Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film

By Carl Plantinga

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film provides a clear and compelling introduction to the basic theoretical issues that ground any in-depth study of documentary film and video. Exploring the legitimacy of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, Carl Plantinga characterizes the documentary in a new way. He examines the uses of mo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Schuler Books
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781943359097

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Preface to 2nd Edition

Footnotes can be found at the end of the preface.

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film is about audiovisual nonfictions, or documentaries, whether produced for film, television, the internet, or any other form of distribution. Although most of the examples it describes are films, the principles it develops apply to all documentaries—digital, video, or celluloid. Since 1997, when the first edition of this book was published¹, the documentary film and video have become increasingly visible and culturally central. The styles of documentary are familiar to audiences because increasingly, people watch documentaries. In the United States, for example, documentary films are now routinely released theatrically, thanks in part to the example of Michael Moore, who with Roger and Me (1989) and several films thereafter demonstrated that documentaries could be entertaining and financially successful. The cable network Home Box Office has for more than twenty years maintained a vigorous program of documentary production and exhibition, including, for example, Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke (2006) and a recent 14-part series, Addiction. Celebrated films consistently appear on public television, for example, Ken Burns' recent The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), the journalistic documentaries shown on Frontline, and the independent documentaries featured on POV. Perhaps most remarkable is the inescapable presentation of documentaries and reality footage on the internet, for reasons and purposes as diverse as humanity itself. The contemporary influence of documentaries is also revealed in the way that recent movies, for example Cloverfield (2008) and District 9 (2009), mimic familiar documentary styles of representation.

Scholarship on the documentary has also flourished to a remarkable extent. A look at the work on documentary today reveals books about individual filmmakers, genres, and regional or national cinemas; about the documentary representation of particular kinds of subject matter, for example, nature, wildlife, and science; and about neglected aspects of documentary, such as documentary politics, the visual attractions (as opposed to informative functions) of documentary representation, or the fascinating hybrid films that straddle the fiction/nonfiction divide. We have seen books about the making of documentaries that are informed by theory and criticism, books of interviews with documentary filmmakers, comprehensive histories of the documentary, and even the vast Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film, edited by Ian Aitken².

Within this context, it is satisfying to be able to offer Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film, for the first time, in a paperback edition. Rhetoric and Representation in the Nonfiction Film deals squarely with many of the central theoretical issues raised by the documentary, or what I call in these pages, the nonfiction film. In general, it offers a critical realist account of the documentary that runs counter to the common thread of skepticism that pervades documentary film theory. Skeptical documentary theory, influenced by post-modernist or post-structuralist thought, doubts the ability of the documentary to represent reality with truthfulness, accuracy, or objectivity. The critical realist approach, on the other hand, holds that in some cases, the documentary can be truthful, accurate, and objective, and that its epistemic claims can be rational and well-justified.

Of course, critical realism should not be confused with the naïve view that documentaries are by definition true, while fictions are false or made up. The contention that documentaries can be relatively accurate or truthful does not minimize their rhetorical, persuasive functions, and their capacity for deception and distortion. The rhetoric in the title of this book suggests its overall plan of examining the ways in which documentaries represent reality through creative choices in structure, style, and what I call voice. Although I do not examine the political or ethical functions of individual documentaries in great detail in these pages, I would hope that the analysis of the rhetoric of voice, form, and style in the documentary can contribute to such examinations.

While the introduction to the first edition provides a summary of the book's architecture and contents, my views on things have changed somewhat in the last ten years, so here I offer a few remarks to add further perspective. The first two chapters examine past attempts to define the nonfiction film, consider the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, and propose a working characterization of the nonfiction film. While I stand by nearly all of this, it has been pointed out to me that these chapters exhibit a kind of tension between two views on defining the documentary, and that the chapters do not clearly settle on either. The first view is that the category documentary, like art, is a fuzzy concept, not capable of being defined in the traditional sense. That is, it is a category defined not by an essence or essences, but by a set of family resemblances. Individual documentaries may share some but not all the family resemblances characteristic of the mode. On this family resemblance view, it is not possible to provide a traditional definition of the documentary, because the films subsumed under the category documentary are too diverse, and because documentary practices are constantly changing. The other view in these initial chapters takes the family resemblance business into account, and yet boldly goes on to define the prototypical documentary. The documentary is defined as a subset of the broader category, nonfiction film and video, and characterized by the assertive stance taken by the filmmaker(s) toward the world of the film. That is, in the case of documentaries, filmmakers assert that the states of affairs they represent occur in the actual world, and audiences implicitly understand that since the film is identified as a documentary, its claims and implications should be taken as assertions rather than fictions.

