Review of chapter 40: Interactive Documentary: Film and politics in
the digital era," James Lyons. Routledge
Companion to Cinema and Politics, ed. Yannis Tzioumakis and Claire
Molloy.
by Kiersten Depina
Throughout recent decades, society has been advancing
technologically at an accelerating rate. While acquiring many new forms of
technology, we find ourselves entering into an era of digital landscapes in
which social and political ideas originate.
The new technology that is presented changes the different processes and
the nature of political and social interaction.
One way in which humankind has been able to portray political ideas and
messages is through the medium of documentary film. As we continue to digitize politics, new
forms of documentary are being released that not only increase interactivity
and participation from the audiences, but also question the meaning and
understanding of ‘documentary’ itself. In
chapter forty of the text, “The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics,”
author James Lyons describes the ways in which documentary adapts to maintain
political function as the world digitizes, specifically through digital
interactive documentary.
Lyons
begins by discussing the definition of political documentary. In this introductory section of the article,
Lyons demonstrates that the definition of political documentary is very broad,
and encompasses a wide variety of different films with different political
agendas. He quotes John Corner, who
states that documentary should be “socially useful storytelling” (Lyons, 2016,
pg. 492). In reference to Michael
Chanan, he says that documentary has “become more individual and personal” (2016,
pg. 492). Drawing upon Debra Zimmerman, she says that if a film causes its
audience to perceive an issue differently, than it can be seen as political (2016,
pg. 492).
In
addition to the definition of political documentary, he describes the definition
of specifically interactive political documentary. Lyons explains how there is a group of films
that sits in between films focused directly on politics and those that include
political undertones of everyday life. He
describes how this middle ground is covered a lot in a new wave of digital
interactive documentary. This middle
ground includes discussion about control of resources and the exercising of
social powers, and more specifically, poverty, racism, the environment,
etc. As a result of the rapidly
developing areas of cultural production, many issues related to terminology and
classification, are debated. Lyons quotes
both Galloway and Mandy Rose, saying that interactive documentary is “any
documentary that uses interactivity as a core part of its delivery mechanism (2016,
pg. 493), and that it “opens up to participation...participation in terms of
making” (2016, pg. 493). With the advancements
in technology and the increasing digitization of media, many new forms of
documentary are being released. These
forms of documentary push the boundaries of traditional forms of cinema,
forcing the industry to question what the term “interactive documentary”
encompasses. Lyons points out how Nichols
says that the “textual authority shifts towards the social actors recruited” (2016,
pg. 493) and their direct contact with the filmmakers. In contrast, more recent definitions differ
from this idea, saying that the ‘social actors’ do not need to have direct
encounters with the filmmakers. Due to
the abundance of new digital mediums, interactions are no longer restricted to
the filmmakers and their subjects, and interactions no longer have to be direct
contact or encounters. The interactivity
of the documentary can also include the actions that the audience or viewers
take in response to the documentary.
Throughout
the rest of the article, Lyons references Gaudenzi in order to explain the
different types of interactivity that exists under the label of ‘interactive
documentary’. Gaudenzi’s work focuses on
the ways in which participants interact with and encounter the documentary. Lyons describes how Gaudenzi categorizes
these interactions into “four dominant understandings of interactivity” (2016,
pg. 493) and that each “create a different dynamic with the user, the author,
the artifact, and its context” (2016, pg. 493), as well as raise specific
issues pertaining to documentary politics.
These four modes include: hypertext, conversational, experiential and participative.
In
the first mode that Lyons discusses, he claims that it is arguably the most
prominent, and is titled ‘hypertext’. This
mode is described as a documentary based on a series of selections created from
options that are generated by a database.
This type of documentary is often found on the Internet – as it is
designed for that specific platform – and is referred to as a webdoc. Lyons gives an example of a webdoc: Journey To The End Of Coal (2008). This webdoc addresses the viewer in the first
person, and simulates an investigative journalistic environment. The viewer makes choices from a list of
selections, leading from one webpage to another, with each webpage containing
text, photos, and short video interviews.
This type of narrative scheme differs from a traditional film, by
allowing the viewer to view the documentary under a time scheme that is not
restricted. Lyons once again references
Gaudenzi as he notes that this particular structure puts control in the hands
of the audience, as they are given the opportunity to visit different sites
found within the webdocs database.
