Hi friends,
Just now I was reading an essay by the ever-excellent Blair McClendon in a back issue of The Drift Magazine - Truth and Consequences: Documentaries and the Art of Manipulation - and found myself nodding my head the whole time. McClendon talks about the distinction between documentary and journalism: two separate entities which are often misunderstood as interchangeable or identical by both the viewing public and by funders/distributors, particularly in the Trump/post-Trump era in the US:
‘The series finale of [true-crime docuseries] The Jinx aired in the spring of 2015, not long before Trump descended his escalator and launched his campaign. Soon after, the American liberal media would be thrust into a years-long frenzy about the nature of, and the need to defend, truth in a supposedly post-truth era. Journalism was cast as an antidote to the tossed-off lies flooding the airwaves. Documentary, with its aura of educative power, is easily slotted into this narrative, but its practices have never aimed to produce verified facts in the same way.’
To me, the difference between documentary and journalism is in how a ‘true’ story gets told. Documentary has space to be more formally inventive, to take liberties in presentation (such as reenactments) that wouldn’t fly in straight journalism. Both traditions operate in service to communicating a story, a truth. But to tell the truth, in documentary, is to tacitly acknowledge that truth is not a static thing but rather something malleable that is subject to bias, perspective, self-reflexivity. There is a time and a place for both types of media; the issue is when one is mistaken for the other. And nothing is a hotbed of exactly this sort of confusion quite like the true crime genre. Hence McClendon’s case study, The Jinx, an immensely popular series on Robert Durst which ends with a smoking-gun audio confession à la Errol Morris. This audio clip was later ‘revealed’ to have been stitched together - a Frankenstein soundbite that was not quite fabricated, but certainly dramatised and simplified via editing room manipulation.
I am not a big true-crime gal (it’s scary!!!!!! sorry I’m a baby!) but I am a student of documentary cinema. So whilst I never got around to watching The Jinx, I can’t say I was terribly shocked to learn about the ending - nor about how many folks saw it as a bait-and-switch. The Jinx was widely lauded as The Thin Blue Line for the 21st century, the latter famous for its groundbreaking approach to documentary. Unlike much of the true crime genre today, which is wholly genuine in its attempts to crack cold cases,1 The Thin Blue Line is famous for its subjectivity. (Morris has cited Kurosawa’s Rashomon as an inspiration, FWIW). By the end of the film, it becomes clear to the viewer that the film has carefully constructed a convincing narrative of the suspect’s innocence - equally persuasive to the viewer as the narrative of guilt put forth in court. What’s more certain than anything else is that even true stories are, in their own way, constructions. It’s a valuable lesson to learn.
Where this gets complicated is when we live in a world where documentary-medium projects get green-lit for purely entertainment purposes - yet still present themselves as journalistic digging (and/or, perhaps more tellingly, are received by audiences as such). When this dissonance crystallises, as in the reveal of what The Jinx left on the cutting-room floor, it erodes a viewer’s trust in the medium of nonfiction storytelling. But, of course, we must know that nonfiction storytelling is a behemoth of an umbrella term: spanning both documentary and journalism - which are not, in fact, the same thing at all. As McClendon points out,
‘Whether one should maintain editorial independence from a subject has everything to do with who the subject is, who the filmmakers are, and what each is trying to do. The ethical answer, the one that cocoons directors from a responsibility to the world as it is and as it could be, is that distance must always be maintained so that viewers can somehow trust that they are not being lied to. But lying is rarely the problem. Viewers tend to suffer from misunderstanding. If a Farsi speaker talks to a person who only understands English, the English speaker is not really being deceived. Bridging the gap between them is a matter of language, intention, and, if one is lucky, solidarity.’
I don’t have a great ending to all of this other than to tie it back to the hill I die on daily in Sisyphean manner: that memory is subjective. Luckily I have not only McClendon but also Errol Morris himself in my corner on this. So I’ll wrap up with a gem of an excerpt from an interview Morris did a few years ago with Isaac Butler of Slate Magazine:
Slate: And don’t they say now that memory is largely a re-enactment, as well?
Morris: Of course, it is.
Slate: That you, essentially, are re-remembering it every time?
Morris: We’re not tape recorders. You know, we’re sort of like meat in a can, observing the world.
Small plates:
Wherever, Anyplace: A phenomenal piece of short fiction by Aram Mrjoian in The Rumpus. (Thanks Mom for sharing this one!) Worth reading for anyone who likes a thought-provoking short story - but especially if you have experience dealing with academia departmental politics, which the story skewers brilliantly.
A long read from the New Statesman: ‘Is a united Ireland now inevitable? As Sinn Féin surges with voters, Irish reunification seems closer than ever. But the real debate over what the new state might look like is only just beginning.’
The Poet’s Nerve, a lovely redux from The Paris Review featuring an all-star lineup of Claudia Rankine, Gordon Lish, Etel Adnan, and Adam Zagajewski.
Interesting piece taking a meta-level look at writing around work, capitalism, care, etc in Lux Magazine. (Happy Worker’s Day!)
‘I once got hit in the face with a tennis ball because I was so busy listening to the woman on the next court verbally skin her husband, I forgot to put up my racquet. Sometimes, I take notes. Always, I wish I had stopped and taken notes. There is a discipline to listening and observing the world around you, and in observing and knowing oneself.’
I don’t know if you all love or hate it when I link to academic journal articles but I can’t resist linking this one: Rural Identity as a Contributing Factor to Anti-Intellectualism in the US by Kristin Lunz Trujillo, published in Political Behavior (2022). Here’s a chunk of the abstract:
‘I argue that a significant and overlooked factor contributing to anti-intellectualism is rural social identification—a psychological attachment to being from a rural area or small town—because rural identity in particular views experts and intellectuals as an out-group […] Conversely, anti-intellectualism is not significantly associated with rural residency alone, as theoretically speaking, simply living in a rural area does not capture the affective dimension of rural psychological attachment. These findings have implications for health and science attitudes, populist support, and other relevant political matters. They also have implications for what it means to hold a rural identity beyond anti-urban sentiment, and for understanding the urban–rural divide.’
Finally, have a meme:
Righty-o, that’s all for me today. Have a lovely long weekend everyone! Catch you next time.
Maddy
A tendency which is skewered hilariously in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building.