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(note, this will not include updated reader comments on
this article.] Over the past
two years, I've been experimenting in conference papers
with what I've called the 'Teutonic Theses About Border
Genres' and the 'Modest Proposals About Docudrama'. The
Theses started out five in number but have expanded to
seven; the Proposals were three to begin with, but are
now five. Before they increase further, I wanted to offer
them up to the readers of Screening the Past in
the same spirit I have offered them to successive
'Visible Evidence' conferences in the Netherlands
(Utrecht/Amsterdam, 2000) and Australia (Brisbane, 2001).
This is a spirit of speculative inquiry. They have never
failed to provoke discussion (though I'm glad to say they
have never resulted in the spilling of blood, as John
Corner for one once feared they might!). With only the
excuse of the speculative enterprise, they come to you
without the familiar paraphernalia of the academic essay
- no carefully reasoned argument, no apparent theoretical
underpinning, no footnotes, no bibliography. Ordinarily I
delight in all these things, but the only aid I am
offering as explanation for the origins of some of the
ideas is this: designations bracketed thus (Name) refer
to books/articles, while these [Name] to
someone's point in discussion following presentation of
the work. In this
experimental departure from accepted practice I hope for
continuation of such dialogue through email. To this end
a link has been created at the end of each section for
anyone who wants to challenge, dispute with, excoriate or
otherwise interact with the Theses and Proposals. Even if
you want to know what book (Name) wrote, or where
[Name] said what I claim they said - just
ask. [Comments
and answers to questions, after moderation, will be
posted on the site to encourage further debate, so please
check the site from time to time to monitor progress of
debate. - ed.] A colleague at
Worcester remarked that the mix of the Lutheran and
Swiftian characterised an attempt to be bold and
subversive (God help me, I can do no other.): this is no
more than the truth of the matter. Behind the Lutheran
Theses lies a sober concern with documentary's continuing
capacity for seriousness in the post-documentary moment
of Reality TV. Behind the Swiftian Proposals lies an
outrageous claim: that the docudrama's narratives, its
theatricalisations of public events, have so democratised
a mode of ethical inquiry once the province of the
'documentary proper' that it is, not exactly superseded
or defunct, but has been usurped in the popular imaginary
by the 'border genres' of docudrama, docu-soap, Reality
TV and mock-documentary. These, of
course, are programme formats that come on to the viewer
as if they were at least partially documentary, but about
which that viewer is as likely to be sceptical (almost as
a matter of course) as not. The formats cover a fiction -
non-fiction continuum that runs from the neo-nonfiction
of Reality TV (itself a various enough category), through
docu-soap and docudrama, to mock-documentary: Reality
TV Docu-soap Docudrama Mock-documentary Nonfiction
Fiction Often some
part of classic documentary discourse is being
appropriated for other than classic documentary ends. Or
to put it another way, a serious mode of production and
accepted codes, conventions and procedures are being used
for entertainment purposes. Consider, for example, the
notion of research. Many different kinds of film and TV
programme in the burgeoning area of popular factual TV
now have a research dimension. Almost all need some level
of 'finding out' (or 'finding who') before programmes are
made, but the research facilitates a scenario, a
part-make-believe, an invention. The tension between the
impulse to document and the impulse to dramatise in
globalised popular factual television is, I believe, a
fundamental trope in border genres. A proper study
of this phenomenon - for it is a phenomenon, the
burgeoning of this quasi-documentary activity is nothing
less - is ultimately a book length project. It will of
necessity analyse the structuring of a variety of popular
factual and quasi-factual programmes like Big
brother, and it will be of necessity a work of
several hands. I have been working on this with Jane
Roscoe (whose work on mock-documentary will be reviewed
in the next issue of this journal); we hope over the next
year to consolidate the project and take it beyond this
current provisionality. Our focus will be on the
following: Taken
altogether, the programme formats in which we are
interested are the 'Not-documentaries', to risk an even
more outrageous coinage. Ever more knowing at all levels,
they manufacture collisions between the 'random real' of
the documentary and the planned, rehearsed, action of the
drama: such collisions are at the root of this turn in TV
discourse. Each Thesis
and Proposal is accompanied by a 'Commentary', offered
just as I have presented them at conferences. Not
conventional academic discourses, these - more
chatauquas (in the manner of Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance).
The
five proposals
Introduction
Send a comment on this section to Derek
Paget
Visible
Evidence 2002 -- Marseille
