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Film-Philosophy1.1 1997

Jay Raskin

The Friction Over the Fiction of Nonfiction Movie

Carl R. PlantingaRhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film

Cambridge University Press, 1997

In the current debate or struggle between postmodernist and cognitive (or 'post-

theory') movie theory, Carl Plantinga's new book Rhetoric and Representation

in Nonfiction Filmfits into the latter's Aristotelian modernist/rationalist camp.

What is interesting, however, is the way Plantinga uses the postmodernisttheory of the non-objectivity of nonfiction film to discredit the postmodernist

theory of a potentially progressive reflexive documentary cinema. Plantinga

theorizes that if there is no objectivity, this idea cancels all the way through,

and even reflexive documentaries are suspect constructions ungrounded in

reality. Because of the interesting and skillful style of argument, both sides

should enjoy it -- as well as cinema buffs, filmmakers, film students, and the

passing civilian tourist.

The book is neatly divided into two parts. In the first, Plantinga discusses

what nonfiction films claim to represent. In the second part he develops

categories for nonfiction films based on their rhetorical style. The last chapter

both sums up his conclusions from these parts and expands them into the field

of culture, with an interesting case study of an old American documentary

television series called The Twentieth Century.

As far as representation in nonfiction films goes, Plantinga brings forth

Nicholas Wolterstorff's theory of 'projected worlds'. Among the things that

artists do is project worlds or portray 'states of affairs'. In nonfiction films, the

artist-producers are asserting that these states of affairs either are occurring or

did occur in the real world. Through a series of 'cues' the audience is made

aware of this assertion or claim about the material presented. The way that

nonfiction movies cue audiences is similar to the process described by David

Bordwell in his important work Narration in the Fiction Film. So for example,

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a handheld camera, high levels of background noise, and a certain non-

professionalism on the part of the actors might cue the audience that the scene

is to be taken as naturally occurring and not staged for the camera. External

information, for example, press reports and posters, also help to cue theaudience to take the claim seriously that a certain set of events happens or

happened.

Of cause there are fuzzy or complex cases such as JFKwhere it is hard to

know precisely how to take the cues. The moment where an enlargement of the

Zapruder film which shows Kennedy's head moving backward after being shot

seems to be a piece of non-fiction mixed into a film which we are cued largely

to take as fiction, but a fiction close to historical reality. Plantinga admits that'in this postmodern age, such intermixtures have become increasingly common',

but maintains that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction 'is not merely

in your head, but in films and in the cultural and historical context in which

they are produced and viewed' (20).

Surprisingly, here on the issue of representation, Plantinga generally

supports postmodernist claims of the constructiveness of nonfiction films. He

notes:

the history of staging in nonfiction shows that the set of features, or

family resemblances, we associate with nonfiction film constantly receded and

expanded, as practices gain and lose acceptance. In light of this, it is most

fruitful to think of nonfiction not in terms of unchanging or universal intrinsic

properties, but as a socially constructed category that is fluid and malleable; it

changes with history. (37)

Here, as one often finds, there is much that postmodernist and cognitivist

theory actually agree upon. Because Plantinga feels, 'nonfiction films are not

imitations or re-presentations, but constructed representations', he is able to put

them into the category of rhetoric, which leads him into the second part of his

book.

Doing something similar to what David Bordwell did for fiction films,

Plantinga argues for a division of nonfiction films into the 'authoritative',

'reflexive', and 'poetic'. The authoritative uses a 'formal voice'. It assumes a

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position of superior knowledge and teaches or explains something about the

world. The reflexive film uses an 'open voice'. It is satisfied to show or explore

something in the world, and does not directly tell the audience precisely what to

think about its subject matter. The poetic film is interested in producing certainclassically artistic effects. A variant of the poetic film, the 'avant garde' film,

aims at producing these emotions from the style of the film itself, which is, in

fact, the subject matter of the film.

Again there is no particular technique or set of techniques that definitely

distinguishes one type of film from another. For example, an authoritative film

like John Ford's Battle of Midwayuses a multiplicity of narrational voices, a

technique usually adopted by reflexive films, e.g., Jean-Luc Godard's Ici EtAlleur. So again, just as when distinguishing between fiction and nonfiction,

there are only family resemblances making up the cues that allow us to index a

film as fiction or nonfiction -- we can only index the difference between

authoritative, reflexive, and poetic nonfiction films using family resemblances

of cues. One could call this type of classification system a kind of 'fuzzy

essentialism', which seems to be a moderate compromise between an

Aristotelian objective absolute essentialism and a subjective relativist anti-

essentialism. Plantinga argues that the rhetorical style of a nonfiction film

cannot be related to any kind of progressiveness or honesty. He writes that

'reflexive strategies do not guarantee honesty, integrity, or genuine self-

revelation on the part of the filmmaker(s)' (218). Put simply, a reflexive film

can be as phoney or dishonest as any other.

Curiously, in his last chapter, Plantinga analyses the old Walter Cronkite

narrated television series The Twentieth Century. The analysis shows that the

program was pure ideology (in the narrowest Marxist sense) expressing only

the views of the American Ruling Class and justifying American policies as if

they were eternal commands from God. This analysis seems to run counter to

his general thesis that no social or political implications flow from the

rhetorical style of a film. This case seems to be evidence that a certain style of

telling people what to think about cinematic material follows from a certain

world-view.

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Sadly, instead of exploring this possible contradiction to his general thesis

-- and in the weakest part of the book -- Plantinga defends the television series.

He feels that it is somehow better than some unnamed alternative, which I took

to be some kind of Stalinist subjectivism. In the end his argument boils down tothis: both communist and capitalist propaganda are subjective and one sided,

but at least capitalist propaganda desires to be objective and honest. But from

Plantinga's own description, the real purpose of the The Twentieth Centurywas

to promote the picture of the United States and its military apparatus as strong,

dynamic, and in control of the world, while at the same time the series

producers pretended to be objective and disinterested. Plantinga admits that his

own analysis of the series, 'adds more evidence to that claim that as concepts,absolute objectivity, fairness, impartiality cannot be instantiated, and that as

practices, they may mask subtle biases . . .' (212) -- but Plantinga still calls for

the retention of the concepts in a 'relative' way.

In opposition to this, I would say that 'relative' objectivity, fairness, and

impartiality is exactly what has been historically instantiated by the ruling

bourgeoisie, and that as practices, they have served to mask 'extreme' real

biases. Plantinga's call for the relative use of these concepts is support for the

status quo, while a demand for the absolute instantiations of these principles

would be the radical demand. The capitalist media today defines objectivity and

impartiality as presenting the liberal and conservative views of the capitalist

class. This 'relative' objectivity and impartiality works to marginalize and

repress the views of other classes and groups in society. The demand for 'real'

objectivity and impartiality is a demand that these other classes and groups take

power through the media. At least I hope it is.

Plantinga ends by pointing out the many contradictions in nonfiction

films:

a medium of truths and deceits, recording and manipulation, biases and

balance, art and mechanical technique, rhetoric and straightforward

information. Nonfiction films are complex representations with an infinite

diversity of possible uses. Theirs is a rhetorical and pragmatic complexity that

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