The truth is only in your eyes

Week 9 – Documentary Ethics

Documentary films hold somewhat an authority to convince the audience to assume that what they are consuming is ‘truthful’ of the reality. Given that it is the case, what progressive changes has this genre gone through to strive and survive against other media forms such as television?

Is it a valid statement to say that documentaries are representation of the truth? Amongst all the surrounding discourses about the clarity of documentaries, it is, I think, crucial to note one specific aspect on the nature of filming. The moment you decide on what to film and roll the camera the ‘truth’ becomes subjective. If the definition of ‘truth’ relies on its objectivity, that it is unmediated and unprocessed, the real ‘truth’ only exists through your eyes. Funnily enough, as soon as it is registered through your eyes it becomes subjective, and to tell that to anyone is to take a stance in subjectifying the object.

Introduction of television has meant for the mass audience that their exposure to media no longer required this certain attitude to rethink their assumption about the society, country and the world. This is due to the fact that documentary films, by nature, was to promote challenge and action within the society against what they depicted as ‘wrong’. Television, which did not require attentive consumption, dispersed throughout the society. This spread and popularity were reinforced by incorporating the ‘truthful’ aspects of documentary films (doco-soap, reality-TV). While at the same time documentary films were, to compete against this trend, also forced to incorporate aspects of fictional television programmes to redesign themselves ‘as a cheap alternative to drama’.

In addition to this, the invention of camcorder, which allowed an ordinary individual to capture their stories, shifted the importance of thoughts-evoking objective truth to subjective narratives for the light entertainment sake. These subjective confessional narratives were perfect for television programmes, because ultimately the consumers were to be at a private and domestic location in this time. However, the dispersion of television continued on to an extent where television sets were now at reasonably affordable prices for them to be viewed anywhere, even in public spaces.

Looking at public spaces such restaurants, bars and cafes placing television sets on their premises, the private nature of viewing of television seems to have lessened. Instead, it has broken its boundaries to manifest the public domain where documentary films were originally shown. So where do the documentary films belong now?

By strategic incorporation of elements of fictional television programmes, documentary forms are now also available on television through pay TV and minor-stream stations. If television is for the light entertainment, I would like to see more authentic documentary films, not on television, but as a separate domain like the cinemas.

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