, imitate, and incorporate documentary for entertainment's sake or to appropriate its presupposed veracity; or, it might challenge documentary's presumed factuality without necessarily mocking the tradition [30]. Fake-documentary correlates to the ethos of parody, to parody's full ‘range of intent – from the ironic and playful to the scornful and ridiculing’ – as well as to parody's function as ‘imitation, but imitation characterized by ironic inversion, not always at the expense of the parodied text’ [22, 6]. Even not considering the fact that parody was used to be taken as a destabilizing, continuous mode of expression, recent studies by Margaret Rose, Linda Hutcheon and Frederic Jameson, focused on parody's political flexibility, have demonstrated its ability to affirm as much as disrupt the targeted text. Moreover, parody has traditionally been regarded as one of the elitist genres, the one that demands both an acquaintance with cultural texts and personal openness towards ironical modes and gaps in senses. Mock-documentary genre doesn't simply dispute these conventional appropriations towards the parody; rather, it illuminates an outstanding example of how far parody may go for reinstating authority in popular culture. The point is, that in the case of mock-documentaries audiences are necessarily required to delineate between the film's 'fact' and 'fiction'. If viewers decode the mockumentary as fiction, they are 'in on the joke'; if they accept the film as real, they actualize the genre's claim to 'pseudo-documentary'. According to Jordan Lavender-Smith, the fake-documentary's most recent manifestations point to the fundamental distinction between satire and parody, ridicule and weaponry, outlined by Hutcheon. The dangers of conflating satire and 24

parody, or 'mock-' and 'parodic', correspond to the hazards of assuming that change initiated by self-reflection is necessarily socially progressive [30]. Roscoe and Hight [45, 101-127] enlist the following mock-documentaries to this degree: The Rutles (1978), Zelig (1983), Man with a Plan (1996), Forgotten Silver (1995), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Waiting for Guffman (1996).

2.2 CRITIQUE AND HOAX Mock-documentaries which conceptually reflect these structural elements explicitly highlight their own fictionality. Generally critique and hoax are applied in order to ask the potential viewers to react upon the validity of the cultural or political issues. Such screen forms are mostly united by an ambivalent appliance of documentary codes and conventions and at the same time more explicit involvement of critical commentaries upon media practices themselves. Within this degree Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight further distinguish texts which develop reflexivity toward factual discourse in three different ways. Firstly, some mock-documentaries feature muted critiques of media practices, others offer a sustained political critique of aspects of culture using the mock-documentary 25

form and a third category comprises texts which generate reflexive interpretations because of their (intentional or not) success as hoaxes [45, 131]. Critiques of media practices Most of mockumentaries which represent critiques of media practices apply documentary aesthetics, but simultaneously use distinguishing forms of criticism towards media practices. In order to distinguish those two degrees Roscoe and Hight compare similar films such as This is Spinal Tap and Bad News Tour. Unlike its predecessor, however, Bad News Tour more explicitly examines the tension and contradictions inherent to any collaboration between a documentary filmmaker and his/her subject [45,70-71]. The first-category ‘muted critique of media practices’ consists of films such as Bad News Tour (1983), ER (episode entitled ‘Ambush’, 1997), and The Games (1998). The common feature of these films is inherent critique towards the practices of the filmmaking process. The relationship between filmmaker and his/her subject is commonly the subject of the criticism. Films in this category usually exploit the violation of the ethical principles by the film crew. Political critique The second direction is ‘political critique’ that applies the political issues as a subject of criticism. Bob Roberts (1992) is one of examples of these kinds of texts. In Bob Roberts both the political issues and certain media aspects are criticized. As Gil Troy notes, this mock-documentary follows Bob Roberts on the campaign trail, telling his life story trough interviews, ‘archival’ newspaper clippings, and voice-over narration. This pseudo-documentary captures supposedly spontaneous moments that are actually scripted parts of the film. This textured effect highlights the gap between the fictional reality and the image Bob Roberts 26

seeks to create. It also raises questions about the differences in perspectives between the actual movie audience and the imaginary audience watching the documentary. Ultimately, the film degenerates into caricature [53,1186]. Another film – Punishment Park (1971) can also be placed within this niche, since the film directly addresses the politics of Nixon. Hoax Another category, the films which can be categorised as ‘hoaxes’, are the texts where the context of reception plays the key role. Roscoe & Hight note that media hoaxes to some extent force their audiences to acknowledge the subversive nature of the mock-documentary form [45, 144]. Mockumentary texts usually succeed as hoaxes because audiences fail to read cues that reveal the films' fictional plot. As a mock-documentary it creates a world credible enough for some sections of the audience to be confused as to its ontological status. Such films as Forgotten Silver (1995), Alien Abduction – incident in Lake County (1998) illustrate author’s intentions to present a number of cues that which highlight its fictionality – and at the same time those films have a status of an unintentional hoax. Jane Roscoe analyzing The Blaire Witch Project argues that the film partly succeeds as a hoax because it has been manufactured as such by the filmmakers. Roscoe indicates that initially there was no conscious decision to set the film up as a hoax, but because of the early responses to the film, this uncertainty over its ontological status was capitalized on by the filmmakers, who refused to confirm or deny that it was a true story [46]. Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman is another example of this kind of hoax-films. Thelma Wills Foote writing on this issue points out that rather, this mock-documentary perpetrates a hoax on viewers who presuppose that the documentary form provides an unmediated and truthful record of past realities or that word and image always reference an external reality. She states that ‘in 27

