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speaking of extrapolation...this entire post and line of argument about neutrality can be extrapolated to apply to the legal system, specifically to judges. in fact, this is exactly what we spent the first month of civil procedure discussing.

on the one hand, we value our legal system for its objectivity, and expect judges to decide cases based on precedent, logical argument, and neutral viewpoints, as opposed to their political views. this was the position of the classical legal thought school. then, the legal realists came along and deconstructed CLT for what it was really doing - using "neutral" analogical reasoning from precedent to appear objective and to cover up the real rationale for decision-making, which was political, personal, and non-neutral. the legal realists exposed the reality that, no matter what you do as a judge, you are making a political decision to support one side or another - there is no inherent logic in the law that decides for you - so you might as well be open and honest about it.

anyway, i could go on and on about all that. but i won't. because then, the logical extension of those arguments is that, despite the fact that objectivity isn't really possible, isn't there some value in the appearance of neutrality in our judiciary? do we want our judges to admit their political biases, or do we want them to appear neutral, so we have greater faith in the system as a legitimate, fair decision-maker?

my point is, interesting arguments, applicable to more than just documentary film-making. i'm just a huge nerd and can't get out of this legal exam-studying bubble.

Posted by: jeanette at May 2, 2006 11:35 AM

You're right in pointing out the comparisons to law. The same lack of neutrality applies to everything. The difference is that, in law, we don't really have the option of disclaiming our biases and forgoing any attempt at objectivity. At least not in concert with any idea of fundamental justice and ordered liberty.

Posted by: David Barzelay at May 2, 2006 3:39 PM

Sorry to pull the discussion from interesting parallels to the law back into movies, but I COMPLETELY disagree with you on witholding the audio footage of the guy dying. I think he showed the scene of him listening to his death - and his reaction to it - in order to show WHY he chose not to include that footage in the documentary.

Herzog was clearly fascinated by this Timothy Treadwell. He wanted to make a documentary that simultaneously honored him and questioned him, all the while walking that tightrope line between fascinated analysis and exploitation. Sure, I kind of wanted to hear the death footage in a morbidly curious kind of way. But Herzog had no responsibility to satisfy our morbid curiosity or turn this man's horrific death into entertainment.

It was a documentary about Treadwell's life, his obssessions, and his reckless self-deception. But I think showing his death (or letting the entire world hear his death) would be needless exploitation.

Oh, and I entirely agree with you on the bias/objectivity thing, both in the media and in the law.

Posted by: Ben at May 3, 2006 2:45 PM

Speaking of cocktease, how come I cant click that picture from Bring It On for a higher res version?

From now on, I'm going to coin the phrase, "This is the biggest cocktease since barzelay.net!"

Posted by: Chris Santoro at May 3, 2006 5:23 PM

You essentially got all of my arguments right, so there's not much to add. I guess I'll try to give some background, though.

Basically, documentary film started out with a very authoritative tone. There was a voice-of-God style narration telling you what is what very matter of factly. By the '60s, people had figured out that these films weren't so objectively unassailable as they purported to be, and a movement emerged in reaction to the authoritative documentaries of old. This movement was led by Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles brothers, and it was usually called cinema verite (essentially "reality films"). They were shot in fly-on the wall style and generally had no voice-over or inter-titles or anything that announced what you were supposed to think. In a lot of ways, they were just as slanted as their predecessors, though. Hundreds, even thousands of hours of footage was shot and then carefully edited down and constructed into a two hour film with such a clear message that they might as well have kept authoritatively telling you what to think. Wiseman's "High School" is the perfect example of this. It's nothing but fly-on-the wall shots of the goings on in a typical suburban high school, but the message was clear: high school is a factory for soldiers in the Vietnam war.

Both of these movements in documentary filmmaking produced some incredible movies. But both of them also purported to be objective in a way that was fundamentally dishonest. Since that time, a new school of documentary filmmaking has emerged which is much more personal. The filmmaker often injects himself into the movie, and it's usually as much about him as it is about anything else. These movies don't make any claims to objectivity. This school of documentary filmmaking doesn't necessarily always turn out better movies, but it's certainly and fundamentally more honest. This is why I almost never object to a director injecting himself too much into the film. I'm aware that he's always present anyways.

