 Seven theses about border genres / five modest proposals about docudrama Five modest proposals about docudrama
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The Simpson/Lawrence cases mobilised issues of gender, race and class; they focused complex national histories into current emotional laboratories; they signalled the multiple return of the ethically repressed in their national cultures. We watch representations of such cases 'with a double vision' (Charles Warren). Borrowing Caughie (borrowing Lukacs!), I would claim that cases like these 'function...as points of condensation for the social and the historical'. Their performative sphere is the new multi-media agora - in which there are many hucksters, but ultimately only one audience - which reveals itself in the moment of performance (and just after). Post-9/11, it remains to be seen how the media will cope with the global dimension of the ethically repressed - but before 11 September 2001, this was being represented in (for example) the McLibel website, The Insider, Erin Brockovitch, Warriors, the Big Brother web-cam, Michael Moore's performed activism. |
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