Although
the first mode provides the audience with a more investigative approach to the documentary,
Lyons describes how this interactive option distracts users from questioning
the argument that is presented in the content they are viewing. He is correct in saying that the choices are
a form of distraction, as they lead the viewer to feel as if they are in
complete control of the narrative. In
reality, the viewer has no control of the content, but rather a control over
their individual view of the static content.
In contrast to Lyons idea, the film immerses the viewer in not only a
full screen investigative environment but provides the opportunity to go back
and view the documentary multiple times, each time selecting different
options. Although the underlying argument
of the documentary stays the same, each time the documentary is viewed, a new
narrative is formed based on the selections.
Through the presentation of multiple narratives, the audience is forced
to question the argument as a result of questioning their own choices and
decisions. In this instance the audience
is not distracted, but forced to construct a deeper understanding.
The
second interactive mode that Lyons discusses is referred to by Gaudenzi as
‘conversational’. He explains how this
mode has a goal of creating 3D interactive worlds that viewers can navigate
seamlessly. Two examples that Lyons
provides of conversational interactive documentaries include Unconstitutional (2004) and Project Syria (2014). In Unconstitutional
(2004), the documentary focus was on Guantanamo Bay and the detainees held in
the prison camp. Using the website Second-Life, the world takes the viewer’s
avatar through the experience of being incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, through
3D simulation and point-and-click option selection. Lyons quotes digital artist Peggy Weil as she
comments on the purpose of the project: “we do not torture your avatar, so
rather than a torture chamber, we elected to build a contemplation chamber, a
series of spaces to contemplate the practices going on in Guantanamo” (2016,
pg. 493). These spaces include real
footage, news stories, photos, audio recordings, poems from detainees, and
interrogation transcripts read by actors.
Another
example that Lyons describes is the documentary Project Syria. The project
uses a 3D system to simulate a rocket shell attack in the streets of Aleppo,
Syria, and being transported to a Syrian refugee camp in Iraq. The audio and visuals were rendered using
real video and photos, and Lyons discusses how this provides the audience with
a personal experience of the event rather than receiving information from a
secondary source.
A
question that Lyons poses in response to these documentaries is the political
effectiveness of the works. The main
positive aspect of these simulation and virtual reality systems is that it
creates new political dialogue that stems more from experience and virtual
immersion rather than being based on the experiences and stories of others. In contrast, Project Syria was shown at the 2014 World Economic Forum, in order
to compel leaders to act. Lyons explains
that due to the project’s limited circulation, the producers can only hope that
the project receives attention from the right individuals. Being only accessible by a small portion of
people limits its political effectiveness and opportunity to provoke
action. One idea that Lyon does not
address however is the opportunity for virtual reality documentaries to be
formatted for widespread accessibility. The
first project, Unconstitutional, was
released on a website that is accessible to anyone with access to the
Internet. Documentaries like Project Syria that are only available as
an installation, might be able to be reworked in the future, to be viewed from
home on more modern devices such as the new Sony PlayStation VR.
Another
question that Lyons poses is a documentary’s ability to provoke its audience to
act in response to their individual experiences. He explains how, due to the growth of
locative technologies, many different innovative projects have utilized these
technologies to document events and issues occurring around the globe in
specific settings. These projects are
labeled ‘experiential’ and are the third mode of interactive documentary. Lyons provides a few examples of this type of
documentary. The first example is Eyes on the Prize (1987-1990). The documentary was created by students who
documented social justice problems in their neighborhood and tagged these
narratives to their location using Google Earth. Handheld GPS devices geo-tagged the stories
so that individuals who were in those specific locations could play them
back. A second example is Coffee Deposits: Topologies of Chance
(2010). This documentary was
situated in Istanbul, and attempted to chart the lives of everyday people in
the city through “in-situ coffee shop encounters” (Lyons, 2016, p. 497). Lyons describes how this particular project
was halted when it was confronted with how Islamic politics impacted certain people
in the city – a mobile encounter with a transsexual person revealed a story of
harassment and discrimination, relating to the use of laws to take LGBT
individuals into police custody.
Both
of these examples demonstrate what Lyons describes as how “eliciting
participant testimony can lead in unexpected geographic and discursive
directions” (Lyons 2016, p. 497) and how these documentaries can evolve into
works of “foregrounding issues of political and social justice” (2016, p. 497). Coffee Deposits in particular, resulted in
the dialogue of an extremely political happening in the city, and due to the
controversy, forced the project to shut down.
