Vashon goes to the movies

Truth is Out There

“Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.”

Evey Hammond

One of the questions that keeps cropping up in our documentary class  concerns what a documentary film is, actually. In writing the title above, i may have stumbled upon an answer, of sorts. Those two words, depending upon the punctuation that follows them, represent the bookends on reality. By simply saying “what is”, one is making a rather definitive statement- this IS what is. On the other hand, by adding a question mark, everything you know quickly vanishes. By asking the big question, “What Is?”, one has essentially agreed to throw out the game plan and burn the operating manual, two actions that some have suggested are the only way we will get out of our current Reality TV Show- brought to you by Carl’s Jr.

Three films come to mind here, although it could be argued that since we have to check the ‘accept’ box under the suspension of disbelief clause everytime we sit down to a cinematic excursion, one might claim that any film is an assault on reality, and one would probably be right. For the sake of this exercise, though, here are my picks for a trip to the other side without the use of substances, controlled or otherwise:

Some might argue that that an X-Box, Comic book, Sci-fi extravaganza has nothing to say about reality as we know it. i would disagree, and say that what the Matrix is is a parable, not unlike those parables told by Someone a couple thousand years ago for the purpose of teaching a lesson- opening a door of perception. Some might counter that that certain Someone didn’t exist either, but i’ll leave that line to another time and place of questioning. What the Matrix does do is present a problem, and that problem is that what you know as “Is”, is not. Going in, it all depends on what you leave at the door. If you suspend your disbelief, then you come away with a dark and leathery kungfu cyber shoot ‘em up. But if it’s your belief system that’s put on hold, then as the character Cypher puts it in a nod to a reality-bender from another era- “…Kansas is going bye bye…” In many ways, the viewer has a choice, along with the one offered to Keanu Reeves’ character Neo, as to whether the blue or the red pill is injested- to say any more would set off the spoiler alarms.

With Wag the Dog, it’s not the full spectrum of our reality that’s at risk, just one of the filters that we perceive it through. Some have said that this film was a thinly veiled mockery of the Clinton-Lewinsky debacle and the steps taken to try and draw attention away from it. But with the benefit of time and distance from that era, this film carries a more sinister warning- one that continues to go unheeded. One simply has to turn on any cable or network news channel to see the problem in action- there is a lot of distraction without much real attention to issues that matter to the big picture. What happens in Wag the Dog is that the media is called upon to create a fictional war to distract attention from the just-about-to-be reelected president’s ill-conceived daliances. One has to be at least slightly suspect of mass media sources in light of this example- it all just seems too……easy. I see, for instance, on my ATT site that there are new photos released today of the 9/11 destruction in New York. What you don’t see is any further questioning as to why Buildings 1,2, and 7 were the first three, and only,  steel structures to collapse because of fire. What about Building 7, you say? I thought it was only the twin towers that came down? Look it up, take the red pill, wag the dog.

And then there is F is for Fake, and here is where we actually are talking documentary. Or are we? There is the statement that appears on screen early on that “everything in this film is strictly based on the available facts”, but as we jump around from Welles himself to disgraced biographer Clifford Irving to Howard Hughes to painting forger Elmyr de Hory, we start to wonder what is real and what is not. It is the quandary posed by every documentary, along with the problem posed (unintentionally) by Dragnet Dude Jack Webb- if you get just the facts, Ma’am, are you really doing a swell job of storytelling? Did my camera and any of my preconceived notions skew the questions and answers? And what of those facts? Where did you get them? What do they mean? Did i dig this hole in the right place and why is it getting so dark in here? i gotta go  …to be continued