Blogging? Let's talk ethics

Bloggers can write anything they want, right? Or at least until they cross the line? But where *is* that line--or is there one? In the recent movie hit The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was portrayed as an obsessive blogger with an adolescent view of women, who as a Harvard student blogged pretty offensive and insulting things about his girlfriend. Is that unethical, or just poor interpersonal skills?

Are blogs that are offensive and racist unethical? What about blogs in which people share things about themselves -- and others -- that are TMI ("too much information") such as providing details of their sex lives or posting pictures of other people in compromising positions without their consent? And then there are the bloggers who make unsupported accusations about people, companies, or organizations.

Where is the line (beyond the laws governing obscenity, indecency, libel and slander)? And what should you know and do to be an ethical and responsible blogger?

First, we need to consider what blogs are, and how they are different from other forms of mass media. Blogs first emerged on the internet scene as a sort of online and public journal or diary, allowing a blogger (that is, anyone) to share personal happenings, feelings and perspectives with others.

As blogging grew, bloggers then took this basic capability in many directions. Some stayed in the personal zone, while others began to rival journalism with reports and editorial-type perspectives on politics and world events that were well-written, smart analyses even though the writers were not professional journalists. As bloggers built broad audiences and committed followings during the early 2000s, the power of blogging became increasingly apparent.

Rebecca Blood, author of The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, notes in an online article on weblog ethics:

Weblogs are the mavericks of the online world. Two of their greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media. Beholden to no one, weblogs point to, comment on, and spread information according to their own, quirky criteria. 

Let's compare blogs to several pre-existing forms of media. Blogs have some similarities to, but also some differences from, each of these kinds of media.

Blogs as essays. In the past, anyone could express their opinion by writing an essay, but they couldn't necessarily get it published unless it conformed to certain standards and principles set forth by the publishing company or magazine. This filtered out the gratuitous, tasteless or offensive content that publishers felt would offend readers' sensibilities or cause a publication to be panned. The other option, self-publishing, was available but required an outlay of capital, and self-publishing also left the would-be writer with cartons of books and no readers unless he or she could find a way to market or distribute them.

Unfortunately, bloggers today no longer have this kind of gatekeeping (beyond the terms of service of their ISP or whoever controls the server upon which their blog is posted) nor do they have the financial barrier to self-publishing, since publishing online is relatively cheap. This leaves the "blogosphere" pretty much wide open to being flooded with lots of stuff that hardly anyone wants to read, and it leaves the job of filtering out the gems from the dirt (the "pointless, incessant barking") up to the readers.

Blogs as journalism. Journalists have a code of ethics that guide their work and their profession. They also have editors and editorial boards that serve as gatekeepers to ensure that what is written is well-researched, fair, objective, and unbiased. Blood comments that: "Journalists are acutely aware of the potential for abuse that is inherent in their system, which relies on support from businesses and power brokers, each with an agenda to promote. Their ethical standards are designed to delineate the journalist's responsibilities and provide a clear code of conduct that will ensure the integrity of the news. Weblogs, produced by nonprofessionals, have no such code."

As far back as 2003, however, Jonathan Dube of Cyberjournalist.net, a Canada-based site that focused on how the internet was changing journalism, proposed A Blogger's Code of Ethics modeled on the SPJ Code of Ethics, with the same three-part schema that included:

Be Honest and Fair

Bloggers should be honest and fair in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Bloggers should:
• Never plagiarize.
• Identify and link to sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources' reliability.
• Make certain that Weblog entries, quotations, headlines, photos and all other content do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
• Never distort the content of photos without disclosing what has been changed. Image enhancement is only acceptable for for technical clarity. Label montages and photo illustrations.
• Never publish information they know is inaccurate -- and if publishing questionable information, make it clear it's in doubt.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

Minimize Harm

Ethical bloggers treat sources and subjects as human beings deserving of respect.

Bloggers should:
• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by Weblog content. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects, victims of sex crimes and criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.

