Documentary (Film Studies)

This article stems from a panel we jointly convened at the i-Docs 2018 Symposium, where we presented a series of provocations with a view to generating a new theoretical framework for i-docs. These provocations were inspired by all aspects of Mikhail Bakthin's concept of polyphony, from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. This article presents these provocations and reflects further on them. A number of key issues are documented, expanded and commented upon, as a potential framework for further research, including multiplicity, the chronotope, dialogism and interaction. We propose that these lead to new ways of approaching complexity. With the aim of using juxtaposition, nonlinearity and layering to break down binaries, the article demonstrates how complexity can be embraced and, crucially, how the simplicity within it can be revealed. In other words, a key proposition here is that we should accept and celebrate complexity as the natural order of things, without needing to deny simplicity. By investigating several theoretical aspects of Bakthin's wider idea of polyphony, this article identifies some areas for potential development and offers input for further research, particularly in relation to the concepts of heteroglossia, carnival and aesthetics. This article is an expanded version of our " provocations " , a series of ideas and stimuli designed to provoke debate and set the scene for a collaborative panel session on " The Poetics and Politics of Polyphony ". We organised and hosted this session at the i-Docs 2018 Symposium held in Bristol, UK on 21–23 March 2018, based on our combined long-term and ongoing research into the subject (Aston and Odorico). 1 In the spirit of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, our provocations were designed to start a dialogue between us, our guests and the audience, through which we endeavoured to create an equal and open platform for the generation and exchange of ideas. A number of key issues came out of this dialogue, which we document and comment upon here as framings for further research. The structure of this article is based on the order in which we presented our provocations, using our set of six slides from the symposium, followed by a list of keywords that emerged from the ensuing discussion. As we use this structure to talk through our ideas, this is not a typical linear essay, but a series of inputs for further analysis, with certain aspects focussed on in more detail. The article also includes a few additional slides, where we have expanded upon points we first made at the symposium. Overall, the aim of the article is to explore areas of synergy with Bakhtin's thinking on polyphony, and to begin to reflect on the theoretical and practical contribution of a dialogic approach to the field of i-docs.

El álbum reproduce todas las fotografías y los retratos del poeta hechos durante su vida. Además, incluye un disco compacto con las únicas imágenes fílmicas que se conservan del poeta, tomadas durante el II Congreso Internacional de Escritores para la Defensa de la Cultura en 1937.

This dissertation investigates the social world of contemporary filmmakers in the Middle East and the way they use visual media to re-imagine existent forms of identity, envision new modes of social agency, and transform public culture in the face of dramatic instability. In the wake of the Lebanese civil war and through the tenuous postwar period, video art and experimental documentary have critiqued the politics of representation and negotiated the theoretical and structural difficulties in representing the war. These artists have activated intersections where experimental media has generated a vibrant visual culture by both building on local notions of cosmopolitanism and by participating in transnational sites of postcolonial representation. Methodologically, I employ ethnography to grapple with the public culture of Beirut as a site of avant-garde experimentation, but also to examine the city as a contested site affected by periods of rapid growth, intense violence, and urban reconstruction. To explain this cultural phenomenon, I advance the idea of ‘post-orientalist aesthetic’ to describe a mode of intellectual critique and artistic style that goes beyond Edward Said’s critique to give greater attention to self-representation in the post-911 period. This aesthetic interrogates western representational practices and also develops a localized critical analysis of Middle Eastern visual culture. This aesthetic informs a better understanding of postwar subjectivity, particularly in the way memory and lived experience becomes mediated through the materiality of objects, images, and architecture affectively inscribed with destruction and violence. The notion of the archive or the personal collection becomes of particular interest here; especially in the way these artifacts embody personalized narratives and testimonials that push back from abstracted notions of a monolithic historical narrative. Drawing on visual anthropology, media ethnography, and nonwestern film theory, this text examines the way these artists challenge realist modes of representation by utilizing both ethnographic and artistic approaches to grapple with the experience of everyday violence. In order to explore methodologies for conducting visual research in conflict zones, I conclude with an experimental auto-ethnography that appropriates these aesthetics in an effort to interrogate my positionality as an American researcher in the Middle East.

