Final Project

My Trip to Thistle

Autobiographical Mode

At the risk of becoming self-indulgent, I decided to work within the autobiographical mode for this documentary mode activity. For this activity, I decided to talk about some difficult things that I have been grappling with lately. "Baring oneself to a public is at the heart of the autobiographical mode. The emotional and personal life experiences of the producer become the documented reality" (Fox, 41). For this project, I was especially inspired by the Center for Digital Storytelling, Story Corps, and the episode of This American Life that was filled with 20 short stories. I wanted to tell a story that was personal to me in a very short amount of time. From the examples that we viewed in class, I was especially inspired by the stories that shared things that were not incredibly expansive or intense, but that were just small, and personal stories.

I do not know if I was successful in this, but the goal was to have "the example of the self as a means of accessing political and historical questions of larger social relevance. At its best, the autobiographical mode not only closes the gap between the photographer and subject but also the space between the filmmaker and audience"(Fox, 41). I think that the thing that was the most touching about the examples that we saw in class was the way that the personal stories that people have experienced connected and spoke to the people who were viewing them. I did not want my story to come across as so idiosyncratic that no one would be able to relate to the things that I was saying. However, keeping this in mind, I wanted my story to still be personalized and mine. In addition to this, I wanted to focus on audio for this piece, with video merely acting as a supporter. I wanted this project to literally be in my own voice.

I think that the biggest thing that I have learned from the autobiographical mode is that everyone wants to have their story heard, or at least someone who cares about the story that is being told. The digital age has made it 100 times easier for people to have their stories heard. For hundreds of years, people have been keeping records and journals so that people in another time will know what their life was like, but now it is so much easier. Individuals can upload their video log, or blog in seconds, and their is no limitation to what is shared online. All of us just want to be heard. The desire to be understood, appreciated, and listened to is nearly universal.

The End. 

Essay Mode and Sherman's March

On Thursday, we discussed the way that the chapter structure of The Hour of the Furnaces is a limitation on the truly active form that the essay mode typically takes. We discussed the way that breaking up the topic by chapters keeps the documentary from flowing from one idea to another freely. I was very confused by this idea, until we watched Sherman's March. However, after watching this film, I think that I am beginning to understand this concept. I appreciated in Sherman's March the way that Ross McElwee flowed from one concept to another in a way that felt really natural. He would be talking about a woman, and then would suddenly be talking about an aspect of Sherman's March across the South. He moved from woman to woman, and between discussions of various topics in a way that was illuminating to the topic at hand, and that did not feel incredibly contrived or purposeful. It just felt like he was talking to us, and that we accompanied Ross McElwee on a journey.

There is a quote from the reading that really resonated with me, in relation to the way that Sherman's March is structured. "This mode is an active one, in which a proposed idea or question is tested by a range of means and intersecting lines of argument. One stab may lead to a tangentially related concept, personal anecdote, or new approach, providing a serpentine, unexpected, and present tense realness to the journey. Quite often, an essay does not arrive at a finite conclusion, yet the ideas discovered during the process may reshape and reinform the initial query in unforseen ways" (Fox, 44). In the journey that Ross McElwee took us on, many of the various pieces came from tangents. For example, the parts of this documentary that dealt with the state of McElwee's automobile were all tangential to the true topic that was being discussed. Actually, everything in this film that was not specifically discussing Sherman, and his actual, historical march was tangential to the original topic at hand. This film was one long, fantastic tangent.

 Just like the reading says, I don't think that we really ended at a finite conclusion at the end of this documentary. Of course, we did end up at the end of Sherman's historical march, and at the physical end of Ross McElwee's journey. However, I do not think that there was much resolution at all in the state of McElwee's love live or of his feelings on love in general. I think that this was not purposeful, and that it just ended up happening, and that it just happened to be a hallmark of essay mode. Even though the entirety of McElwee's personal journey was tangential to Sherman's March, it was apparent that both topics were able to inform the same theme in a way that I had never before considered.

Humans of New York Favorites

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/43835301885/when-my-husband-was-dying-i-said-moe-how-am-i

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/40849479658/he-got-me-through-a-tough-time

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/86834845691/i-looked-different-before-the-cancer

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/86364992071/my-dad-died-in-9-11-they-opened-up-the-museum-to

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/86216521361/if-you-could-give-one-piece-of-advice-to-a-large

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/87102548646/i-tend-to-be-cynical-about-a-lot-of-things-but

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/87594084051/i-prefer-maritime-laws-over-laws-on-land

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/85758327681/therapy-seems-to-be-going-well-dad-said-i-love

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/85485554951/im-telling-you-prayer-works-whats-a-time

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/85131871541/saddest-moment-how-am-i-supposed-to-choose

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/84098900032/it-is-my-belief-that-god-created-one-earth-and

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/83336360695/i-have-a-neck-injury-so-i-had-to-tone-it-down

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/82289456926/for-the-longest-time-i-was-so-focused-on-being

http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/81926253794/mom-said-tell-him-something-that-makes-you

Autobiographical Mode Response

There were several different moments in the past several days that I was very touched by the tenacity and strength of autobiographical documentaries. I think that there is just something so beautiful about the power that a single person's story can have. I also think that there is something really beautiful, and
almost of an ancient tradition to listen and learn from what other people have to say. Traditionally, history was passed through the stories of individuals, and I think that this tradition continues today was we share our own stories and our own experiences.