Be Accountable

Bloggers should:
• Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
• Explain each Weblog's mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers' conduct.
• Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers.
• Be wary of sources offering information for favors. When accepting such information, disclose the favors.
• Expose unethical practices of other bloggers.
• Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Blogs as commercial media or advertising. Rebecca Blood notes that "bloggers may not think in terms of control and influence, but commercial media do. Mass media seeks, above all, to gain a wide audience. Advertising revenues, the lifeblood of any professional publication or broadcast, depend on the size of that publication's audience. Content, from a business standpoint, is there only to deliver eyeballs to advertisers, whether the medium is paper or television."

Many bloggers, seeking to make money from their ventures, have found opportunities to profit by endorsing or reviewing products--making their blogs little more than infomercials. In October 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the mission of which is to protect the interests of consumers, ruled that bloggers who endorse particular commercial products must disclose any payments they have received or face penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. As The Washington Post reported:

The agency, charged with protecting consumer interests, had not updated its policy on endorsements in nearly three decades, well before the Internet became a force in shaping consumer tastes. The new rules attempt to make more transparent corporate payments to bloggers, research firms and celebrities that help promote a product.

Blogs as extended social media comments. Like entries on a Facebook page or the comments field of a news site (allowing readers to comment upon articles), we can also view blogging as the ability to remark candidly about anything and everything. From my experience, the lack of editorial control and lack of wisdom on the part of the people who post and blog are the two greatest contributors to people making absolute fools of themselves (and often an embarrassment to their friends, family and employers).

Blood argues that bloggers have no inherent incentives to maintain any community standards of ethics:

“ Let me propose a radical notion: The weblog's greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness. ”

Let me propose a radical notion: The weblog's greatest strength — its uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness. 

Since news corporations are beholden to advertising interests, she claims, this provides reporters with a true incentive to stay on the good side of their sources, to maintain their professional reputations, and to maintain the support of those who fund them--that is to maintain their journalistic standards in order to maintain their professions and the companies that employ them.

However, Blood notes that, in contrast, "Weblogs, with only minor costs and little hope of significant financial gain, have no such incentives. The very things that may compromise professional news outlets are at the same time incentives for some level of journalistic standards. And the very things that make weblogs so valuable as alternative news sources — the lack of gatekeepers and the freedom from all consequences — may compromise their integrity and thus their value."

SETTING SOME ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR BLOGGING

Rebecca Blood proposes six rules for ethical behavior for online publishers of all kinds, in hope that "these principles will spur discussion about our responsibilities and the ramifications of our collective behavior."

1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
Honesty still reigns supreme, even in blogging.

2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
In addition to serving as the extension of the academic source citation, the blog hyperlink provides readers the ability to access all relevant and referenced information themselves. As Blood points out, "The Web, used this way, empowers readers to become active, not passive, consumers of information. Further, linking to source material is the very means by which we are creating a vast, new, collective network of information and knowledge."

3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
Everyone makes mistakes, but it is essential for bloggers to not only correct the mistakes but to add a note to the blog clearly indicating that the correction has been made.  Some bloggers even use the strikethrough HTML code -- <strike>wrong information </strike> -- to show that they have revised their page. This is closely related to the next guideline.

4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.
Blood argues: "Post deliberately. If you invest each entry with intent, you will ensure your personal and professional integrity." She adds:

“ The network of shared knowledge we are building will never be more than a novelty unless we protect its integrity by creating permanent records of our publications. ”

Changing or deleting entries destroys the integrity of the network. The Web is designed to be connected; indeed, the weblog permalink is an invitation for others to link. Anyone who comments on or cites a document on the Web relies on that document (or entry) to remain unchanged. A prominent addendum is the preferred way to correct any information anywhere on the Web.

The only exception to this rule is when you inadvertently reveal personal information about someone else. If you discover that you have violated a confidence or made an acquaintance uncomfortable by mentioning him, it is only fair to remove the offending entry altogether, but note that you have done so.

5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
If you as a blogger have a personal connection to or investment in a company or organization, and particularly when you are promoting its products, it is ethically imperative to let your readers know this so they they can judge your commentary accordingly.

6. Note questionable and biased sources.
If you have cited or drawn material from questionable or biased sources, it is your responsibility to note the nature of the site from which it came, allowing readers to determine the credibility of the source. As Blood notes, "If you strongly feel the piece has merit, say why and let it stand on its own, but be clear about its source. Your readers may cease to trust you if they discover even once that you disguised — or didn't make clear — the source of an article they might have evaluated differently had they been given all the facts."

