The Observational mode of documentary vs. The Participatory mode

         In  documentary filmmaking, there are many ways a certain subject can be documented. Documentaries on similar subjects can end up being very different, depending on who’s directing the project. Different styles, approaches, and messages are inevitable when you have two different people editing footage, giving varying amounts of agency to their social actors, and making their own decisions in regards to ethical engagement with the social actors.  To understand the differences between the styles of two different documentarians, it is useful to consider how each person would document the same subject.

            

                 Two documentarians that exemplify distinctly different styles of film documentation are directors Jennie Livingston and the directing duo Albert and David Maysles. Livingston, who is often associated with the participatory mode of documentary film, often engages directly with her social actors. She sets up interviews with them and asks them specific questions in an attempt to hear their side of the story. The Maysles brothers on the other hand are more closely associated with the observational mode of documentary film, stemming from the “cinema verite” approach of the Italian neo-realists.  Their films consist mostly of capturing subjects in their natural state, unguided by interview questions and staged scenes. The Maysles brothers prefer to take a step back and not influence events in any way in an attempt to document reality as honestly and as truthfully as possible.

My hypothetical documentary centers on a high school student (Charlie) who is obsessed with politics. Charlie’s obsession with politics is a result of the loss of his father (a congressman) who was killed in a fatal car accident. The documentary emphasizes Charlie’s attempts to create a “political issues club” in his high school. The main conflict in this documentary becomes apparent when nobody in the school seems interested in political issues. Although this is the main conflict within the narrative of this documentary, the two different directing teams will have very different methods of presenting to the audience the footage they’ve captured and thus creating different voices and messages.

 Before we get into how each director would structure this documentary, we first need to establish exactly what the different methods consist of. We also need to determine how much agency is given to the social actors and the ethical issues associated with each portrayal. In Jennie Livingston’s film Paris Is Burning (1990), she gives the social actors a large amount of agency. We can see evidence of this through the way she conducts her interviews. She allows the social actors to address the camera and speak for themselves. They directly administer to us their testament. Whether or not the audience wants to believe their tales is up to them of course  but agency is given to the social actors (I believe) to correct misconceptions. There is much evidence to support this claim of the social actors having a large amount of agency. We see it in an interview with Pepper Labejia. “The house of Labejia is the most legendary house above all of them”. “New York City is wrapped up in being Labejia”. Are these claims true? We don’t know for sure but Livingston is giving them the freedom to choose whether or not they want to be truthful. That act of allowing the social actors to decide for themselves is a clear depiction of granted agency. We are being informed at the whim of the speaker. In another interview, Venus Extravaganza tells us about a date that went horribly wrong. “He said you’re a freak, you’re a victim of aids”. I would think that if someone is angrily passing judgment and insulting a person, they wouldn’t take the time to call them a “victim”. In other words the man most likely said “you have aids”. Venus’s inclusion of the word “victim” is strong evidence that she is manipulating information. That being said, it is safe to assume that in a Livingston documentary, the social actors act as the gatekeepers of information. They are deciding what and what not to tell. Is this ethical for Livingston to do? Since the social actors are all giving their own tailored stories, one can say that the act of allowing them to give us false information is actually hurting the integrity of the documentary. All these concerns maybe relieved once one realizes that Livingston decides ultimately what gets put into the movie and what gets left out. In Salesman there are very important ethical concerns on how the brothers acquired their footage. “We told the customers that we were doing a human interest piece on Paul” (DVD interview). There is speculation that these people Paul is selling to aren’t completely aware of how big their role is in this film. I believe that the Maysles brothers unfairly understated the roles of these customers to them, in order to invade their homes.

In salesman, the social actors don’t privately give their statements to the camera. In fact, most of the social actors act as if the camera wasn't even there. Since the subjects aren't giving us information directly then who is the gatekeeper of information? In this case it is the Maysles brothers. Their authority of government over the amount of information that is presented to the audience is created through the editing and scene selection done during post production. This manipulation of events in post production also obviously calls attention to ethical concerns.

The scene when Paul is talking to his wife on the phone, for example, is a scene that I did not feel comfortable watching. When he starts talking to her in the beginning, he repeats some things she says to him for the guys in the room. This indicates that Paul thinks that nobody can hear his wife on the other end of the line. David Maysles’s sound recorder can hear her though. The moment I knew that this voyeurism had gone too far was when you hear his wife say faintly “this is costing us a lot of money”. Paul panics, rushes to say goodbye and hangs up. The guys in the room don’t know any better because they can’t hear her. But David has revealed (through the taping of Paul’s wife) that Paul is dismissive of his wife’s concerns with the welfare of their family. This reveals a lot about Paul and in my opinion I think goes too far and reveals too much. I immediately had a feeling that I wasn’t supposed to hear that. Whenever we have that feeling we know that we have arrived at our ethical threshold. Nobody is on the phone in Paris is Burning. I would imagine that if Willie Ninja got a call during an interview, Livingston would respect his privacy, stop taping and allow him to take the call. 

