The Manifestations of Political Power Structures in Documentary Film

Abstract

The aim of this practice-led research is to explore the ways in which the political and social power structures between filmmaker and protagonist are manifested in the aesthetics and cinematic means of documentary film. Through a synthesis of filmmaking practice and “hidden knowledge” with critical theories from the fields of cultural studies and political philosophy the research devise methodological approaches to the critical analysis of documentary films in light of the political and material conditions of their emergence. By exploring filmmaking practice, both through the practical aspects of the research as well as through experiences made and reported by filmmakers, and placing those in the context of wider theories pertaining to issues of power structures and representation, it sheds light on the different aspects which must be considered when approaching the analysis of a documentary film for its ideological and political content.

The work also asserts that in order to fully understand and analyse a documentary film, a wider range of factors must be considered, most prominently the material conditions of the filmmaking process. Those include the financing and commissioning of the film, the conditions of its production as well as its distribution and reception. Drawing on methodologies of dialectical materialism in cultural studies, the research approaches the studied films as well as the practical experiences in a holistic fashion, contextualising them in historical, political and cultural processes instead of viewing them as isolated texts divorced from social context.

Keywords: Film Studies, Documentary Film, Dialectics, Hermeneutics

1. Understanding documentary as a political text: state of the research

Extensive scholarship and research have been conducted pertaining to the political aspects of documentary film and its reading as a political text, pointing to its inherent political character as a medium dealing with the real and the social. Chapter 3 of this book provides an overview of relevant literature and theories, which are further explored and applied throughout this thesis. Here it suffices to provide an account of the general literature used as well as literature which, however influential, was omitted from further references due to limitations of scope.

Beginning this research from the position of a practitioner with basic academic knowledge, I first studied the existing literature on documentary and turned to several well-established works as my starting point. Brian Winston’s Claiming the Real II: Grierson and Beyond (2008) and Michael Chanan’s Politics of Documentary (2007) have offered me a good first step in the understanding of the historical, social and political context of documentary, as well as an introduction to further literature and methods. Both books have also strengthened my view that documentary film cannot be properly read, certainly not in the political sense, without considering the context of its production.

In the last couple of decades, it is practically impossible to conduct theoretical research in the field of documentary without coming across the works of Bill Nichols, which I read extensively as well (1981, 1991, 2010). His by now canonical concept of the documentary modes has been eye-opening for me as a way to categorize and conceptualize the reading of documentaries, and has proven itself – as I made my first steps as a lecturer of documentary film – to be an invaluable framework for the theorization of documentary for students. The further I advanced with my research, however, the more I came to the understanding that although Nichols’ work is highly relevant to my work – his understanding of the interview as a locus of power structures being one clear example – some of his theories, primarily his “modes of documentary”, offer an excessively rigid structure often inapplicable to many modern documentaries or to the experiences I myself have accrued as a practitioner. In the chapter of this book dealing with participation and reflexivity I attempt to clarify why Nichols’ modes are better considered as different spectrums of cinematic approaches than categories. This view of Nichols’ modes is shared by other scholars, such as Stella Bruzzi, who sees them as ‘crude’ and ‘breathtakingly simplistic’, imposing a ‘false chronology onto what is essentially a theoretical paradigm’ and ‘necessarily circumscribed by his own preferences and areas of knowledge’ (2006, p. 3–4). While I subscribe to Bruzzi’s criticism, Nichols’ approach is still a necessary step in my own understanding of the academic discourse, and is a necessary stepping stone for documentary theory, if only for its by now hegemonic status in the field.

The experiences I gathered through my political work in the years leading up to my research have introduced me to Marxist thinking and epistemology, and the applications of Marxist theories to cultural and film studies proved themself useful for my research as well. There, the writings of Mike Wayne have proven highly instructive and have shown me how such theories can be and are integrated in the field of film studies (cf. 2001, 2003, 2005). Wayne’s work has also pointed me in the direction of the literary critique of Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács, whose influence is present in some parts of this paper (cf. 1970, 1979). Those writings led to my integration of dialectical-materialist approaches into my methodology and has thoroughly shaped my research and understanding of the subject matter. The economical and political crisis of the last decade have sparked a resurgence of interest in Marxism and the applicability of its ideas and methods (cf. Jeffries 2012), among the left as well as the right,¹ and this research has proven to me that such methods are highly valuable in the field of cultural studies. In order to better understand such and similar approaches, I turned to the works of intellectuals from the field of critical theory as well, such as Theodor W. Adorno (1958) and Raymond Williams (2005). While I do not refer to Williams directly in this work, both have proven invaluable to further my understanding of dialectics and historical and dialectical materialism in the context of culture and art.

Since the focus of my work is power relations in documentary films, acquiring an understanding of the definition of power was necessary. I have consulted several works in sociology, such as the writings of Pierre Bourdieu (cf. 2005) or Michel Foucault (cf. 1991), but have found them less applicable to the specifics of my work. The definition of power in documentary work is an intricate one which can be approached from different directions: for example, power can be seen as an issue of representation, such as in the works of British sociologist Stuart Hall (in Jhally 1997) or of Palestinian literature scholar Edward Said (2003), both discussed in Chapter 3. For this research, however, it was important for me to find a definition of power and power structures which will allow me to better examine the relations between the film and society, with society being intrinsically connected to its material conditions, and so it was sociologist Bob Jessop’s work (2012) which allowed for important nuances for a relevant Marxist definition of power, discussed in Chapter 3.