WK 8 – “DOCU-SOAP AND DOCU-DRAMA” – SG2051 NEWS AND

SOCIETY

Dr. Carolina Matos, Lecturer in Media and Communications, Department of Sociology

Required readings

Bruzzi, S., ‘New British observational documentary: ‘docusoaps’ in New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, pp.75-98.

Nichols, Bill (1991) ‘The Fact of Realism and the Fiction of Objectivity’ in Representing Reality. Indiana University Press. pp165-201

Additional: Kilborn, Richard and Izod, John (1997) ‘Tackling the Text: Documentary

Analyses’ in An Introduction to Television Documentary: Confronting Reality. Manchester University Press 88-115

Paget, Derek (2005) ‘Dramadoc/Docudrama: The Law and Regulation’ in Corner, Rosenthal, ed. New Challenges for Documentary 2nd Ed. Manchester University Press pp 435-453

Scharrat and Luhr (2005) ‘Bowling for Columbine: A Review’ in Corner, John, ed. New Challenges for Documentary 2nd Ed. Manchester University Press pp253-267

Core themes

Docudrama and docu-soap: definitions and challenges Drama-documentary versus docu-drama Documentary realism Docudrama and the public sphere New British observational documentary: ‘docu-soaps’ Realism in cinema versus Hollywood “Objectivity” of documentary versus news Case studies: Bowling for Columbine and Dreams of a Life (Morley,

2011) Conclusions Seminar questions and activities Activities for week 11 (Module Overview)

Docudramas and docu-soaps

Questions asked

1) What is meant by the docudrama and the docu-soap? 2) What are some of the ethical issues of representation that the

dramatization and reconstruction in documentaries raises? 3) Why has dramatization had an impact on the documentary’s claim of

representing reality and being ‘objective’? 4) What are the differences and similarities between documentary realism

and Hollywood fiction? 5) Why do some claim that the drama-documentary creates confusion? 6) What are some of the criticisms made to the docu-soap? 7) How can we compare this to reality TV or to the soap opera? 8) What are the issues concerning quality programming that these

documentary forms raise?

Docu-soaps and docudramas: definitions and problems

Since the late 1990s, there has been a struggle over the definition of the term docu-soap.

“Docu-soap” is largely believed to be a journalistic invention, seen as a somewhat pejorative word which implies a “trivialization” of the “seriousness” of the documentary form

This debate is closely aligned to conceptions of cultural value and quality, and to an implied hierarchy that exists between documentary and soap (i.e. between serious news, current affairs, politics etc and entertainment)

Blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction I.e. The use by docudrama of “fact” (real crimes and victims) and

“fiction” (actors playing out a part) has been controversial in the history of British TV. The massive debates around Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1966) are an example

Docu-soaps and docudramas versus the classic documentary form

As far back as the 1930’s, with John Grierson’s classic documentary tradition of John Grierson, there has not been an easy separation between ‘drama’ and ‘reality’

If we address the debate superficially, it can seem that observational documentary has become obsolete due to the emergence of more interactive modes of non-fiction film-making (Bruzzi, 2000), but in fact what has occurred “has been an evolution from within the parameters of observational documentary…”

Observational ‘fly on the wall’ documentary has been defined as being about ‘real people in undirected situations.’ ‘Observational’ however is seen as the catch all term for several documentary sub-trends

Docu-soaps and docudramas: the mingling of fact and fiction

Docudrama and docu-soaps: some examples

Ethics and performance in documentary (in Austin and Jong, 2008)

Relationship between drama, documentary and performance: Some films employ actors to play the roles of real people in various kinds

of dramatic reconstruction of real events, with these drama-documentaries containing performances

Questions over the ethics of representation: It is the perception of the role of the dramatic reconstruction and of people

‘performing’ that much confusion over certain kinds of documentary resides.

Criticism?: The common sense believe is that documentaries ‘tell the truth’: drama

and performance is ‘make believe’, thus to combine the two is to be ethically suspect.