I also think that this type of documentary is a testament to the oneness of human life. In the short films that we watched today, people from all over the world, of all races, genders, backgrounds, and sexual orientations shared their stories. Many of these people are people that I would have never thought I would have anything in common with, at least initially. There was nothing from the outset that should have connected me to these individuals. However, once they began to tell their stories, I found that I could relate in some way to nearly every single video that was shown. "When successful, the example of the self is a means of accessing political and historical questions of larger social relevance. At its best, the autobiographical mode not only closes the gap between photographer and subject but also the space between filmmaker and audience" (Fox, 31). I think that people are more similar than we would ever expect them to be. In the end, we are all just people, despite the minor differences that may be between us. This reminded me of a class I once took, where we had to argue whether humans across cultures are more alike or more different. The point of that class was to realize that we are all just human, and we often have the same needs, desires, and wants as the people around us, as well as people who are thousands of miles from where we are at. Although I knew this in theory, it was touching to understand this concept in a way that hit very close to home, and in the process of connecting with these stories of people that I did not know.

Another thing that I have found interesting this week, was one moment from the film Nobody's Business. In this film, it was the moment when Alan Berliner asks his father about his feelings on the Holocaust. Although he did sound sad, and expressed sorrow over the loss of so many Jews, he did not seem nearly as upset as I was expecting him to be. This moment simply taught me that individuals are still able to have their own reactions, which are separate from the reaction as a whole. Individuals are individuals, and they cannot be expected to act the same as the organization overall.

Documentary Mode Activity 2

 This week, I was very inspired by the various discussions of feminist cinema that took place in class and in our readings. This piece was especially influenced by Second Sex (Drew Duncan) and by Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained. My main inspiration for working in this theme was a quote from Martha Rosler, which says “How one learns to see oneself as a being in a state of culture as opposed to a being in a state of nature. How to measure oneself by the degree of artifice… This is a work about how to think about yourself. It is a work about how she is supposed to think about herself. How she learns to scrutinize herself, to see herself as a map, a terrain, a product constantly recreating itself inch by inch. Groomed, manufactured, programmed, re-programmed, controlled; a servile mechanism in which one learns to utilize every mechanism of feedback” (Fox, 38). My goal with this piece was to create a feminist argument that would not be preachy or too heavy handed. From what I have read and seen of Vital Statistics, one of the main critiques is that it is too preachy for the feminist cause. People who watch it tend to get freaked out by the heavy handedness of the argument that is being made. I wanted to create a piece that acknowledges the expectations of women to look, act, and be a certain way without being too hard for people to relate to. My goal was to make the feminist argument that is made in Vital Statistics accessible to the everyday person through the act of something that many women do everyday, taking off make-up. In doing this, I especially wanted to point to the fact that what is being presented to the world is more often than not artificial, and is not an accurate representation of true being. 

For this documentary mode activity, I decided to work in the performative mode. I think that there were many ways that I could have explored this theme, but the choice to explore the performative mode was very deliberate. "Performative documentary restores a sense of magnitude to the local, specific, and embodied. It animates the personal so that it may become our port of entry to the political" (Nichols, 209). I wanted to demonstrate how my experience as an individual can be extrapolated to other people, and eventually to society at large. Through this, I "set out to demonstrate how embodied knowledge provides entry into an understanding of the more general processes at work in society" (Nichols, 201). Women everyday put on and take off makeup. This was not just my experience, but the experience of millions of women everyday. This is truly not an individual experience, but a collective experience of expectation. "The free combination of the actual and the imagined is a common feature of the performative documentary" (Nichols, 202). With lighting, a studio set up, and heavier than average makeup, my goal was to create performance art through a heightened version of the real. I don't normally wear fake eyelashes, but that was an aspect of this that was imagined to demonstrate my point.

For this project, I was definitely concerned with making something that was not specific my experience, but was generalizable to the experience of many people. I was concerned that this piece could become autobiographical if I specifically talked about my experiences with gender expectations. This is the reason that I did not talk throughout the duration of the piece. I wanted to create a generalized version of myself, using myself as a conduit of what women experience everyday. In this piece, I am not only representing myself, but also the experiences of millions of other people. 

Documentary Mode Activity 2

Participatory Mode Response

On Thursday, when we watched Stories We Tell, I was completely blown away. I was surprised in the way that the multiple tellings of the story really added to it, and that, in a way, the acting was Sarah's version of the story being told. On Thursday, I thought about how my family would react if anything traumatic like that ever happened to us. And then, wouldn't you know, something extremely dramatic, and stressful, and crazy has unfolded over the past few days, and has enveloped nearly ever member of my extended family. In the beginning of this event, I was extremely tempted to start filming. Everything that was happening was so dramatic, and in my head, I began comparing it to Stories We Tell, primarily because we had just watched it for class. I wanted to capture that event, which will change our family, and I wanted it to be as powerful, and ground-breaking as the film that we had just watched. But I realized that, no matter how much I participated in this event, the only way for it to be a fair representation would be to include every story of every person who participated.

I think that this is the greatest strength of the participatory mode. It does not just give a voice to one person. This style of documentary gives a voice to many. This mode works against the "danger of the single story" that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about in her Ted Talk. This is not just Robert McNamara talking about decisions that have been made. This is Robert McNamara and all of the people that those decisions have affected.

However, no matter how many stories are included in the telling of a general story, this mode of documentary still risks being primarily one sided. While this was not the case with Stories We Tell, Harlan County, USA and Capitalism, A Love Story could have been more equitable to the whole story. This was especially true for Capitalism, A Love Story. This film completely lacked the Robert McNamara, big decision voice, although Michael Moore did "try" to include the voices of the decision makers. This film primarily worked to give a positive voice to the people who had been negatively affected by decisions, and then to paint the decision makers in a less than positive light.

I think that Stories We Tell was the most equitable participatory documentary that we viewed this week. This was the only documentary that gave equal voice and time to all sides of a story, and to everyone who had been involved. This film could have easily painted This was probably due to the small scale nature of the story involved. If Michael Moore or Barbara Koppel had tried to get every story down, they would still be working on this project.