Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Critical Review #9: Titon 1992

I hadn’t really previously considered the personal spins and biases documentary films can perpetuate. It’s true that effects and editing greatly affect one’s perception of what’s going on, even just in terms of quality or legitimacy. This doesn’t completely relate, but I remember when doing video projects in high school how differently the message and impact of a final edited video is than just one that films the action as a whole without any effects. Close-ups and narration really do imply that certain parts of a scene are more important by directing the attention to what the director feels should be emphasized. One can also really distort the truth/reality by cutting scenes and taking pieces out of context in order to frame a desired message.

Titon comments that people tire of talking heads, such as when someone is telling a long story. Is it better to try and keep the audience’s interest and investment or to preserve the purity of watching the person tell the story from beginning to end?

I’m also not sure I entirely understand everything Titon is trying to get across. I was getting a little confused trying to understand what he meant by convention and the best experiences to have. The terms of convention and realism and representation seemed to have very specific meanings and I was having a hard time distinguishing the meaning intended by them.

“In the presence of the camera, professional actors are trained to be natural, whereas non-actors often act.” This sentence really caught my attention. It put a lot of the things I’ve come to realize about both life and performance into words in a very coherent and explicative manner.

One thing that bothered me about the article was how Titon refers to Powerhouse of God, his film, as though the reader has seen it and knows exactly what he’s talking about. Of course the context isn’t imperative to understanding his points, and he does explain most of what’s important, but I still felt while reading that it was implied that I should share this base of knowledge of the film.

When presenting a rhetorical documentary on humans, does it have to feel racist or colonialist? Isn’t there a way to discuss an outside society being observed without it feeling condescending? I feel like I’ve seen documentaries as such on television or in class that aren’t but I’m finding myself unable to recall now. So much of media today has shifted toward some form of “reality” television, whether this reality is actually constructed or not, that learning about or watching other humans without a structured narrative seems to be pretty normal and less condescending.

Also, regarding authority, if professors and so-called experts aren’t presented in their offices in a suit, “donning the mantle of academic authority,” how should they be portrayed in order for viewers to still take them seriously? And when trying to assert a point, shouldn’t a narrator speak with a voice of authority? I suppose it depends on what the goal is. If the goal is simply to present information and then to allow the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions, diminishing one’s authority then makes sense. However, if the objective is to try and convince the viewer to accept the perspective of the narrator, then it’s foolish not to try and assume the most authority they can to try and seem credible.

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