In terms of the idea of filmmakers releasing their raw footage, I guess it's an interesting idea, but I just don't think it would have much value. First of all, the normal ratio of footage shot to footage that winds up in a documentary is somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred to one. What exactly it would accomplish dumping hundreds of hours of footage out there, I'm not sure. I also don't know who it is that would be sifting through these hundreds of hours of film for some nugget of proof that the director was biased. I have a feeling that whoever it is who is willing to do this, though, they would have an axe to grind of their own, and their picking and choosing would be at least as suspect as the director's. Finally, as a practical matter, it might not even reveal much bias because it still doesn't address the matter of selectively filming, interviewing, and buying rights to footage of only sources that support your point of view.

Regarding your specific criticism (people can't be trusted to reveal the depth of their own biases), I'll grant you that. But with film, because of the nature of the medium, I think the best you can do is make it clear that you are biased. If someone wants the unvarnished truth, they need to look to other sources. Film just isn't well suited for objectively conveying information. Film is a lot more like a newspaper editorial.

Posted by: Aaron at May 3, 2006 5:45 PM

How is film any more or less objective than newspapers?

I'm with Barzelay on the objectivity thing. While one must always take what one reads/sees/hears with a grain of salt, I prefer when reporters at least strives for objectivity. In the the Founding era, when newspapers were openly nothing more than partisan tools, it must have been even harder to separate fact from slander. Democratic-Republican papers would come up with some new corruption that Alexander Hamilton allegedly did. Hamilton's enemies in Congress would do an investigation and conclude, to their chagrin, that there was no corruption to find. And then the papers would keep repeating the same thing anyway.

I like my media to at least strive to be factual, even if their selection of facts will inevitably be biased.

Now that I think about it, I have less of a problem with partisan documentaries. Maybe because I'm simply less used to looking to documentaries for fact. I have no problem with Michael Moore being openly partisan. (I do have a problem with how disjointed and clumsy his partisan documentaries are. But that's another story altogether.)

Posted by: Ben at May 3, 2006 6:02 PM

Well, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a film major having made various forays into (shitty) filmmaking myself and studying how much thought and manipulation goes into every single miniscule decision that's made in putting a film together. The process yields itself to putting out absolutely, 100% the vision of the person who puts it together no matter how objective they try to make it. Virtually all of the academic film theory out there is based around this idea.

Now a lot of the same things can be said about the possibility of objectivity in general and applied to things like writing - a lot of care goes into what to include, how to phrase things, etc. For me, the key difference would probably be the amount of content in a film as opposed to a book or a newspaper. A film is a relatively short two hour statement about something based on the vision of one person. Other mediums use tens or hundreds of thousands of words. They can probe into the nuances of every argument. Newspapers can hire writers from all different perspectives to balance each other out. Film is just different by nature for a couple of reasons:

First of all, this delving into nuance and examining all sides isn't really possible in the same way for movies. Unless they limit their scope dramatically, they'll never be able to go into their subject matter in the depth that a book or series of features in a newspaper can.

Second, and more importantly, this isn't what movies are good at. Film is a visual medium, which tends to mean that it's better suited for conveying things viscerally rather than in the measured evenhanded way you're suggesting (words lend themselves more easily to reasoning; images lend themselves more easily to emotion). Even if a documentary can be made this way, it would be working against the strengths of its medium.

Posted by: Aaron at May 3, 2006 7:47 PM

Never been an auteur (sp?) theory fan. Unless you've got a really controlling director a film (at least a fiction film) seems far too collaborative an effort to be simply the vision of the director. It's an amalgam of the visions of the screenwriter, actors, director, special effects folks, cinematagrapher, etc. Not sure where I'm going with that.

Also, I've seen movies that seemed to present both sides to an argument and to do it well. I can't think what they are at the moment, but that probably has much to do with the fact that I've been Bluebooking for 2 hours. I hate, I hate, I hate the Bluebook.

Posted by: Ben at May 5, 2006 1:32 AM

See, Ben. I disagree on narrative movies. I think narrative films are best when they're mostly the product of a single brilliant mind. The auteur thing is great for narrative films. And I'm not saying it can't work for documentaries. But like with fiction, you have to set up your audience's expectations from the start. You can't act like you're presenting a documentary, and then have it gradually devolve into nothing more than a presentation of your own thoughts about the subject. And furthermore, fiction is supposed to make one care about the plot and the characters. I don't give a rat's ass what Werner Herzog thinks. I want to know about Timothy Treadwell. The film shouldn't have been called Grizzly Man, it should've been Werner Herzog and his thoughts on an interesting subject.

Posted by: David Barzelay at May 5, 2006 1:56 AM

I like your site! It is cool, I'll stop by again when I have more time. www.eatshortfilms.com

Posted by: Little Lamb at June 28, 2006 5:31 PM