Clearly these two views or strains of thought are not entirely compatible. Either the documentary can be defined in a traditional sense, or it cannot. Looking back on these issues now, I lean toward the claim that prototypical documentaries—central examples of the mode, such as journalistic documentaries—do have a characteristic function, what I would call asserted veridical representation.³ That is, documentaries, when indexed or identified as such, are taken to (1) assert that its claims and implications are true, and (2) to present its images and sounds as reliable guides to the pro-filmic scene, the pro-filmic scene being the scene in front of the camera or the sonic environment of the microphone. When a film is indexed as a documentary, an implicit contract holds between audience and filmmaker. The filmmaker implicitly asserts veridical or truthful representation; the audience expects that the film will offer veridical representations. From this implicit contract between filmmaker and audience stems some of the ethical requirements of documentary filmmakers—honesty and truth-telling or truth-showing.

The third and fourth chapters, in my opinion, address issues that are vital to a full understanding of documentary discourse—the uses of photographic images, and to a lesser extent, recorded sounds, in documentary communication. These chapters explore the means by which images and sounds are used to represent and to communicate. The third chapter discusses photographic images as what Charles Sanders Pierce would call icons; my claim here is that moving photographs can provide rich information about the visual world, and that audiences use many real-world perceptual processes to apprehend the information available in images. The fourth chapter examines the image as an index, that is, as a sign that is created in part by a mechanical causal process that under some conditions lends credence to what the image shows. Taken together, thinking of the moving photographic image as simultaneously iconic and indexical goes far toward accounting for the tremendous information and rhetorical power of images. In these chapters I also examine how images are used in documentary films to make claims and to bolster a sense of authenticity.

At this point, some will want to know how the rise of digital imagery relates to this discussion. Although I deal with this issue in the book, in the ten-plus years between this and the first edition, digital filmmaking has become the norm rather than a new technology. With digital imaging, it is becoming increasingly easy for filmmakers to manipulate images or to create photographically realist images without cameras. What does this say for the indexical and iconic bond between image and pro-filmic scene? Doesn't digital imagery throw into question all claims of the documentary image to evidence? Frankly, I find much of the discussion of the revolutionary effects of digital imaging for documentary to be rather hyperbolic. First, consider that the digital photographic image shares much in common with their older, analog counterparts:

1. Both analog and digital photographic images can be iconic; that is, they both can provide stunning and accurate visual information about a pro-filmic scene.

2. Both analog and digital photographic images can be indexical; that is, they may be the result of what is in part a mechanical, causal process involving the physics of light and the mechanics of lenses and cameras.

3. Both analog and digital photographic images can be altered and manipulated. This is not new to digital photography.

4. Both analog and digital images are used in contexts that in part determine how they are used and received, from the context of the images in a particular documentary film, to the context of the film in relation to a community of practitioners, distributors, and audiences.

What digital technologies bring to image creation is the capacity to more easily alter and manipulate photographically real images. At most, what we can say is that in some contexts, it would be wise for audiences to consider the source of the documentary and its images. But the rise of digital imagery hardly renders documentary evidence illicit, and does not require that audience trust no one and nothing. Audiences have never relied solely on the photographic image to make judgments about the veracity of a film. If this were so, then audiences would believe everything they see in a film, regardless of its source or the plausibility of its claims. As anyone familiar with the backlash against Michael Moore in the United States can attest, many political conservatives will automatically discount Moore's documentaries, notwithstanding their use of photographic imagery. Conversely, if institutional protocols and standards are firmly in place (for the BBC's Planet Earth or PBS Frontline, for example), or if the audience is familiar with the reputation of the filmmaker(s), it is not unreasonable to trust that digital images have not been inappropriately manipulated for deceitful purposes. If audience trust in documentaries does stem solely from a misplaced belief in the evidence of photographic images (and I do not believe that does), one wonders how readers could ever trust written discourse. After all, we tend to trust many communications that are not photographic at all, if we trust the source of the communication, and if the context warrants such trust. As readers and viewers, we rely on institutional and interpersonal supports that encourage and enforce various standards of discourse. These are not perfect, of course, but without them we could take nothing we read or see as reliable.