Both of these projects give voices to those who would otherwise not have
one, and as a result, many different narratives can emerge. These examples in particular demonstrate
Lyons earlier reference to Chanan, when saying that filmmakers are trying to
make work that shows the “politics of identity” (2016, pg. 492). Another example is the Quipu Project (2014 –) that aimed to share stories of indigenous
women affected by the sterilization policy in Peru in the late 90s. This project uses a toll-free telephone
number to allow women to record personal testimonies, and then uploads these
testimonies to their project website.
The importance of the project is that it gives a voice to those who were
previously unable to communicate their experience with the rest of the
world. In the words of co-director
Rosemarie Lerner, “for the first time they can actually become part of a wider
dialogue” (2016, pg. 497). Lyons states
that the point of this particular documentary is not to recreate the event, but
to “make conditions for the story to emerge” (2016, pg. 497), and that the
documentary addresses the underlying conditions of isolation and
disempowerment. What Lyons does not mention is that not only does this
documentary allow for the story to emerge, but it also allows for multiple
narratives that can be perceived as both separate and as a whole. The director
is no longer the sole voice of the project, and many different people are given
the opportunity to become directors of their own narratives.
Another
important point about the Quipu
project is that it is through the participation of the women that this
documentary exists; and it is through this form of documentary that new forms
of collaboration can occur. This leads
into the final category of interactivity that Lyons discusses: the
‘participative’ mode. Lyons explains
that the participants contributing to the creation of a project can be viewed
as both the creation of the content and to connect with others who share their
experiences. The example he gives of
this particular mode is 18 Days in Egypt (2011
–), which described on their website is an “interactive, crowd-sourced
documentary project about the ongoing Egyptian revolution” (Lyons, 2016, p. 498). The project focuses on the protesters of the
Egyptian uprising in 2011, by aggregating their social media content through
the hashtag #18DaysinEgypt. Lyons
describes how an interactive platform called GroupStream was launched in 2012
“crowd-source, contextualize, and archive photographs, texts, tweets and video
clips” (Lyons, 2016, p. 498). Lyons
argues that this documentary contrasts other forms of documentary as it is
“designed to collate and document participatory experiences through an open and
evolving database of user-generated content” (Lyons, 2016, p. 498), and that
this form of documentary is a response to the original political catalyst using
an interactive format.
Lyons
is correct in saying that this form of documentary contrasts other forms of
documentary, due to it being open and continuously evolving. What Lyons does not discuss is that unlike
other forms of interactive documentary, the content does not go through a
secondary source before being released.
The uploaded content is directly inputted into the database by the
creator and is not edited or censored in anyway. Even if the content is not directly featured
on their website, the hashtag #18DaysinEgypt is still sorting the content into
the same database and exists for the world to see. This once again disrupts the definition of
documentary, as the project itself can be perceived at its core as simply a
hashtag. In this way, new forms of
interactive participatory documentary changes its ‘social actors’ into
directors and narrative creators.
In
conclusion, the majority of the article provides a brief glance into the
ever-expanding world of interactive documentary. The article provides an in depth look at each
of the four modes of interactivity in a simple and accurate way, and describes
the spectrum of interactive documentaries in an unbiased manner. Lyons arguments are based upon information
gathered from those working in the documentary industry, but do not expand on
the impact of the projects he describes.
He remains very neutral on the subject of interactive documentary as he
mainly explains the different kinds, but where he interjects with personal
opinion, he briefly argues his points leaving them to exist more as shallow
facts.
One
overarching argument that Lyon presents is that none of the documentaries that
he presents in the article allow for the audience the input of information as
well as input structural ideas. This
argument can be combatted due to the structure of the 18 Days in Egypt documentary.
All of interactive political documentary arguably relies on the
relationship between the audience and filmmaker, as they would not exist
without that relationship. The
relationship determines how the documentary is structured, for example, the
entire 18 Days in Egypt documentary
is created and structured based on the content of what the participants
submit.
Overall,
interactive digital documentary breaks the mold of what a documentary is
traditionally understood to be.
Documentary adapts to the changing digital landscapes in society by
incorporating different digital platforms and mediums, in order to find new
ways of storytelling. This type of documentary focuses predominantly on the
relationship between the audience and the creators, and blurs the line between
consumer and producer.
References
Lyons, J. (2016). Interactive Documentary: Film
and politics in the digital era. In Routledge Companion
to Cinema and Politics (pp. 491-499). Routledge.
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