STYLE AND ETHICS: SOME MAINSTREAM BLOGGING STANDARDS

Finally, some wisdom distributed in the form of an internal memo from New York Times standards editor Craig Whitney to his staff, as condensed and repackaged in March 2009 by Nicholas Carlson of Business Insider:

1. What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias, or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone — “snark.”
2. If something could easily fit in a satirical Web site for young adults, it probably shouldn’t go into the news pages of nytimes.com.
3. Contractions, colloquialisms and even slang are, generally speaking, more allowable in blogs than in print.
4. Obscenity and vulgarity are not.
5. Unverified assertions of fact, blind pejorative quotes, and other lapses in journalistic standards don’t ever belong in blogs.
6. Writers and editors of blogs must also distinguish between personal tone and voice and unqualified personal opinion.
7. A blog or news column has to give readers the arguments and factual information that led to the writer’s conclusion — enough argument and fact on both or all sides of the issue to enable the reader to decide whether to agree or disagree
8. That does not apply to editorials or Op-Ed columns, which “are not intended to give a balanced look at both sides of a debate,” as the Readers’ Guide says.
9. Headlines on analysis should try to capture the debate rather than taking sides in it.
10. If the comments contain vulgarity, obscenity, offensive personal attacks, say that somebody “sucks,” or are incoherent, moderators are advised just to chuck them out.

Valentines, anyone?

Have you ever heard of Esther Howland? Probably not, but this Massachusetts college student of the 1840s who began producing Valentine's cards for her father's stationery shop can be credited as the founder of the Valentine's industry in America.

To honor this day dedicated to romance and to the support of the greeting card and candy industry, I thought I'd round up a few articles on the history of Valentine's Day and of the vast consumer industry it has spawned.

First, start with this About.com history by Robert McNamara. Once Miss Howland had begun the trend, it spread rapidly:

In 1862 post offices in New York City accepted 21,260 Valentines for delivery. The next year had a slight increase, but then in 1864 the number dropped to only 15,924.A huge change occurred in 1865, perhaps because the dark years of the Civil War were ending. New Yorkers mailed more than 66,000 Valentines in 1865, and more than 86,000 in 1866. The tradition of sending Valentine cards was turning into a big business.

The February 1867 article in the New York Times reveals that some New Yorkers paid exorbitant prices for Valentines:

It puzzles many to understand how one of these trifles can be gotten up in such shape as to make it sell for $100; but the fact is that even this figure is not by any means the limit of their price. ...

Valentines of this class are not simply combinations of paper gorgeously gilded, carefully embossed and elaborately laced. To be sure they show paper lovers seated in paper grottoes, under paper roses, ambushed by paper cupids, and indulging in the luxury of paper kisses; but they also show something more attractive than these paper delights to the overjoyed receiver. Receptacles cunningly prepared may hide watches or other jewelry, and, of course, there is no limit to the lengths to which wealthy and foolish lovers may go.

A recent NPR article takes a look back at the cultural history of this tradition, focusing on "The Dark Origins of Valentine's Day." Another website devoted to all things holiday, The Holiday Spot, provides a detailed history of one of the saints named Valentine who was martyred and for whom the day may have been named. They note:

Valentine is believed to have been executed on February 14, 270 AD. Thus 14th February became a day for all lovers and Valentine became its Patron Saint. It began to be annually observed by young Romans who offered handwritten greetings of affection, known as Valentines, on this day to the women they admired. With the coming of Christianity, the day came to be known as St. Valentine's Day. 

But it was only during the 14th century that St. Valentine's Day became definitively associated with love. UCLA medieval scholar Henry Ansgar Kelly, author of "Chaucer and the Cult of Saint Valentine", credits Chaucer as the one who first linked St. Valentine's Day with romance. In medieval France and England it was believed that birds mated on February 14. Hence, Chaucer used the image of birds as the symbol of lovers in poems dedicated to the day. In Chaucer's "The Parliament of Fowls," the royal engagement, the mating season of birds, and St. Valentine's Day are related: "For this was on St. Valentine's Day, When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate." 