Friedrich Nietzsche is presented in this essayistic documentary film as a fascinating, questionable and sometimes repulsive philosopher whose influence goes far beyond the boundaries of the academic world. As a representative of perspective thinking he is regarded as a pioneer of modernism and postmodernism. Of utmost importance for his life and work was the tiny Swiss village Sils Maria, the only place that he visited again and again during his nomadic years and where much of his work was created. The film conveys a tangible impression of the area and how this charismatic place must have influenced Nietzsche's thinking and feeling. For the first time in a film are shown some of the scribbled sheets from the time of Nietzsche's mental derangement at the clinic in Jena. The majority of the interviewees in the film are academics related the Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria.

See more info and table of contents here:

http://catalinbrylla.com/cognitive-theory-and-documentary/

This edited collection explores the intersection between cognitive and documentary film studies in light of the latest discoveries in the affective and cognitive sciences. Given that most Western societies are mass-mediated cultures in which “reality” is understood through factual media, documentary film has significantly informed the consolidation of the audience’s emotional and cognitive understanding of the world. This understanding is informed by the interplay between two dimensions inherent in the reception of documentary film texts: Firstly, the extra-textual dimension, where truth assertions establish a strong indexical link between representations and their real-life counterparts, and secondly, the intra-textual dimension, where narrative and aesthetic strategies are employed to achieve emotional and cognitive engagement. This interplay has arguably resulted in documentaries exhibiting a far greater potential than fiction films to impact on our attitudes towards, and interaction with, the world, but also on the construction of our own social, cultural, and individual identities.

There has been little convergence between cognitive film theory and documentary film studies. Cognitive film scholars have largely focused on the analysis of fiction film, whilst documentary scholars have deemed cognitive models too limited in that they address only the hardwired attributes of audience reception, thus hypothesizing a universal body of spectators and dismissing individual, social, cultural and historical contexts of authorship and spectatorship. However, a new wave of cognitive film theory has moved from neo-formalist and purely cognitive concerns towards the study of emotional and embodied film engagement, taking into account practical, social, cultural and individual aspects; these in turn can explore fundamental questions within documentary film theory and practice. Thus, cognitive and emotional models have the potential to examine not only narrative-driven and expository documentaries, but also more contemporary and experimental formats, such as essay films, participatory documentaries, docu-dramas, and docu-musicals. In our opinion, this enables an alternative and more scientifically rigorous pursuit of issues central to documentary film studies in areas as varied as ethics, performance, character engagement, mediation and realism.

The book explores a cognitive framework for understanding documentary film texts, production practices, institutions and spectatorship. It seeks an empirically grounded understanding of the reception of documentary films, as well as their production and exhibition, establishing the practitioner or institution as a socio-cultural entity driven by similar emotional and cognitive mechanisms that inform the audience before, during and after the viewing process.

History is full of passages that evidences the consequences of decisions taken for those in Power (political, ideological, economic, cultural, among others) affects individual's lives. The interpretation of such events leads to discover the inner contradictions within humanistic ideas and conceptions. Traditionally, it is used to research about this issues by means of literary and rhetoric forms, nevertheless, nowadays, it is increasing the frequency of this topics been treated by audiovisual media. The current term paper aims to demonstrate the humanistic values within three documentary films, emphasizing in the usage of technical-expressive resources pointed to problematize the complexity of human conduct and the relationships among social beings.

Essay that tries to explore the force that pushes and motivates two different documentary directors :  Frederic Wiseman and Werner Herzog. in the core it is about the essence of film-making, which is inspiring these two types of documentary practices. It has been written in my second year of film studies at UCA (Farnham).

Il cinema di Alberto Grifi, regista e sperimentatore: breve panoramica sul cinema sperimentale italiano, Grifi e la lotta alle forme del potere attraverso il cinema e gli altri media, la documentazione della lotta antipsichiatrica degli anni '70.

Most of us practitioners of the documentary genre today were brought up on The “Films Division documentary” which always celebrated the promise of modernization. There was little or no space for voices of dissent and peoples narratives. The primary format was that of the all- encompassing, Voice of God, male narration, guiding the audience through a pre meditated course, thus disallowing them to engage with or believe in the scenario that was unfolding in front of them on the screens. These films were mandatorily shown in cinema theatres all over the country, a time used by most to go out for a smoke or to eat popcorn!
This rather obvious disconnect between what was being projected & what was being perceived fuelled the imagination of a few who for the first time expressed an Independent vision & voice in the Indian Documentary, a definite departure from the existing format, which went beyond mere dissemination of information & became representative of the marginalized & the downtrodden…

Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context 13.2 (2020): 69-95

In an effort to reshape its international reputation, North Korea has in recent years sought to market abroad a run of documentaries and dramas featuring students and children. This essay explores the ways in which North Korean and international commentators have argued that the films in question reflect one or another reality. For the North Korean commentators, the works encapsulate life in the son'gun or "military-first" era instituted by Kim Jong-il in the late 1990s. For the international commentators, they provide a platform on which the North Korean youth reveal themselves as not wholly supportive of the system under which they are made to live. While the films have in each case been pressed into the service of an operative politics of truth, attention to their profound ambiguity unsettles the assumption that the reality of life in North Korea can invariably be reduced to a dichotomy between the suppressed citizenry and the totalitarian state.

