A key consideration in responding to any documentary is the question as to whether it portrays what could be determined as “the truth.” This presupposes that it is possible to define “truth,” certainly a debatable issue. Categories such as “fiction” versus “reality”—frequently employed in discussing documentaries, may be equally difficult to define. Fiction often portrays certainly “realities” or is described as “realistic.”

The concept of “truth” requires an analysis of the degree to which a documentary captures the complexities of or alternative perspectives on a particular event, institution, experience, or phenomenon. Propaganda presents only one, biased version on an event, institution, experience, or phenomenon. Effective documentaries attempt to portray different, competing perspectives through, for example, interviewing people who provide alternative versions of the same event or person.

“Truth” is often defined in terms of verisimilitude—the extent to which the images or signs in the documentary are accurate to the actual site, persons, or events—as opposed to portraying a site, person, or event in an inaccurate, distorted, or false manner, or if it is deceptive—through omitting or leaving out important information. For example, a documentary about a high school would be considered as untruthful if it left out primary information about the nature of the student body or deterioration in the school building. However, simply judging “truth” on the basis of verisimilitude ignores the role of the experience of the audience and the audience’s ways of constructing the meaning what is portrayed through responding to the documentary.

For example, some critics have argued that Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine contains some distorted information about the relationships between murder rates and gun use/ownership, as well as the version of American history as portrayed in the animation clip.

David Hardy: Bowling for Columbine: Documentary or Fiction?

However, rather than assume that the “truth” is inherent in the documentary text itself, it is useful to consider the ways in which audiences extract certain “truths” about gun violence and culture through their experience with the documentary.

Randolf Jordan argues that determining the “truth” in viewing documentaries depends on audiences’ meaning-making processes of organizing and judging perceptions of what it portrayed, as opposed to the actuality of the images.

Truth, as has been suggested here, might best be found through the concept of bridging the gaps between that with which we are presented in order to construct meaning from it. Be they the gaps between the digitization of film material and the original film, the digital manipulation of images and indexical images, contradictions in documentary modes of representation, or the tensions between documentary and fictional space as exemplified by the use of animals on screen, our minds search for truth by reconciling these tensions through a process of meaning construction. At the heart of such reconciliation is the concept of the middle ground, that stable centrifuge around which all perception is built, the space that lies between the disjointed elements of filmic representation that we must piece together to find truth.

Randolf Jordan The Gap: Documentary Truth between Reality and Perception, OffScreen

Students could discuss issues of “truth” in documentaries by first selecting a site, person(s), or event about which they would make a documentary, for example, their school or their sports team. Working in small groups, they could then discuss the “truths” they know about this site, person(s), or event that they would attempt to capture, for example, that there are considerable tension between the school administration and the students in their school over issues of dress and free speech. They could then discuss the techniques they would employ to portray these truths—which people they would interview, what questions they would ask, what events or images they would employ, and how they would engage their audiences. They could the present their ideas to each other to discern how potential audiences would respond to or understand the truths they were attempting to encourage audiences to explore.

Students could also debate their alternative responses to the truths they infer from viewing documentaries. In their Webquest, Bowling for Columbine: The Quest for Truth, Magan Gaffey and Meghan Scott ask students to explore alternative explanations for the high rate of gun deaths in America. Students examine information provided on different sites about the alternative explanations for this high gun death rate and debate the validity of these explanations.

Module 11: Word document

Traditional versus Cinema Verite Documentary

Cinema Verite Documentary

Propaganda Documentary: Blatant Selectivity

Documentary and “the Truth”

The Docudrama

Mock Documentary

Music Documentaries

Sports Documentaries

Televised Documentaries

Reality Television

Documentary and Cultures

Studying Social Issues or Topics through Documentary

Student-Produced Documentaries

Final Task

References