Dunye’s hands, mock-documentary becomes a mode of fictional discourse that endorses creative acts of self-discovery and self-determination’[15].

2.3 DECONSTRUCTION The third degree ‘deconstruction’ addresses those screen forms that may or may not expect their viewers to easily define their fictionality, but which engage a more distinct degree of reflexivity towards the documentary genre. As Roscoe & Hight note, these mock-documentaries represent the ‘hostile’ appropriation of documentary codes and conventions, and can be said to bring to fruition the ‘latent reflexivity’ which is inherent to mock-documentary’s parody of the documentary project itself [45, 160]. At this degree, a mock-documentary ‘examines, subverts and deconstructs factual discourse and its relationship with documentary codes and conventions’ [45, 73]. Mock-documentaries at this degree also feature a reflexive stance toward ‘factual discourse’, and suggest ‘the potential of the mock-documentary form to serve as a site for the active subversion of factual discourse’ [45, 61]. 28

Being the most radical form of mock-documentary, it stances its profoundly reflexive nature as a key element. Parody or satire might possibly be engaged but cease to be self-serving narrative tools. Within this degree the following films can be outlined: David Holzman’s Diary (1967), The Falls (1980), Man Bites Dog (1992). Man Bites Dog (1992) Rémy Belvaux’s mockumentary Man Bites Dog (orig. C’est arrivé près de chez vous) depicts a group of young documentarists reporting on the activities and private life of a serial killer, played by Benoît Poelvoorde. Aside from its consequently naturalistic look and feel, conscious to the visual conventions of factuality, it is deconstructively applicable for featuring the filmmakers actually befriending the killer and his social circle, finally to become partners in his crimes by helping him to get rid of the bodies. In the last scene, the crew gets killed together with the killer, in front of the rolling camera, by a group of rival mafiosi. The horrible depictions of violence serve as a setting to the metaphor of the manipulations that may serve as a basis of the documentary effort itself. From the point where the killer starts slaughtering people, the audience and the filmmakers as observers become involved in anything that might potentially fill the screen. Here the documentarists face a dilemma – to what point the motivation to ‘keep filming for the world to see’ is ethical if the violence becomes extremely brutal and flashily inhuman? The illusion that any kind of recording, especially a one, could be objective, that switching the camera on wouldn’t be a manipulation and intervention itself, is shattered. As Eric Schockmel points out, the deconstructive mockumentary tears down the wall from which the proverbial fly pretends to observe, unseen. Injustice and violence portrayed in drama cannot fully expose the complexity of the 29

viewer’s situation as the mockumentary can, because the suspension of disbelief is much stronger in fiction. It’s-just-a-movie ultimately preserves the audience from too much guilt. But if the realism temporarily removes the mental fiction barrier and the imagery takes on a snuff-film-like appearance, viewer and filmmaker share the same imaginary guilt [51, 45].

CHAPTER III. THE ROLE CONSTRUCTED FOR THE AUDIENCE

3.1 EVALUATION THE REALITY STATUS OF MOCKUMENTARIES BY THE SPECTATORS

This chapter focuses on how the spectators evaluate the reality status of media products, how they distinguish and how they correlate elements of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. To the certain degree, the viewers are expected to be aware of the fictionality of the presented screen form – so to understand the author’s ‘mocking’ intentions and accept the assumption of documentary codes and conventions. Such acceptance of the mock-documentary genre presupposes that viewers regard it as ‘documentary’ –but still remember about its fictional status. As Roscoe and Hight [45, 52] remark, the mock-documentary addresses a knowing and media-literate 30

viewer. Moreover they underline, that with mock-documentaries, the key issue becomes the extent to which a text’s construction encourages reflexivity towards the documentary genre. Here the parallel with documentary acceptance might be drawn, according to Grierson’s three main concerns in constructing the language of documentary. As Philip Rosen points out [49], Grierson’s first main concern was to compose a specific ‘language’ that could be addressed to different people simultaneously. His second concern was to create an ‘audience profile’ that would be appropriate for this new form of film. The third concern was defining the role of a filmmaker. What is interesting for us here – is the appropriate ‘audience profile’. For Grierson the target audience was the middle class of well-educated intellectuals.

