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Running Head: DOCUMENTARY FILM AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Prospectus For

Documentary Film and Social Change: A Rhetorical Investigation of Dissent

Angela J. Aguayo

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Abstract

For well over a century, non-fiction film has figured prominently in the public

sphere as a powerful means of persuasion. My dissertation will explore the intersection of

cultural texts and social change by investigating the history of contemporary activist

documentary film. Using all the available means of persuasion and coercion at their

disposal, social movements have collectively developed a diverse set of tactics and

strategies to prompt social change. Among these documentary films deserve scholarly

attention.

Documentary films that reflect the interests of social movements are important

but to what ends and in what rhetorical situations are these strategies most effective for

social change? This study will not call into question the importance of cultural texts like

documentary film, but rather will explore how constitutive cultural strategies constrain or

aid the instrumental goals of contemporary social movements. In this dissertation I will

argue that mediated, politically driven and aesthetically dressed activist documentary film

and video not only has the potential to be an act of political oratory but under the correct

conditions can transform into a public communication between private people that has the

potential for social change. This project will explore the commitments of early activist

media, theories of social change, the second wave of activist media and finally, the

function of contemporary activist documentary.

There is much left to be studied about the relationship of activist cultural texts and

social change. The manner in which activist documentary film is conceptualized in

theoretical literature or in film reviews, primarily qualifies the term activist with the

intentions of the film maker and his or her ideological commitments outside of

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filmmaking. There is, however, another tendency to label documentary film as activist

based on content. If the film mediates as political or moral controversy, the inclination is

to label it activist. However, such labels are fruitless if the film does not actually

intervene in a larger public space to create active political agents that will extend and

execute the political work initiated by documentary film. It is not enough for

documentary film to be activist; it must help in creating the space for activism and

invested in producing material and cultural change.

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Introduction and Rationale for Project

Postmodern social critic Fredric Jameson argues that after World War II, a new

society began to emerge. Jameson refers to a society invested in creating meaning and

understanding through cultural texts such as music and film (19). Prior to this period,

theorists and artists alike had placed a great deal of import on the potential of high

artas opposed to popular cultural textsto influence political subjects. Although social

theorists may disagree about why popular cultural texts play a significant role in meaning

production, few can deny the impact and mass consumption of culture in the

contemporary public sphere.

If cultural texts play a significant role in meaning production, how can these texts

function in the process of social change? In social movements theory, a significant debate

ensues around the function of cultural strategies utilized in the process of social change.

In his article Culture and Social Movements, Doug McAdam argues that there is a

significant rationalist and structural bias in the studies of social movements that deny

the impact of culture on the process of social change. Until recently, he argues, culture

in all of its manifestations, was rarely invoked by American scholars as a force in the

emergence and development of social movements (37).

While scholars like McAdam insist that cultural forces have been ignored in the

process of studying social movements, others insist that cultural strategies are the primary

means of social change for an era of new social movements that began to emerge out of

the 1960s. With the emergence of new social movements, Alberto Melucci argues that

constitutive cultural strategies are the primary and the most important acts of

contemporary social movements,

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Conflicts [of new social movements] do not chiefly express themselves through

action designed to achieve outcomes in the political system. Rather, they raise a

challenge that recasts the language and cultural codes that organize information.

The ceaseless flow of messages only acquire meaning through the codes that

order the flux and allow its meaning to be read. The forms of power now

emerging in contemporary societies are grounded in an ability to inform that is,

to give form. (102)

As a result, the production of cultural texts that challenge important language and cultural

codes of the institutions of power, according to Melucci, is the primary political moment

to be seized.

For well over a century, non-fiction film has figured prominently in the public

sphere as a powerful means of persuasion. In 1928, Stalin attempted to coordinate

documentary film content with political goals. During World War II, the United States

government heavily invested in documentary bugle-call films, designed to sell war to

soldiers and teetering allies. The Nazi party had a documentary film unit, at times headed

by Leni Riefenstahl, to bring highly aesthetisized images of political practices to the

masses (Barnouw 99-182).

More recently, after winning an Academy Award for best documentary in 2003,

Michael Moore ignited a firestorm of controversy by denouncing President Bush and the

war on Iraq to a 33 million-person television audience. Moore, responsible for making

one of the most commercially successful political documentaries of all time, recognizes

that the Oscars are not normally a place for political commentary (United Press

International, March 28, 2003). After receiving a robust round of boos and cheers, Moore

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defended his actions by stating, [I]f I had won the Oscar for a movie about birds or

insects, Id say something about them. But I made a movie about violenceand global

violenceso I felt I had to say something about that. I just hope I generated a discussion

about Mr. Bush and the war (Salt Lake Tribune, March 29, 2003). In popular culture,

documenting reality or a derivative of it, has become the new hip form of media

entertainment.

More than just a new hip form of media entertainment, the genre has significant

rhetorical implications. Documentary film can perform many of the actions for which

language is usedwarning, asserting, identifying, informing, ridiculing, critiquing, ect

(Plantinga 1). The documentary genre marries three distinct speech acts, image, sound

and word. These speech acts, employed in the package of an entire documentary film or

video text, makes understanding the rhetorical aspects of the documentary genre quite

complicated.

Yet, the most interesting facet of documentary at the turn of the 21st century is

non-fiction film and video pragmatics. Study of non-fiction film and video as a pragmatic

art is to investigate the rhetorical process of documentary to perform various social tasks.

However, there is a paucity of research that attempts to understand documentary film

history as an instrumental rhetorical text, which means conceptualizing documentary film

as a force of social change. Theoretically, there is much left to be studied concerning the

speaker (filmmaker)-text (documentary)-audience dynamic of documentary film. By

studying this rhetorical relationship, scholars may come closer to understanding of the

civic, social and political functions of documentary film.

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This project will explore the intersection of cultural texts and social change by

investigating a history of activist documentary film. Using all the available means of

persuasion and coercion at their disposal, social movements have collectively developed

a diverse set of tactics and strategies to prompt social change, documentary films being

one of the most understudied texts. Thus, there are several questions to be answered

about the pragmatic functions of activist documentary film and video. What is activist

documentary film and video? Documentary films that reflect the interests of social

movements are important but to what end and in what rhetorical situation are these

strategies most effective for social change? What role does documentary film play in a

larger political program for social change? Does activist documentary only publicize

social injustice or does it act as an instrumental rhetorical text? How do actually existing

counter-publics function to create social change, from or with, documentary film? In

what manner does the rhetorical tradition stand to enrich documentary film studies? This

study will not call into question the importance of cultural texts like documentary film

but rather how constitutive cultural strategies constrain or aid the instrumental goals of

contemporary social movements.