Documentary films are intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record. Under this understanding, both "Magic for Beginners" and "Hard Fat" are very "factual" to me.
Magic for Beginners examines the intimate relationship between human and media, or say people and television. Such close and dependent relationship between human being and media world is the topic brought great concerns in today's information generation. People become more comfortable with being friend with the characters in television, or even fall in love with them, result in the fact that people become afraid of the real world or talking to real people. Such kind of phenomena is very common and start to grow in this internet world. So, the artist's exploration on people's obsession on media and the following crazy fan culture is quite factual and informative.
When questioning people's need for such intimate connections with media (whether real or imaginary), the artist use the idea of mythology to capture such psychic connections. For example, when the narratives were talking about the personal story with a tv character, the portrait of the boy started to shake and became dizzy. With the transforming effects and background sounds, such imagery reminds me a lot about the illusion and the scenes in a horror movie. I think this artistic expression is very effective and works great for me. Since when I was a kid, it was very hard for me to distinguish the story in tv from the story in my dreams or in real life. The incredible impact of television, video games, and other interactive entertainment forms force people to relay more on this builded-up imaginary world, resulting in a growing need for such emotional release that only fantasy and fairytales in media can provide. The end of this video, different people from different ages, different places singing Titanic together, is one of my favorite part. One reason is that I am myself a big fan of this movie, and all my family members and friends love this film. And when the 3D version came out this year, we all get together to watch this film again. To watch this film again is not just review this masterpiece one more time, it's more about recalling the days and my feelings in 15 years ago. So when seeing different people singing this song together, I feel I am one of them. And such strong connection just suddenly made me realize the point of the artist, in a very powerful way.
Hard Fat is more like a formal documentary film compared to Magic of Beginners. Instead of shooting people crying in front of the camera as the form of doing interviews, Hard Fat used Rick online introduction videos as the source of interviews. I am personally very shocked to know the life and belief of this worldwide most celebrated gainer. This video let me know what is a gainer, which is a man who purposefully gains weight because he enjoys inhabiting a fatter body. Regarding this, this video was very informative and did a good job in recording a "fact". By viewing the video clicking into the web world of Rick and Big Dog, viewers have the first-person perspective to enter into their mental world. With showing their everyday life scenes like eating junk food lunch, shopping at a mall, standing in front of health magazines, the video documented their normal life in a very honest and direct way, leaving the audience to think about the meanings and right-or-wrong for that. The video used a lot of very close shot of the gainer’s body and his bodily transformation to challenge our preconceived notion of desire, beauty and masculinity. The ending of this video, an incredibly big man walking toward the camera and posing and touching his body, just makes me feel a little pornography. Such relationship between imagery and body desire is the question the artist left for us.
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