Week 8: Things to consider

Darkness in El Dorado review

•  In the letter following the review, Richard Dawkins and a number of other quite eminent academics offer this criticism:

‘Tierney writes: “I gradually changed from being an observer to being an advocate…  Traditional, objective journalism was no longer an option for me.”  This rejection of objectivity came from the belief, endorsed by Horgan, that anthropologists’ documentation of the warfare of the Yanomami has been used by others to exploit them, and should therefore be denounced.  That is a fatal mistake.  Indigenous peoples have a right to survive in their lands whether or not they (like all human societies) are prone to violence and warfare.  Self-anointed “advocates” who link the survival of native peoples to the myth of the noble savage do nothing but harm, because when the facts show otherwise, either they have weakened the case for native rights, or they must use any means necessary to rewrite the facts.’  (p. 6)

What is the criticism being made here against the author of Darkness in El Dorado?  Do the letter-writers have a good point?

Lemming ‘suicides’; Aufderheide, Documentary Film, pp. 91-124; etc.

•  David Attenborough notes in Aufderheide that ‘a program “about a jungle where nothing happens is not really what you turned the television set on to see”’ (124).  With this in mind, is it ever ok for a filmmaker to manipulate nature in filming a nature documentary?  If so, when?  For example, what if the filmmaker moves a process along for the sake of filming it – say, releasing a mouse (prey) near a snake (predator) that normally eats that kind of mouse?  Or moving an animal to a slightly different location that is more filmable?

•  We talked a bit about manipulating information to include in a nature documentary, but what about what’s left out (which is a lot harder for the viewer to determine)?  For instance, Aufderheide notes about Disney’s films that ‘the sight of death was discreetly managed for general audiences…  For instance, Seal Island ignores the fact that seal bulls sometimes trample pups by accident’ (119-20).

•  Aufderheide writes that historical documentary filmmakers ‘struggle with the question of how much reenactment is appropriate and how it should be achieved’ (91).  While we have not been exposed to reenactment in the films we’ve seen for class, it’s a fairly widespread tactic for documentaries like those that appear on the History Channel.  Why are they used and why might they be a concern?

•  How is making a documentary film different than writing about the same topic?  Are there constraints that filmmakers have that writers don’t, or vice-versa?  Advantages that each holds over the other?  Aufderheide writes on the subject:

Filmmakers often avoid consulting a range of experts.  Too often for filmmakers’ liking, historians may be sticklers for precise historical sequences, discussion of multiple interpretations, and the need to insert minor characters or precise accuracies, all of which frustrate the clarity of filmed storytelling for broad audiences…  Unlike print historians who can digress, comment, and footnote, documentarians work in a form where images and sounds create an imitation of reality that is itself an implicit assertion of truth (92).