Drama-documentary (Creeber et al, 2008)

This term is used to indicate a combination of dramatic and documentary elements in a programme

Drama-documentary has thus been a controversial area of work because it presents us with central questions about the nature of audio-visual representation, also with difficulties concerning the separation of the two sides (drama-documentary)

Some see the fusion of the two as an unacceptable There is work in the British and European tradition which has developed

along the lines of classic documentary with degrees of dramatization (i.e. scripting and acting) to give it projection. There is also work that has developed as a play, but which then has employed documentary devices to deliver a more ‘realist’ impact (i.e. the first is known as dramatised documentary, the second, as documentary drama.)

Dramatised documentary versus docudrama

Dramatised documentary might include conventional documentary elements alongside dramatized sequences, whereas most of a documentary-drama, with the exception of a brief use of archive footage, will consist of directed management of scripted action and speech.

Classic forms of the documentary drama blurs into the forms of TV realist drama

Drama-documentary can encourage confusion among the audience Questions that we ask: In what way are we asked to relate to the

characters as real people or as actors performing a role? In other words, it is really happening, or is it being acted out? In Britain during the 1960s and 1970s, a number of directors used the

documentary drama format to generate this kind of debate

Cathy Come Home (Loach, 1966)

Facts and figures: Screened by the BBC in 1966 and considered a classic of British

television, Cathy Come Home was seen as a drama-documentary which dealt with issues of homelessness and its effects upon families.

It is organised as a narrative about a woman who marries, has children and following her husband’s accident and loss of job, suffers homelessness until her children are taken into care by social services

The key documentary feature of this text consists of the ways in which it goes about portraying all the aspects of homelessness

The public at the time was in doubt if the story was real or not, with the actress who played Cathy being stopped in the street by people giving her money

Cathy Come Home (Loach, 1966)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1RYVjlP0dM)

New British observational documentary: ‘docusoaps’ (Bruzzi, 2000)

The Anglo-American observational tradition has gone through several stages, with a series of filmmakers, such as Michael Moore, contributing to develop the documentary form

Docu-soaps also began to appear on UK TV in the late 1990s, and have brought a “new set of issues to the question of observational documentary.”

“The recent proliferation of the ‘docu-soaps’ started specifically with the long-running series Vet School and Airport, which began in the mid-1990s and with the two 1995 series HMS Brilliant and The House….”.

The characteristics that have represented the docusoap sub-genre of observational documentary are an emphasis on entertainment as opposed to the serious value of the documentary, i.e. the focus on personalities

New British observational documentary: ‘docusoaps’ (Bruzzi, 2000)

What are some of the reasons for the emergence of the docu-soap?: According to Bruzzi, the docu-soap forms “part of a developing trend

towards a greater interest in the active interaction between films, film-maker and spectator; they also relax some of the boundaries between the documentary and fiction”.

“Docusoaps pose interesting questions about the degree of acceptable intervention by the filmmaker into his or her subject material; they continue in the tradition of John Grierson….and exemplify the ‘creative treatment of actuality’.”

Other characteristics include a soap-like fast pace editing, a guiding voice-over and a focus on everyday lives rather than underlying social issues

The series has been successful with viewers, but has gone out of fashion with channel controllers.

Docusoaps: examples

Docu-soaps can be seen as form of reality TV: British examples include Vets School (BBC1, 1996), Children’s Hospital

(BBC, 1993) and Vets in Practice (BBC1, 1997-2002) Many of these documentaries tend to deal with current events, events that

are unfolding in front of the camera Thus ‘fly on the wall’ docusoaps combines observational documentary

with the dramatic concerns of soap opera I.e. Vets in Practice (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fzpnz )

New technologies and transformation of the documentary form (Bruzzi, 2000)

Advances in sound and camera equipment had a radical effect on the type of documentary and film that could be made, with the development of an alternative to linear editing for instance

The rise of non-linear editing systems, such as Avid, have enabled filmmakers to work on video in a way comparable to how they have worked on film, to edit quickly and to experiment with sequences and cutting styles.