Der Begriff des Interface kategorisiert die Ausprägungsstufen einer kommunikationsstabilisierenden Schnittstelle als Interaktionsmechanismus, wobei die Interaktion von maschinellen Komponenten (Hardware, Software) sowie die vielfältigen Interaktionen zwischen UserIn und Maschine zur Geltung gebracht werden.

Video/sound recorders with high data storage capacities, hi-resolution and low light capabilities of miniature high-definition tapeless cameras , solid state surveillance cams, dashboard and body cameras and most crucially, the ubiquitous smart phone with capabilities for live-streaming via social media are transforming the dynamics of the interactions between law enforcement officials and citizenry in the United States. That both public and private law enforcement officers in the United States are almost always armed in their confrontations with citizens is deeply connected to the often antagonistic and violent history of American law enforcement. The emerging continuous, single shot, digital video documents that people are self-streaming and recording as protection when encountering the police and other figures of state authority have begun to transform the national discourse on police violence. These videos are documents whose narrative directions are still evolving in the moment of recording, so outcomes and meanings of the events seen and heard cannot be neatly narrated. Instead, they reveal the immediate present as an unfolding problem for representation , which is often incomplete and always contingent. Thus the very in-determinacy of outcome caused by the presence of the cameras becomes a stage for resistance to state authority. What the recordings document gives insight into what I am calling the time of resistance, a performative mode in which the technology allows the filmer to destabilizethe temporality of their interaction with authority, by shifting the dynamic of power in the interaction and, in the process, momentarily denaturalizing the terms of power.

Co může o filmu prozradit filmová věda, disciplína, která jej uchopuje kriticky, historicky i teoreticky? Film se vlivem technologií i diváckých nároků neustále proměňuje a s tím se mění způsoby jeho vnímání, interpretace a zkoumání.


Pulzujícími tématy tohoto oboru jsou filmozofie, neuroestetický přístup k vnímání filmů, ale také studium cinefilie, výrobních a distribučních mechanismů či festivalů. Obor filmových studií tak je prostorem poznání, v němž se potkávají různé sociální i empirické vědy. Návštěvu kina tato hutná a krásná kniha zpestří úvahami o distribučních strategiích či o fungování vlastního vnímání.

"Forms, Politics, Makers, and Contexts:  Basic Issues for a Theory of Radical Political Documentary," in Thomas Waugh, ed., Show Us Life:  Towards a History and Aesthetics of Radical Documentary Film (Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984), pp. 318-342.

RAM (Revista Archivo Manoseado) es una publicación digital que tiene como objetivos estimular el estudio, la reflexión, la creación y la divulgación de las obras hechas total o parcialmente a partir de material de archivo propio o ajeno (llámese: apropiación, reutilización, mezcla, edición, resignificación, usurpación, reciclaje, collage, etc.).
Nº1, Octubre 2016 / Chile ISSN 0719-8043
Edición: Colectivo Miope, Rodrigo Araya Tacussis.
Diseño y diagramación: Colectivo Miope.
Revisión de textos: Pablo Molina Guerrero.

Since publication of Thomas More‘s «Utopia» more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world; positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship – and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries.

ABSTRACT: We will analyse three types of mise-en-scène in documentary as an expression of personality transfigurated into characters. We will name them direct-acting; constructed-acting and self constructed-acting. To those acting expression we find correspond stylistic types of acting in documentary history.

RESUMO: Abordaremos três tipos de encenação, como expressão de personalidades em cena transfiguradas em personagens: 1)a encenação-direta de personalidades públicas (corpos com presença social fixada na mídia; 2)a encenação-direta de personalidades anônimas (o espectador não reconhece o corpo/face/voz figurados); 3)a encenação-direta que remete ao corpo próprio do cineasta (a encenação ancora-se em quem sustenta a tomada como sujeito-da-câmera:seja como imagem privada, seja em situação de per¬formance).

