Postclassical Nonfiction; Narration in the Contemporary Documentary

22 Pages·012.273 MB·English

by  Chris Cagle

Postclassical Nonfiction: Narration
in the Contemporary Documentary
by CHRIS CAGLE
Abstract: This article examines contemporary mainstream documentaries for tiie pat-
terns througin wiiich they create meaning and argument. Rather than exhibiting hybrid-
ity, these fiims reiy on postclassicai narration in their combination of traditionai formai
documentary form with direct cinema's open argumentation.
E
ach semester, in my Introducdon to Film Analysis course, I teach a unit on
documentary form, drawing indirecdy on BiU Nichols's now-famous typol-
ogy of the modes of documentary. For the introductory audience, I leave off
the more complicated categories like performative documentary and add a
"pseudodocumentary" or "mockumentary" mode to correspond to one discussed
in the textbook I use. Otherwise, I dudfully describe and illustrate these approaches
to documentary making—expository (direct presentadon of argument), observa-
donal (aiming for direct experience of a phenomenon), interacdve (pardcipatory
reladonship between social actor and documentarist), and refiexive (commentary
on documentary making)—and I suggest how they help one interpret a documen-
tary much as one would read a ficdonal füm. I also use historical examples Uke
ro 1930s government documentary or 1960s cinema vérité to illustrate the categories,
§ much like Nichols does. It can be difficult for novice students (among others) to talk
H about nonficdon füm with analydcal distance, and I remain convinced of the udlity
s of a simplifying model, one that groups füms and provides a vocabulary to discuss
^, how these films create meaning.
g A couple of nagging problems have persisted for me, however. The categories
I work weü enough for selecdvely chosen historical examples but hold less explana-
Q tory power for contemporary work. Even a PBS documentary as formally straight-
s' forward as Bruce Palling's Vietnam: A Television History (1983) is not purely expository
^ or interacdve in its argumentation. The contemporary theatrical feature, the very
S sort of documentary my students are likely to champion, is even further removed
J 1 Bill Nichols, Representing Reaiity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), especially chapter 2; see
I also his addendum on performative documentary in Blurred Boundaries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
•^ 1994) and his reformulation in introduction to Doci/menfa/y (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 2001).
-o Chris Cagle is Assistant Professor in the Film and Media Arts Department at Temple University. His research interests
o inetude postwar Hollywood änema, social theory, and documentary studies. He is currently working on a book on the Hol-
@ lywood social-problem film.
www.cmstudies.org 52 | No. 1 | Fall 2012 45
Cinema Journal 52 | No. 1 i Fall 2012
from the clarity of the modes-of-documentary model. Therefore, to apply a modes-
of-documentary understanding to contemporary documentary is, by necessity, to ac-
knowledge definitional problems.
The response from documentary scholars has varied, but two major views have
challenged Nichols. The first, an anti-foundationalist one, considers taxonomy an
incomplete or problematic endeavor for such a complex beast as nonfiction repre-
sentation. For Stella Bruzzi, for instance, the very drive to taxonomize is proof that
Documentary Studies has not kept up with poststructuralist developments in critical
theory. A second approach is to embrace the confusion of documentary modes. Paul
Ward argues against Bruzzi and others who would throw the baby of categorization
out with the bathwater of taxonomic reification. He writes, "There have always been
so-called 'reflexive' documentaries, and there continue to be 'expository' documen-
taries in the present. It is more to do with how these modes are taken up and used in
specific contexts that is of interest—and this can be conceived as a type of 'hybridity'
in documentary—rather than looking for new modes. "^ Hybridity apdy describes the
stylistic bricolage of a number of "new documentaries," an umbrella term for con-
temporary füms resisting traditional documentary formulas—films such as Tarnation
(Jonathan Caouette, 2003), Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003), and Fah-
renheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004). Ward's line of argument also dovetails with work
on what might be considered non-Griersonian nonfiction genres (the essay film, the
animated documentary, the science füm, and the home movie) or the more poetic and
auteur-oriented art documentary (the works of Werner Herzog or Agnès Varda, say).*
The Documentary Studies research agenda therefore has often seen documentary
modes per se as categories flattening the complexity of documentary or has argued
that contemporary documentary in its art-füm or more mainstream versions is inclined
to hybridity.
