Authenticity
Building on the "truth in media" theme we've been dealing with, I wanted to return to what is "true" in Deborah Scranton's film. I saw two kinds of authenticity: the soldier's voice and the soldier's reality. I dealt with this a little in a question I asked in class, dealing with the level of control over the camera the troops had while in combat, but I want to outline it a little more clearly. The sequences and shots where I felt the soldier's voice was coming across most clearly were the light-hearted, joking scenes, the scenes where they notice something funny or poignant in the middle of all the chaos - for example, the shot of the little boy who walks around the courtyard, in his own little world, in the middle of a war zone. It is these scenes that I think the soldiers had the most control over what they were broadcasting, what they wanted to show. So in a way, these are the sequences most accurately depicting the voice of the soldiers, what they wanted to depict.
On the other hand, there are the combat sequences, where the camera is unacknowledged. First and foremost, the soldiers want to survive. They could care less what is going on the camera, they have very little control over what is depicted. But in a sense, this is their reality, it's what it's like to be in Iraq in a combat situation. In showing both the light-hearted shots and the heavier combat sequences, I think Scranton appropriately shows both sides in her attempt to present the story of the infantry soldiers of Iraq - their reality and their voice. I was interested in whether the soldiers had input on the editing process because I was wondering if they preferred to show one type of shot or the other. Judging by the answers in class today, it seems they had some control over their own footage and they were pleased with the end result.
Comments
I was intrigued by DS's response to my question on the dangers of 'going native' - that she wholly intended to do just that out of empathy and to get a better (more authentic?) story from the soldiers. What's your take on that?
VTY
JDD
Posted by: Anonymous | February 22, 2007 03:06 PM
Was that when she laid out her views on objectivity vs. subjectivity? I'm trying to conceptualize what "going native" means in this context - Scranton specifically avoided actually going to Iraq, but she did guide the soldier's filming(as when she told one of them to go to the equipment graveyard). I think it ended up working. I'm assuming that not "going native" would mean that she just gave them cameras and left it completely up to them what to film. That approach would probably result in a film heavily skewed towards the soldier's voice I discussed above - which would be one form of authenticity, but would not portray other aspects of the soldier's reality in Iraq. "Going native," i.e. guiding the soldier's footage and ultimately editing it herself, allowed Scranton to present a better (more authentic) story in the sense that she forced them to film things they probably wouldn't normally have filmed, but that were part of their day-to-day reality, which was the ultimate goal of the film - to show the story of the infantry soldiers.
Posted by: Daniel Bowman | February 22, 2007 06:34 PM
In class, in response to JDD's question, I was trying to remember a quote that Dutch doc filmmaker legend Joris Ivens once said, I looked it up since it is one of my favorites on this strand of inquiry. From The Camera and I: "I was surprised that many people automatically assumed that any documentary film would inevitably be objective. Perhaps the term is unsatisfactory, but for me the distinction between the words document and documentary are quite clear. Do we demand objectivity in the evidence presented at a trial? No, the only demand is that each piece of evidence be as full a subjective, truthful, honest presentation of the witness' attitude as an oath on the Bible can produce from him."
Posted by: Deborah Scranton | February 26, 2007 11:37 AM