TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

(1)

University of Groningen Faculty of Arts

TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

A Cognitive Approach to the Dialogical Nature of First Person Documentary

Jennifer M.J. O’Connell

Master thesis, August 2015

Department of Arts, Culture and Media: Film Studies

(2)

2

TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

A Cognitive Approach to the Dialogical Nature of First Person Documentary

Jennifer M.J. O’Connell S1530828

jenniferoconnell@hotmail.com

(3)

3

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

When we ask ourselves what defines documentary, one might be tempted to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, or the subjective and the objective, categorising documentary film as more ‘truthful’ than its perceived counterpart, fiction film. However, when we

consider the label ‘documentary’ as consisting of quite a large and heterogeneous body of cinematic endeavours, entanglement arises along the lines of the aforementioned dichotomies. In documentary, experience is not just described, but shaped; fragments of life must be ordered and given aesthetic form to render the events comprehensible and meaningful. In doing so, ‘reality’ is necessarily distorted. This problematic notion has led numerous

documentary theorists in their attempts to define and question the underpinnings of the genre. A striking trend in these critical accounts has been their reflection on complex and fluid social structures, such as concepts of objectivity, truth and historical reality. Efforts to objectively delineate documentary in terms of these concepts lock out all deviations and have therefore largely been in vain – our understanding of objectivity, truth and historical reality is subject to change, causing what we may or may not accept as an authentic representation to encompass a wide variety of practices that may differ from person to person, from time to time, and from place to place. Underpinning the foregoing, more subjective forms of documentary have started to emerge from the late 1950s onwards. By the 1990s, a multitude of divergent formats became widespread while still fitting within the documentary realm. This trend has not gone unnoticed, leading many documentary theorists to suggest these developments indicate a new, highly subjective paradigm in documentary practice. Research on documentary film has consequently resulted into contrasting propositions and statements, creating a current crisis in definition and categorisation (f.e. Renov 1993; Carroll 1996; Plantinga 1997; Bruzzi 2006; Lebow 2008; Nichols 2010; Winston 2013).

First person documentary

The difficulties in theorising and defining documentary are particularly exemplified by first person documentary. The emergence of more subjective documentary forms gave rise to what is often described as a recent outpouring of first person documentaries. While pioneering films such as Window Water Baby Moving (1959) and Welkom in het leven, lieve

(5)

5 Caouette, 2003), Wide Awake (Alan Berliner, 2006) and Arirang (Kim Ki-duk, 2011) were screened worldwide in film festival documentary sections and are frequently marked as symptoms of a subjective turn in documentary practice. However, this move towards general recognition also reflects a broader change in our modes of thought. Offering insight into highly individual life by forefronting subjective inner worlds and complicating referential claims, these films display a uniqueness conveyed not just through facts, but also through personal memory and imagination. A straightforward description of the events depicted in these films, in other words, does not seem to be an accurate representation of the issues upon which they reflect. According to documentary scholar Alisa Lebow, “[…] first person film goes beyond simply debunking documentary’s claim to objectivity. In the very awkward simultaneity of being subject in and subject of, it actually unsettles the dualism of the objective/subjective divide, rendering it inoperative” (2012: 5). First person documentary evidently muddles traditional fiction and nonfiction distinctions by its very nature; moreover, its recent proliferation suggests that changes in documentary practice should not be

understood apart from the cultural contexts in which they occur. These complex notions point towards the relevance of investigating first person documentary through the elements inherent to its shared appeal, a matter I will attempt to further flesh out in this thesis.

First person documentary and dialogism

(6)

6 aware of the subjectivity in which it is portrayed (Ibid.: 21-3). Reflecting on a similar link, Bill Nichols argues that first person nonfiction films are fundamentally paradoxical as they raise tensions between performance, the personal and the embodied versus the typical, the abstract and the scientific. Nichols describes these specific tensions as an indirect experience of experience itself (Nichols 1994: 2). The fuzziness inherent to theoretical accounts

exploring first person documentary in terms of its dialogical nature poses a problem worth addressing. At first glance, these scholars appear to surpass prior accounts that broadly

theorise documentaries on their merits of objectivity, truth and historical reality by pointing to first person documentary’s specific form as shaping the viewer’s experience. However, by focusing largely on contextual factors their descriptions remain quite vague – a more pragmatic view on the workings of such a viewer/text relation has yet to be provided. In an attempt to further delineate first person documentary through its experience, this thesis will turn to its cognitive underpinnings.

Cognitive film studies

So far, we can state that first person documentary engages the viewer in a complex cognitive activity. We can also note that this activity establishes a dialogical relation between the viewer and the filmic text. But what exactly does this mean? A review of both statements promptly spurs several questions. What kind of complex cognitive activity is the viewer engaging in, and how does first person documentary work as its trigger? What is meant by a dialogical relation in documentary theory, and why is it specifically ascribed to first person documentary? And in what way does first person documentary establish this presumed relation with its viewer? The problem I wish to address in my research is the somewhat mythical characterisation of the dialogical viewer/text relation provided by numerous critical accounts. Though this relation is foregrounded as one of the main traits of first person documentary, these difficult and fundamental questions are not explored. Yet, the fact that multiple documentary scholars describe the experience of first person documentary as

(7)

7 that filmic structures make use of certain cognitive systems to which we all possess the key. From the late 1950s cognitive scientists have researched the workings of the human mind, and from the 1980s this theoretical emphasis has been picked up in film studies.Scholars

departing from cognitive film studies aim to zoom in on the processes of sense-making in which film viewers partake by examining the structure of the embodied mind and its engagement with the world. Viewers are able to process the information a film provides through the particular form of the film. Filmic elements address certain fixed schemata, eliciting the viewer’s involvement as s/he recognises these elements and their relation to one another, inciting reactions in various ways. In short, “[…] the artwork cues us to perform a specific activity” (Bordwell & Thompson 2008: 55). From a cognitivist perspective, first person documentary film can be understood as the ‘artwork’ that ‘cues us’, and the dialogical relation as a result of the ‘specific activity’ performed.

According to Greg M. Smith, we must seize our endeavours to broadly define the documentary genre and pay more attention to documentary as a specific cognitive sense-making process (2007: 83-4). The purpose of this thesis is to do exactly so. I will therefore investigate if cognitive film studies, which generally focus on narrative fiction film, can provide a suitable framework through which we may come to a more intricate understanding of the dialogical experience of first person documentary. In order to do conduct my reserach I will connect my observations from documentary theory to Torben Grodal’s PECMA flow model. Grodal’s identification of a blocked or continuous PECMA flow within the viewer addresses the experience of subjectivity and realism in a manner that is also applicable to documentary film. Moreover, by taking into account both the subjective experience of the individual viewer and the collective aspects of the viewing experience the PECMA flow model seems particularly suited for the analysis of first person documentary, as it inherently combines conflicting notions of objectivity and subjectivity. Grodal’s discussion of

documentary in relation to the PECMA flow is nevertheless quite limited. I will therefore primarily use Grodal’s model to gain an understanding of how certain filmic elements may facilitate or stall the viewer’s cognition and build on Grodal’s theory by linking these elements to documentary practice.