To some extent, Bruzzi and Ward are both right. Treating intellectual models as
things-in-themselves is problematic, and new types of contemporary nonfiction me-
dia challenge previously defined documentary forms. (Calling them "postmodern
documentary" is perhaps fitting.) Nonetheless, despite the conceptual problems of
categories, there are regularities in how documentaries present information and en-
gage spectatorial experience. And despite the flourishing of hybrid documentary styles
in the new documentaries, institutionally dominant documentary forms are hybrid
only in the most legalistic sense. Henry Hampton's Eyes on the Prize (1987), for ex-
ample, mixes explanatory written text, interviews, and voice-over narration and hence
2 Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002).
3 Paul Ward, Documentary: The Margins of Reality {Lor\áon: Wallflower Press, 2005), 22. See also Matthew Bernstein,
"Documentaphobia and Mixed Modes: Michael Moore's Roger & Me," in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Barry
Keith Grant and Jeannete Sloniowski (Detroit, Ml: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 397-415.
4 See, for instance. Ward, Documentary; Laura Rascaroli, "The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commit-
ments," Framework 49, no. 2 (Fall 2008): 24-47; Timothy Corrigan, "The Essay Film as a Cinema of Ideas," in
Global Art Cinema, ed. Rosalind Gait and Karl Schoonover (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 218-235; Eric
Ames, "Herzog, Landscape, and Documentary," Cinema Journal A8, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 49-69; James Moran,
There's No Place Like Home Wc/eo (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
46
Cinema Journal 52 I No. 1 I Fall 2012
expository and interactive modes, yet the effect is not truly a mixed narration but
rather a stable formal approach. Anecdotally, I can attest that my students, like me, are
likely to find the film more transparent and coherent in its information, argument, and
emotional experience than "purer" examples of expository or interactive documen-
tary. This paradox deserves unpacking. Where the taxonomies and models of docu-
mentary have moved, in Copernican fashion, from basic generalizations to increased
complications and exceptions, a Keplerian alternative should be possible.
As useful as the modes-of-documentary model is, I propose that institutionally
dominant documentary in the United States tends toward either classical or postclassi-
cal narration. Each combines multiple modes into a coherent and unified meaning sys-
tem. Classical documentary approaches its subject matter with transparent style and
economy of communication. Its mainstay is the hegemonic form of the public-broad-
cast documentary, exemplified by Eyes on the Prize or, more recently. Ken Burns's series;
classical form continues to exert its force as an aesthetic norm today. At the same time,
contemporary documentaries increasingly draw on a looser narration without sacrific-
ing the closure of argument of the traditional documentary. They lie, that is, between
the classical documentary and the alternatives that have challenged classicism. For
this reason, it makes sense to posit the existence of a postclassical documentary that
differs from more traditionalist documentary and from art documentaries by seeking
a middle-ground signification of "democratic" documentary within the context of
Griersonian nonfiction.
Three films illustrate the nature and scope of postclassical documentary narration.
Hoop Dreams (Steve James, Fred Marx, and Peter Gilbert, 1994) was a crossover theatri-
cal feature straddling the Griersonian ethos of pubHc-broadcast documentary and the
emotional identification of narrative füm. Daughter fiom Danang (Gaü Dolgin and Vi-
cente Franco, 2002) is an example of a newer style of public-broadcasting documen-
tary centered on personal narrative, yet recognizably conforming to the conventions
of public-television and social-problem documentaries. Hebetica (Gary Hustwit, 2007),
a film about the eponymous design font, is a theatrical feature in the "quirkumentary"
vein, drawing simultaneously on technology and design cultures and on social his-
tory Each would seem to exemplify hybridity. Hoop Dreams, as some critics have noted,
synthesizes cinema vérité with expository documentary. Daughter fiom Danang imports
the performative documentary into the public-broadcast milieu. Hebetica combines
participatory interviews and expository montage. From another perspective, however,
these mixtures are in fact variations on a common formal and political sensibility. They
are the collective result of an aesthetic rebellion against classical documentary forms
that nonetheless does not sacrifice key classical aims.
