Performative Documentary

One of the modes of documentary talked about in the article was the performative mode. This is a style of documentary where the focus is more on the performance and the message that needs to get across than getting actual footage of actual events happening. While this can be a strong way to convey a message, it must be clear that there are some fallacies, or fictions, happening within the documentary. Otherwise, it may be taken by some, if not most, as complete truth since it is a documentary. The article talks about method of this mode, such as recreating events with a style meant to induce emotions in the viewers. An example of this is a documentary that recreated scenes from World War II in the concentration camps, showing the prisoners there. Obviously, we cannot go back in time and take films of the people there, so making this false reality can help show an audience the filmmaker’s account of what happened there. All the people in the documentary, though, will be actors, unless of course some alive survivors tell their stories as well. This is a performance, and using the word “documentary” for it seems a bit of a stretch, even if it has the proper documentary style. Although, what I believe to be most vital about performative documentaries is that viewers are aware that those in the documentary are not real people living these lives that are seen on the screen. Many people are quite gullible and if the word documentary is labeled on a video, they will take it as truth. This can be problematic when these types of documentaries are propaganda, and people are believing every word. This could be the case for any type of documentary, I suppose.

An example of a performative documentary, that is mentioned in the article, is Tongues Untied. This segment shows a very stylized version of the men being filmed. Even though it is a documentary style, it looks (purposefully) staged and pre-written. This is fine, and it works well for this video, but it is still important to make people aware of the performance so that no one is ignorant to the agenda of the film.