Other important advancements have been the introduction of digital video cameras (DVC), small ‘handicams’

Observational documentary versus docu-soaps (Bruzzi, 2000)

What distinguishes observational documentary from docu-soaps?: As the author notes, Paul Hamann, while head of BBC documentary and

history department, has defined docu-soaps as being a type of series which are constructed around a small group of charismatic characters in a common environment.

Emphasis on characters grouped together by work, pleasure and/or place/institution.

Soap opera element: Bruzzi (2000) underlines that another feature of docu-soaps is the

inspiration of fast editing and the adoption of devices which are similar to soap operas. They frequently have opening sequences that introduce the audience to the “characters” each episode will focus upon, as well as closing sequences that function to maintain audience interest.

Documentary and the “realism” tradition (Creeber et al, 2008)

Can documentary (even the docu-drama or the docu-soap) represent reality better than news or film?

“Realism” is a central notion in the arts, from painting, to literature and film, and it is much contested.

Realism is a term that has a long attachment to work in documentary Most documentaries make serious claims to the level of “realism” that they

seek to portray Fact versus fiction: however, to make a “realistic” TV play is different

than making a “realistic documentary Observational realism (understood as the record of an on going reality) Expositional realism, and can be seen as a ‘rhetoric of accuracy and

truth’ that many TV documentaries draw on.

The Fact of Realism and the Fiction of Objectivity (Nichols, 1991 and Matos)

Realism has had a tradition in film: i.e. Italian neo-realism, British realism Documentary realism however is not the realism of fiction “Realism is a set of conventions and norms for visual representation which

virtually every documentary text addresses….In fiction, realism serves to make a plausible world seem real; in documentary, realism serves to make an argument about the historical world.”

In fiction, the filmmaker uses aspects of mise-en-scene (i.e. camera movement, sound, editing) to create realism

Differences of realism in film and documentary: “In documentary, realism joins together objective representations of the

historical world and rhetorical overtones to convey an argument about the world. But realism in fiction refers to sensibility and tone…”

Realism in film: neo-realism versus Hollywood (Nichols, 1991 and Matos)

How is realism discussed in relation to Hollywood films?: The realism tradition in cinema has exactly emerged in response to the

criticisms levelled at the Hollywood film industry (i.e. the Frankfurt School theories on mass culture)

Hollywood cinema was seen as a cinema of escape and evasion, uncommitted to exploring the world, of focusing on the lives of rich people and of selling to the rest of the world the “American dream” (i.e. the values of consumerism and individualism)

“Neo-realism, like documentary, but in a tradition of socially conscious aesthetic, set out to establish as complete a convergence as possible between it representation of reality and the lived experience of post-war Italy…”

Issues of victimhood: “documentary tradition of the victim is given support from neo-realism.”

Realism in film: neo-realism versus Hollywood (Nichols, 1991)

Thus documentary realism can be seen as an ethical code. It is also closely connected to the very origins of cinema

Italian neo-realism: Neo-realism, as a fiction film movement, accepted the documentary challenge to organise its aesthetic around the representation of everyday life not simply in terms of topics and character types, but in the very organization of the image and story.

I.e. Films like Paisa, La terra Trema, Bicycle Thieves mingled the observational eye of documentary with the identification strategies of fiction.

Italian neo-realism: a history of film

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAhAgyXHC4M)

The Fact of Realism and the Fiction of Objectivity (Nichols, 1991)

Types of realism - it can be considered from three levels or types of mimetic verisimilitude (empirical, psychological and historical realism)

Discussing the tradition of objectivity in news, Schudson underlines that the tradition existed until the 1920s, supported on a “naïve” approach to empiricism

Empirical realism can be considered within the domain of the photographic image and recorded sound

Psychological realism conveys the sense of a plausible, believable and accurate representation

I.e. Both Dallas and An American Family locate themselves within certain situations set in time and place, inviting audiences to acknowledge the emotional chords struck as common universal ones

The Fact of Realism and the Fiction of Objectivity(Nichols, 1991)

Blurring of the boundaries between fiction films and factual documentary ones:

Classic Hollywood films usually rely on continuity editing, however some Hollywood films still ascribe to these guidelines as well

In fiction, the sound track often assists in the creation of continuity Differences: Documentary has jumps in time and space that would be disruptive in

fictional films, and documentary also makes claims to historical realism As Nichols (1991) underlines, “historical realism does not support the

same aesthetic as fictional realism even though it uses many of the same techniques. By the same token, realist style in documentary plays a different function from the one it has in fiction.”