As films produced outside of the entertainment industry, these recent documen-
taries have their own institutional history, but in their aesthetic rebellion they parallel
some of the developments in the fiction film over the past decades. They militate
against the notion that dominant aesthetic tendencies in contemporary documen-
tary narration are any more resistant to generalization than the aesthetic tendencies
of earlier, more canonical productions. Beyond examples that mark a rupture from
documentary's Griersonian heritage—whether the auteur documentary, the post-
modern feature documentary, or the new political documentary—a typical form of
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Cinema Journal 52 i No. 1 I Fall 2012
contemporary documentary has been hiding in plain sight, with both continuities and
departures from earüer documentary style.
Classical and Postclassical Documentary Narration. Two examples from docu-
mentaries made roughly a few years apart demonstrate the limits of the modes-of-
documentary model and the broader historical change in how documentaries tend
to be put together. The first, the third episode of Fyes on the Prize, about the Nash-
ville lunch-counter sit-ins, borrows entire scenes from a vérité-style J^BC White Paper
(1960-1980) episode, "Sit-in" (1960). Eyes uses one incident from "Sit-In" as part of
a turning point in the civil rights movement and in the city: the mob attack on an
African American arcade worker. The sequence begins with a social actor's testimony,
as Nashville merchant Bernie Schweid describes in a talking-head interview the effect
of black boycott and white flight on the Nashviüe business community. He intones
over images of disorderly crowds, "That was the main feeüng I remember about those
times: fear." Then, an abstracted voice-over (civil rights figure Julian Bond, who is
credited but nonetheless speaks with voice-of-God authority) remarks that nonpro-
testing African Americans also faced violence. The füm proceeds to a few seconds of
vérité footage (from "Sit-In") of white teens fighting an outnumbered black teenager
before Bond's voice-over returns: "Nashviüe, the moderate Southern city, looked on
in disbelief." The next shot shows an arrest amid a gathered crowd. In a brief scene, a
combination of intellectual montage and sound-image relationship creates a complex
exposition. White violence, the documentary suggests, led to a crisis in the moderate
white Southerner's understanding of race relations, which in turn led to a key turning
point in history.
The second example. Hoop Dreams, creates a similarly complex exposition through
its interplay of editing and sound. In a scene depicting one of its social-actor pro-
tagonists, Arthur Agee, at practice with the St. Joseph's High School basketball team,
voice-over narration speaks over a shot: "Arthur wins the starting point-guard position
on the freshman team." Two shots foüow in the haüway, one framing a slogan on the
wall ("He Gonquers and Labors"), continuing what appears as one motif through-
out the film. A shot of Arthur dribbling and passing the bau cuts to one of Goach
Gene Pingatore watching from the bleachers, and Pingatore's testimony begins in
voice-over as another shot of Arthur appears: "When Arthur started at St. Joseph's,
he was a good kid from what we saw, but he was very immature." Only then does the
film provide the talking-head interview footage for Pingatore's testimony: "He might
have been a little more disruptive, speaking out, getting into childish things." The fol-
lowing shots are of Arthur sulking during a game whüe the voice-over continues: "He
wasn't used to the discipüne or control. He reverted back to his environment, where
he came from." In this brief scene, the documentary suggests an interior insight be-
hind the external appearance of Arthur's not fitting in, as weü as the abstract idea of
social determinism.
What these two examples have in common is their mixing of documentary modes.
In each, expository (voice-over), observational (handheld, silent), and interactive (talk-
ing head) formal devices are combined in a short span of screen time, but in each, no
cinematic punctuation marks the transition from one mode to another. Rather, each
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Cinema Journal 52 I No. 1 I Fall 2012
seamlessly absorbs the spectator in its argument and its invocadon of the social actors'
experiences. One could argue that a given mode, such as the expository, is dominant,
but if so, then why does each seemingly need the other subsidiary modes to get its
informadon across? Remove one mode from either of the two films, and the argument
becomes less seamless, less transparent. Key informadon gets lost.