Chapters 5-8 describe the rhetorical use voice, structure, and style in documentary films. The project of these chapters is abbreviated well in the introduction to the first edition, and need no further amplification or comment here. Chapter 9, The Poetic Voice, was one of the first attempts to systematically account for the artistic or poetic uses of documentary films. Documentary films and videos, of course, play an important role in informing and persuading audiences about political and other issues. Yet there exists a body of work that cannot be easily classified as fiction, and that does not take as its primary concern the provision of information. Such films may celebrate the beauty of images and sounds, of rhythms and textures, and may experiment with form and style in fascinating ways. In this chapter I distinguish between the poetic documentary, the avant-garde nonfiction film, the metadocumentary, and the documentary parody. Judging from recent scholarship, these sorts of films have become especially interesting to contemporary scholars, and especially metadocumentaries and documentary parodies.⁴ In the filmmaking world, the category mock documentary or mockumentary has become a commonplace generic handle.

Chapter 10, Nonfiction Pragmatics and the Limits of Theory, engages some of the theoretical issues at the heart of the debates between the skeptics and the critical realists.⁵ Where some critics might valorize the open over the formal voice because the open voice is epistemically hesitant and self-aware, I argue that in some cases, the formal voice, which makes assertions and comes to conclusions, is justified. In any case, it cannot be ruled out automatically as misguided and overly-confident. Where skeptics challenge the very possibility of objectivity in the documentary, I defend the notion of relative objectivity in journalistic documentaries by closely examining a popular television documentary series of the 1960s, The Twentieth Century. My conclusion is that however much we must qualify our use of the word objecitivy, we cannot dispense with notions of objectivity when discussing documentary films. This chapter also questions the fetishization of reflexivity especially in academic circles. While reflexive films have often been thought to be more epistemically honest than realist, illusionistic documentaries, I argue that reflexivity is merely a technique, and when used by self-deceived, ignorant, or unaware filmmakers, it can actually imply sophistication where none exists. Reflexivity has its uses, both artistic and otherwise, but this section functions as a warning about putting too much stock in it. Finally, the book ends with an appeal to truth-telling (and I might add, truth-showing) as one of the fundamental goals of the documentary filmmaker. On the critical realist perspective, documentary filmmakers (making prototypical documentaries) don't simply make things up, and should not think of their work in this fashion. If the implicit contract between filmmaker and audience leads viewers to expect veridical representation, as the book argues, then filmmakers have an ethical obligation to tell and show the truth as they see it. To reject this call for truth-telling is to flatten all documentary discourse into fabrication. In a world without truth, neither do lies or propaganda exist. All documentaries are equally true and objective, that is, not true or objective at all. All documentaries, on this view, become merely self-serving discourse, tailored to particular interests and desires, and subject to no standards of evidence. I cannot believe that this is the world we live in. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film is my attempt to fully elaborate a critical realist view of the nature and functions of documentaries in human discourse.

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1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

2 3 vols., (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).

3 For a full (and philosophically technical) account of this revised characterization of the documentary, see my What a Documentary Is, After All, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63,2 (Spring 2005), 105-17.

⁴ See Jane Roscoe and CraigHight, FakingIt: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001) and Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, eds., F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth's Undoing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

⁵ For a brief account of these debates, see my Documentary, in Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds., The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 499-501. Among filmmakers, Errol Morris has taken a firm critical realist position. See my The Philosophy of Errol Morris, in William Rothman, ed., Three Documentary Filmmakers: Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 43-60.

Introduction

Moving picture nonfictions, typically called documentaries or nonfiction films and television, are a diverse lot. Those I examine in this book include independently-produced features (American Dream, Brother's Keeper, and The Lovely May [Le Joli Mai], journalistic documentaries (See it Now with Edward R. Murrow, Frontline), government-sponsored films (The River, Song of Ceylon, Why Vietnam?), anti-war, anti-government films (Far From Vietnam, Hearts and Minds), public television programs (The Civil War, Eyes on the Prize, and Nature), network news magazines (CBS 60 Minutes, 20/20), compilation films (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, Victory at Sea), and poetic and experimental work (Manhatta, Valentin de las Sierras).