(Livingston on the far left with the subjects of Paris is Burning)

 However, we mustn’t look over the fact that in 1969 there was a very different mass media culture. I would imagine that cameras seemed less intrusive to people because the potential of mass media to make someone look idiotic was less understood by the general public given the young age of cinema verte. The subjects of Paris is Burning understood the potential of mass media to reach a large number of people given the times that they lived in. We can see this in an interview with Freddie Pendavis. “If Roy Rogers changes its ways by the time this comes out I will be so upset”. His statements convey to the viewer that he is concerned about exposing his dishonest tendencies to a large number of people. This large audience may include in it, some Roy Rodgers restaurant executives who have the power to change things at the restaurant so they can’t steal food.

In order to make the differences in the two documentarian’s voices clearer, I’ve developed a formula much like Nichols. This hypothetical voice is being spoken by the director and addressed to the audience. For Salesman the voice is saying; “let’s observe them as if we weren’t even there so we can make our own conclusions about them”. For Paris Is Burning the voice says; “Let them tell us about it so we can learn from those who are authorities on the subject”. The first statement boasts that the viewer has the capability of being an authority. The second paints the audience as submissive and totally reliant on the gospel of (for instance) Pepper Labejia.

In Livingston’s version of my hypothetical documentary, I picture interviews with Charlie. He might tell us something to the effect of “kids my age don’t care about politics”. Livingston would grant him agency and respect his opinions on the subject. Shots of Charlie sitting in an empty room during the clubs meeting times would also convey the same message of political illiteracy in today’s youth to the audience. Interviews with kids who don’t care about the club will only prove Charlie’s claims of his casemates’ disengagement with politics. Also, interviews with teachers who say they don’t have an explanation why kids at this age think that this stuff is not important. Interviews with everyone involved will highlight the central conflict because questions that Livingston will ask the subjects will be geared toward that conflict. The film is shaped by the conflict.

The Maysles brothers more intrusive camera, I believe, would capture a very different kind of documentary. Charlie’s more personal problems which are products of his traumatic loss of his father would not go unrecognized by the Maysles brothers. I Picture Charlie and his mother sitting down at the kitchen table for dinner when they talk about dad and how hard it is without him. I can see the mother struggling to make Charlie realize that he doesn’t need to follow in his father’s footsteps if he doesn’t want to. She encourages him to try new things on his own so that Charlie isn’t always reminding her of his father. The message of this film will put more emphasis on how children cope with traumatic events that happen early in childhood. A crowd watching this film would most likely conclude by themselves that “of course he has problems fitting in at school; his father was taken from him in such a horrific way”. In this film the political youth conflict will take a back seat to a more interesting and voyeuristic look into the private lives of Charlie and his mother.

These two different approaches to the same subject of Charlie and his politics club will ultimately result in two very different movies. On one hand we have a social commentary on the small role that politics have on young people’s lives. On the other hand, an expose’ on the lives of those who have been effected by traumatic experiences. Both versions varying in the ethical concerns associated with each and ultimately varying in their perceived validity. Although we can’t speculate too much on what the social actors would say, by dissecting these two films made by the two different directors, we can be confident in our predictions of how their movies about Charlie would turn out. Susan Sontag once said something to the effect of: a camera and a gun are similar in that people act differently when standing before them. Livingston subjects consciously conduct themselves in the way that they want to be seen. The Maysles brothers subjects are not and I believe this has much to do with the cultural understandings of mass media at the time. I’m sure the subjects knew that they would be seen by an audience, but I can damn near guarantee that their subjects did not think they would still be watched and studied by a group of students in upstate New York in the year 2012. These two directors differ in the way in which they use their camera; passively and interactive. In the movies that were made by the directors, you could say the same about the social actors exchange with the camera. 

  Bibliography

1.)    Flinn, Caryl. "Containing Fire: Performance in Paris is Burning." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeanneatte Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. 429-445.              
2.)    "Interview with Albert and David Maysles." Interview by Jack Kroll. Salesman DVD Special Features. The Criterion Collection. 1968. Television.
3.)    ""Paris Is Burning" Director & Drag Queens." Interview by Joan Rivers. The Late Show with Joan Rivers. 1989. Television.