 Today, Valentine's Day is one of the major holidays in the U.S. and has become a booming commercial success. According to the Greeting Card Association, 25% of all cards sent each year are "valentines."

The "valentines", as Valentine's Day cards are better known as, are often designed with hearts to symbolize love. The Valentine's Day card spread with Christianity, and is now celebrated all over the world. 

The History Channel provides us with a brief video from a Valentine card collector about the history of cards:

And I'll leave you with a steampunk valentine! Styles may change, but the sentiments remain the same :^)

You may be watching --but are you seeing?

When you watch a movie or television show, do you generally stop and think about the strategies and choices that have resulted in what you see on the screen? As I mentioned in my last blog, most filmic media have traditionally worked hard to render these strategies invisible--to encourage us to *not* pay attention to the conditions of their production.

Whether it is a nonfiction form such as a documentary or television news report, a talk show, a sporting event, or a fictional or dramatic form such as a feature film, TV drama, soap opera or sitcom—most cinema and TV pulls us in to the content (i.e., the story, or narrative) and implicitly asks us to suspend disbelief about, or to not question, the constructedness of its form and structure.

One of the best ways to understand the way a film or television program is constructed is to learn the traditional "grammar" of (or rules for generating) television and film. While there has been an accepted, traditional "grammar" or rulebook of feature film-making techniques that developed during the first half of the 20th century in Hollywood, and which has had a huge impact on visual language all over the world, we can also study the alternative systems and grammars of film "language" that have developed in different times and places and which provide us with new and refreshing ways to think using moving images.

Film production of Apache Gold (1963): note the camera apparatus on the railroad tracks

Students in my film criticism classes often complain that learning to analyze a film's constructedness — by “deconstructing” the plot, for example, or even moreso by examining the camera angles, camera movement, composition of the frame, lighting, sound, use of color, and editing strategies — “ruins” watching TV or film for them for a while! And I sympathize. I do remember this myself, when I took my first film classes. I remember watching and analyzing classical Hollywood films in class and dissecting them (just like we dissected pigs in Biology 101). And it felt just as clinical--a disruption of that pleasant experience of the "whole" by being forced to see all of the inner clockwork and taking the puzzle apart into tiny pieces.

We learned about the standard single-camera Hollywood filming style, a style that dictates a particularly disjointed way of filming scenes that leads to the story sequence being re-created only later, in the editing booth during post-production, when all the puzzle pieces are put together.

And in contrast, we learned about the very different three-camera studio style for filming most studio-based TV shows, from news to sitcoms to variety shows, that originated with theatrically-based live television in the 1940s-1950s, and which involves editing not of film (or video) but switching between the feed coming from the cameras as the action is happening—and then recording that “pre-edited” camera feed, a very different process than the Hollywood filming process.

A television studio

A broadcasting master control booth

So had you ever considered how different the production conditions are for movies (and some dramatic TV series) than they are for most television studio comedies? (and in the past decade, how different again the “rules” and aesthetics are for reality TV shows?) I know that I had never even noticed a difference before I began to study media, since I had never even been on a tour of a broadcast studio to understand the contrasting modes of production. Understanding these differences is an important component of media literacy.

But I do have a vivid memory of going to the movie theater after my first week of grad school at UNC Chapel Hill, where I was taking classes in both television studio production as well as film criticism, and I was learning all the ins and outs of how both films and TV shows were put together.

My friends and I went to the theater to see a new film, David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, a psychological thriller in which Jeremy Irons played twin gynecologists. And all I could think of when I watched each scene of the film was: "Oh, look at the camera dollying in this scene! Hey — did you notice the low camera angles there? Wow, I wonder how they got that lighting just perfect in that scene?" And of course, "OMG, how in the world can the same actor be on the screen talking to himself (his twin) at the same time — I can’t imagine how they did that!"

For a while after that, during every movie or TV program I watched, I analyzed the plot structure, the characters, the camera angles — marveling at the artistry of the composition, the cleverness of the way the sound enhanced our emotional experience, and the power of the editing to create rhythm or to move the story through time.

