Non-Fiction Film - Documentary

Non-Fiction Film - Personal, Political and Social ‘Realities’

Introduction:
Non-fiction film is an attempt to record ‘reality’ or actuality. It is meant to be raw footage - reportage of ‘real’ events
with actual peoples’ voices. These ‘real’ events are represented as taking place spontaneously, in ‘real’ time and
unmediated by the filmmaking process.
The filmmaking process requires that the filmic material is ‘ordered,reshaped and placed in sequential form’ (1) - the
processes of shooting (choice of shoot - point of view,lighting,camera position), editing and ‘narrative’ structure.
Andrew Britton(2) reinforces this view point; ‘In the first place, truly great documentaries are analytical, in the sense
that they present the corner of reality with which they deal not as a truth there to be observed, but as a social and
historical reality which can only be understood in the context of the forces and actions that produced it. Secondly, they
are engaged, in a sense that they lay claim to objectivity, but actively present a case through their structure and
organisation of point of view’ (2). Documentary is not an unmediated recording of ‘reality’ but a representation of
‘reality’ influence by the filmmakers’ points of view and the social/political context of the documentary. -
social/political purpose of the documentary.

Types of Address to the Audience -

voice over commentaries (‘voice of God’)
roster of experts on the subject of the documentary.
living witness interviews.
opinionated members of the public.
‘real’ location shooting.
footage of live events shoot in ‘real’ time.
‘found’ archive footage with authentic technological quality.

Documentary Authenticity Style:

As with any other genre of filmmaking the documentary has its distinctive style - ‘marks of authenticity’
Mobile camera, usually a hand - held camera allowing long takes, tracking and panning shoots within scenes often with
jerking movement on the image.
Change of focus in shoot - long shoot or medium shot to extreme close-ups.
Undifferentiated and poor sound recording.
Variable levels of lighting within a scene.

Today the journalistic tendencies of prime-time television documentaries have marginalised and desensitised/sanitised
documentary technique and content. These ‘news style’ documentaries have tendency to emphasis the transparency and
unproblematic nature of documentary filmmaking - unmediated truth. There is evidence however that the ‘news style’
documentaries of prime-time broadcasting are being challenged by more ‘cinematic’ style non-fiction films - exhibition
in cinemas, colleges, universities, film societies.
What is Documentary?
John Grierson was the first to use the term documentary when reviewing Robert Flaherty film Moana (1925) - film that
could make a visual document of an actual event. He was extremely committed to the educational and democratic
aspects of the documentary - ‘cinema is neither an art nor an entertainment; it is a form of publication, and may publish
in a hundred different ways for a hundred different audiences’(3). Grierson believed that documentary was ‘the creative
treatment of actuality’(4). He had no illusions of documentary being ‘truth’ and recognised that ‘actuality ‘ footage be
manipulated by a creative process to reveal its truth. - both a recording of ‘actuality’ and a statement about ‘reality’.

Richard Barsam(5) has categorised the genre of non-fiction films into the following list;
factual films
ethnographic film
films of exploration
propaganda film
cinema-verite
direct cinema
documentary
He further claims that documentary is outside the other categories because the role of the filmmaker is more specific in
determining the interpretation of these types of films - ‘actuality’ footage with an ‘authored’ form.
The context of the documentary filmmaking distinguishes the different uses of ‘actuality’ footage, how it is compiled
and organised into - ‘ the Newsreel(record of current events), Travelogue (description of a place, often for the purposes
of promotion or advertising), the Educational or Training film(to teach an audience how to do or understand something),
and the Process film (to describe how an object or procedure is constructed’) (6) .

The context of a documentary is its purpose and perspective - cultural purpose and ideology. Once the context has been
established then it is constructed in a particular way. John Corner(7) has identified three important aspects that inform
all non-fiction films;
technological factors
sociological dimensions
aesthetic concerns

Technological development (determinants) intrinsically change the style of non-fiction filmmaking - light hand-held
camera capable of recording sound, fast film stock, digital cameras increase length of shoot, etc.
Sociological dimensions because of the nature of using ‘actuality’ footage the film is located in a particular historical
time and location - focusing on personal and social conventions.
The aesthetic approach of a non-fiction film ultimately determines it proper context - Corner has suggested four modes
of visual language and three modes of verbal language in the documentary form.(8)

Four Modes of Visual Language;

1. Reactive Observationalism - filmed as spontaneously as possible subject to the minimum influence of the camera
operator/director - most unmediated recording of ‘actuality’ footage
2. Proactive Observationalism - filmed in a sequential manner with choice made about what material is to
be recorded in relation to what has been shot.
3. Illustrative Mode - attempts to illustrate what the voice-over is saying.
4. Associative Mode - film footage is manipulated to a high degree to emphasis a symbolic or
metaphorical meaning on top of the literal ‘actuality’ information available in the image.