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film works toward a pragmatics and a rhetoric of moving picture nonfictions. Nonfiction film pragmatics is the study of how nonfictions are used to perform various social tasks. Erik Barnouw implicitly acknowledges the rich variety of nonfictions in his history of the genre in section headings alluding to the diverse purposes of their makers: explorer, reporter, advocate, poet, promoter, observer, guerrilla, etc.¹ Michael Renov describes four functions of nonfiction films as (1) to record, reveal, or preserve, (2) to persuade or promote, (3) to analyze or interrogate, and (4) to express.² The purposes of the nonfiction film are limited only by the breadth of human communication itself.

It has been argued that images can perform many of the actions for which language is used – warning, asserting, identifying, informing, ridiculing, critiquing, etc.³ When we broaden the study of speech acts to encompass actions performed through the presentation of entire nonfiction texts, and to images and sounds used within texts, the matter becomes quite complicated. Instead of the simple utterances of a language user, we have a complex meld of images and sounds, in a work playing in some cases longer than two hours (consider Shoah or The Civil War, for example). Moreover, the sentence is typically uttered by an individual, often for a discernible purpose, whereas a work of nonfiction is a group project which, after its initial release, can be used for a variety of purposes depending on the context of exhibition.

One of the tasks of the nonfiction student or scholar is to investigate how producers, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences employ films and videos in the realm of human action. However, if the uses of nonfiction films are as varied as the films themselves, theory alone cannot circumscribe the work's possible uses, or determine a priori the ideological effect of a text or genre. History and criticism must place movements, filmmakers, and individual films in their contexts. Theory, at best, supplies conceptual tools.

To contribute to such a pragmatics, we must first explore central philosophical issues. The first four chapters of this book examine two issues fundamental to all theoretical explorations of nonfiction film. The first – the nature of nonfiction and the nonfiction film – has proven to be utterly baffling to generations of filmmakers and scholars. The second issue – the semantics of moving picture photography – is no less central, and the scholarly discussion every bit as contentious. While emphasizing the historical nature of the genre, these chapters propose a characterization of nonfiction moving pictures that distinguishes fiction from nonfiction, accounts for the diversity of nonfiction films and videos, and accounts for expressive techniques, often mistakenly called fictional, in nonfictions.

A pragmatics of nonfiction moving pictures must deal with the semantic issues of photographic realism and reference. It must also explore the rhetorical uses of images and sounds. Sometimes those who endorse a qualified realism of the image, as I do here, are claimed to hold all types of fantastical beliefs, ranging from the presence of the photograph's referent, to confidence that the photograph automatically guarantees unproblematic evidence about its referent, to a belief in magic. Photographic realists are also claimed to have various shortcomings of a personal or psychological nature. At various times, they have been called philistines, narcissists, or fetishists. In The Burden of Representation, for example, John Tagg writes that Roland Barthes' assertions about photographic realism must be considered in light of the death of his own mother, his reawakened sense of unsupportable (sic) loss, and his search for 'a just image' and not 'just an image' of her, and implies that Barthes' claims stem from a desire for the repossession of his mother's body.⁴

Although Barthes may in fact have had this problem, and other realists may hold various naive beliefs, it is nonetheless possible to make a more sophisticated case for photographic realism. In the third and fourth chapters I do so, drawing on diverse sources to argue that as iconic and indexical signs, still and moving photographs (and recorded sounds) can refer to the profilmic scene in ways that account for its unique informative power. However, the iconic and indexical aspects of the image are never automatic, guaranteed, or unproblematic. Moreover, images and sounds also have connotative and symbolic aspects, and point forward, so to speak, to their rhetorical functions.

This book is also meant to contribute to a rhetoric of nonfiction moving pictures. I mean rhetoric not in the relativistic sense of Stanley Fish. Fish makes rhetoric into an all-encompassing phenomenon, claiming as irrelevant and misleading all notions of truth, evidence, or reason. Fish's project calls first for a debunking of orthodoxies and arrangements of power, a recognition that everything is rhetorical. Second, for a loosening or weakening of the structures of domination and oppression that now hold us captive.⁵ These forces he identifies with rhetoric, arguing that we must counter the power of rhetoric and liberate ourselves from its hegemony. However, if all is rhetoric, then our debunking is itself just more self-serving drivel (with no grounding in truth, evidence, reason). Why should anyone be persuaded by it?⁶