Aims and methods

(8)

8 complex cognitive activity. My research is an attempt to contribute to the discourse on

cinematic experiences from a cognitive-psychological perspective in general, and to the field of documentary theory on first person documentary in specific. Rather than placing an emphasis on broad and complex social structures such as truth, objectivity and historical reality, I intend to research first person documentary on the level of reception. Due to the recent general recognition of first person documentary formats I will take contemporary first person documentary as my most solid point of departure. To conduct my research I will draw from a range of documentary scholars currently focusing on first person documentary and connect my findings to Torben Grodal’s concept of PECMA flow. It must be noted that the scope of this thesis places certain restrictions on the matters discussed. My research and findings will therefore be largely theoretical; by operationalising Grodal’s PECMA flow model I will attempt to give a preliminary impetus to practice. It is consequently not my objective to provide closed arguments on the complex notions this thesis will address. I merely aspire to open a discussion by connecting documentary theory to cognitive theory. By doing so, my goal is to make the complexity that has been ascribed to the relation between first person documentary and its viewer less obscure. In summary, I propose the following research question:

How can cognitive film studies help us to further theorise the dialogical relation between first person documentary and its viewer as described in documentary theory?

(9)

9 to blockages in and facilitations of a fluent PECMA cycle, arguing how in/familiarity with cultural conventions influences senses of realism in documentary viewing experience. By doing so, I will attempt to delineate the dialogical nature of first person documentary from a cognitivist perspective and support my call to view first person documentary in light of a broader change in our modes of thought. Finally, chapter four will substantiate the claims made in the previous chapters by approaching the dialogical nature of first person

documentary as a relation established through blockages in the PECMA flow, giving an initial impetus to practice by providing a cognitive analysis of L’image manquante/The Missing Picture (2013) and Tarnation (2003). In conclusion, I will reflect on the matters treated and connect the outcomes of my research to discussions focusing on cultural change and problems in definition and categorisation in documentary theory. I will furthermore forefront where the PECMA flow model has the potential to further delineate first person documentary’s

(10)

10

CHAPTER 2: FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARY

Documentary scholar Brian Winston is one of the leading theorists in historical documentary theory. By extensively discussing paradigm shifts in documentary practice, Winston provides valuable insight into the rationales underlying documentary theory and the factors that have led to change over time. Winston predominantly argues that modernist thought installed a strong shared belief in authenticity as a fixed or fundamental property of the image, which he pointedly describes as a fundamental underestimation of the viewer’s role in the process of reception (2013: 24-6). According to Winston this belief established a ‘Griersonian paradigm’ from the 1920s to the 1990s, during which a hegemonic observational dogma of objectivity was instilled upon documentary practice by the Direct Cinema movement in the 1960s (2008; 2013). Not surprisingly, the Griersonian paradigm was ultimately infeasible in terms of providing clear-cut answers to questions of authenticity and objectivity and started to erode – a process reflected in the perpetual and increasing production of documentaries diverting from its norms. The resulting emergence of more subjective documentary formats is often pointed to as a new subjective paradigm in documentary practice. Winston belongs to the main proponents of such positions, forefronting early diversions from classical documentary practice as indicating a highly heterogeneous ‘Post-Griersonian’ paradigm. Theoretical accounts discussing first person documentary frequently echo such delineations, forefronting first person formats as inherently fluid, formed through an endless process of malleability (f.e. Beattie 2004; Renov 2004; Lebow 2008; Rascaroli 2009). As a result, studies on first person documentary define different subgenres, depart from different theoretical rationales and employ different umbrella terms. To come to a better understanding of the contexts in which first person documentary has emerged, a brief consideration of the factors leading up to this crisis in definition and categorisation marks the logical first step in my investigation. The following chapter will consequently take stock of the current field of first person documentary research. I will first reflect on the rationales underlying the emergence of first person

documentary by examining Winston’s paradigm cycle. Tracing the roots of Winston’s

(11)

11 neglect of our shared cognitive dispositions as an incentive to investigate first person

documentary’s shared appeal. Throughout, I will reflect on the notions addressed and highlight where they are useful for my explorations and where they may fall short.

2.1 THE EMERGENCE OF FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARY

In the following paragraph I aim to excavate the origins of first person documentary by tracing its familial others – that is, through the interconnected practices, movements and events described by several current scholars that may have contributed to its emergence. As outlined above, Winston’s description of paradigm shifts in documentary practice locates the recent outpouring of first person documentary films among the midst of a current crisis in documentary theory. I will critically reflect on the rationales underlying Winston’s paradigm cycle to demonstrate the connection between this crisis and the current proliferation of first person documentary formats. Starting out with a brief overview of classical documentary practice and its adversaries in Europe and North-America from the 1920s to the 1960s, I will move on to explore the implications of the North-American Direct Cinema and the French Cinéma Vérité movements from the 1960s to the 1990s. In conclusion, I will attempt to describe the situation in documentary practice from the 1990s onwards. By putting the

accuracy of Winston’s statements up for discussion, I will argue that the aforementioned crisis in documentary theory should be viewed in light of a larger cultural shift of which first person documentary is emblematic.

2.1.1 1920s – 1960s: classical documentary era

The recording of nonfiction events was common practice before the 1920s, even more so than the production of fiction films. As a consequence, the body of work stemming from the era of the advent of film is largely made up of nonfiction forms such as newsreels, scientific films, ethnographic films and scenic shorts. A logical statement might therefore be that the very first motion film simultaneously constituted the very first documentary film, a title generally ascribed to Louis Lumière’s short nonfiction Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895). However, documentary scholars have rightly pointed out that the filmic recording of

(12)

12 and were thus merely a form of mechanical registration (2010: 87). Nichols’s statement is in line with John Grierson’s definition of documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’, through which Grierson separates documentary practice from other nonfiction film practices by awarding the filmmaker an essential role (1933: 8). Ranging from the 1920s to the 1960s, the classical – or, Griersonian – documentary era produced films that incorporated

commonplace classical documentary techniques such as directing subjects, repeated actions, using tripods, extra lights, added sound, commentary, and interviews (Winston 2013: 3). These techniques were generally employed to steer the viewer in predisposed directions, attempting to convince her/him of the documentarist’s assertion about the world. In

Grierson’s view, documentarists should take reality as their fundamental starting point and use the foregoing techniques to dramatise in lieu of highlighting certain features or ‘extracting truths’ (1933: 8). The result of these processes of selection and editing was subsequently deemed ‘more real in the philosophic sense’ due to Grierson’s belief in their ability to reveal truths that would otherwise remain hidden (1998: 83). Offering a description of classical documentary practice, Winston states that:

“[d]espite the implicit need for ‘objectivity’ demanded by documentary’s claim on the real, the world was acknowledged as being presented through the prism of the documentarist’s own sober sensitivities. They were artists like any other and as a result documentaries could embrace poetic visions or express personal opinions in the form of political analysis […]. The documentary filmmaker was no mere ‘fly-on-the-wall’ – even if the technology had allowed for such unobtrusiveness, which (of course) it did not” (2013: 2).