Three Modes of Verbal Language:

1. Overheard Exchange - recording of what appears to be a spontaneous dialogue between two or more
participants engaged in conversation/ observation.
2. Testimony - mainly through the voices of interviewees (‘talking heads’), solicited observation, opinions or
information by witnesses, experts or participants in the diegesis of the documentary.
3. Exposition - through voice-over or direct-to-camera address, essentially directing and organising the viewer’s
reception of information and the arguments of the documentary.
The visual and verbal language of a non-fiction film determines the nature and extent of manipulation of
the filmic experience and the self-reflexivity in the film.
Modern theories on non-fiction film and documentary in particular centre around the concepts of ‘objectivity’ and ‘the
mimetic power of the camera’. The Post Structuralism/ Post Modernism theorists (9,10) have a great suspicion about
documentary being a unmediated film form and it cannot be ‘objective’ - there is always behind the ‘actuality’ footage a
subjective influence and ideology.
Recently the debate has turned to considering documentary to be an icon and indexed form of filmmaking. This has
opened up the field of study to the concept of documentary image as being mimetic of ‘reality’ but this iconic form is
organised by editing(and other filmmaking processes) by a subjectivity and ideology. Frederick Wiseman has said: ‘I
think the objective/subjective stuff is a lot of bullshit. I don’t see how a film can be anything but subjective’(11).
Carl Plantinga attacks the Post - Structuralist approach - ‘It is misleading to characterize the nonfiction film as
inherently deceptive due to its combination of moving pictures and rhetoric’. He continues, ‘ Any rhetoric that denies
the legitimacy and importance of informative evidential uses of motion pictures, and finds only deceptions and
manipulation, presents a one-sided, indeed paranoid picture of nonfiction film and its cultural and psychological effects.
Film studies must move beyond Post-Structuralism to less defensive, more nuanced study of nonfiction film and video
discourse, one that can account for icons,indices and their complex uses as elements of nonfiction films’ (12) . This
opening up of the study of documentary is healthy however three important questions should always be asked about
documentary filmmaking;

1. What is the documentary film for? - cultural context

2. How was the documentary produced? - social context
3. What are the motives of the filmmakers/producers? - political or ideological
context.

Case Studies
Robert Flaherty - Nanook of the North (1922), Man of Aran (1935) - manipulated ethnographic documentaries - ‘Noble
Savage’.
Leni Riefentstahl - Triumph of the Will (1935) - Nazi propaganda – 1st Nazi Party Congress 1934 - see Susan Sontag’s
excellent article - ‘Fascinating Fascism’ (13).
Joris Ivens - more left-wing documentary European filmmaker(14). - New Deal Documetaries The Power and the Land
(1940)
Grierson and Humphrey Jennings - Grierson wanted a more sociologically aware and less formally aesthetic
documentary form.
Empire Marketing Board, GPO and Crown Film Unit during the War. Humphrey Jennings(15) a artist, poet and
filmmaker ‘redefined the documentary as a genre which not merely recorded events and locations but appropriated them
as illustration for the poetic muse’(16). - Listen to Britain (1942)
Cinema Direct grew out of Robert Drew’s television production section of Time Inc. - ABC TV - Richard Leacock,
Donn Pennebaker, Albert and David Maysles – In the 1960s the advent of portable, technically sophisticated camera and
sound equipment, faster film stock, zoom lens that allowed shooting in natural light which enabled telephoto shallow
focused images to be captured, to reveal personal and social ‘truth’ - used ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries - ‘reality’
could be directly observed - unmediated immediacy of the experience - less deliberately authored approach.
Cinema-verite - term coined by Jean Rouch(17) - literally ‘cinema truth’ - it accepted the impact of the filmmaking
process upon the recording of ‘actuality’ and recognised the subjectivity of the filmmaker in obtaining the ‘actuality’
footage of what took place. Rouch suggested that the documentary form must be defined through the integrity and the
purpose of the filmmaker. The value of the ‘actuality’ footage and the ‘truth’ that it might present is directly related to
the intention of those that produce it.
The documentaries of Frederick Wiseman(18) are examples of this cinema verite - documentary films in institutions like
high school, hospitals,prisons and the police
‘mosaic of events , interactions and working processes, revealing patterns of behaviour’, which ultimately reflected the
morality of the institution and society itself. - tensions in social institutions.
Wiseman did not want the viewer to be ‘passive’ but actively engaged in understanding the world on the screen - there
is no imposed ‘narrative’, no voice over or music directing viewer’s interpretation of the events
Wiseman wants the viewers to make up their own minds but hopes that they would make the (‘imaginative leap’)
connection between the institutional models which are symbols and metaphors for society at large and thus understand
the bigger picture about power and authority in society - Law and Order (1969) and Hospital (1970).

