Friday, February 8, 2013

YEAR 11 - DOCUMENTARY - REPRESENTING ‘REALTIY’ – the world of the documentary

Film, whether based on fiction or fact, is an unique storytelling medium that can perpetuate and shape the attitudes and beliefs of their audiences. The full ideological power of film is more fully available when the genre doesn’t ask the audience to suspend belief, but rather asks the audience for their attention as they endeavour to reveal a factual recount of actual people and events. This perceived realism is the power of documentary film.

It is up to the audience to decode the conventions upon which some of Australia’s best storytellers draw in order to manufacture a sense of objectivity—to seemingly remove their voices from the text—in the service of constructing a specific version of realty that advocates a particular ‘truth’. A documentary is the ultimate realist genre as a vehicle for cultural reproduction and change.

When you view a documentary, you need to interrogate it by considering the following:

·         KEY WORDS FROM THE TITLE THAT MAY REVEAL MUCH ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY
·         SUBJECT MATTER – Does the film address issues that you feel are significant ?
·         PERSPECTIVE – Does the film provide a unique insight or offer a non-dominant point of view (POV) regarding its   subject matter?
·         AESTHETIC FEATURES – Is the overall look and feel of the film culturally significant?
·         DOCUMENTARY CONVENTIONS – Does the film make innovative use of the codes of documentary?


THE TWO CENTRAL QUESTIONS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM ANALYSIS:

Documentaries are non-fiction film texts that aim to document or record subject matter based on factual or actual people and events. Regardless of the style, genre or mode of documentary under analysis, first you need to ask:

1.      What types of evidence are being used, and how reliable are they? (For example: eye witness reports, use of statistics, sourcing.)

2.       To what extent are the conventions of documentary film being employed to document, interpret, modify, manipulate or fictionalize the subject matter, and for what purpose? (For example: inclusion or exclusion of subject matter.)

Why are we cynical regarding documentary films? We always need to remember that every mode of representation, whether romance novels or the news, involves a certain degree of intervention in reality—even if it’s as simple as what to include or exclude from the frame or the fact that the presence of a camera affects how people behave.

Essentially, you might ask yourself whether the filmmaker is revealing or distorting the ‘truth’ of the image through their use of techniques such as staging action, cinematography, adding music or commentary, or structuring the narrative during editing. How does this distortion challenge or support the dominant invited reading of the subject?

It’s also important to remember that depending on the subject, documentaries might employ everything from stunt work or animations to creatively represent aspects of the ‘real’ –think about ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. The sheer diversity of styles and genres emerging from the documentary tradition is possible because documentary itself has always encompassed a wide range of topics.

TYPES OF DOCUMENTARIES: SIX DEGREES OF MANIPULATION

Despite their diversity, it is possible to divide documentaries into six main sub genres based on the different strategies and types of evidence they use to represent and make claims about reality. These categories are not water-tight and it is possible for one film to incorporate several modes.

1.       The Poetic Mode interprets reality creatively and experimentally. Based on the assumption that it’s not possible to document reality objectively, the filmmaker aims to honestly express an aspect of subject perception.

2.       The Expository Documentary assumes a position of authority, telling the audience about the meaning and importance of footage, with the assumption that there is one objective true account of the subject matter and it is the job of the documentary to communicate or expose the facts. Voiceover commentary is central to expository documentaries – eg David Attenborough.

3.       In the Observational Mode, the filmmaker records events like a surveillance camera, without apparent intervention or interpretation of the material for viewers. Traditional observation documentary have no voiceover, no added music or sound effects, no titles, no re-enactments, no behavioural repeats for the camera and no interviews – eg Jesus Camp.

4.       Participatory Documentaries rest on the belief that the filmmaker is best able to create an authentic representation of events if they are personally involved and have intimate knowledge of the subject; it is a filmmaker’s attempt to recount their own experience with the world, engaging in social issues via interviews and footage of historical events – eg Michael Moore’s documentaries such as Supersize Me.