A prime example of this Griersonian view on documentary is Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922). Combined with everyday footage, Flaherty made extensive use of classical documentary techniques such as staged events and steered action, which he all consciously organised into a dramatic narrative form in the editing stage. Due to Flaherty’s application of dramatic narration to nonfiction film, Nanook is often viewed as having provided the basis for the documentary genre. Winston juxtaposes Nanook with Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which he exemplifies as the very reverse of Flaherty’s conception of

(13)

13 “For [Vertov], an essential requisite for presenting any ‘truth’ on the screen was to reveal the process of filming and then to remind the audience of them constantly. It is this willingness to acknowledge the inevitability of mediation – to luxuriate in it – that positions Vertovian practices as a longstanding alternative to that of Flaherty/Grierson/Direct Cinema” (Winston 2013.:15).

Building on the above, one could argue that the recognition of the viewer’s role in the process of reception is an implicit part of the ‘longstanding alternative’ Vertov’s work provided. Classical documentary practice departed from the filmmaker being able to reveal or extract truth, a truth that was perceived to already have existence and through the efforts of the filmmaker became located somewhere within the filmic text. Classical documentary thus proponed the ability to objectively register truth, which denies the subjectivity inherent to reception. Here the filmmaker takes on an imperative role, utilising documentary techniques to steer a naïve mass audience. In juxtaposition, Vertov’s view centered on the capacity of film to produce truth, a film-truth that was new and could not be seen with the naked eye. Instead of believing in the objective registration of truth, Vertov’s approach departed from the filmmaker’s creation of truth. Winston therefore rightly marks that the documentary

techniques employed by Vertov were used to reveal the process of filmmaking and that similar techniques were used by classical documentarists to conceal the filmmaker’s mediation. In this respect, Vertov’s work could be posited as being decidedly subjective by awarding centrality to the viewer in the process of reception. However, I argue that the diversion posed by Vertov’s work is far more nuanced. Classical documentary practice and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera are both grounded in a fundamentally similar conviction, namely the central role of the filmmaker and the filmmaking apparatus in the representation of truth. Whereas classical documentarists assumed that the camera endowed them with the ability to objectively register the truth, Vertov considered the camera and film as tools able to directly convey the filmmaker’s subjective truth. From this point of view, both address the viewer as a passive, collective entity and thus bypass the subjectivity implicit to the process of reception. Winston’s forefronting of Man with a Movie Camera as a direct reversal of the Griersonian paradigm therefore seems inherently flawed.

(14)

14 preparing for the establishment of the Nouvelle Vague’s auteur theory during the 1950s and giving rise to the 1950s and 1960s European and North-American avant-gardes. The origins of these important developments can be located in the emanation of the auteur theory, which acknowledged the accountability of the director for a film’s overall form and style and became one of the most influential ideas in the history of cinema (Rascaroli 2009: 6). Alexandre Astruc outlines some of these ideas in his famous 1948 essay The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo. Astruc saw the camera as an authorial instrument – the ‘caméra-stylo’ – by means of which filmmakers could produce their own abstract thoughts and emotions through personal and reflective discourse (1968: 17-24). The foregoing meditations on authorial subjectivity influenced many European documentarists, such as Agnès Varda, Jean Rouch and Ed van der Elsken, while also making a clear impact on the 1950s North-American avant-garde. These filmmakers rebelled against the subjects and forms used in the Hollywood industry by employing simple recording techniques to examine the link between everyday events and the self, of which Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), Jonas Mekas’s extended film cycle Diaries, Notes, and Sketches (1949-84) and Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving (1959) are prime examples. Just as Vertov had done in Man with a Movie Camera, key figures of the North-American avant-garde repeatedly questioned the authority of chronology and the ontological status of the image in medium-specific ways (Lane 2002: 12-5). Similarly, first person documentarists would later employ subjects and forms that deliberately clashed with observational documentary. By positioning themselves at the foreground of their work, they are often noted as reversing the very

fundament of classical documentary practice, embracing their own presence and that of the cinematic apparatus. However, and as suggested before, I argue this presumed reversal implicates a more close resemblance to Griersonian beliefs than suspected – a similarity upon which I will elaborate further below.

2.1.2 1960s – 1990s: Direct Cinema’s observational dogma of objectivity

The development of portable film equipment during the late 1950s – most notably, the 16 mm hand-held synch-sound camera – broadened the scope of locations accessible to filmmakers and permitted them to closely follow their subjects during everyday activities. These

(15)

15 from the filmic text, allowing the viewer to judge documentary value in terms of authenticity. The movement’s proponents therefore abided by what they believed to be an objective, non-personal, non-participatory – hence: observational – approach. Direct Cinema firmly

established an observational dogma of objectivity in documentary practice that quickly grew to enjoy a widespread popularity from the 1960s to the 1990s. Most of the standard

techniques used in classical Griersonian documentary were deemed interventionist and were therefore rejected by Direct Cinema, which has led theorists to forefront the rise of the

movement as a decided break in documentary history. However, Winston convincingly argues that “Direct Cinema did not so much remove the observational claim on the real made implicit in Grierson’s vision as suggest that, if intervention was removed, it would now realise it, legitimately, for the first time” (Ibid.: 3). Though both practices departed from the belief in their ability to capture ‘the real’, their willingness and technological capability in deploying certain devices to do so starkly differed – the belief in the scientific ability of the camera to capture reality that had originated from the advent of the medium gained even more strength due to the development of lighter, more flexible film equipment (Winston 2008: 148). As outlined before, this modernist presumption places the production of reality within the filmic text, sidelining the subjectivity inherent to the process of reception. The intensification of this belief by the Direct Cinema movement therefore remained fallible – a weakness that is generally believed to have been quite directly confronted by the French Cinéma Vérité

movement that originated around the same time. Cinéma Vérité adherents addressed the issue of objectivity in a manner that was very different from the Direct Cinema aesthetic by

(16)