Radicalisation of Documentary form –

Emile de Antonio opposed Direct Cinema in the USA (1960s and 1970s). He believed that unmediated, unbiased
documentary ‘reality’ was a myth – Point of Order (1963) on demise of Senator McCarthy ‘s popularity; In the Year of
the Pig (1969) critical analysis of American conduct in Vietnam; Milhouse: A Whitehouse Comedy (1972) a satirical
portrait of Richard Nixon. De Antonio believed that TV documentary trivialised important social issues and desensitised
the TV audiences – TV was a medium missused and banal.

Counter Cultural Radical Revisionism –

The 1970s – 1980s saw a more radical revisionism in documentary film.
Political Revisionism – films that revised the contribution of working people – The Wobbles (1979) by Stewart Bird and
Deborah Shaffer and Union Maids (1976) by Jim Klein and Miles Mogulescu.
Feminist non-fiction films – The life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) by Connie Field and Daughter Rite (1979)
by Michelle Citron – “These films sought to reclaim ‘film language’ and express the historical, social and personal
concerns of women”(19).
Gay and Lesbian films – The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) about the murder of a gay activist and official in San
Francisco

More recent documentary has become a hybrid of many different film forms, often narrative ‘fiction’ or ‘fact’ in a
critical often populist form. Bill Nichols has coined the term reflexive/ performative documentary(20) - that is more
reflective and subjective often highlighting how arbitrary or relative objective ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ actually are.
Drama Doc such as The Thin Blue Line (1998) by Errol Morris on roadside killings part fiction part non- fiction.
New Populist forms – Sports Doc – The Oscar winning When We Were Kings (1996) by Leon Gast’s and Taylor
Hackford – the 1974 World Heavyweight Boxing Championship bout between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman
staged in Zaire
New development of the iconoclastic celebrity taking on the ‘system’ Michael Moore Oscar winning Bowling for
Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) or Nick Broomfield and his celebrity exposes Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood
Madam (1995), Kurt & Courtney (1998), Biggie and Tupac (2002) and Aileen: Life and death of a Serial killer (2004).
Digital technology today both in portable cameras and sound equipment, as well as computer based editing software,
has made documentary video cheap and accessible to everyone. This has enabled a democratisation of documentary
making and provided a more intimate filmic style.

References and Bibliography

1. Wells, Paul, The documentary form, An Introduction to film Studies, (ed.) Jill Nelmes, (Routledge,
London, 1999) p212.
2. Britton, Andrew, The Invisible Eye, Sight and Sound, Feb. 1992, p29.
3. Hardy, F., Grierson on Documentary, (Faber & Faber, London, 1979) p 85.
4. Grierson, John, The Documentary Producer, Cinema Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 1, p 8 - quoted in Wells,
Paul, The documentary form, An Introduction to film Studies, (ed.) Jill Nelmes, (Routledge, London, 1999) p213.
5. Barsam, The Non-Fiction Film, (Indian University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1992) Preface,
p1.
6. Nitto D. De., Film: Form and Feeling, (Harper and Row, New York , 1985) p 325.
7. Corner, J., (ed.), Documentary and Mass Media, (Edward Arnold, London, 1986)pp xiii-xx.
8. Corner, J., The Art of Record: A Critical Introduction to Documentary, (Manchester University Press,
Manchester,and New York, 1996) pp 27-30.
9. Nichols, B., Representing Reality, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1994) and
Blurred Boundaries, (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1994)
10. Winston, C.. Claiming the Real, (BFI, London, 1995)
11. Wells, Paul, The documentary form, An Introduction to film Studies, (ed.) Jill Nelmes, (Routledge), London, 1999)
p 227 from Roy Levin, G. Documentary Explorations (Doubleday New York, 1971).
12.Plantinga, Carl, Moving Pictures and Rhetoric of Nonfiction: Two Approaches, Post-Theory, (ed.)David Borwell
and Noel Carroll, (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996) p320.
13.Sontag, Susan, Fascinating Fascism, from B. Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods, (University of California Press,
Los Angeles, 1976) p 34
14.Delmar, Rosalind, Joris Ivens: 50 years of film-making, (BFI, London, 1979).
15.Jennings, M.L. Humphrey Jennings: Film-maker, Painter, Poet, (BFI, London, 1982) p 17.
16. Wells, Paul, The documentary form, An Introduction to film Studies, (ed.) Jill Nelmes, (Routledge), London, 1999)
p 221
17.Eaton, Mick, (ed.), Anthropology-Reality-Cinema, The Films of Jean Rouch, (BFI, London, 1979)
18.Atkins, Thomas, R. Frederick Wiseman, (Monarch Press,1979)
19. Welles (1999), op.cit. p230.
20. Nichols, Bill, ‘Performing Documentary’, Blurred Boundaries (Indiana University Press, 1994) p 92-107

