If someone really wants to know what the hells going on in Iran – the most effective way to gain insight is through first hand experience, or books. This takes time, effort, understanding and care. I say this because I recall a short correspondence I had with Noam Chomsky about why his ‘ideas’ haven’t been marketed in a ‘slick medium’ for a new youth audience. (new youth = put it on TV/in a Movie and maybe we’ll care). He just didn’t see the need for it and didn’t “understand how to do it”, yet he openly welcomed the idea (as he did for Manufacturing Consent) however wasn’t active in its creation.

It’s this inherent feeling we acquire when watching socially conscious programming/films, that we are ‘doing something good’. The content of which is always, always, always second to the entertainment factor. Do you think the raw narrative transcript for “March of the Penguins” would be a good read? Why the fuck do we care about Penguins anyway? Because Hollywood TOLD us to care…. for about 3 weeks – they saw value in the ‘brand’. That’s why Road to Guantanamo isn’t on kids lunch boxes, and probably why you haven’t seen it. Among other things…

I’m not trying to sway off topic on a Corporate rant; I’m using this as a way to solidify my point. I find looking at a spectrum always helps me form opinions. The BEST possible way (one end of the spec.) a documentary can be used to instill any action, outcome or result in people is if it happens to hit SO close to him that it instantly changes the way to live our lives TODAY. Consequently, this won’t be about the homeless, AIDS, Africa, Iraq…etc It will probably be about Global warming (TURN OFF THE LIGHTS TONIGHT) or some lame Michael Moore film that will tell us “to go to JIM’s Hardware” instead of Walmart. That’s the BEST. It will last 3 days, and that’s it.

Now the other end.

The worst, most pathetic and disgusting feeling I get is on Christmas. Oprah comes on, she’s in Africa, surrounded by “her children” and telling us to care. My mom, my sister – in tears – telling me to “shut up” so they can listen. So ALL OF AMERICA can stop for 5 fucking seconds and look at a poor black kid (Which we would instantly shut off if it were, in effect, an infomercial needing money) because Opera makes-it-cool to care. So we sit and look at her, and cock our heads in pride/shame – before we instantly forget, and move on to the next thing which can entertain us.

“*sigh* We are so lucky”

“Where the HELL are the keys to my car!?”

I don’t think there is any power in the sympathy one derives from an entertainment fix.

I liked syriana and traffic for what they were, and avoided blood diamond because of leo. And documentaries of course have their social function. What I was trying to call attention to though was the implicit connotation that documentaries are addressed to the powerful — ie, watch this and do something! — and how that is to some extent problematized in more recent years by the general feeling of powerlessness common to citizens of western democracies.

of course it’s important to get people sympathetic to causes, but there is always an implicit tension it seems between informing the enfranchised groups to take action on behalf of the disenfranchised, and encouraging the disenfranchised to take action for themselves. it’s especially hard in the case of the homeless because they don’t have any alternative sources of power that they can leverage to obtain political power. it’s all a very open question, i think.

but i maintain that the whole idea is education and awareness. if i can get my doco on the cbc and a few more dozen (hundred, thousand, etc) people are sympathetic to the homeless crisis, then i feel that is a step forward. and new technology makes it possible for me to produce a cbc quality (or at least film festival) documentary with little funds. there’s a certain degree of power i feel in being able to even do that.

what are your feelings on global social problem films? narratives like syriana (corporate oil), traffic (drugs), blood diamond? and docos like inconvenient truth, the corporation, why we fight?