La comunicación se centra en el cine documental realizado durante el periodo de la Transición española que aúna la crónica negra y la denuncia social, mediante el análisis comparativo de dos películas relevantes del periodo por su peculiar apuesta discursiva.

“El asesino de Pedralbes (Gonzalo Herralde, 1978) conjuga técnicas propias del “Nuevo Periodismo” americano –una larga entrevista a José Cerveto, asesino confeso del crimen del matrimonio de la alta burguesía catalana cometido en 1974– con los moldes dramáticos propios de la crónica negra del tardofranquismo español. El resultado es un ejercicio cinematográfico atípico que parte de un material estrictamente documental ¬¬para construir un relato con los esquemas propios de la ficción.

“Queridísimos verdugos” (Basilio Martín Patino, 1977) confronta el testimonio de tres ejecutores de sentencias operativos en la España del Franquismo de los setenta y disecciona en formato de crónica negra todos los vértices que se dan cita en la teoría y praxis de la pena de muerte bajo la modalidad del garrote –verdugos, reos, representantes de la ley, psiquiatras, vecinos y familiares, medios de comunicación…¬– superando en sus intenciones la mera denuncia o el abolicionismo.

Ambos filmes ejercen una crítica social del tiempo del franquismo crepuscular al denunciar sus paupérrimas condiciones de vida y las políticas punitivas todavía empleadas. Simultáneamente, construyen un oscuro relato biográfico en primera persona de los asesinos y verdugos protagonistas que indaga en las causas psicológicas que les abocaron a la ejecución de sus víctimas.

The chapter as a whole illustrates some of the possibilities and problems currently haunting the area of Jewish participation in the making and the history of feminist art in the United States.The signficance that gender, class, Jewishness, Marxism, and nationalism have for Martha Rosler is evident throughout her work, though her artistic practice has only recently been written about from such an intersectional perspective.

This essay provides an introductory analysis of Alisa Lebow's interactive documentary Filming Revolution. It approaches the work from the point of view of new media, rather than documentary, arguing that the work adopts an important non–narrative form as a way to describe revolution, and to prevent the foreclosure that story enforces. This essay is experimental to the extent that it tries (with mixed fortune) to introduce the essayistic into scholarly writing, and, perhaps, tries to find room for some of the qualities of the essay film in a personal academic practice. I don't know what this is, which is a strange place from which to begin. This is unsettling, for as an academic I am trained and acculturated to displaying a certainty of manner — a certainty that many of my students and conference colleagues would attest I have down pat. It begins from Bristol. It begins from Alisa Lebow's presentation in Bristol at the 2016 i– Docs conference about her interactive documentary Filming Revolution. It begins from what I was reading during my thirty hours of travel between Melbourne and Bristol. It begins from the question that gnawed and nagged at me after Alisa's keynote in Bristol. It begins in my body. Not much of an introduction, is it? This writing reintroduces hypertext as a material way of making and performing knowledge and proposes it as a valuable precursor to interactive documentary and what I am describing as computational nonfiction. What I say here about hypertext, Filming Revolution as an interactive documentary, and story, are a prolegomena toward what computational nonfiction might be as a broader field that might encompass computers, technodigital practice, and networks. Oh, it was originally written as hypertext using Storyspace, and translating it into something more linear and sequential sees its looping rhythms, redundancies, and recursiveness become clumsy stutterings and repetitions.

The entire work is available for free at http://viewjournal.eu/index.php/view/article/view/JETHC113/259

Briar March’s award-winning documentary There Once Was an Island chronicles the lives of the Polynesian inhabitants of Takuu, a small atoll in the Pacific, who are faced with the gradual submersion of their home due to sea level rise.  Applying Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence” to the ecological and political processes shown in the film, the chapter argues that March’s documentary is a eco-cosmopolitan project reaching out to new forms of solidarity.

En este trabajo se abordan las industrias culturales o industrias creativas en El Salvador con énfasis en el sector audiovisual y la producción de documentales. Se retoman los ejemplos de dos producciones salvadoreñas del año 2010: “UNO, la historia de un gol” y “La última ofensiva”; ambas fueron elegidas teniendo en cuenta su origen, sus temáticas, su difusión, exhibición y comercialización, destacando el hecho que fueron los únicos documentales que en este año se exhibieron en salas de cine. El reto de este trabajo es documentar un fenómeno interesante y promover el interés en continuar la investigación.