Realism and the Cinema

Lecture 8
Realist Practices in the Arts and the Cinema
• What is Realism in the arts? - ‘Pictures of Reality’ by Terry Lovell(1) and ‘A lecture on
Realism’ by Raymond Williams(2) are two good places to start in an understanding of the development
of theories of realism and the cinema.
• To understand realism and realist practices in the arts requires distinguishing between;
Empiricism (naturalism)
Conventionalism (formalism)
concepts which to some extent conflate into realist practice.
• Naturalism in art follows an objective methodology ‘exhaustive analytic description of
contemporary reality’(3). A meticulous observation of detail by a clinical observer,..
. ..the ‘conscious opposition to supernaturalism and metaphysical accounts of human action’(4). In French
literature of the late 19th century, Zola epitomised this objectivity in the novel. A scientific approach to detail
 which was appropriated from natural sciences (Darwin’s theory of natural selection and studies of heredity in
families). Naturalism emphasises the influence of the physical and social environment on human behaviour.
Consequently, the social and physical world determine the psychological or ‘inner reality’ of an individual - the
individual moulded by an existential social world.
• Conventionalism, which grew out of idealism, emphasises that knowledge of the world is an
active construction of the mind through concepts, theories, methodological rules, etc., ‘The limit
position which all conventionalisms more..
…or less approach is one in which the world is in effect constructed in and by theory….If the first stage in
displacing empiricism is the recognition that theories and therefore knowledge are socially produced, the second
which often follows close upon its heels is expansion of theory until it fills the world’(5). - consciousness
moulding reality, The argument is that knowledge of reality is constructed through concepts already in the mind.
This conceptual framework is informed by social practices - rules or conventions shared by a social group or
community. Formalism in the arts (interests in form rather than content) and Saussure’s structuralist linguistics
follow a similar approach as conventionalism.
• Conventionalist theories cannot completely account for the sense perceptual existence of
objects outside mental constructs.
• Realism is an attempt to fuse conventionalist and empirical concepts. Modern epistemological realism is a
dialectic fusing of an empirical existential concept of the world and a conventionalist conceptual framework of
thought which must inform any comprehension of this ontological reality. Realism concedes that knowledge of
reality is socially constructed, that the language of experience is theory influenced but there is an existential
dimension, the real world exists and cannot be reduced merely to a system of conceptual mental constructs. A
realist wishes to make this conceptual ‘social consciousness’ as transparent as possible to get to the ‘deeper
ontological layer of the universe’.The ‘definite forms of social consciousness’ such as political, religious, ethical,
aesthetic, artistic, etc., conceptual frameworks, constitute the superstructure of society, are the ideology which
informs awareness of reality.
• Raymond Williams in his book Keywords(6) has suggest three possible meanings for ideology;
a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular class or group.
a system of illusory beliefs - false ideas or false consciousness - which can be contrasted with true or scientific
knowledge.
the general process of meanings and ideas.
• The first and second meanings of ideology have been used in marxist cultural studies to address
realist practices. In short the essence of realism is to remove these ideological ‘blinkers’ to reveal the
deeper ontological, multi-layered structure of the real world, not surface appearances mediated through
ideology.