16 consequently argue that Chronicle reversed the rules propagated by Direct Cinema and thus constituted a fundamentally different approach to documentary practice (Ibid.). However, I argue that the foregoing line of argumentation overlooks an important paradox, as Direct Cinema and Cinéma Vérité can also be viewed as inherently similar due to their shared core belief in the mechanical ability of the camera to capture reality. Though the onscreen presence of the filmmaker was resolutely rejected by Direct Cinema, Rouch’s forefronting of the filmmaker’s interventions as creating truth indicates a crucial resemblance. Self-reflexivity in Cinéma Vérité was presented as evidence of being transparent and therefore truthful, which can be posited as making a decisive claim to the real. In this respect, Rouch’s methodology places congruent, yet contrasting restrictions on the documentarist’s role in the representation of reality. Whereas Direct Cinema attempted to remove the filmmaker’s interventions entirely in lieu of capturing the real, Cinéma Vérité put forward the on-camera visibility of the

filmmaker’s actions as prompting truth. In both cases these movements display an intensified belief in the camera’s direct registration of reality and, consequently, in the viewer’s general acceptance of whatever s/he is presented with as truthful. Similar to the comparison between classical documentary practice and Vertov’s work made before, Winston recognises the fundamental difference between both movements in the rationales underlying the type of reality claimed – Direct Cinema implicitly and explicitly proponed the ability to capture an unbiased record of reality, while Cinéma Vérité never claimed such impartialness as the filmmaker’s interventions were for all to be seen (2013: 17). By focusing on these differing rationales, I believe Winston bypasses Vertov and Rouch’s shared modernist roots and separates them too strictly from the cultural context in which they are situated. I therefore argue that the fundamental logic behind these rationales is more unifying than Winston suspects. Vertov and Cinéma Vérité documentarists openly displayed the filmmaker’s mediation in order to subjectively generate truth, while classical documentarists and Direct Cinema proponents concealed such interventions in order to objectively record truth.

(17)

17 foregoing as being susceptible to falsification. Whereas classical documentary practice and Direct Cinema addressed naïve, standardised audiences, Vertov and Cinéma Vérité seem to have steered towards questioning the status of the filmmaking apparatus, foreboding the paradigmatic effects of postmodern thought on our evaluation of representational forms. Realism in art had long been preferred, though the impossibility of objectively representing the world started gaining widespread recognition due to further developments in technology – especially the rise of digital technology – and postmodern thinking. Winston rightly notes that postmodernism created more awareness of the selective processes in representational forms, which directed the viewer to take a more skeptical position towards the evidentiary status of photography and film (2008: 221-2). More generally speaking, postmodernism posited a new attitude towards the conventional concept of representation, emphasising its implicit distance from reality and therefore its ineptitude at reaching pure objectivity. Despite the growing number of technological advancements the persistent belief that technology would eventually enable a direct representation of reality was repeatedly contradicted. The foregoing factors caused concepts such as ‘reality’ and ‘subjectivity’ to be increasingly problematised, emphasising the inherent subjective nature of all representational forms and affecting

discussions concerning the construction of objectivity and subjectivity. As a consequence, an objective representation of the truth in documentary was no longer considered possible; from a postmodern perspective, all documentaries inherently represented a truth. The result of this cultural shift has clearly influenced the current rationale in documentary theory. I therefore argue that the dogma of objectivity that dominated documentary practice has now been replaced with a dogma of subjectivity dominating documentary theory. The objective representation of reality that Direct Cinema had propagated became more and more refuted, leading many theorists to award a radically central position to the status of the viewer. By focusing largely on changes in documentary practice these views have continuously been confirmed: more subjective forms of documentary gathered steam from the 1980s onwards and the Griersonian paradigm was increasingly attacked. By the 1990s a multitude of non-observational formats became widespread, making more space for the documentarist’s personal view on the world while still fitting within documentary practice.

2.1.3 1990s – onwards: shifting paradigms

(18)

18 actors and ‘real people’, and imagined and witnessed events became more vague from the 1990s onwards (Winston 2013: 13). It is in this timeframe that the previously noted outpouring of first person documentary formats can be located. According to Winston, the change in the viewer’s status from a naïve, standardised audience to a skeptical, individual viewer indicates a new and highly heterogeneous paradigm that returns to – and refines – Griersonian documentary techniques. He consequently claims that we should “[…] focus on the ‘connections’ to reality that were now broader than Grierson had in view and […] gloss this current period as being ‘post-Griersonian’”, critiquing popular terms such as ‘New

Documentary’ as falsely implying unprecedented phenomena in documentary practice (2013: 24). In agreement with Winston, I believe that the current situation in documentary practice is not accurately described in terms of unprecedented documentary forms or some other type of linear progression. Such distinctions misleadingly isolate the development of culture from the myriad of interrelated factors through which it is continuously shaped and changed. Yet, by implicitly restricting itself to the realm of documentary practice, Winston’s ‘post-Griersonian’ documentary also falsely detaches itself from larger cultural contexts. Instead, I argue that terms such as current documentary or contemporary documentary are more fitting. These adjectives reflect less modernist preconceptions of improvement than the term ‘new’ and are inherently linked to a wide range of developments in the past, present and future, which is a more accurate conveyance of the interconnected processes underlying cultural change. Amplifying the foregoing, documentary theorist Alisa Lebow points to Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera as one of the films that foretold the development of movements such as Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema in the 1960s, while also posing it as one of the first

examples of first person documentary elements due to Vertov’s use of his brother and wife as surrogates for the filmmaker. According to Lebow, “[a] more thoroughgoing alignment of the particular and the universal, the individual and the collective, could hardly be made” (2013: 259). The uncamouflaged presence of the filmmaker in first person documentary is evidently not unfamiliar. Filmmakers such as Vertov and Rouch employed onscreen filmmakers and subjective perspectives long before first person documentary became widespread. It is

(19)

19 Godard’s 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle/Two or Three Things I Know about Her (1966) inspired documentarists to use reflexive strategies to represent their inner worlds (2002: 12). As noted before, reflexivity in documentary was commonly used with the intention to lay bare the previously mystified cinematic apparatus and expose the ideological stance of the film and its maker. However, Lane rightly points out that reflexivity in autobiographical documentary functions quite differently:

“Reflexivity clearly heightens our awareness of the constructed status of the documentary image and sound, yet reflexivity in the autobiographical documentary does not necessarily function as a strategy that overthrows the possibility of historical reference in documentary. Autobiographical documentaries use reflexivity not to eradicate the real as much as to complicate referential claims. Reflexivity enables the autobiographical discourse that inextricably brings together autobiographers, their medium, and their life story” (Ibid.: 18).

Similarly, Michael Renov sees what he calls the ‘new autobiography’ as a link between existing categories of documentary and the avant-garde, able to combine intricate representations of subjectivity with documentary impulses, though characterised by an activity of self-inscription:

“[…] far from offering an unselfconscious transcription of the artist’s life, [the new autobiography] posits a subject never exclusive of its other-in-history. In so doing, it challenges certain of our staunchest aesthetic and epistemological preconceptions” (2004: 110).

