Surreal Demands of Perfection

Godmillow touches on a consistent theme of documentaries in stating that the audience's role can be minimalized to that of a position of warship on behalf of the hero, to that of compassion for the attractor of tragedy. This is evident in almost any movie but also in a well-executed documentary. There is something about being a member of an audience which exempts one from "the responsibility either to act or even to consider the structures of their own situation". It is difficult to break this mold sometimes as a documentary can exploit a seemingly three-dimensional window of reality but only give one interpretation of it--such as in "Dear Zachary". It is because of this that, when behind the lens, the audience's true judgment, as it would manifest in a real life application, is "not implicated". My favorite application of this logic is from "The Bridge" where the man behind the camera lens filming the woman about to jump off the bridge expressed a sense of detachment from what was occurring. I believe he was under the influence of a fragmented reality perpetuated by the organic bias of his hands and the mechanical bias of his camera lens. This is essentially what I believe Godmillow is arguing. In real life, I believe there exists no perfect hero or a true tragic figure and with all other extremes on the personality spectrum implicated, the only environment in which is cohesive to their surreal demands is one which is flattened and therefore, perpetually incomplete.