Transparency is a haUmark of classical narradon in the flction füm, and classi-
cal documentary, too, depends on unobtrusiveness. Much as classical narrative fums
avoid formal excess and construct a diegesis that seems to have its own spadal and
temporal reality, classical documentaries present their argument about actuaUty foot-
age whüe making this presentadon seem naturally to come from the footage itself.^
Hayden White notes that (written) narradve historiography acts as if history "speaks
itself" and that "we can comprehend the appeal of historical discourse by recogniz-
ing the extent to which it makes the real desirable . . . and does so by its imposidon,
upon events that are represented as real, of the formal coherency that stories pos-
sess." Classical documentary is organized along this principle, according to three
tendencies. First is the "voice" that Pascal Bonitzer has described in documentary: the
reUance on the soundtrack to anchor, in expository fashion, the meaning of actuaUty
footage that is separated temporally and spatially from the voice.' Eyes on the Prize takes
actuaUty footage (e.g., a fight between teens, an arrest) and uses voice-over narradon
about historical events to affix meaning to that actuaUty footage. For instance, the cut
from Schweid to a young white man being arrested occurs just when Schweid says the
word fear, the look on the man's face apdy iUustrates the idea of white fear but also,
in and of itself, is relatively meaningless without the voice-over to code it as "fear."
Second is a conceptually oriented structure that groups actuality footage together
according to broader ideas. The fight scene in Eyes takes on historical significance
because of its place in a larger structure about the rise of the sit-in movement and the
reacdon it caused; personal fear becomes a moment of historical peripeteia. Third is
a closed argumentadon unequivocal in its meaning; closure is a particular hallmark
of the historical-recoUecdve documentary, which ascribes the fixity of history to its
subject matter.^
Whereas Eyes on the Prize serves as an ideal type for mixed-mode classical docu-
mentary narradon. Hoop Dreams departs nodceably from classical narradon. The most
immediate difference is its lack of an abstract voice-over narradon, aside from the
most basic exposidon: "Arthur wins the stardng point-guard position on the freshman
5 David Bordweli, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); David BordweU, Janet
Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production, 1917-1960
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
6 Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baitimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987), 21.
7 Pascal Bonitzer, "The Siiences of the Voice," trans. Philip Rosen and Marcia Butzei, in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideol-
ogy: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 332.
8 This argument dravis on Philip Rosen's reading of JFK: A Time Remembered (Mark Oberhaus, 1988). Rosen's read-
ing is ultimately about the historicity of documentary images, but in general the genre of the recollective-historical
documentary illustrates classical narration so weli because of its relations between voice-over and footage. Change
Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, r/7eo/y (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
49
Cinema Journal 52 I No. 1 Fall 2012
team" (Figure 1). Instead, social-actor
tesdmony, in the form of Coach Pinga-
tore's comments, anchors the meaning
of the image (Figure 2). The pace of
the edidng is different, allowing more
time for observational footage of its
social actors. In comparison to the
scene in Eyes, the editing both andci-
pates more of what the spectator will
see (Pingatore's words come before his
image) and withholds information for
longer periods of time. It is pardy, but
Figure 1. Hoop Dreams departs noticeably from clas-
sical narration, lacking abstract voice-over narration. not wholly, classical. Furthermore, the
Instead, we see Arthur win the starting point-guard po- ironic juxtaposidon of Arthur Agee
sition on the freshman team, and then . .
with the "He Conquers and Labors"
banner in Hoop Dreams introduces a
self-conscious editorializing, a strategy
that would disrupt the straightforward
argument of Eyes on the Prize.
On all these counts—narradonal
ambiguity, duration, and ironic edit-
ing—Hoop Dreams borrows from clas-
sical documentary's putadve opposite,
direct cinema or cinema vérité. Carl
Plandnga notes that this tradition
shows rather than tells, exploidng the
Figure 2. ... social-actor testimony, in the form of indexical qualities of the medium to
Coach Pingatore's comments, anchors the meaning of
the fullest: direct cinema focuses on
the image, serving a narrator function vicariously (Fine
Line Features, 1994). the experiendal dimension to provoke
a spectatorial impression, however se-
lective, of being present at the profümic event. Perhaps most important, direct cin-
ema's argumentadon is open rather than closed, is at least pardy ambiguous, and is
implied rather than explicit.^ Another way of stadng the difference between classical
documentary and direct cinema is by disdnguishing between deducdve and inducdve
approaches at the level of both producdon and spectatorial experience. The direct-
cinema shooting style famously changed the documentary production process. Instead
of shooting actuality footage to illustrate an idea or to capture a planned event, direct-
cinema fümmakers sought to observe and respond to events and to make, in Rich-
ard Leacock's words, "an uncontrolled cinema."'" Consequendy, they ran up high
shoodng rados with the expectadon of making coherent feature- or broadcast-length
9 Carl Plantinga, Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Fiim (Cambridge.- Cambridge University Press, 1997),
116-118.