The foregoing complication of referential claims and the activity of self-inscription is roughly combined what has led several scholars to forefront first person documentary as an intrinsic fusion between the marginal and the typical, or the individual and the collective, establishing a complex relation between the filmmaker, the film and the viewer (f.e. Lane 2002; Renov 2004; Bruzzi 2006; Rascaroli 2009; Nichols 2010; Lebow 2012). But in what way are first person documentaries structured to transform familiar documentary techniques differently than other documentary forms? The post-Griersonian paradigm forefronted by Winston evidently does not provide a sufficient answer to this question. By positioning the skeptical, individual viewer radically central to his new paradigm, Winston presents us with an endless range of possible interpretations. As a consequence, it fails to further delineate first person documentary’s particularity – or that of any other contemporary documentary form for that matter.I therefore argue that Winston’s reasoning is, ironically, largely informed by the dogma of subjectivity instilled on the academic realm by postmodern thought. In

(20)

20 truth. Such a grand categorisation produces little more than its own existence, automatically making itself redundant in terms of generating further scientific insight. Our shared

recognition of countless phenomena convincingly indicates that not everything is subjectively defined and that historical and scientific facts do have legitimate existence. The very fact that various documentary theorists recognise first person documentary’s dialogical nature as a phenomenon points to some measure of common ground. Though postmodern thought has rightly brought attention to the active viewer as a factor that should be reckoned with, focusing solely on the centrality of the individual viewer is quite unproductive. In fact, I believe that the paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism raises relevant doubts, especially considering the interconnected nature of culture. Illustrating my point here, documentary scholar Annelies van Noortwijk convincingly describes a current cultural shift, suggesting a return from a skeptical, postmodern awareness to a modern stance in which “[t]he reevaluation of the subject as an active, embodied, and emotional individual is fundamental” (2014: 114). Thus, more progressive than addressing an uncritical inactive audience and less drastic than claiming the absolute subjectivity of the skeptical active viewer, the contemporary paradigm combines and harmonises both extremes. As discussed earlier, all cultural developments can be viewed as interconnected. The emergence of a given documentary movement may appear to pose decided breaks from older traditions, yet

simultaneously presents several evident links to other documentary practices and to the larger cultural contexts in which they occur. I therefore argue that Winston’s post-Griersonian paradigm too easily pushes modernist rationales aside. Moreover, I claim that first person documentary is emblematic of a current paradigm shift to a rationale in which the active, embodied viewer is acknowledged in the construction of contemporary documentary film. It is subsequently my belief that paying more attention to first person documentary as a specific, cognitive sense-making process may lead to a more profound understanding of its

underpinnings.

(21)

21 encompassing a more broad range of modalities than those belonging to the fixed categories set up by Grierson and Direct Cinema proponents. I therefore posit that the most vital

consequence of the current paradigm shift has been the emergence of a rationale in which the role of the active, embodied viewer is acknowledged in the construction of meaning in representation. I subsequently argue that it is due to this very context that contemporary first person documentary has proliferated. The striking similarity in which documentary theorists forefront first person documentary as establishing a complex relation with the viewer seems to articulate the view that “[…] documentary is less a thing than an experience […]” (Sobchak 1999: 241). Paradoxically, these reflections are often accompanied by attempts to further delineate first person documentary without paying further attention to the complexity inherent to reception. The next paragraph will therefore reflect on the role of the viewer in theoretical descriptions of first person documentary and highlight several similarities and differences.

2.2 PROBLEMS IN DEFINING FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARY

The examined body of theoretical work roughly fits within the paradigm cycle described by Winston. Non-surprisingly, some confusing differences become apparent when we turn to scholarly attempts to theoretically delineate first person documentary as a documentary genre, specifically due to the structural use of the concept of dialogism in combination with umbrella terms such as performative documentary (Nichols 2010; Bruzzi 2006), autobiographical documentary (Renov 2004; Lane 2002), the essay film and personal cinema (Rascaroli 2009) and first person documentary (Lebow 2012). These denominators all encompass related – yet at times very distinct – practices, and vary from being interchangeable to being discussed side by side in numerous theoretical reflections. This points to first person documentary’s

(22)

22 viewer’s previous experiences and certain innate dispositions. Knowledge is stored and

clustered in schemata in our minds, readily available to aid us in our continuous interpretation of the surrounding world. As a result, the array of potential connections we can make between documentary form, style, and the events and people portrayed depends on our individual and shared capacities to link varying areas of lived and observed experience (Grodal 2009). In light of the foregoing, understanding first person documentary as a cognitive process rather than as a fixed documentary category is central to my investigation of first person

documentary’s dialogical nature. The aim of this paragraph will therefore be to highlight the rationales underlying the use of varying umbrella terms and offer some critical reflection on their consideration of the status of the viewer. I will furthermore propose Lebow’s

grammatical formulation of ‘first person documentary’ as the term most suitable in terms of my research. In conclusion, I will provide some clarity concerning the problems inherent to theoretical descriptions of what appears to be the same phenomenon, namely the dialogic nature of first person documentary.

2.2.1 Performative documentary

(23)

23 documentary film is evolving into a more and more authentic form, pushing towards a utopian ideal of abolishing the divide between reality and representation (2006: 2). Bruzzi argues that it is more valuable to accept the very impossibility of documentary ever being able to fully represent the historical world by embracing the construction of reality (2006: 7). This

construction is an ongoing negotiation between the filmmaker and the historical world, which Bruzzi places at the heart of all documentary and calls an act of performance: “[…] documentaries are inevitably the result of the intrusion of the filmmaker onto the situation being filmed, […] they are performative because they acknowledge the construction and artificiality of even the non-fiction film and propose, as the underpinning truth, the truth that emerges through the encounter between filmmakers, subjects and spectators” (2000:8).