• Realism in the arts for Williams(7) is an attempt to ‘show things as they really are’ not as they
appear superficially on the surface. He emphasis that realist practices in the arts are both a particular
fundamental attitude (intention) and a certain type of art practice. The fundamental attitude is to reveal
the underlying forces, whether ‘from inner feelings to underlying social and historical movements -
which are either not accessible to ordinary observation or which are imperfectly or not at all represented
in how things appear.’(8). In addition, the realist practices in art are mimetic representations of the
world in another medium. Consequently the representation of the world in an art medium or media is
‘radically different from the object represented …the effect of ‘lifelike representation’ is at best a
particular artistic convention, at worst falsification making us take the forms of representation as
real’(9).
• Williams has identified certain features common to all realist practices in the arts.
‘Secular action’ - were early feudal/ aristocratic conventions concerned metaphysical or religious dimensions
which often strongly determine human action. Realist practices rely on active human determinism of social
relationships.
‘Contemporary reality’ - human action is in a contemporary reality set in the present ideological juncture, not in
historic or the mythical past.
‘Social extension’ - realist text demands ‘social extension’, a consideration of all classes within a particular
historical juncture.
‘a particular political viewpoint’ - Williams extends his realist practice to embrace a more progressive tendency
in realist, ‘that is the consciously interpretative in relation to a particular political viewpoint’(10) (Epic Theatre
of Bertolt Brecht(12))
 • Walter Benjamin versus The Frankfurt School - In the 1920s the conservative rightwing
dismissed cinema as ‘a pastime for slaves, an amusement for the illiterate, for poor creatures stupefied
by work and anxiety’(12). Leftist culture critic Walter Benjamin, a close friend of Brecht, in his essay
‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’(13)(France, 1936), took a different view on
cinema and mass culture. Benjamin (and Brecht too) believed through mass culture and the cinema,
‘capitalism planted the seeds of its own destruction by creating conditions which would make it possible
to abolish capitalism itself. Mass-media forms like photography and the cinema created new artistic
paradigms reflective of new historical forces; that could not be judged by old standards More important,
the cinema enriched the field of human perception and deepened critical consciousness of reality’(14).
Frankfurt school left critical theorist Theodor Adorno attacked Benjamin’s technological utopianism -
‘Adorno, naively idealised the working class and its supposedly revolutionary aspirations. Adorno
Worried over the effects of what the Frankfurt theorists called the ‘culture industry’, discerning vast
potential for alienation and commodification’(15).
• Realism debate between Lukacs and Brecht - Georg Lukacs(16) developed a realist approach to
the novel. Two Marxist realist practices - Critical Realism and Socialist Realism. - realist totality,
typicality (e.g. typical characters) and a specific historical juncture.
• Critical Realism displays typical characters representing a bourgeois culture undergoing radical
political upheaval in a particular historical period. The realist totality of the critical work, reveals the
underlying social forces, the essence behind appearances, the typical characters act as a nucleus for the
action and the narrative structure of climax and resolution, expose the internal structures of bourgeois
ideology. A historical crisis reaches a climax, the resolution of which actively enables future social
development. There is emphasis placed on typical protagonists caught up in the political upheaval, not
on historically significant figures. These representative historical figures are transformed through
historical crisis, achieving an awareness of the structures and ideologies within their society,
• Socialist Realism adopts a realist approach also to expose the latent social forces obscured by
bourgeois ideology but this approach wishes to transform society beyond capitalist modes of
production. Socialist realism actively promotes revolution from alienating capitalist social relations to
socialist proletariat dictatorship, a movement in which man realises his ‘species being’.
The official adoption of socialist realism by the Soviet Communist Party after the 1934 Congress of Soviet
Writers established Soviet Socialist Realism as the predominant art practice in the USSR. This was established
by Stalin and Gorky and ‘promulgated by Stalin’s cultural thug Zhdanov’. The doctrine demanded a
standardised artistic portrayal of socio-historical reality in revolutionary development revealing the problems of
ideological transformation and education of the workers in the spirit of socialism. In opposition the Prolet - Kult
- Meyerhold the Russian experimental theatre director proclaimed- ‘this pitiable and sterile thing called Socialist
Realism has nothing to do with art’
• Brecht, Realism and Epic Theatre - In the theatre of Brecht there is a a conscious internal
analysis of interpretation of realist practices in relation to a particular political viewpoint. Much of
Brecht’s drama is set in the past, historical events are interpreted through a realist approach, to reveal
the superficial appearances generated by a superstructure (ideology) at that particular historical juncture.
This analysis of ideological appearances formed an intrinsic part of epic theatre. ‘Brecht favored a
theater realist in intentions - aimed at exposing society’s ‘casual networks’ - but modernist - reflexive in
its forms. To cling to the ossified forms of nineteen-century realist novel constituted for Brecht a
formalistic nostalgia which failed to take altered historical circumstances into account. That particular
artist formula, for Brecht, had lost its political......potency; changing times called for changing modes of
representation…..Through interruptions, quotations, and tableau effects, epic theater supersedes the old
illusionistic, anti-technical’(17) forms of art. In fact, Brecht’s epic theatre actively generates a analytical
methodology by alienation; distancing the audience from the traditional twentieth century bourgeois
drama of naturalistic representation and identification.
• Brecht realised that the ‘formalism’ of Lukacs’ realist practices suffered from accepting
bourgeois representational form as ideologically unproblematic. For Brecht, realism was exclusively an
attitude to ‘ show things as they really are’, expose the underlying social dynamics in history, regardless
of conventions adopted. He was passionately committed to an accessibility and popular art. For him
Marxist art had to reach and appeal to the mass audience. However, he emphasised the need for new
formal practices in arts which may not be pleasurable at the outset to the mass audience. These new
forms would engage the audience actively and without recourse to bourgeois emotional identification.
In this way the form could generate an analytical detachment from the work of art which could provoke
audiences with new knowledge into political action. These alienating or distanciation effects create an
 active interaction between the art form and audience, rather than the passive consumption prevalent in
bourgeois art. Eventually, Brecht believed, that these new forms of active engagement with the audience
could be come popular and pleasurable to the mass audience. Brecht also ‘viewed art in terms of the
harnessing of pleasure to learning’(18).