10 Richard Leacock, "For an Uncontrolled Cinema," Fiim Cuiture, nos. 22-23 (Summer 1961); 23-25.
50
Cinema Journal 52 No. 1 Fall 2012
documentaries in the editing process." Structure steps in to fill the gap and provide
coherence for the otherwise disorderly amassing of detail. The multivocal potential of
actuality footage leads direct cinema to mimic some of classicism's conceptual struc-
ture, and in direct cinema the editor thus functions much like a writer.'^
This structure differs from the deductive, expository argument of the classical doc-
umentary. Instead, direct cinema highlights juxtapositions, selections, and motifs. Law
and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969) builds up from observations of daüy police activ-
ity, as in these connected scenes from the first third of the film:
• Shots of a police officer riding in his patrol car
• An officer intervenes in a domestic dispute
• An officer writes a report for a mugging and helps the victim to recover her purse
• Policeman rides across town
• Arrest of a drunk escalates as the officer responds to the man's insults with force
• Two policemen puU their cars next to each other and talk about soaring tensions
and gang violence in the city
• Two policemen break into a building and chase after an African American teen-
ager, who struggles and whom they proceed to arrest with excessive force
None of these scenes provides exposition through voice-over, identifying tities, or
contextual editing. As with some fictional art cinema, the spectator is thrust into the
scenario in medias res, without cues as to how to read the larger meaning or argument
of the events. Eventually, a structure emerges: we are witnessing a rough alternation
between law enforcement's "big" challenges and its insignificant ones. In between are
behind-the-scenes glimpses of law enforcement culture. When, toward the film's end,
a Richard Nixon political rally stressing a law-and-order agenda comes to town, the
observations and juxtapositions of the füm take on a new, larger meaning. Implicitiy,
the füm critiques the American right's law-and-order ideology as simplistic, since it
is unaware of the challenges of law enforcement or the ingrained social conflict that
"law" and its enforcement entail.
law and Order—and direct cinema in general—tends to present an open argu-
ment. The critique of sDent-majority politics requires considerable inference work on
the spectator's part and, moreover, is hard to establish definitively as a critique. Hoop
Dreams, by contrast, is not nearly so ambiguous, inductive, or open in its argument. It
invokes inductive structure without sacrificing clarity and presents moments of tempo-
rary rather than sustained ambiguity. For this reason, the füm is a key and influential
example of documentary postclassicism, which contains elements of both classical and
direct-cinema documentary.
Here the analogy with fiction cinema is instructive. Hollywood classicism usually
designates a bounded period of studio filmmaking in which industrial structure and
11 Barry Keith Grant notes that Frederick Wiseman's shooting ratios range from 10:1 to 30:1. Five Films by Frederick
Wiseman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 4.
12 On the commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD of Grey Gardens (David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen
Hovde, Muffie Meyer, and Susan Froemke, 1975), director-editors Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer describe this
process of writing through editing, noting for instance the significance of opening with the approach to the Grey
Gardens house.