Nor do I mean by rhetoric merely the realm of persuasion. I take the word in a broader sense, as the study of the richness, complexity, and expressiveness of nonfiction discourse, and the means by which it is structured to have influence on the viewer. To this end, the fifth chapter describes nonfiction discourse in general terms, then examines the means by which it fashions its representation – through selection, ordering, emphasis, and what I call voice. The sixth chapter discusses the means others have used to talk about subgenres of nonfiction, from Bill Nichols' modes of documentary to divisions based on categorical, rhetorical, and narrative form. Then it further expands on the concept of voice, showing the formal means by which nonfiction texts claim or disavow levels of authority, and describing what I call the formal and the open voices. The seventh and eighth chapters examine structure, style, and technique, in each case not as elements of a free-floating play of signifiers, but of an expressive discourse that makes reference to the actual world. In the ninth chapter I explore an alternative to the formal and open voices, the poetic voice, manifesting itself in poetic documentaries, avant-garde nonfictions, metadocumentaries, and parodies.

Chapters 5–9 emphasize the formal, syntactical qualities of nonfiction moving pictures. Yet it would be inaccurate to describe my project as formalist. As I said above, I'm interested in studying the place nonfictions occupy in the social world, and in the morality and ideology of discourse. A valuable way to contribute to such a study is to investigate the formal workings of texts, since their structures influence how texts can be used and what effects they may have. I want to avoid the bold and general, but misguided, claims some theorists make about the ideological effect of nonfiction films.⁷ For example, Brian Winston argues that the photograph is invested with such an aura of science that despite all disavowals by filmmakers, spectators always take the image as unproblematic and transparent truth.⁸ This misleading scientificity is allegedly built into the photographic apparatus, an outcome of its historical association with scientific instruments. Yet Winston doesn't believe in the automatic veracity of the photographic image. Is it right for Winston to impart a universal ideological effect to the photograph from which he is exempt? My contention is that ideological effects cannot be posited at such a broad level of generality, but instead must be determined in reference to specific texts, events, contexts, and audiences. If this makes it more difficult to determine ideological effect apart from history, then so be it. History, criticism, and theory must have a symbiotic relationship.

I make no general claims about the historical meaning of nonfiction moving pictures, or their central ideological effects. They have none. It seems to me that nonfictions occupy a central place in Western culture, but that their importance is manifested in infinite variations. Moreover, nonfiction moving pictures, like photography in general, have no unitary ideological effect, central function, or singular purpose, but a multitude of effects and purposes, depending on use, context, audience, and other factors. Rhetorical, text-based studies can contribute to the overall pragmatics of nonfiction film by examining how texts make meaning and use persuasive techniques. A fuller understanding of the uses of films, however, requires serious historical and critical investigation.

The final chapter of Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film considers some broad issues raised by nonfiction discourse. There I examine the strengths and weaknesses of the formal and open voices and their alternatives, showing how each is suited for specific purposes. I question and evaluate concepts such as objectivity, balance, and fairness in relation to historical or journalistic documentaries, and show how these concepts play out in an historical compilation documentary, The Twentieth Century. I discuss filmic illusion and reflexivity as they apply to the nonfiction film spectator. Finally, I conclude with some remarks about truth-telling and the ethics of nonfiction discourse.

This book integrates theory and philosophy with criticism. Theory here means the systematic investigation of issues central to nonfiction moving pictures. I am primarily concerned with understanding the nature and functions of nonfiction film, and thus with analysis rather than prescription. The book is also criticism, because it provides extended analyses to show how individual works exemplify particular issues. It adheres to no well-defined school or program, but approaches issues with reference to a broad spectrum of sources, from film theory, philosophy, cultural criticism, narratology, psychology, art theory, and of course, nonfiction film scholarship.

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film does not cover all relevant issues. Although it deals with the ethical responsibilities of the film maker toward the audience, it does not examine the rights of persons used as documentary subjects, a topic explored quite thoroughly elsewhere.¹⁰ The same is true for ethnographic and anthropological films, a discussion of which is better left to those more familiar with particular problems raised by those fields. Neither does this book deal extensively with the dramatic documentary, or docudrama. This topic has not been sufficiently explored, and someone should begin that project soon.