The concept of ‘media-literate viewer’

Something similar we do have with mock-documentary genre – that is what we call the ‘media-literate viewer’. As Natali Helberger quotes the Audiovisual Media Service Derictive, the concept of ‘media-literate viewer’ is closely connected with the concept of ‘media literacy’ which enables viewers to ‘exercise informed choices, understand the nature of content and services and take advantage of the full range of opportunities offered by new communication technologies’ [20]. We came to the point of understanding the nature of the content – which is the crucial issue regarding the mock-documentary genre. Most mockumentaries are targeted at discovering the film’s ‘fictional identity’, in other words, viewers are expected to understand the fictional element of the film. Therefore, the audience should be aware of mocking or exaggerating features of mock-documentary genre. The small number of mockumentary forms aim to dupe the spectators 31

intentionally, confusing them by its ambiguous characteristics, but as a rule – in mock-documentaries the fictional elements (or fake sequence) are not applied for misleading the viewers. Still their main goal remains exposing the fictional identity of the film. Nevertheless, it’s always difficult to predict exactly how audiences will interpret these screen forms. Jacobs underlines the differences between films that use fake sequences to create credibility among the audience and mock-documentary that has another mission: ‘The use of pseudo documentary theory implies responsibility. Its products inform, persuade, entertain, and influence. They may mislead but they in some way, shape, or form, debrief the audience and own up to the fabrication. This is what sets pseudo-documentary apart from many other media manipulation’ [25, 49]. Linda Hutcheon quoting Del Jacobs points out, that there should be a qualified audience to understand the difference between documentary and mockdocumentary. In this meaning, mock-documentary is quite similar to other forms of parodic genres, where the emphasis is being put on the viewers understanding and deconstruction of the joke. If audience does not know the original of what is being parodied, they probably would not get the aim of the film [22]. Therefore the audience turns out to be an important element that determines the line between the fact-based screen forms and fiction-based ones. Naturally, the attitudes and expectations towards these two categories are different. Nichols underlines the significance of interpretations of the films given by its viewers: As stories, films of both type (documentary and mock-documentary – author’s remark) call on us to interpret them, and as ‘true stories’, films call on us to believe them. Interpretation is a matter of grasping how the form or organization of the film conveys meanings and values. Belief is a question of our response to these meanings and values [39]. En essential remark has been given by Ohad Landesman, who noted that while in fiction a spectator may indeed know that what he is watching is unreal, 32

but will be willing to momentarily disavow it, a hybrid documentary encourages a different kind of engagement: the pleasure of the text relies on accepting the inability to classify the nature of the object, enjoying the obscurity by trying to map out the way between an inseparable amalgamation of fictional traits and factual qualities. He adds that in the hybrid documentary, respectively, it is the viewer who ultimately determines the mode of engagement with the object at stake, sizing things up and settling the balance between fiction and reality without being able to compromise on a stable definition [29, 41-44]. For Doherty, the mockumentary is reassuring because it plays on the knowledge the viewer has gained over a lifetime of media viewing, and places the viewer in an empowered position in which he or she is enabled to recognize the constructed nature of both mockumentaries and documentaries [10, 58]. An approach, comprising three independent perspectives for evaluating the reality status of media products, is proposed: a. a pragmatic perspective concerning the product type (‘fact’, ‘fiction’, and ‘hybrids’); b. a semantic perspective concerning product content (degrees of credibility); c. a perspective of model referring to the (perceived) realism of the product (formal features and their effects on degree of involvement). Under all three perspectives, any media product involves cues that orient the potential viewer toward its ontic status and credibility of content. This model is then applied to film transcending the traditional boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, the Woody Allen’s mock-documentary Zelig and its reception.

3.2 THE METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH: THE QUALITATIVE APPROACHES To explore the way audiences evaluate the reality status of media products, and their credibility degree the qualitative methodology has been chosen as it’s ‘the most useful approach to understanding the meanings people make of their experiences’ [36, 211]. Qualitative inquiry is designed to study the ‘experiential life of people’ (Polkinghorne, 2005, 138, quoted in Morrow). ‘A primary purpose of qualitative research’, according to Polkinghorne, ‘is to describe and clarify experience as it is lived and constituted in awareness’. Using language as a tool, the researcher is able to plumb the depths of this experience to glean meanings that are not otherwise 34

observable and that cannot be gathered using survey or other data-gathering strategies [36, 211]. That is the main reason why the preference was given to the qualitative methodology rather than to quantitative one. Susan Morrow also underlines that qualitative approaches can be used to explore variables that are not easily identifiable or that have not yet been identified, as well as investigating topics for which there is little or no previous research and addressing contradictions in the literature that arise from prematurely, inaccurately, or inadequately operationalized variables. When theories are not yet available to explain phenomena, qualitative designs are available to facilitate the theory-building process [36, 211]. It is also necessary to note that qualitative researchers acknowledge that true objectivity is not possible. Whereas quantitative researchers apply strategies to control for subjectivity, qualitative researchers recognize both the promise and limitations of subjectivity.