51
film aesthetics maintained a stable system; since both industry economics and film
style have changed, many scholars refer to a postclassical period that departs from
some classical norms while maintaining others. Early claims of what constitutes this
postclassical style varied considerably, with scholars pointing to an emphasis on spec-
tacle over narrative, to high-concept visuals, and to a breakdown of classical editing
norms under the influence of advertising and music video. Moreover, in addition to
film style, postclassicism has been deployed as a periodizing concept for histories of the
film industry and for models of film spectatorship.'*
A clear objection to the possibüity of a postclassical documentary is the tenuous-
ness of the term postclassical itself David BordweU in particular resists the generaliza-
tions of the postclassical camp:
Some scholars suggest that U.S. studio filmmaking since 1960 or so has en-
tered a "post-classical" period, one sharply different from the studio era. They
argue that the high concept blockbuster, marketed in ever more diverse ways
and appearing in many media platforms, has created a cinema of narrative
incoherence and stylistic fragmentation. Yet these judgments aren't usually
based upon scrutiny of the movies. Scholars who have analyzed a range of
films have argued persuasively that in important respects, Hollywood story-
telling hasn't fundamentally altered since the studio days. ... In representing
space, time, and narrative relations (such as causal connections and parallels),
today's films generally adhere to the principles of classical filmmaking.'^
Instead of postclassicism, Bordweii prefers a model of "intensified continuity," which
he defines as a specific version of contemporary fiction narration that stresses continu-
ities with classical norms. Kristin Thompson takes issue with the periodization implied
by postclassicism, stating, "In our book [The Classical Hollywood Cinema, coauthored
with Bordweii and Janet Staiger], we had limited our survey to pre-1960 cinema be-
cause the breakdown of the studio structure and the competition from television led to
a different situation in Hollywood. We did not, however, say that classical filmmaking
died then. Quite the contrary; we said that it had endured through those changes in
the industry."'^ Both Bordweii and Thompson stress the systematic quality of classical
film language and its storytelling power.
13 Thomas Schatz, "The New Hollywood," in Film Theory Goes to the Movies: Cultural Analyses of Contemporary Film,
ed. James Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher Collins (New York: Routledge, 1993), 8-37; Justin Wyatt, High
Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hoiiywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994); Thomas Elsaesser and
Warren Buckland, "Classical/Post-Classical Narrative," in Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie
Analysis (London: Arnold, 2002), 26-79. For a wide range of definitions of postclassical style, see Contemporary
Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith (London: Routledge, 1998).
14 Neale and Smith, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema-, Miriam Hansen, "Early Cinema, Late Cinema: Permutations of
the Public Sphere," Screen 34, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 197-210.
15 David Bordweii, "intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film," Film Quarterly 55, no. 3
(Spring 2002): 16-28.
16 Kristin Thompson, "Classical Cinema Lives! New Evidence for Old Norms," Observations on Film Art (.b\og), Febru-
ary 12, 2007, http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/02/12/classical-cinema-lives-new-evidence-for-old-norms/.
52
Cinema Journal 52 ¡ No. 1 Fall 2012
Gritics of the postclassicism concept have a point, in that generaüzations about
spectacle- or action-driven narrative can be facüe. Nonetheless, postclassicism can
refer less to a replacement of classical norms than to a recaUbration of them. The
most compeüing accounts demonstrate how contemporary narrative füms selectively
gran art cinema and neoreaüst style onto classical storytelling Eleftheria Thanouli,
for example, remarks of Natural Born Killers (Oüver Stone, 1994), "On the one hand, it
presents a remarkable styüstic freedom and experimentation with different discontinu-
ous techniques, while, on the other, it maintains an essential narrative coherence . . .
[that] contributes to the progression of the story."" Her observation could describe
many postclassical füms. Even a straightforward romantic comedy üke Made of Honor
(Paul Weüand, 2008) breaks the 180-degree line in a decidedly unclassical manner,
whereas Ocean's Twebe (Steven Soderbergh, 2004) demonstrates that jump cuts and
blockbuster appeal are not incompatible. On the basis of a wide sampüng of contem-
porary examples, Thanouli argues that narrative form, spatial construction, and cine-
matic time have all moved toward hypermediation and knowingness—in short, toward
an appropriation of formalism within classical forms.'^ For Bordwell and Thompson,
the abüity of the commercial Hollywood film to absorb the stylistic influences of art
cinema, the avant-garde, and television advertising is proof of the flexibiüty and vital-
ity of the classical system. From another perspective, the absorption itself constitutes
postclassicism. Gertainly, as Murray Smith argues, postclassicism is not the only model
for understanding contemporary fikn aesthetics, yet a periodization dividing classical
and postclassical cinema does have explanatory power.''