Albeit a valuable notion within the field of film studies as a whole, I believe that

performativity as a common denominator for first person documentary film is too strict and at the same time too general a term to function productively within the lines of my research. Bruzzi acknowledges a complex connection between the filmmaker, the documentary and the viewer by making a case for performativity as lying at the heart of all documentary forms and therefore supports the relevance of my aim to understand first person documentary in relation to its reception. However, Bruzzi’s approach does not sufficiently relay the complexity underlying our shared and individual processes of sense-making. Instead, she directs her definition of performance at gaining recognition for performativity as an important organising structure in general. Due to this broad conceptualisation, Bruzzi’s understanding of

(24)

24

2.2.2 Autobiographical documentary

Prominent documentary scholar Michael Renov forefronts the term ‘autobiographical

documentary’ in his reflections on first person documentary and centers his argumentation on principles divergent from those discussed by Bill Nichols and Stella Bruzzi, while touching upon quite similar types of film. Renov refers to the ‘new autobiography’ in his discussions of ‘filmic autobiography’ or ‘autobiographic documentaries’, and observes that this denominator entails a range of autobiographic modalities, such as the ‘essayistic’, the ‘confessional mode’ and ‘domestic ethnography’ (2008: 44-5). Renov claims to purposefully surpass the specifics of these modes by speaking of the autobiographical, “[…] which in its adjectival form evokes the activity of self-inscription shared by all” (2004: 106). According to Renov,

autobiographical documentary necessarily combines an explicit presentation of the self with an implicit, discursive tradition of self-presentation through cinematic imagery (Ibid.: 110-1). From the foregoing, Renov derives the capacity of autobiographical documentary to challenge fixed conventional structures, as its subject cannot exist without its ‘other’, its in-history: “It is the site of a vital creative initiative being undertaken by film and video makers around the world that is transforming the ways we think about and represent ourselves for ourselves and for others” (Ibid.: 110-1). Rather than recognising documentary as a cognitive frame,

Renov’s description of what encompasses autobiographical documentary is directed towards autobiographical filmmaking as a filmmaker’s tool for personal exploration, and therefore towards gaining more understanding of autobiographical documentary within the realm of the filmmaker’s intentionality – a rationale that generally underlies modernist arguments in documentary theory. As noted before, the dialogical relation I wish to address is rooted in modes of reception and can therefore be viewed as an event – a phenomenon that occurs in the encounter, not necessarily in the encoding (Lebow 2008: xxiii). Moreover, and as argued earlier, I take the position that the adjective ‘new’ is flawed in the context of cultural change. Autobiographical formats should not be marked according to connotations suggesting some unprecedented phenomenon. Such distinctions falsely detach developments in documentary practice from cultural contexts. It is further important to note that the widely used umbrella term ‘autobiographical documentary’ can also be viewed as quite problematic. According to Alisa Lebow, autobiographical documentary is an inherently flawed description of first person documentary as it automatically implies an autonomous author, a unified self within a

(25)

25 suggests that the term inherently omits the complex processes implicit to reception, an issue I will return to later in this paragraph.

2.2.3 Personal cinema

Echoing Renov’s classification of autobiographical modalities, Laura Rascaroli separates ‘personal cinema’ from ‘essay film’, and divides personal cinema into three forms, namely the ‘diary’, the ‘self-portrait’ and the ‘notebook’. According to Rascaroli, personal cinema is always both personal and autobiographical, as it explicitly documents aspects of the first person self. In juxtaposition, Rascaroli defines the essay film as a form of personal self

expression on any issue that is always subjective, but need not necessarily be autobiographical (2009: 14-6). In her research, Rascaroli traces the origins of the essay film and the different personal cinema forms, connecting them to a reflective, authorial and introspective tradition of work. She bases her categorical division on what she claims to be key distinctions in the textual commitment of each type, and the spectatorial pact they set up:

“The commitment and the pact of the essay film can be summarized as follows: ‘I, the author, am reflecting on a problem, and share my thoughts with you, the spectator.’ In the diary, the notebook and self-portrait, instead, the textual commitments can be expressed as follows: ‘I am recording events that I have witnessed and impressions and emotions I have experienced’ (the diary); ‘I am taking notes of ideas, events, existents for future use’ (the notebook); ‘I am making a representation of myself’ (the self-portrait)” (Ibid.).

Rascaroli points to autobiographical documentary as placing the author central to the filmic text, using the camera as an authorial subjective pen to reflect on her/his personal discourse (Ibid.: 106, 108). Despite their monological nature, Rascaroli states these films have a dialogical desire to connect with the viewer (Ibid.: 108-9). While the enunciator talks of her/himself as a character that identifies with the author, the act of ‘writing’ itself implies an audience. It is this implication that makes the viewer feel like being let into a private

(26)

26 essay film on whether these forms are necessarily autobiographical or not. Though Rascaroli acknowledges the inherent impossibility of a strictly autobiographical art form, I consider the grounds on which she bases her categorisation to not fully weigh in the interconnectivity inherent to considering first person documentary as a cognitive process.

2.2.4 First person documentary

Similar to Rascaroli, Alisa Lebow acknowledges her designation ‘first person documentary’ foremost as a mode of address, but delves deeper into the implications of such an approach. According to Lebow, the grammatical formulation of the term covers a broad range of divergent, yet related practices, and is less imperfect than, for example, ‘autobiographical documentary’ (2012: 2). To substantiate her claim, Lebow argues that first person

documentary is much less centrally autobiographical than one would expect due to its implicit formal dualism. The first person singular, ‘I’, automatically inherits the first person plural, ‘we’, as one does not speak without the other (Ibid.: 1-2). This dualism facilitates us to gather a multitude of documentary types such as the ‘self-portrait film’, the ‘essay film’ and the ‘video diary’, all of which have in common that they articulate the position of the filmmaker (2012: 1). Next to ‘subjectivity’, Lebow therefore views relationality as a distinguishing feature of first person documentary:

“Autobiographical film implicates others in its quest to represent a self, implicitly constructing a subject always already in-relation – that is, in the first person plural. […] First person film merely literalizes and makes apparent the fact that self-narration – not to mention autobiography – is never the sole property of the speaking self. It properly belongs to larger collectivities without which the maker would be unrecognizable to herself, and effectively would have no story to tell” (2008: xii).

By deliberately not choosing the one or the other, first person documentary resides between the ‘I’ and the ‘we’. Lebow’s denominator subsequently allows for a diversity of aims and approaches, all of which can still be related to one another in terms of their relational articulation of the position of the filmmaker, while avoiding the broad or narrow

characterisations described above. Lebow forefronts that the individual, or the ‘I’, does not exist alone, but always in relation to, or ‘with’, another:

(27)

27 In consequence, the grammatical formulation of ‘first person documentary’ exemplifies that even if we express ourselves as individuals, we are always interconnected with an other, a group, a larger whole – an interrelatedness that is also expressed through the very act of communicating (2012: 3-4). Moreover, Lebow’s term implicitly recognises that the act of representing the self implies a splitting. The filmmaker is simultaneously the subject matter of the film and the subject making the film, a schismic state through which s/he becomes both subject and object (2012: 5). Extending her argument to the philosophical notion of

subjection, Lebow outlines that one can only become a subject by subjecting oneself to a certain social, political or symbolic order. Even though these powers clearly surpass oneself, they are still implicitly constructive of the self (2012: 6). Therefore, first person documentary “[…] goes beyond simply debunking documentary’s claim to objectivity. In the very awkward simultaneity of being subject in and subject of, it actually unsettles the dualism of the

objective/subjective divide, rendering it inoperative” (2012: 5).