• The realist ‘essence of cinema’ - By the 1940s ‘post-war realism emerged from the smoke and
ruins of European cities; the immediate trigger for the mimetic revival was the calamity of World War
II….With Rome Open City (1945), Italy regained the right to look at itself in the mirror, hence the
extraordinary harvest of Italian films. The war and the liberation, filmmaker-theorist Cezare Zavattini
argued, that the war had taught filmmakers to discover the value of the real….Zavattini called for
annihilating the distance between art and life. The point was not to invent stories which resembled
reality, but rather turn reality into a story’(19)
• Inspired in part by Italian neo-realist cinema’s anti-fascism, Andre Bazin and Siegfried
Kracauer posited the intrinsic realism of the photographic image as the...foundation of a democratic and
egalitarian aesthetic. In his article ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’. Bazin suggested, ‘the
objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture
making’ and later ‘an image of the world is framed automatically without the creative intervention of
man’(20).
• According to Bazin, new approaches to editing and mise-en-scene especially long-take
cinematography and depth of focus, allowed the filmmaker to respect the spatiotemporal integrity of the
pro-filmic world. These facilitated a more thoroughgoing mimetic representation, one linked, in Bazin
thinking to a spiritual notion of ‘revelation’, a theory with theological overtones of the divine in all
things. Indeed, Bazin’s critical language - real presence, revelation, faith in the image - often
reverberates with religiosity.

• The view that Siegfried Kracauer was the ‘ayatollah of realism’ rests on this book Theory of
Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality(21). He too believed that realism in cinema and the nature of
the mimetic qualities of cinema photography could reveal different degrees of the essence of reality.
‘Central to Kracauer’s valorisation of the cinema was its capacity to register the quotidian, the
contingent and the random, the world in its endless becoming….Film for Kracauer stages a rendezvous
with contingency, with the unpredictable and open-ended flux of everyday experience’(22).
• New Left- During the 1960s (May 68(23)) and on into the 1970s Marxist cultural studies took
up the conventionalist ideas of Louis Althusser(24) - a structuralist approach to Marx. Althusser’s
approach built on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and developed a theory of the Ideological State
Apparatuses, affectionately called ‘ISAs’ in leftist circles. ‘While Althusser was fundamental reference
for Screen theory, Gramsci, ….was a key reference for what came to be known as cultural studies’(25).
Althusser had introduced into film studies the concept the cinema apparatus could interpellate a
spectator.- ‘influenced by the psychoanalytical theories of Jacques Lacan. Althusser argued that we are
all ‘subjects’ of ideology through the ways in which we are interpellated or positioned into society by its
structures and systems. The spectator is similarly interpellated into the film, is similarly the subject of
its largely invisible or taken-for-granted operations.’(26)
Screen critics such as Stephen Heath(27), Colin MacCabe(28) and Jean-Louis Comolli developed Althusser’s
theories for cinema. - one example was ‘Suture theory’.

• An excellent BFI Reader on Realism and the Cinema edited by Christopher Williams(29)
address many of the issues in this lecture and also non-fiction films.
References
1. Terry Lovell, Pictures of Reality, Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, (BFI, London 1980).
2, Raymond Williams, A lecture on Realism, Screen, vol.. 18 (1) (1977) p 61 - 74.
3. ibid., p 65.
4. ibid., p 65.
5. Lovell (1980), op.cite., p15
6. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, (Flamingo Press, London,1983)
p152-7
7. ibid., p 257-262
8. ibid., p 260
9. ibid., p 261
10. Williams (1977), op.cite., p 68
11. Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, (ed.) John Willett, (Eyre Metheun Ltd., London, 1979).
12. Robert Stam, Film Theory, An Introduction, (Blackwell, Oxford, 2000) p 65.
13. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Illuminations, (ed.) Hannah Arendt,
Trans. Harry Zohn, (Schocken Books, New York, 1969) p 217 - 251.
14. Stam (2000) op.cite., p 65.
15. Stam (2000) op.cite., p 67.
16. Georg Lukacs, Writer and Critic, (Merlin Press, London, 1968) also see Terry Eagleton - Marxism and Literary
Criticism, (Methuen and Co Ltd,)
17. Stam (2000), op.cite., p 71.
18. Lovell (1980), op, cite., p 94.
19. Stam (2000), op.cite., p 73.
20. Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? Vol. 1, ed. and trans, Hugh Gray (University of California Press, 1967) p 13
21. Siegfried Kracuaer, Theory of Film:The Redemption of Physical Reality, (Princeton University Press, (1947)
22. Stam (2000), op.cite., p 79.
23. S. Harvey, May 68’ and Culture, (BFI, London, 1980)
24. Louis Althusser, For Marx, trans., Ben Brewster, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1969) and Reading Capital, trans.,
Ben Brewster, (Verso, London, 1979)
25. Stam (2000), op.cite., p 135.
26. Patrick Phillips, The film Spectator, Chapter 5, An Introduction to film Studies, Second Edition, Ed. Jill Nelmes,
Routledge(1996) p137
27. Stephen Heath, Questions of Cinema, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).
28. Colin MacCabe, Tracking the Signifier: Theoretical Essays: Film, Linguistics, Literature, (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
29. Christopher Williams (ed.), Realism and the Cinema, (BFI, London, 1980).