Objectivity and Documentary Discourse (in Nichols, 1991)

Documentary practitioners have shared a belief in the importance of objectivity

Objectivity in news: “For a news gathering and disseminating apparatus like a television

network, objectivity provides a legal safeguard against libel. Objectivity means reporting what was said and done in the historical world…Objectivity has its virtues for the individual reporter as well…”

Objectivity in documentary as a form of realism: “..documentary realism vouches for the reporter’s presence….What might

have seen an odd form of detachment becomes a professional mode of social engagement. The realist code of location photography and sound, of physical presence “on the scene” and the various forms of documentary gaze….supply evidence that works to authenticate the subject matter, legitimate the filmmaker or reporter, and validate the canon of objectivity.”

Objectivity and Documentary Discourse (in Nichols, 1991)

Objectivity has at least three meanings that bear on the discussion of documentary representation:

1) The objective views is a third person view rather than a first-person one. It corresponds to something like a normal or commonsensical perspective;

2) An objective view is free of personal bias, self-interest, or self-seeking representations. Whether first or third person it conveys disinterestedness;

3) An objective view leaves audience members free to make their own determination about the validity of an argument. Objectivity means letting the viewer decide on the basis of a fair representation of facts.

Nichols underlines problems with all these, pointing out that discourse, even if objective, seeks to persuade and convince. Rhetoric remains at work.

Bowling for Columbine: a review

Directed and narrated by Michael Moore, the documentary attempts to explore the causes for the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and engages in an assessment of the relationship between possession of guns in the US and the existence of a culture of violence in the country

Like Supersize Me and Grizzly Man, this was also a very famous documentary that won various Awards (Best Documentary Feature)

Interviews Matt Stone of South Park, the actor Charlton Heston as well as Marilyn Manson, who had been blamed for the attacks

The documentary includes montage (i.e. the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun is played with various different images of people firing rifles

Controversial argument: the documentary makes a link between the US as historically an aggressor nation when it comes to foreign policy with the existence of a culture of fear in the country, and a fascination with violence

Moore’s Bowling for Columbine

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cglnvXzitOQ )

Dreams of a Life (Morley, 2011)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLOoox3pP0)

Seminar activities and questions

Part I. 1. Examine Bruzzi’s text. What are the main challenges that

docu-soaps face? Why do some consider it a ‘populist’ text? What is its cultural value? Can it represent reality better than a traditional documentary?

2. Discuss Nichols texts and the difficulties that he discussed concerning the realism tradition in documentary and in film. Why is it difficult for the documentary to be “objective”?

Seminar activities and questions continued

Part II. Choose one type of documentary (i.e. docu-drama, docusoaps) to discuss in detail. Use some of the questions below to guide you:

A) What makes this documentary what it is? What are the problems with its definition? Who is the narrator? What are some of the cinematic devices (i.e. editing, shoot in location) that are used here?

B) What is the role of the documentary maker? Are the characters “real” or are they “acting”? Is it a dramatised documentary?

C) Does this documentary contribute to public understanding? Is this particular style of documentary a good way of engaging with the issue?

Some suggestions of documentaries to choose from: Dreams of a Life (Morley, 2011); The Times of Harvey Milk (Epstein and

Schmeichen, 1984); Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and Sicko (2007)

Seminar activities for week 10 (Module Overview)

1. In the groups that you are in, choose a particular topic from one of the weeks of the course (i..e WK 3 – What is News?) to revisit.

A) Select a few readings to revisit the topic B) Who are the main theorists here? What are the debates and

arguments in this particular field? 2. In groups, summarise these theories and write them down

briefly. Prepare to tell them to the rest of the class.