(28)

28 first person documentary is structured to engage the viewer in a dialogical relation remain unexplored. While each scholar proposes theoretical needs to range this variety of highly heterogeneous films under separate documentary categories, little pragmatic grounds are supplied to warrant such a distinction. Moreover, their delineations of first person

documentary are all based on relational features, reflecting the influence of the dogma of subjectivity in documentary theory. As previously noted, films are generally made to be viewed by a broad audience, which implicates that the ways in which first person

documentaries are structured speak to certain shared cognitive systems. The very fact that several theoreticians recognise the dialogic nature of first person documentary as a

characteristic trait points towards the relevance of investigating these shared cognitive capacities. However, the rationale underlying dialogism – and therefore all of the umbrella terms described above – may have considerably problematised such a pursuit. To come to a better understanding of this problem, I will turn to Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and its theoretical underpinnings below.

2.3 FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARY AND THE CONCEPT OF DIALOGISM

The writings of Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895 – 1975) were rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s. From that point onwards, Bakhtin has risen as one of the most influential linguistic thinkers within cultural theory and art theory. His theoretical reflections on the analysis of literary forms have not only inspired literary criticism, but also film and art criticism. Interestingly, Bakhtin himself never wrote about film. Nevertheless, his concept of dialogism is used throughout academic reflections on first person documentary and is therefore of noteworthy interest for my research. It was developed most notably via Bakhtin’s study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels, in which he discovered a dialogic world containing a variety of voices and speech types. The foregoing is best understood in contrast with what Bakhtin pointed to as monologic literary forms – for example, poetry and the epic – which he viewed as representing an authorial, singular voice (1984: 6). In Bakhtin’s view, Dostoevsky’s novels constituted a new style of writing.

(29)

29 According to Bakhtin, heteroglossia “[…] represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily form” (1981: 291). Bakhtin’s linguistic view on culture is rooted in the belief that language is the center of all cultural production, in which every utterance is rooted in the different languages of heteroglossia. Here, an utterance does not only encompass the verbal, but may for example be a gesture, piece of music, book, painting, or film. In the Bakhtinian sense, first person documentary does not only include utterances in the form of verbal discourse, it is an utterance and, as a consequence, social communication in itself (Stam 1986: 128). In this respect, Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia represents the multitude of voices and speech-types involved with a given utterance, while simultaneously pointing towards the different stances they might take. ‘Dialogue’, then, is the ongoing process that may originate between their differences. Following the foregoing, dialogue refers to the ongoing pervasive relation between the ‘speaker’, from whom the utterance originates, and the ‘listener’, positioned at the receiving end of the utterance. It therefore spreads out to encompass all contextual negotiations of its occurrence, whether they are personal, social, cultural or institutional: “Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole – there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others” (Bakhtin 1981: 426). Bakhtin’s work consequently expresses a belief in the mutual relation between meaning and context as involving the author, the work and the reader, each constantly affecting and influencing the other, and the whole influenced by existing cultural and social forces. The recipient of the message plays an essential role in the construction of meaning by treating every cultural production as an utterance, a discourse in action, which engages the speaker and the listener in active understanding. Meaning – or, ‘truth’ – is what emerges as the final result of this confrontation and can therefore not be fixed (Scheinman 1998: 189).

Building on the above, a Bakhtinian view on film is based on the interdependence of language and culture. From this perspective, first person documentary cannot be seen as existing in a vacuum as a finite text, but must be approached as a porous entity of production and

(30)

30 it includes the filmmaker, the viewer and the filmic text in the construction of meaning.

However, the Bakhtinian rationale demands its researcher to possess a profound

understanding of all factors involved, which can be rather difficult – or, impossible – to obtain. A dialogic approach is moreover based on the concept of difference or otherness. As such, I claim that it implicitly sidelines our shared cognitive dispositions. Underpinning this statement, cognitive film theorist Torben Grodal posits that “[…] linguistic models [of culture] emphasize cultural differences and de-emphasize how our shared embodied nonlinguistic experiences provide a background for transcultural understanding as well as conflicts between cultures, based on interests” (2009:12). Similar to my critique of Winston’s post-Griersonian paradigm, I believe Bakhtin’s concept is quite broad. The human mind is not wholly constructed by social, cultural and institutional factors. By predominantly focusing on these contexts dialogism largely neglects the fact that we share certain dispositions through which we enter in complex processes of sense-making. Just as radically centralising the viewer in the process of reception, forefronting first person documentary’s dialogic nature as a key characteristic does not lead towards fleshing out its specificity. As a consequence, the scholarly tendency to forefront first person documentary as a dialogical filmic form remains quite vague. The questions posed in the introduction of this thesis therefore persist – in what way does first person documentary engage its viewer, and what is the specific nature of this engagement? It seems that the dialogic nature of first person documentary would best be objectively understood by its shared effect on viewing experience. Based on the outcomes of this chapter, I argue that documentary theory is in dire need of shifting its focus from

(31)

31

CHAPTER 3: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO FIRST

PERSON DOCUMENTARY

The academic realm of social sciences and the humanities has become more prominently influenced by cognitive studies over the last couple of decades. Underlying this tendency is the desire to come to an understanding of the shared dimensions of human phenomena in combination with the manners in which these dimensions are interconnected with social, cultural and historical forces, how they interact with one another and how they might influence each other (Bondebjerg 2014: 12).This cognitive turn in academic theory may be viewed as another indication of the broader cultural shift we are currently situated in. Society and culture shape the mind to some extent, but the human brain and body also influence the manners in which reality is experienced and represented. Narrative is therefore not only constructed by history and culture; nor are emotions, or language structures. From a cognitive point of view these are all basic elements of the embodied mind, amounting to a countless number of variations through the influence of historical, social and cultural contexts (Bondebjerg 2014: 13). Interestingly, this means that our perception and experience of the world may be linked more closely to the experience of film than one might think (Kiss 2010: 165). Cognitivist perspectives have strongly affected film studies. However, several scholars rightly note that documentary film theory and documentary film analysis have barely

(32)

32 understanding of the dialogical nature of first person documentary this chapter will first

introduce the PECMA flow model, forefronting the details inherent to an unproblematic movement through the model’s cognitive stages and connecting these elements to the manners in which certain documentary techniques may emulate our experience of reality. In the second paragraph I will build on Grodal’s model, describing documentary elements that may stall cognition by blocking the PEMA flow and arguing how the viewer’s in/familiarity with cultural conventions may magnify or diminish these disruptions, resulting in an increased or decreased experience of realism. In the third and final paragraph I will formulate a hypothesis on the dialogical experience of first person documentary as a conscious sense of realism evoked by blockages in the PECMA flow. Throughout, I will offer a critical view on the matters discussed.