Film and Postmodernism

Popular Culture, Media
And its Influence on Contemporary Cinema
Introduction
• The concept of Postmodernism is problematic because it has been applied to many economic, social and
cultural phenomena(1).
• Postmodernism is not a theory, in fact it is suspicious of grand unified theories.
• Three strands;
Philosophical Debates on the scope and basis of knowledge and subjectivity.
Socio-Cultural Debates on economic and social shifts in modern society.
Aesthetic Debates on how artistic practice has changed since the ‘decline’ of modernism

PhilosophicalDebates

– Postmodernism is suspicious of ‘universal’ and grand unified theories of thought and explanation. Jean-Francois
Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition (2)(1979) has addressed this - Postmodernism critiques the modern period in
philosophy relating to the Enlightenment associated with Voltaire, Locke and Hume. This argued for a ‘scientific’
explanation of the natural and social world which would develop an ‘emancipation of reason’ as well as. social and
political emancipation. Lyotard argues that the modern horror of Auschwitz undermines this philosophical position.

Postmodernism rejects;
• a totalising theory of social and political thought.
• a foundational theory of knowledge.
• universalism, ethnocentric or Euro centric thought.
• essential reality of the individual person (fixed subjectivity a major precept of Enlightenment thought).
• Postmodernism embraces the heterogeneity and fragmented nature of social and political ‘reality’.
• Postmodernism can be accused of ‘relativism’, idealism or conventionalism – the underlying ‘reality’ is
not knowable except through the ‘discourses’ that construct ‘reality’.

Socio-Cultural Debates
 • Centres on the transition of society from the old industrial order to a post-industrial structure.
• Decline of manufacturing industry and the increased importance of service industry.
• A move from ‘Fordist’ mass production to targeted consumer groups/markets and globalisation.
• A move from ‘working class’ to ‘white collar workers’ (service class)
• Decline in the significance of class identity and divisions.
• Social identity understood in terms of age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and region.
• A movement from a politics of mass movements to a politics of difference - a fluid nature to social
identity in contemporary society.
• Computer information technology and international mass communications has changed the nature of
social experience and subjectivity. Two aspects;
• Erosion of regional identity due to global communication and pluralism of cultural perspectives and
multiculturalism.
• Media images and signifiers are central to a person’s understanding of modern ‘reality’.
• Jean Baudrillard(3) is central to the arguments on the media construct of modern ‘reality’.
• Baudrillard has suggest that the media actually constructs our understanding of modern ‘reality’. A
world of simulation or ‘hyperreality’ which has no ‘reality’ outside its signifying practice - Simulacrum. The
omnipresence of media images and signifiers.
• Television is seen as the medium of postmodernism. When postmodernism is applied to the cinema it is
for individual films.

Aesthetic Debates
• Postmodern aesthetic developed from an unease in the progressiveness of modernism in art and design.
• Architecture experienced disillusionment first. Attack on modernist approaches of - Le Corbussier, the
Bauhaus, International Style based on function and social utility. A truth through function, rejection of the
ornamental or decorative, exposing the materials and their purpose in architecture. – ‘modernist formalism’.
Desire for efficient and functional mass housing.
• Charles Jencks(4) argues that the modernist approach to architecture came cashing down with Ronan
Point in London in 1969 and the demolition of the high-rise projects in St Louis in 1972.
• Postmodern architecture would reconnect with occupants by rejecting functionality – reintroduction of
mixed styles from different periods, decoration and ornamentation.
• This postmodern aesthetic has been extended to other arts. Russell Berman(5) discusses how there is a
exhaustion of modernism in art modern art has become a commodity market for a rich elite.
• The transgressive power of modern art has lost its shock value -‘obsolescence of shock’(6).
• Postmodernism in art was heralded in by the pop art of the 1960s. This aesthetic was a rejection of
abstract expressionism. It introduced popular culture (film icons, comic art and advertising) into art practice.
• It fostered eclecticism, erosion of aesthetic boundaries, decline in the emphasis on originality and the
artist ‘author’
• This eclecticism enabled pluralism in genres and artist conventions. Modernism techniques could be
used but it is only stylistic choice among many.
• Fredric Jameson(7) has identified that pop art used the conventions of advertising, B- movies, science
fiction, crime ‘pulp fiction’.
• Dick Hebdige(8) has defined it in terms of ‘parody, simulation, pastiche and allegory’. The boundaries
of style are blurred, no need for originality in art and the death of the author.