Focus group methodology The approach for gathering this kind of qualitative data that is being applied in the Thesis is focus group methodology. Focus group methodology is a qualitative data gathering approach that takes advantage of structured interviewing techniques performed in a group setting (Fontana & Frey, 1994, quoted in Hartman) [19]. Unlike more traditional one-on-one interviewing, the focus group approach encourages discussion among group members, and this interaction tends to stimulate ideas that would not have been available otherwise [35]. The dynamic interplay generated among group members can provide rich, descriptive information offered from the respondentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; viewpoints. As such, focus group methodology offers an excellent way for researchers to examine the underlying 35

logic used by and the kind of evidence brought to bear by participants on a given situation or product (Lindlof, 1995) [19, 402]. Goldman (1962, 61; quoted in Hartman) [19, 403] referred to focus groups as ‘group depth interviews’. The elements of the definition illuminate the approach: •

group is a number of people who interact and who have a common interest;

•

depth refers to profound information gathered, more so than individual interviews;

•

interview refers to the presence of a moderator; and

•

focus implies a limit to the issues discussed.

Focus groups are targeted at member interaction for stimulating the ideas within the group. Such an interaction that takes place among the group members produces the dynamic synergy and rich information exchange that might be chaotic sometimes. Nevertheless, the chaotic brainstorming process acts as an effective tool in idea generation chain. Jackie Hartman quoting Lederman (1990) points out five fundamental assumptions that exist regarding focus groups: (a) people are valuable sources of information; (b) people are capable of discussing themselves and articulating their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; (c) the moderator can help people retrieve information; (d) the dynamics of the group can help generate valid and reliable data; (e) group interviewing can be more effective than individual interviewing in particular research circumstances [19, 403]. According to these assumptions, focus groups are applied to encourage discussion, identify attitudes and behaviours, and stimulate ideas generating processes within the group members. Zeller [58, 1] argued that the focus group may be the ideal approach when the goals of the research are general, call for qualitative data, require data that is not in the respondent’s top-of-mind, and when 36

there is minimal prior knowledge about a particular problem and the range of responses that are likely to emerge.

3.3. WOODY ALLENâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MOCK-DOCUMENTARY ZELIG (1983) AS AN OBJECT FOR RESEARCH The reason Zelig is chosen as an object for research among other mockdocumentaries is the fact that this film represents a more seamless simulation of documentary genre than others do â&#x20AC;&#x201C; therefore is more appropriate and interesting for evaluating its reality status. Zelig is a mock-biography of a man who lived in USA during 1920s, named Leonard Zelig (starring Woody Allen). The peculiarity of this character was his ability to transform himself in appearance to resemble whoever he is with. After being discovered by the American mass-media, Leo Zelig becomes a national 37

celebrity, a true media phenomenon. This popularity and fame brings him both rises and falls, and finally the relationship and marriage with psychiatrist Dr Louise Fletcher (starring Mia Farrow).

Appropriation of documentary aesthetics in Zelig Zelig exploits to a large extent the expositional form of narrative together with a specific appropriation of documentary aesthetics which include the following features: a. a traditional male (God-voice) narration1; b. the film is completely in black and white, except for ‘up-to-date

interviews’2; c. archive audio-visual material from 1920s period, which is used as a

reference points to various cultural and political event of that time3; As Roscoe and Hight [45, 111] point out the film also incorporates a variety of sequences designed as reconstructions of conventional documentary forms of representation, sequences which are all treated as cultural artifacts and evidences of Zelig’s existence. Among such sequences there can be outlined: - color interviews with recognizable personalities (intellectuals and cultural commentators); - simulations of newspaper headlines and articles covering Zelig’s life; -

re-creations of press conferences and other events covered by newsreels4;

The narrator speaks refined correct English – almost in a style of a 1920s. To reinforce the ‘nostalgic effect’ W.Allen extensively uses the music from the 1920s (e.g. ‘I’ve got the Feeling I’m Falling’, ‘Sunny Side Up’, ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’, ‘Charleston’). 3 Film ‘chronicles’ where Leonard is mugging with Presidents Coolidge and Hoover, carousing with Charlie Chaplin, waiting in the on-deck circle while Babe Ruth, one of the greatest American baseball players, takes his turn at the plate, and waving frantically behind Hitler as he gives his fiery speech. 4 These are variously labeled as Pathé News, Metrotone News, Universal Newspaper Newsreel, Hearst Metrotone News and Hearst Movietone News. 2

