Documentary Expression and Thirties America - Essay Example

? ORDER No: 553288 Documentary Expression Running Head: THIRTIES AMERICA Documentary Expression and Thirties America First and s Institutional affiliation Documentary Expression 2 Abstract In his book Documentary Expression and Thirties, William Stott offers a definition of documentary style and considers two important variants: the objective and factual account of events and the alternative which relies more on human issues than objectivity. In the thirties the style of social documentary became popular, and was described as increasing the knowledge of public facts while sharpening it with feeling. Two notable exponents of this style were considered, both of whom employed the presentation of dramatic, and sometimes over emphasized, photographs accompanied by a written commentary. The distinction between art and photography and whether or not documentary expression owed its genesis from fiction or non-fiction was also explored. Finally the matter of ethics in the treatment and presentation of documentary imagery was discussed. Documentary Expression 3 Documentary Expression and Thirties America William Stott in his book Documentary Expression and Thirties America covers an enormous range of topics and much of it is in a highly discursive and rambling style. However, it is possible to subdivide it into four principal themes: Documentary, The Documentary Motive and the Thirties, The Documentary Nonfiction of the Thirties, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. First of all it is necessary to understand what he means by the documentary style. In its simplest form there are two possibilities: “an honest and reasonably objective report, or a case for the prosecution” (Stott, 1986). The second may be discarded, and we are left with two further forms: a factual, objective account which is left largely unedited, and therefore acquires the effect of being regarded as “official”, and secondly an account which is not necessarily objective but deals with human issues. An example of the latter is Sargeant’s account of his struggle with mental illness. Another branch of documentary expression is to be found in social documentary, which may be said to increase the knowledge of public facts while “sharpening it with feeling (Stott, 1986) and keeping in touch with human feelings and emotion. It was also held that such a documentary style did not rely upon information so much as “the power to move.” Stott suggests that while the purpose is to encourage social improvement – public education at its most altruistic – reality is more cynical in that its real purpose is to shape attitudes towards certain public facts. An example of this type of “expose journalism’ is to use a public figure or authority’s quotation to mean something else. For example, the head of the US Red Cross stated categorically, in answer to innocent sounding questions, that Red Cross personnel were noncombatants. He was unable to defend this stance when faced with the fact that when called up for military service these individuals were obliged to take the oath, Documentary Expression 4 imposed by Congress, requiring them to obey military regulations and act as combatants. Two contrasting examples of the documentary style in thirties America are contained in the works of Bourke-White & Caldwell and Agee & Evans. In both cases one of the authors writes the commentary and the other provides a series of generally highly dramatic “propaganda” pictures. The question now arises, was the documentary style in the thirties; found in fiction and non-fiction, and in art and photography. The reverse of the former was really true; both fiction and non-fiction of the time owed something to the documentary style. Fiction was full of ‘real people’ and many writers tried to introduce social issues. The social documentary style was devised to give a sense of urgency to the representation of life as it was: reality with drama and a sharp tug at the emotions. In the case of non-fiction the genre usually relied upon simple issues: interviews and case studies with all burdensome statistics – ie how many farmers were suffering – left out. Art and photography, on the other hand contribute in similar ways to the representation of thirties America. Stott suggests that the main difference between the two forms is ‘personal’ and ‘time’. In the case of a painting by Edward Hopper, for example, of urban buildings in New York, the result is a portrayal of a scene as he believes it to be at a particular instance in time. With a photograph, such as the most famous one by Walker Evans in “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” by Agee & Evans, the vision of the picture is timelessness. Susan Sontag holds that “His is a “contemporary art…an ‘art of silence’…traditional art invites a look… Art that is silent engenders a stare...no release from attention”( Sontag,1979). It is almost always the case that the photograph, although dramatic in itself, will also convey a special meaning; as for instance the Gudger family depicted by Agee & Evans, where one is tempted to ask why the members of the family are grouped in such a way and what do the different elements within the picture signify? For example what Documentary Expression 5 does their body language suggest? How can such an impoverished family look so clean, so humble and yet so arrogant? Stott contends that much of the documentary expression of the thirties media was blatant propaganda and frequently showed working people as grim, resolute and joyless. Whilst this was generally done with comparative integrity, many practitioners used a variety of devices which sometimes called into question the ethical nature of their work. For example it was claimed by Erskine Caldwell and others that Margaret Bourke-White “Lay in wait for her subjects with a flash, and wrote with pleasure of having them ‘imprisoned on a sheet of film before they knew what had happened’. The resulting portraits are by turns sentimental and grotesque” (Caldwell). Both she and Caldwell not only deliberately posed their subjects, but also used captions so as to steer the viewer towards the desired interpretation. There are many more serious ethical considerations, for instance whether or not it is ethical to tamper with the photo to the extent that it completely distorts both the situation and the message. Should the subjects be deliberated placed in falsified and highly emotive situations to give the desired impression of poverty or dominance? Also, in a further extension, although these examples have been quoted in the book, but are recounted in articles rather than books, or from photodocumentaries, they comply with Stott’s general ethos. Bunuel’s graphic documentary, filmed of a young girl tormented by starvation and a throat infection, dies in front of the camera. The question is should not he, or another person, have attempted to save the victim instead of using her as propaganda? There are, of course many instances where humanity has overtaken the chance of a scoop and, in the case of the Vietnam War, the exercise of both factors has resulted in sensational photography. Documentary Expression 6 References Stott, W. (1986). Documentary Expression and Thirties America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Read More