Qu'est-ce que le cinéma direct ? Une forme ? Un style ? Une sous-catégorie du cinéma documentaire caractérisée par l'absence de mise en scène ? Une utopie cinématographique depuis longtemps dépassée ? A l'heure où le cinéma synchrone et léger, aujourd'hui numérique, est devenu un langage commun accessible à tous, que reste-t-il de ce moment où les documentaristes aspiraient à faire des films aussi improvisés et perméables que la vie elle-même ? Alors que chacun peut filmer avec son téléphone ses enfants ou l'épicier du coin, que nous apprend cette volonté de porter à l'écran le destin de l'homme ordinaire? Et à l'heure de la « post-vérité », que retient-on de cette conviction de pouvoir dire vrai ? Si le terme « cinéma direct » embarrasse, tout comme le mot « documentaire », c'est parce que l'un comme l'autre posent le problème épineux de la mise en scène du réel ou de son hypothétique absence. Le constat de ce déni récurrent nous conduit à envisager le cinéma direct d'abord comme un retour à la trompeuse simplicité de « l'esthétique de la vue » (Tom Gunning) et aux enjeux d'une dramaturgie du regard, puis comme le prolongement du « documentaire dialectique » théorisé par John Grierson dans les années 1930. Dans les années 1960, les cinéastes et les ethnologues qui font et pensent le cinéma direct répondent aux questionnements de l'époque (le destin de l'idée communiste, la décolonisation, l'émergence de l'idée de démocratie participative au profit des minorités) par un art de la mise en scène fondé sur la participation et le feedback. Grâce à l'éclosion de la parole filmée et par le biais de dispositifs réflexifs, leurs films interrogent le potentiel politique et épistémologique du cinéma. Chacun désormais peut revendiquer le droit d'être filmé (Walter Benjamin), de se mettre en scène et de questionner la vérité des images. Ce faisant le cinéma direct, au moyen d'une dialectique qui lui est propre (le flux et la structure, le direct et le différé, la présentation et la représentation) est devenu un espace pré-politique : la mise en scène s'y conçoit comme le moyen de penser la place et la participation de l'homme du commun (filmeurs, filmés, spectateurs) dans cet espace que le film découpe dans le réel. C'est en cela que le cinéma direct constitue une matrice, plus pertinente que jamais, pour le cinéma documentaire contemporain.

De manière originale, en suivant les skateurs de Tokyo, cet ouvrage offre une lecture de la ville par ses revers, ses lieux délaissés et ses « temps morts ». Dévoilant des aspects cachés de la vie citadine, le livre propose un regard sur la construction, la diffusion et la consommation des images produites par les skateurs, comme système particulier d’identification à un territoire. Grâce aux compétences qu’ils développent, ces praticiens composent le paysage de Tokyo à leur image. De cet imaginaire partagé, émergent les tactiques qu’ils mettent sur pied, leur permettant d’occuper les lieux et de diffuser leurs prouesses dans des visuels à l’esthétisme codifié. Ainsi, la ville se dévoile avec ses parcs, ses quartiers, ses entre-deux délaissés et laisse apparaître une organisation, entre lieux publics, semi-publics et privés.

Anthropologue social et urbaniste, Julien Glauser est conservateur adjoint au Musée d’ethnographie de Neuchâtel. Spécialiste du Japon, il a soutenu une thèse de doctorat en cotutelle avec l’Institut d’ethnologie de l’Université de Neuchâtel et l’Institut d’urbanisme de l’Université de Paris-Est, intitulée « Revers de Tokyo : images et imaginaires du skateboard. Recherche en anthropologie visuelle. » À côté de son activité de muséologue, il a une charge de cours à l’EPFL et continue ses recherches sur le rôle de l’image comme support à la création de paysages urbains. De plus, il développe une activité de vidéaste et de photographe.

American observational documentary pioneer D.A. Pennebaker traces his embrace of film-making as a ‘witnessing process’ that allows him to reach a unique understanding of his subjects in this conversation on several rarely discussed films: the highly formative early shorts Baby (1954) and Daybreak Express
(1953–1957), the Drew Associates oddity David (1961), as well as Wild 90 (1968), Eat the Document (1972) and 1 P.M. (1972) – collaborations with Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan and Jean-Luc Godard, respectively. He addresses the meaning of cinéma vérité, Godard’s ‘reckless’ approach to film-making, and the sadness behind his second, and ultimately abandoned, collaboration with Dylan.