- footage of main characters (especially Fletcher the psychiatrist) that has the appearance of having been filmed by a colleague; - grainy, hand-held home movie footage of Fletcher and Zelig’s eventual marriage – constructed as more ‘authentic’ evidence of the relationship between Zelig and Fletcher than the manufactured or mediated images supposedly obtained from public archival material; - black and white photos of Zelig with famous people from the 1920s; -

a sequence from a fictional Hollywood film based on Zelig’s exploits in Nazi Germany called The Changing Man, and the variety of songs and other merchandise constructed for the film [45, 112].

An essential element in mock-documentaries is the issue of characters – the usage of cameo appearances, when people are acting themselves, blurring by this the boundaries of fact and fiction sequences. In mock-documentary cameo appearances are applied to reinforce the fake discourses. While characters appear themselves as in the real world, in mockumentary they totally represent a discourse that belongs to an invented world. For example Susan Sontag in Zelig appears as she is, plying herself – as a scholar she posses a certain credibility and she uses this credibility to represent a fake historical character. Within this respect people in mock-documentaries are perceived as both subjects and characters of the film. Mock-documentary’s scheme exploits this ‘subject and character transitions’ and creates another level of framing the people in front of the camera. Except Susan Sontag, there are a number of real personalities who also appear as they are, not plying a role: Irving Howe, Saul Bellow, Dr Bruno Bettelheim, Bricktop, Pr. John Morton Blum. As Roscoe and Hight [45, 112] argue, ‘their participation in the film allows them to parody their own rhetorical styles.’ To a large extent the appearance of professional experts in mock-

documentaries is also a tool of a ‘mocking’ agenda – their language and status are often being parodied. The issue of ‘identity’: authenticity of Leonard Zelig vs authenticity of the cinematic image itself In Zelig Allen explores that ‘serious’ topics such as identity, death, sex which are posed as complicated due to the artificial nature of the cinema, either comedic nor dramatic. The film evokes that one of the ways of solving this issue is to expose the artifice intentionally, to explore the interplay of signifier and signified in the communication of ‘meaning’. Daniel Green points out that Zelig not only raises the ‘problem’ of identity as we commonly think of it, it enacts the problem before our very eyes. He adds that ‘it relates the fictional story of Leonard Zelig, a man in search of an identity, while also telling the story of a similar quest for identity in the medium itself’ [17]. Without decreasing the intensity this apparent subject, Leonard Zelig, Allen is able to explore the supposed discrepancy between subject and medium and to point out the extent to which the former is a function of the latter. Eventually, Zelig the ‘human chameleon’ is a unique invention of the cinematic world, a character whose illusory existence is completely dependent on author’s ‘tricking’ intentions and its manifestation in filmed images. According to Green, Hollywood's reputed version of Zelig's story, acts as a commentary on the role of the Hollywood cinema's influence on viewer’s perceptions, as well as the role of the fiction film vs. the documentary, ultimately calling into question the claims of both as authentic versions of the truth [17]. Moreover the film also evokes the question of the viewer's own identity, Green suggests – ‘as moviegoers’. For example, the scenes where Leonard Zelig appears in archival footage require the viewer's active scrutiny of the mise-en40

scene if he/she is to appreciate their humor and ingenuity. ‘The passive spectator will be lost in the cinematic puzzle which is Zelig’ – claims Daniel Green [17]. Eventually the film implicitly arouses the question of what the viewers think about their own relationship to the movie-going experience, their consideration of truth worthy nature and function of cinematograph. Zelig encourages the potential audiences to define and re-define their notions of what a film clearly is. Due to the cinematic features described above, Zelig turns out to be an incredibly interesting object for research. The film could easily pass as an authentic documentary – if only Leonard Zelig had actually existed. As Daniel Green indicates, much of the newsreel footage included in Zelig is authentic, and the mock-footage is carefully designed and shot to look as ‘historical’ as possible. So the main question that evokes and correspondingly is going to be answered in the next Chapter – whether the audience accepts Leonard Zelig as an authentic subject for a documentary because of its willingness to accept the authenticity of the cinematic image itself.

