Telling Facts and the Fact of Telling

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.

Inside a Box

The documentary film recorded the process and some afterward feedback on Stanford prison experiment, which was a study held by Stanford University exploring the psychological effects of ordinary people becoming a prisoner or prison guard. This experiment itself was very powerful and the result was quite shocking to me.

It's astonishing to see how fast people can act like someone else according to a certain situation and power relationship. Both the "guards" and "prisoners" adapted to their roles more than they were expected, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine sadistic tendencies", while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized. In this experiment, many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected the researcher, Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners went mental breakdown and quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was forced to stop after only six days. 

The film recorded many valuable footages of the acting power of situation, and the fact that human behavior is so weak under certain situational forces. For example, rules, roles, symbols, and uniforms. They can lead to a dangerous place and result in psychologically damaging situations to everyone. In such powerful process, I find that the lost of identity or personality act as a key point in crushing the feeling of being in control or being yourself. For instance, the experiment use numbers instead of names to identify prisoners. The power of language is astonishing. After repeating the sentences after the guards in loud voice several times, prisoners started to accept the situation and unconsciously builded up a psychological recognition. Using bad language and public humiliation just acts like physical punishment to human beings. The effects of this experiment to those "prisoners" were incredible.  Like prisoner 416, after two months of the end of this experiment, he still believed that it was not just an academic experiment. The lost of personal identity let him feel like his real personality was remote form himself. The experience harmed him badly, especially when he realized that how horrible normal people can be turned into or how badly people can act to each other under certain circumstances. 

In this experiment, the whole builded up prison society was very unreal, however the power acted quite factual and profound. Especially when the prisoners' parents and the priest accepted this system and acted according to it. The guards responded on this system strongly by accepting their uniforms, the authority, the power of feeling in control. There's even one guard believed that he was doing an experiment by his own, trying to explore if there's one to question the authority he had, and he was amazed that "no one stand up to stop me". Such situation reinforced him to act in power and performed badly to prisoners and totally forgot that his real identity. Yes, this just showed that anybody could be a guard; and anybody could be made into a prisoner.

This experiment is very related to today's world. When people in a certain position or in a power relationship, like husband and wife, parents and children, teachers and students, government and citizens, everyone would act responding to their power-roles, not just behavior according to their identity or personality. It just reminds me of the lost of humanity in human behaviors in some major wars, like the massacres did by the Nazis or Japanese in WWII. 

Those effects of situation, the power of being in control can easily change a person's social behavior and psychologic activity. Such result leads to many questions to our human natures, and challenges many conventional values in our society. 

Tears from a war criminal

The Fog of War.

I have to say, although I have seen many movies about the Vietnam War, I still think I'm not that knowledgeable about that period of history; and I didn't know much about Robert McNamara before this documentary. So I guess I'd rather talk about the form of this film instead of its content or the political/social significance.

First of all, I believe this film is a great example of documentary art and it has innovative approach of doing interviews. As a sense of documentary, this film is very informative, including lots of numbers, charts, historical footage, and government records; and most importantly, a personal aspect from one vital figure, McNamara. One interesting thing happened in this 2 hours film was that the 24 hours talk with McNamara was the only interview in this documentary. Instead of doing interviews with many people from different levels and standpoints, the director decided to talk and record McNamara exclusively. Someone might doubt the truthfulness or fairness of such documentary based on only one source. However, I think it has its own reason and the final product is powerful. Since McNamara is a key feature in all the big events like Cube Crisis, Cold War and Vietnam War, I think his own experiences and understandings are worth studying. A documentary that can record something in a neutral way and then leave the audience talking and thinking about it can be called a success. As what the director said in one interview, "I believe the movie was fair to him (McNamara). Maybe it didn't describe him, in every way, the way he wanted to be described. But the movie was not unfair, and he realizes that."

As the stylistic way of doing interview, the film director Errol Morris, used a special device called "Interrotron". It allows the interviewee to look directly into the camera and talk. It is very powerful since audience can see directly to McNamara's eyes. And his laughs, his pointing finger, his hesitation, his body gestures, and of course his crying exposed directly to the public. I believe this interview format brings more life into the abstract idea of the interview. And the documentary appears a fair portrayal of the figure to me. I know Robert McNamara was always portrayed as a pushover, a war criminal, and even a dictator of war. And I don’t think the film is trying to figure out whether he is a bay guy or a good one. The film just recorded his talking in a very honest natural way, in a very close distance, that provides lots of information for audience to judge. From the film, I just see McNamara as an 85 years old man, very strong, very confident, and very emotional, as a normal human being whom experienced a lot in his past. I believe the movie does create a very complex portrait of a man, a very interesting one. And in that respect, I think it's a successful movie.

Besides, this film used lots of archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, which are rarely seen in mainstream media. From this point, this documentary is very informative and based on thoughtful researches. The most valuable thing in this documentary is that the narratives or speaking were all come from McNamara. When he is telling us a very powerful and important story, there’s picture or a piece of footage on the screen showing the visual part of the story. I think the film did a great job in making the interviewee’s thoughts communicated visually. There’re effective use of showing numbers, charts, proportions, graphics, maps that make the saying more powerful. Especially the scenes that enlarged some numbers or certain words like “destroyed”, “murder”, “killed”, etc. The voice-over and the visuals combined in a way that a story is told, and made the story so powerful and readable.

Based on the above point, I also find something really interesting in this film.  Along with the voice-over from McNamara, between the conversation about wars and human mistakes, many pictures in the frame begin to have their own suggestions to the audience. For example, when McNamara’s talking about the cold war and America’s approach, the screen was showing a series of footage about rocket building, testing, lab activities. In such dialog environment, audience can easily connect those images with evil human power, the beginning of war, the end of moral laws. However, if the conversation were about the development of technology and economy, the imagery suggestions would be totally different. That just reminds me of the argument of photography from Susan Sontag in her book, Regarding the Pains of Others. Images can be easily manipulated for different political propagandas, and that can totally change the social impact of those pictures, and then change our views about interpreting the action of photography.