The book remains the primary, most worthy route through which scholarly knowledge is disseminated. With the easy access to low-cost technology, new opportunities are emerging to expand knowledge transfer beyond the academic book. Using a methodology of image-generating discourse, we argue here for the need for architectural researcher–designers to explore new “undisciplined” corporeal publication. From an ontological position, we present a radical space of research that is audiovisual, bodily and interactive, participatory, archival inspired by ethnography and architecture. We argue for a shift in research methodology to agency whereby academia, industry and audiences work together as a research team.

Borat 's fictional voyage - complete with interviews, staged encounters, and provocations - is not so distant from the documentary tradition, which has been on shaky ontological and epistemological ground since Auguste and Louis Lumire staged their first actualities and Robert Flaherty enlisted Allakariallak to play Nanook in Nanook of the North (1922), a re-enactment of past Inuit life. In an era in which digital manipulations and suspect documentary practices call the truth-status of the mode into doubt, Borat illustrates a difficult middle ground: a thrilling yet slippery territory that defies easy dichotomies of truth and fiction, us and them, primitive and civilised, mockumentary and documentary, reference and performance.

The Liberation War of 1971 (Muktijuddho in Bengali) is the most significant and celebrated event in the history of Bangladesh. Covering the films made during the Liberation War, this paper aims to explore the language and aesthetics of wartime films of Bangladesh. The traumatic suffering, the human rights abuses against the Bangladeshis, and their revolt against the Pakistani army were the subject of numerous documentary films during the period. Local and international film makers recorded the unfolding events of the war. Scrutinizing the interests and perspectives of different directors both from the local and the international arena, this paper considers how wartime films tackled and negotiated the issues of atrocity, memory, and witness. In addition, I closely analyze the film Stop Genocide (1971) by the Bangladeshi film director, Zahir Raihan (1935-72). Stop Genocide is acclaimed as the most authentic and influential visual text in shaping the cultural memories of the war. Along with its third cinema aesthetics, I look at its re-inscription of gender stereotypes of nationalist struggle. I also pay attention to the complex relationship between language, culture, ethics, identity, and other discourses related to violence and suffering.

Confronted with the widespread commercial success of reality television in the early 2000s novelist and cultural critic Salman Rushdie lamented, ‘The television set, once so idealistically thought of as our window on the world, has become a dime-store mirror instead’.  His widely syndicated article entitled ‘Reality TV: a dearth of talent and the death of morality’ proposed that ‘success on this scale insists on being examined, because it tells us things about ourselves, or ought to’. His own examination, which was critical rather than analytical, made two observations: firstly, that the ideal of television had been degraded by Reality TV (the dime-store mirror) and secondly that Reality TV was both ethically dubious and socially damaging. The connection between these two readings of the Reality TV phenomenon was less than clear except to say that it seemed to be effected through a robust disapproval of the untalented and unremarkable people parading across the screen. Rushdie asked rhetorically, ‘Who needs images of the world’s rich otherness, when you can watch these half-familiar avatars of yourself – these half-attractive half-persons – enacting ordinary life under weird conditions?’ It seemed that the ubiquitous ‘tawdry’ exhibitionism of the untalented ‘half-person’, which in Rushdie’s terms rendered ‘real values’ such as modesty, decency and intelligence redundant, not only damaged the ideal function of television to document the richness of real life but it also undermined the wider values that underpin civil society. 

Rushdie was only one of a number of commentators whose evaluation of the significance of Reality TV was formed along these lines; linking Reality TV’s dilution of serious television culture to a wider culture of declining public values.  As Holmes and Jermyn have noted, definitions of Reality TV, discussions of its forms, content, claims to the ‘real’, its inclusion of ordinary people and even its economics have all been underpinned and structured, sometimes covertly, by invested cultural values, hierarchies of taste and stratifications of social difference.  At the centre of complaint lodges bemusement and the question mockingly posed by Peter Bazalgette, why are ‘all these awful ordinary people on television’?    Bearing in mind this context, the essay begins with a consideration of Reality TV as an innovative and challenging incursion into the established field of documentary and factual television culture. It then steps back to consider its broader significance as a cultural phenomenon and the values that it appeared to endorse, challenge or contravene. In doing so, it aims to highlight an issue spanning these two areas of debate, that is the prevalence of the unschooled, ordinary person on popular factual television.

The documentary depicts the journey of a teenage girl and her mother who move to California in 2012 because of the Syrian civil war. Together they learn to live in a different culture and face challenges to their traditions - ­all while endeavoring to build a better future.