5.       Reflexive Documentaries call the process of presentation and the techniques of realism into question by self-consciously showing the audience that they are watching a representation of the truth. Dramatizations are common in this mode as are self-reflexive techniques, such as direct addresses to the camera – eg Forbidden Lie$.

6.       Performative Documentaries address the audience emotionally and expressively, seeking to communicate different experiences of reality from a subjective position, freely utilizing expressive techniques such as cinematography and music – eg Touching the Void.

Now you understand the constructed nature of the ‘truth’ in all documentaries, you are in a better position to assess the representation constructed in your chosen text and the various ways in which conventions unique to the screen medium have contributed to the documentary’s invited readings. In order to develop a persuasive argument regarding the nature and the intentions of your chosen documentary, you should answer the following questions”:

What ‘truth’ regarding Australian culture is this film trying to convey?
Whose attitudes and values does this version of reality endorse? Whose does it offend?
What documentary conventions have been used in the construction of this ‘truth’?


With thanks to Kelvin Grove State High School handout - Australian Film Festival.





YEAR 12 - NOVEL - METAMORPHOSIS by Frank Kafka - BOOK REVIEW

This short novella is told in three parts...


Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect (BUG). It was as if he was suddenly armor-plated. When he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position. He was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. (Paraphrase of the first few lines of the story.)

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. The opening sentence is regarded as one of the best in literature. 

This novella is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. 

As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man." Not that modern man is in danger of waking as an insect, but the dissociation between mind and body is something to ponder--what makes us human?

Read it free online, thanks to the Gutenberg Project.



YEAR 12 - NOVEL - THE METAMORPHOSIS by Frank Kafka - KEY FACTS

FULL TITLE · The Metamorphosis

AUTHOR · Franz Kafka

TYPE OF WORK · Short story/novella

GENRE · Absurdism

LANGUAGE OF ORIGINAL TEXT · German

TIME/PLACE WRITTEN · Prague, Eastern Europe, 1912

DATE FIRST PUBLISHED · 1915

 PUBLISHER · Kurt Wolff Verlag

 NARRATOR · The narrator is an anonymous figure who recounts the events of the story in a flat, neutral tone.

POINT OF VIEW · The narrator speaks exclusively in the third person, focusing primarily on the thoughts, feelings, and actions of Gregor Samsa. The narrator only describes events that Gregor sees, hears, remembers, or imagines from the actions around him.

TONE · The narrator’s tone is flat and unchanging, describing even the most outlandish events in a neutral fashion.

TENSE · Past tense

SETTING (TIME) · Unspecified, though references to trains and streetcars suggest the late-nineteenth century or early twentieth century

SETTING (PLACE) · The Samsa family’s apartment in an unspecified city

PROTAGONIST · Gregor Samsa

OTHER MAJOR CHARACTERS · His parents and sister, GRETE.

MAJOR CONFLICT · Gregor Samsa struggles to reconcile his humanity with his transformation into a giant bug (insect).

RISING ACTION · When Gregor Samsa wakes up inexplicably transformed into a giant bug, he must handle the consequences in terms of his understanding of himself and his relationship with his family

CLIMAX · Unable to bear the thought that all evidence of his human life will be removed from his room, he clings to the picture of the woman in furs, startling Grete and the mother and leading the father to attack him

FALLING ACTION · Gregor, injured in the father’s attack, slowly weakens, venturing out of his room once more to hear Grete play the violin and dying shortly thereafter

THEMES · (Topical issues that run through the story.) The absurdity of life; the disconnect between mind and body; the limits of sympathy; alienation

MOTIFS · (A recurring element of symbolic significance.) Metamorphosis; sleep and rest; money

SYMBOLS · (symbol is a person, place, or object that has a literal meaning and also stands for something larger, such as an idea or an emotion.) The picture of the woman in furs; the father’s uniform; food

FORESHADOWING · Gregor is seriously injured after he leaves the room a second time and he stops eating and sleeping, foreshadowing his eventual death; the family gradually takes less interest in Gregor, foreshadowing their decision to get rid of him.