Moreover, Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film does not claim the last word on the subjects it does cover. It is rather part of a collaborative project in film studies, media studies, and other disciplines. I care less about whether I am right in all cases than about the contribution this work makes to discussion, synthesis, and perhaps even controversy – to that collaborative conversation which, we hope, leads to better understanding and perhaps beyond that to more tangible benefits. I take issue with many scholars throughout these pages, and in turn, welcome their criticisms, corrections, and questioning. Too often in film and media studies, carping and defensiveness take the place of constructive discussion and debate. We often take defensive postures toward criticism of our work, and allow debate to degenerate into personal animosity. We can and should disagree with each other openly.

When I first cite a film within the text, I give its date of release. For historical information about the films, see Richard M. Barsam's Nonfiction Film: A Critical History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992) or Erik Barnouw's Documentary: A History of the Nonfiction Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). These books also include bibliographies of works on specific nonfiction films and film makers. This work is not a history of nonfiction moving pictures, though it does assume a basic familiarity with that history. The better the reader's historical grounding, the better she will be able to test my claims against specific films and the historical record.

The past few years have witnessed a marked increase in the scholarly attention paid to nonfiction moving pictures. An annual conference, Visual Evidence, is devoted to the subject. Many significant books have been published, and a book series is planned on the topic.¹¹ To existing theoretical paradigms – William Guyn's semiological-psychoanalytic model, narrowly derivative of Metz, in A Cinema of Nonfiction (1990); Bill Nichols' discourse of sobriety, with roots in anthropology and information theory, in Representing Reality (1992); Michael Renov's Derridean-inflected modalities of desire in documentary poetics in Theorizing Documentary (1993); and Brian Winston's post-modern skepticism in Claiming the Real (1995) – this book offers a distinct alternative.

Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film provides a philosophical discussion of the central issues of nonfiction discourse. In its integration of philosophy, theory, and criticism, it contributes to a pragmatics of nonfiction film. It develops a rhetoric of nonfiction, exploring the diverse means – structure, style, discourse, and voice – through which moving picture nonfictions represent the world.

CHAPTER 1

What Is a Nonfiction Film?

Why bother to define the nonfiction film?¹ Some might say that we already know one when we see one. Others may wish to avoid definitions because defining film genres may degenerate into academic pigeon-holing, that pedantic exercise whereby scholars assign films to synthetic categories, only to find that actual films exceed and escape those categories. Furthermore, definitions sometimes become a search for nonexistent essences. Defining then becomes a prescriptive attempt to promote a preferred characteristic as essential under the guise of a merely descriptive definition.

If all of these objections bear an element of truth, why not forgo discussion of definitions altogether? My contention is that characterizing nonfiction film, when properly approached, is indispensable for a study such as this. Questions about the nature and function of nonfiction and documentary infuse all of the theoretical debates about the genre. Every emerging style and many of the films that capture national attention give rise to similar questions about the nature of nonfiction film in relation to issues such as objectivity, the forms and purposes of nonfiction, and the uses and effects of photography and sound recording.

Roger and Me (1989), for example, caused intense controversy in the United States press. The debate centered on whether director Michael Moore's rearrangement of the film's chronological order of events constituted deceitfulness, or was acceptable documentary practice.² Much of the confusion stemmed from different conceptions of nonfiction film. We can usefully discuss these issues only after we have either (1) come to a mutual agreement about what nonfiction films are, or (2) acknowledged differences in our uses of the terms nonfiction or documentary.

Why Categories, Definitions, and Distinctions?

To organize entities into analytic categories is sometimes called Aristotelian, a word none too complimentary in contemporary film studies. The spirit of the age, which in film studies is at present postmodernist, points us toward intertextuality, dispersion, and diffusion. Among its other claims, Derridean deconstruction has challenged the ease with which we make linguistic distinctions. A basic element of postmodern thought squarely contests fitting films into broad categories.

Postmodern theorists criticize the imposition of artificial categories onto the world as though they were natural and discovered. The post-modernist argument often proceeds from a rejection of the objectivist, classical notion of categories, which holds that all categories can be defined by an essential property or properties common to their members, to a wholesale dismissal of categories and categorization as means of discourse and thought. However, the postmodern emphasis on dispersion, diffusion, and intermixture goes too far if it denies the value of categories altogether. As George Lakoff writes, categorization is fundamental to the way we make sense of experience.³

Although the classical conception of categories fails for many types of categories, most of our words and symbols