If the term postclassical provokes debate when appüed to fiction füm, its appüca-
tion to documentaries is rare, perhaps previously nonexistent. Instead, other names
of succession, such as the "postmodern" or the "new documentary," emphasize the
breaking or bending of traditional Griersonian tenets.^" Beyond those füms that chal-
lenge documentary norms, however, a large number of contemporary documentaries
maintain a straightforward nonfiction style while moving away from a strictly classical
documentary narration. These documentaries differ noticeably from an earüer gen-
eration of conventional documentary with extensive voice-over narration. Unlike the
new documentary, furthermore, these füms do not generaüy challenge documentary
truth claims, foreground cinematic style, or trade in ambiguity. This category of films
has gone relatively unnoticed and thus lacks a name; the notion of postclassical docu-
mentary can designate the middle ground between the classical tradition and challeng-
ing new-documentary forms.
Postclassical documentary does not exhibit the styüstic traits of postclassical narra-
tive füms. Rather, postclassical fiction füm and postclassical documentary both tend to
17 Eleftheria Thanouli, Post-Classical Cinema: An Internationai Poetics of Film Narration (London: Wallflower Press,
2009), 96.
18 Ibid., 173-182.
19 Murray Smith, "Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History," in Neale and Smith, Contemporary Hollywood
Cinema, 1-20.
20 Bruzzi, New Documentary; Linda Williams, "Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary,"
Film Quarterly A6, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 9-21.
53
Cinema Journal 52 No. 1 I Fall 2012
assume art narradon into classical narradon. In pracdce, this means that postclassical
narradon combines elements of classical and direct-cinema narradon. Its structure
and argumentation suggest the openness of direct cinema without reUnquishing the
clarity of classical documentary Its soundtrack, like direct cinema's, eschews voice-
of-God-style narration, yet its social actors provide voice-over narradon in a classical
manner. Its edidng draws on both the inteUectual montage of classical documentary
and the real-dme aesthedc of direct cinema (Table 1).
These categories describe ideal types, and many documentaries faU outside of these
narradonal patterns, whereas others fit the generaUzadons only imperfectly. None-
theless, as representative postclassical documentaries like Hoop Dreams, Daughter from
Danang, and Helvetica demonstrate, it is remarkable how consistent and stable the nar-
radon system has been for contemporary documentaries that vary in type and produc-
don circumstances. Classical documentaries do condnue to be made (those airing on
PBS Frontline are good examples), but there has been a shift in dominant narradonal
styles within the documentary field. The reasons for this shift are up for debate, but a
few causes seem likely. Foremost is the poUtical economy of American public-television
funding: first the budget cuts of the 1980s and the balkanized system that foUowed
"led stadons to embrace programming that would appeal to middle-class viewers to
bring in more donadons and subscripdons."^' The poUdcal batdes over public fund-
ing, moreover, have Ukely encouraged producers and makers to personalize poUtical or
social issues as a means of inoculadng themselves against charges of bias. Finally, the
box-oflice success of theatrical-release new documentaries has led some filmmakers to
depart from tradidonal documentary aesthedcs, even in expository or issue-oriented
fums. In short, the economic and insdtudonal basis of documentary fümmaking has
changed and with it, so has documentary aesthedcs.
Character-Driven Documentary: Hoop Dreams and Daughter from Danang.
As with most historical periodization, the dividing Une between classical and postcias-
sical documentary is not stark. Already in the direct-cinema movement one can find
instances of a central quality of postclassicism: the use of social tesdmony voiced over
actuaUty footage to anchor meaning. Union Maids (Jim Klein, Miles Mogulescu, and
JuUa Reichert, 1976), for instance, places sound from interviews with three women
labor activists over photographs and archival footage of 1930s labor strife. Reliance
on this practice was only sporadic in recent decades, but what was once a Umited for-
mal trope has become widespread, developing into a stable part of the postclassical
narrational system. The main site and conduit of this change has been what many
in the documentary field caU the "character-driven documentary."^' This format has
21 B. J. Bullert, Public Television: Politics and the Battle over Documentary Film {Ne\n Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 1997), 17.
22 Noel King critiques the film for this practice in "Recent 'Political' Documentary: Notes on Union Maids ana Harlan
County, USA," Screen 22, no. 2 (1981): 7-18.
23 See production guidebooks for documentary makers, such as Michael Rabiger, Directing the Documentary, 4th ed.
(Amsterdam: Focal Press, 2004), 137-138; and Dorothy Fadiman and Tony Levelle, Producing with Passion: Mak-
ing Films That Change the World (Studio City, CA: Michael Weise Productions, 2008), 151-168.
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