3.4. THE RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH For exploring the credibility degree of the audience towards Woody Allen’s film Zelig we use qualitative method of research as it clearly shows peoples’ interpretations of their experiences. Because qualitative methods are so effective at examining processes, they are appropriate for understanding the phenomena which

is being studied, for adequate exploring the depth and complexity of the researched question. During the research period two focus-groups have been conducted – the first one in Berlin, Germany in January 2011, and the second in Kyiv, Ukraine in April, 2011. Choosing focus group approach is to a large extent caused by its potential to encourage discussion among group members, and stimulate generating ideas that would not have been available otherwise. The received results don’t claim to be representative for the whole population or even certain social group. Bad sampling has been applied for the research. As Morgan and Spanish (1984) indicate, the focus group format can generate data that are not necessarily specific to any particular group or setting; that is, the information can be generalized outside the research setting. This methodology presented itself as a reasonable and appropriate scientific approach as the aim of the qualitative research was to examine how viewers evaluate the reality status of mockumentary, how they distinguish and correlate elements of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’. Focus-group 1. Background The first focus-group was conducted in Berlin, Germany in January 2011. The group consisted of 9 participants, aged from 25 till 39 (both male and female). This group was of multicultural origin: 2 Ukrainian, 3 Belarusian, 4 German – origin representatives (all residing in Berlin). 5 of the participants knew each other before the focus-group meeting. 5 group-members had direct relation to film production sphere, had either worked on television, or directed documentaries themselves (1 participant worked as an actor in feature films and theatre). 4 other – had occupations connected with artistic sphere (photography, design, contemporary art forms). 42

Due to the specific and tight relations of all the participants to the cinematic world – the group might be regarded as ‘media literate viewers’, taking into consideration their acquaintance and professional stance towards the researched subject (5 participants have previously seen the film). The focus-group was a held in a photo-gallery, owned by one of the participants. The film was demonstrated in original English with the help of multimedia DVD projector which was present in the gallery. After the communal viewing the questionnaires (attached in the Appendix) have been distributed, and the participants had 15 minutes at their disposal to answer the questions. After that a discussion had been initiated which was particularly valuable at this point in the focus group process. Indeed, these unique data would not have likely emerged using other kinds of research methodologies. The atmosphere within the group was friendly and relaxed which stimulated the participants to freely express their ideas and impressions. The questionnaires have been distributed before the discussion with the specific purpose – to receive ‘pure’ data, thoughts not influenced by the statements and observations of other participants. Afterwards the members of the focus group had the possibility to reconsider (aurally) their answers – which showed the influence of the discussion on the process of forming their statements.

Results The focus-group results showed that the number of circumstances has a dominant impact on the evaluation results: (1) the specialized education or occupation related to the media studies; (2) the previous experience; (3) more broad acquaintance with the genre of mock-documentaries

itself (or information gathered from other media); 43

(4) general assumption of parodic cinematic style of Woody Allen. In the process of discussion only 1 group member showed the uncertainty concerning the reality status of the film (he supposed Leonard Zelig had a real prototype), but due to the comments of other participants and general assumption of cinematic style of the Woody Allen had formed his own judgment. When filling out the questionnaire (an inquiry about reality status of the film), this respondent (Dietmar R.) marked the field ‘some of the events and personalities are real, others– fictional’. Later, in the course of the discussion he changed his viewpoint and agreed on its fictional origin. This ‘reconsidering process’, when the viewer found out the trick director had played on him, evoked the ironical references about his own credulity and naivety. Needs to be said that this ‘eye-opening’ procedure didn’t arose anger or irritation at all – on the contrary, the majority of respondents expressed the admiration on the director’s falsification skills. Dietmar R. (39, actor): “At the very beginning of the film I was not sure actually whether the Zelig is real or fictional persona. But just remembering the fact that this film was shot by Woody Allen makes me think that there should be some hidden joke or parody.” Natalia E. (28, journalist): “I have seen this movie before, actually it’s one of my favorite’s one. So in this relation I am not the best respondent – my general knowledge about this film makes me a quite biased viewer. The only thing I can say is that Woody Allen had actually done the unbelievable thing – he transformed the fictional idea into the real phenomena. I have read that after this film there had been introduced a new terminology into medical sphere, into psychiatry if to be accurate, – the so called ‘Zelig affect’ or ’Zelig syndrome’ which describes the mental disease when the person adopts the identities of those who are around him. So in this meaning – yes, he did it – turned the fiction into reality. But that’s because his name is Woody Allen. He is genius.”

Michael M. (31, photographer): “I do know about mock-documentary style and well, I should say – I am a big fan of it. I haven’t seen Zelig before, but knew that this movie is characterized as mockumentary. During the whole film I was just enjoying the tricks that Allen did: all that fictional footages and fake archive video. Well done job!” During viewing the film participants often commented on the tricks the director had used, often admiring the ‘mocking’ techniques and supposing the way it might have influenced the less ‘informed’ viewer. Few participants have showed the amazement when on the screen appeared Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow and other prominent personalities. Even though knowing the fact that this film is fiction, the presence of those commentators and experts have affected their reception. The most interesting responses to the film were those which expressed admiration – the idea that this was the hoax which was just very smart and intellectual, implying that its fictionality could be unravelled by the most ‘visually sophisticated viewers’. The first focus-group results have shown that ‘media-literate viewers’ are fully aware of the nature of the suggested content. The previous experience or general knowledge on the subject let them easily explore the ‘fictional identity’ of the film.