3.1 TORBEN GRODAL’S PECMA FLOW

Torben Grodal’s cognitive approach to film draws on ideas and empirical research from the field of cognitive psychology. Grounded in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, in which intentionality is linked to the ways our motor system is directed toward acting in and on the world, Grodal’s theory demonstrates how key features of film genres and narrative forms can be explained from an evolutionary-biological perspective. From this point of view, the viewer’s response to first person documentary is not only based on the culturally acquired aspects of film experience. Quite the contrary: it is to a great extent molded by the

biologically innate dispositions embedded in the human brain. The fundamental claim Grodal makes is that the activities involved in viewing film are similar to our standard experience of the world. The manners in which we make sense of and survive in the world are guided by the same general biological system that facilitates an understanding of audiovisual representations – our embodied mind. As most cognitive theory the foregoing is grounded in the evolutionary argument, which asserts that the human perception system is formed by the need for survival and departs from the view that the initial response to any stimulation will be to take it

(33)

33 be considered as a flow from perception to actual but suppressed motor action, and that the experienced degree of emotional saturation or tenseness is based on the cognitive processing and emotional labeling of the object perceived. To further delineate these experiential processes Grodal’s seminal work Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film (2009) introduces the PECMA flow model (figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1 Torben Grodal’s PECMA flow model (2009: 147)

The PECMA flow model is an attempt to unify contemporary cognitive psychology –

(34)

34 activated in the PECMA flow, providing an immediate analysis of important forms and

movements detected by the eyes by rapidly scanning and sorting incoming information. After the information has been identified, the flow moves towards two destinations: the association cortex and the emotion system. The association cortex compares the incoming information to what we already know and offers fast guidance for what action to take through memory tags (Ibid.: 148-9). Culture and personal experience evidently play a considerably bigger role in this process of identification and emotional labeling. The brain stores schemata and images of visual forms, tagging them with certain basic emotions which are triggered upon a positive match with the percept. The emotional brain systems are located in the oldest and deepest parts of the brain and influence all PECMA flow stages (Ibid.: 147). In the cognition stage, logic and reason start to mold the flow of perceptual information through functions such as association, the understanding of other minds and their intentions, the ordering of events in time, thinking out plans for motor actions motivated by emotional concerns, and simulating possible – emotional – consequences of actions (Ibid.: 150). This stage is also strongly influenced by the cultural background and dispositions of the individual. Though emotions have a core in the more instinctive parts of the brain’s architecture, the ways in which they are accessed or suppressed may differ per individual due to innate and culturally appropriated factors working alongside each other. Thus, emotional dispositions, emotional tagging, cognitive preferences, ideological stances and personal preferences all play a role in the viewer’s reception and experience of film. One of the main aspects of the cognition stage is to assess reality status and to incite or suppress bodily responses to what is perceived. This leads to motor action, the final stage of the PECMA flow, which is located in the motoric action cortex and controls the execution of appropriate responses through repressed or actual motor action. As noted earlier, situations in which the brain is aware of experiencing a

(35)

35 inherently point to possible future motor actions, such as escaping through a door,

approaching a person or obtaining a goal. In other words, the natural process of experiencing visual information is not abstract and disembodied but concrete, goal-oriented, and embodied. The PECMA flow follows the structure of the brain by leading perception through emotions and cognition, and ends in physical engagement, as “[t]he emotional-conscious experience is […] colored by, or modalised by, muscular tension because it is the muscles, whether in the arms or legs or in the speech organs, that implement our preferences, and thus this muscular intentionality colors the experience” (Ibid.: 150). This identification – or, simulation – is enabled by our ability to empathise and triggered by mirror neurons, a system in the brain that prompts action tendencies in the viewer that mirror the actions and intentions of the film’s characters. Even though the awareness of experiencing a representation leads the brain to repress actual motor action, action tendencies have a strong connection to our experience of reality. Best described as bleed-throughs of our experiences of the real world, involuntary corporeal responses in the form of unconscious and uncontrolled motoric reactions may subsequently still occur. As a result, our pulse changes, we may sweat and our muscles alternate states of relaxation with tensity (Ibid.: 4). These repressed motor actions cause a certain tension that may be relieved by the achievement of a certain goal, after which a subgoal is forefronted as the new main objective and the whole process simply restarts – guaranteeing a full and continuous PECMA cycle (Ibid.: 150-1).

The above description of PECMA flow mainly discusses the bottom-up processing of information: our perceptors feed new information to the brain, which is fitted into existing memory structures – or, schemata – and activates certain emotions, cognitions and actions. In turn, top-down processes determine the manners in which new information is handled,

(36)

36 provide flexibility in our preferences and motivations due to coping potentials and previous emotional experiences (Ibid.: 153). The same double movement can be recognised in our evaluations of reality status. In the primary process of the perceptual stage memories, dreams and films are analysed according to their colors and shapes, though reality status mechanisms monitor different types of reality by tagging them with an appropriate determination. Whether we act on a certain mental experience or not is controlled according to the reality status assigned to the incoming perceptual information, which relies on individual abilities and cultural backgrounds (Ibid.: 153-4). Grodal points out that reality status is therefore generally experienced as a feeling, and that “[f]ilm and other types of fiction do not merely simulate the different types of reality; they also enhance our understanding of these different types” (Ibid.: 154).

3.1.1 Documentary and the emulation of our experience of reality

(37)

37 events and the presence of the documentarist, all in favor of guaranteeing a full PECMA cycle (Ibid.: 258-9). Interestingly, Grodal’s cognitive understanding of realism provides the

scientific grounds to more firmly substantiate my claims with regard to the Griersonian paradigm in documentary practice. As argued in chapter two, the development of portable film equipment during the late 1950s intensified the modernist belief in the ability of film to directly capture reality by facilitating documentary filmmakers to camouflage their

interventions. Direct Cinema adherents consequently rendered most classical documentary techniques invalid. Under the influence of this dogma of objectivity, observational

documentary formats adopted conventions and forms similar to the classical fiction style. Direct Cinema films consequently offer a close resemblance to mainstream fiction narratives. For example, Robert Drew’s Primary (1960) closely follows John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey during their pursuit of a concrete goal, namely to win the election for US

presidency. This goal is divided into sub-goals, such as taking part in debate and other means to gather votes. Drew presents the corresponding events chronologically, combined with a continuous presentation of space. The PECMA flow experienced by the viewer while watching such a documentary may therefore be unproblematic and evoke a sense of realism. Thus, though Direct Cinema adherents believed these aesthetics would work to directly capture reality, I argue that they more accurately worked to emulate the viewer’s experience of reality by appealing to certain innate dispositions. From this perspective, classical

TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

TRAVERSING THE DIVIDE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2: FIRST PERSON DOCUMENTARY

CHAPTER 3: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO FIRST

PERSON DOCUMENTARY