Postmodernism and Film

• Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) are often taken to be
indicative of postmodern films.
• In the case of Blue Velvet it does show a eclectic style which draws on popular narrative cinema and the
avant-garde. There is also a play on the meaning of the surface signifiers, but it still is circulated within film
culture as a ‘David Lynch film’.
• There seem to be three main themes that link postmodern analysis of individual films:
• Contemporary film production is postmodern – the decline of Hollywood studio mass production and
the rise of independent production in the global market run by media conglomerates.
• Films reflect postmodern themes and images e.g. dystopian vision of miss trust of technology. There is
a lack of confidence in the ‘grand narrative’ with regard to masculinity and patriarchal society.
 • Film content has become eclectic - quoting, ‘tongue and cheek’ playfulness, these films use a style that
is more self conscious using quotes from film history and cinematic styles.

• Two approaches used in postmodern analysis:

• There is an attack on contemporary cinema attempting to reveal a ‘reactionary postmodernism’. All
style, quotes with no originality - no critical analysis in film. (main stream cinema)
• Postmodern analysis used to discuss alternative approaches to filmmaking that involve ‘oppositional’
and ‘transgressive’ cinemas an extension of the ‘political modernism’ of Godard. (independent cinema and the
avant-garde)
• Jameson(7) has used the second approach to discuss the New Hollywood of the late 1960s/1970s. He
argues that what began as a period of experimentation, self conscious, quoting of film history and styles
descended in to the ‘new classicism’ of the blockbuster/genre films, he identifies the ‘depthlessness’ (all
surface) of representation in these films, ‘a new culture of image or the simulacrum’.
• He discussed how Chinatown (USA, 1974) and Body Heat (USA, 1981) are examples of ‘nostalgia
film’ with vacuous reworking of the film noir style but unconvincing, a simulacrum of the genre. - Pastiche
• Jameson then goes on to discuss the difference between parody and pastiche in postmodern approaches.
Parody involves a certain amount of criticism and mockery. Pastiche has no critical dimension only a ‘neutral
mimicry’.
• He contrasts:
• Robert Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ (USA, 1973) which quotes from film history and styles and
reworks the film noir genre conventions using parody to debunk the myth of the private eye.
• ‘The Untouchables’(Brian De Palma,USA, 1987) uses pastiche with no critical dimension. In the case
of Independence day (19960 pastiche is used to dress up the conservative militarism with ‘tongue-in-cheek’ self
conscious.
• The progressive postmodern approaches to alternative forms of cinema that is independent avant-garde
and pluralist – parody, pastiche, irony, quotation and juxtaposition – to subvert the original material quoted and
(re)appropriating meaning. Pluralist vision, the ‘anti essentialist’ nature of social and cultural identity. This type
of postmodernist film would be both transgressive, reflective and popular.

Reference
Hill, John (1998), ‘Film and Postmodernism’, in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, (ed) John Hill and pamela Church
Gibson, Chapter 11.
Lyotard, Jean - Francois (1779/1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans, Geoff Bennington
and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
Baudrillard, Jean (1975), The Mirror of Production (St Louis: Telos Press)
- (1983), Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, paul Patton, and Phillip Beitchman (Sydney: Power)
- (1991/1995) The Gulf War did not Take Place, trans. Paul patton (Sydney: Power)
encks, Charles (1986), What is Postmodernism? (London: St Martin’s Press)
Berman, Russell A. (1984-5), Modern Art and Desublimation, (Telos)
Huyssen, Andreas (1984), Mapping the Postmodern, (rep) in After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture and
Postmodernism (London: Macmillan)
Jameson, Fredric (1984-1991), Postmodernism or,the Cultural logic of Late Capitalism, (repr) in Postmodernism: Of the
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso) – (1988), The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the
Postmodern Debate, in The Ideologies of Theory, ii: the Syntax of history (London: Routledge)
Hebdige, Dick (1988), Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things (London: Routledge)