In other words, the audience was totally conscious of mocking or

exaggerating features of mock-documentary genre itself and Zelig in particular.

Focus-group 2. Background

The second focus-group was held in Kyiv, Ukraine in April, 2011. The group consisted of 11 participants, aged from 22 till 47 (both male and female). This group was mono-cultural, all of the participants were of Ukrainian origin, residing in Kyiv at the moment. The majority of the group was represented by the students – 6 from National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (different faculties) and 2 from Kyiv National I.K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University (Film Direction faculty). 3 other group members had different occupations not related to the media/cinematic sphere: the English teacher in the school (Boyarka, Kyiv region), IT specialist in Astelit Company (Kyiv), doctor-nutritionist (Kyiv). The focus-group was held in one of the private cinema-clubs in Kyiv which organized the communal viewing on the request. The film was demonstrated in Russian translation with original English subtitles. The focus-group agenda and setting was similar to the previous one: viewing – filling out the questionnaires – discussion – reconsidering the answers (orally). Due to the fact that the group was variate in age and profession/occupation categories it gave the possibility to receive diversified results. Most of the participants were not familiar with the mock-documentary genre. In further discussion they mostly used the definition ‘pseudo-documentary’ or ‘fake documentary’. Taking into consideration that in Ukrainian there is no direct translation of ‘mock-documentary’ or ‘mockumentary’, the term and concept itself needed additional description from the moderator’s side. Then, the term was simply transliterated into Ukrainian (in Ukr.‘мок’юментeрі’).

Results Mostly of the discussion was focused around the questions concerning the reality status of the film. This turned out to be a distinctive feature in relation to the 46

first focus-group, while the audience in the first FGD mostly discussed the tricks and masterful exploitation of documentary aesthetics (mostly being aware of the reality status of the film). Exploring the main indicators and perspectives from which this reality status is defined and whether the spectators regard the film as fiction or as non-fiction there can be outlined the following issues: Pro-fiction arguments: (1) Woody Allen starring Leonard Zelig – the presence of actor5 presupposes story-film narration; (2) the general perception of Woody Allen’s style as the one that involves irony or satire – thus the disclaimer of factuality. Non-fiction arguments: (1) the archival black and white video material, newsreel footage; (2) the appearing in the film's vintage footage of real figures from academia

and other fields (e.g. Susan Sontag, Soul Bellow);

Alyona K. (23, recently graduate student in linguistics): “To be honest, at first I was a bit confused – I had doubts about its reality status. Sure, there were enough arguments to define Zelig as documentary – all that photos, video and commentators – looking very realistic and authentic. But still I know Woody Allen likes to trick his viewers – I’ve seen his movie Take the Money and Run, which is also directed as fake documentary. I read an article in Internet about that film. So, I can say that my evaluation of Zelig is highly supported by my previous experience.” 5

This was to the large extent influenced by the fact that Woody Allen is a recognizable personality, both as film director and actor. Most of the respondents who stated this pro-fiction argument assumed that if there were another (less recognizable actor) they would take him as real character, not actor.

Vladislav M. (36, IT specialist): “…what are the criteria? Have no idea – just my intuition. I don’t believe it’s about real historical personality – Zelig is fictional.” Aksenia B. (22, student of film direction faculty): “We have studied this direction – pseudo-documentary style, but I haven’t seen this film before. Fascinating! I really loved it! ” Ilya P. (22, student of sociology faculty): “Well, Woody Allen is playing – that’s not a ‘pure’ documentary for sure. But I don’t rule out the possibility that this character has a real prototype. There might have existed the real person like Zelig in history. I should Google.” Oksana S. (47, doctor): “I have stated in the questionnaire that all the events and personalities are real in the film. I thought that that the director took the realistic story, the historical plot, I mean, – and made a film about that Leonard Zelig. And moreover, in the very beginning there was said that it’s a documentary. For me that was strange to hear during the discussion that’s it was all faked. All that experts and video were fictional? ” While most discussants correctly identified the film as fiction – 7 out of 11, 2 group members were at least temporarily uncertain as to the product type, and 2 participants defined it as fact-based film (documentary genre). To substantiate their perceptions of or their doubts concerning the film's ontic status, respondents that consider it to be fiction and respondents who are uncertain frequently refer to information gathered from other media. By comparison, cues that permit the unambiguous identification of the film as fiction (impossible content elements, disclaimer as part of the credits) are only rarely given as reasons. Similar to the first FGD experience, the discussion had strongly influenced the reconsidering stage. Comments and remarks of other group members were critically important this time. As most of the participants were not acquainted with mock-documentary genre, they mostly relied on their intuition and common sense, 48

or, whereas, on the commentaries of others. In general, the feeling of temporal uncertainty as to the product type evoked slight confusion and puzzle. Still after ‘disclosure’ the respondents who defined film as a fact-based screen form expressed the assumption about possible existence of Zelig prototype, believing there was a historical figure like Leonard Zelig. Those viewers were prepared to accept that certain parts of the film were faked but that historical prototype of Zelig was real. The confusion of some viewers was perhaps also due to the titles which stated that the film is documentary, as they were used (as was figured out in the discussion process) to more clear designation of media products – whereas they watch reality-based screen forms or fictional ones. In this meaning, few viewers expressed a feeling of betrayal at having their expectations and assumptions in some sense been ‘vialated’ by not Zelig having been labelled as fictional. In other words, viewers were expecting more obvious markers of fictionality. Despite confusion of some viewers, there were no responses expressing anger or irritation at having been taking in by the hoax. These focus-group results show that unfamiliar hybrid genres like mockumentary have the potential to confuse spectators and thus temporarily provide a way for ‘fiction’ to enter ‘life’. FGD participants were divided on the degree to which they were prepared to accept the ‘inappropriate’ use of documentary codes and conventions, and the degree of their appreciation of the film’s implicit subversion of factual discourse.

CONCLUSION This thesis aimed to examine the relation between mock-documentary, and the factual discourse of documentary, considering in this relation all the possible influences of mock-documentary towards the factual discourse of documentary. Within the study the attention has been mainly focused on the role of the viewer in reading hybrid documentary forms. To make the relationship between documentary and mock-documentary more distinctive, the characteristics of documentary and mock-documentary have been examined. Throughout the text there has been observed that mockdocumentary acts as critical discourse, challenging the conventions of the traditional documentary, especially the perceived dichotomy between fact and fiction. It moves beyond any form of proper documentary, including the reflexive type, to address several levels of the ‘Classic Objective Argument’ facing the audience. This transformation becomes possible due to the implicit reinforcing of mentioned conventions via the Parody, to act upon them reflexively, pointing them out for the audience to scrutinize through Critique, or finally, to Deconstruct the foundations of factual discourse, leaving the spectator to resolve the problem. Within the study it has been explored that mock-documentary can comment on all the other forms, from the proper documentary, via docudrama and other hybrids, to the purely fictive narrative. The evolution of documentaries illustrated their generic problematic issues, notably pointed out by the mentioned antecendents to mockumentaries. Sub-genres like Direct Cinema tried to claim journalistic accuracy regarding the observed facts, at the same time, Cinema Vérité, New Journalism enabled more critical approaches towards the factual 50

discourse. They allowed for the artistic and poetic vision of the filmmaker to reassert itself and give back a certain editorial freedom in creation. The post-modern strategies of the mockumentary (self-reflexivity, playfulness, and their attempt to “undo” the documentary genre) stimulate viewers to play the role of arbiter, deciding whether to accept or reject a certain screen form as authentic or not. Mock-documentary plays on the knowledge the spectator has gained over a lifetime of media viewing, and places its audience in an empowered position in which he or she should recognize its fictional agenda. Otherwise, if the audiences are unaware while viewing the film that is a work of fiction, not a ‘true’ or ‘real’ documentary, they are being duped and puzzled. To the certain degree, the viewers are expected to be aware of the fictionality of the presented screen form – so to understand the author’s ‘mocking’ intentions and accept the assumption of documentary codes and conventions. Such acceptance of the mock-documentary genre presupposes that viewers regard it as ‘documentary’ –but still remember about its fictional status. Since every viewer ‘is an active agent in constituting what counts as memory, fiction, or document’, and has an individualistic attitude towards the documentary codes and formats, cinematic ‘truth’ can be subverted, parodied, or otherwise taken out to play. The conducted focus-group research has shown that such factor as ‘media literacy’ plays a key role. Audiences' familiarity and previous experiences with the genre let them define the nature of the suggested content and explore the ‘fictional identity’ of the film more accurately. Less experienced audience, on the contrary, expects more obvious markers of fictionality. Considering the fact that unfamiliar hybrid genres like mockumentary have the potential to confuse spectators and thus temporarily provide a way for ‘fiction’ to enter ‘life’, the feeling of temporal uncertainty as to the product type evoked slight embarrassment and puzzlement among certain spectators. Still after ‘disclosure’ the respondents who defined film as a fact-based screen form expressed the assumption about possible factual background. 51

The received results support the argument that mock-documentary has become another identifiable style with a developing set of codes and conventions which can be easily adopted, but also point to a greater acceptance by the audience of an increasingly sophisticated form.

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