• Flashbacks? How are we the viewers to know that the story is suddenly moving back in time? What semiotic devices did the director use to signal to us that “this is a flashback”?
• I became entranced by camera angles, noticing when we (the viewers through the camera) were seeing scenes through a character’s first person point of view as opposed to the fly-on-the-wall omniscient camera.
• I began to notice the way that perceived camera proximity — long shots, medium shots, close ups, extreme close ups — brought us viewers into zones of intimacy or pulled us back into more formal distance from the action.
• I noticed how important lighting was for creating dramatic effect and for guiding our eyes to what the director wanted us to see.

In doing all this, I began to understand the “rules” of what I learned was called Classical Hollywood Narrative Style. The clip below is just a few minutes of a terrific documentary on the history of cinematography called Visions of Light:





However, I also noticed when filmmakers *broke* the rules—as in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), when the main character would turn his gaze directly into the camera and speak to us, the viewers, breaking out of the self-contained story world that is supposed to be unaware of a camera filming it.

Throughout the 1980s-1990s, these rules were being broken more and more often. It had started with music videos, and the birth of MTV in 1981 displayed the innovative camera styles of music videos — very fast-paced, in-your-face editing, jump cuts, and the use of hand-held cameras with shakiness, poor composition, or graininess that would never have been acceptable in classical Hollywood, and which signified amateur video or home movies rather than professional film standards. Film critic Roger Ebert credited Richard Lester's 1964 Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night with pioneering this style for musical sequences and providing the "grammar" for the next generation of music videos, and later, the modern style we know today:

It was clear from the outset that "A Hard Day's Night" was in a different category from the rock musicals that had starred Elvis and his imitators. It was smart, it was irreverent, it didn't take itself seriously, and it was shot and edited by Richard Lester in an electrifying black-and-white, semi-documentary style that seemed to follow the boys during a day in their lives. ...Movies were tamer in 1964. Big Hollywood productions used crews of 100 people and Mitchell cameras the size of motorcycles. Directors used the traditional grammar of master shot, alternating closeups, insert shots, re-establishing shots, dissolves and fades. Actors were placed in careful compositions. ....Lester did not invent the techniques used in "A Hard Day's Night," but he brought them together into a grammar so persuasive that he influenced many other films. Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of "A Hard Day's Night."

Soon, these radical styles began to make their way into mainstream film and television. Films like The Blair Witch Project (1999), like its more recent cousin, Cloverfield (2008), brought this amateur home video aesthetic to the big screen in startling new ways, while TV dramatic series like Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999) were filmed using hand-held 16 mm cameras on location (not in a studio) to signify a degree of documentary realism rarely seen in police detective dramas. Homicide was also innovative in its use of jump-cut editing and a stuttering triple repetition of the same camera shot during critical moments in the narrative.






Generally, every kind of filmic or motion media production involves four basic phases:

1. Development: conceiving, planning, and arranging financing for the project
2. Pre-production: assembling the people and resources needed, from building the sets and casting the actors (for staged pieces) to setting up appointments for interviews and making travel arrangements (for documentaries)
3. Production (generally the filming or principal photography phase): the shooting and all the things behind the scenes that need to happen to be able to film or shoot each day’s work: lighting, camerawork, costumes, make-up
4. Post-Production: taking all the footage, editing it into the final product, and including effects such as special visual effects, soundtracks, titles, voiceover narrations, and so on

At another level, there are three main aspects of any industry to consider, from the concept and design to getting the product in the hands of the consumer. These include:

• Production: everything discussed above—the development, creation and packaging of the product
• Distribution: the marketing (advertising and promotion) of the product and the actual physical or digital movement of the product from its site of production to a site where it can be purchased by consumers
• Sales (or Exhibition): the actual purchase and consumption of the product by the public, whether it be at the box office in a movie theater, through a computer, via satellite television, or on a rented DVD.

Really?? Conventions of Realism in Nonfiction and Fiction Media

The concept of realism in visual media is one that is very powerful in shaping our expectations of, and our judgments about, the media that we consume. The degree of perceived realism in a media text (a movie or a television show, for example) is closely tied with genre conventions and other classificatory schemes.

Different kinds of "realism" work in media to mask the constructed nature of all media forms, to try to make the story or information seem natural, "real" and unmediated. The power of these mechanisms to keep us, as viewers, from being able to think critically about the media texts is exactly why it is so absolutely essential to understand the concept of realism as we work to become more media literate. We need to be able to see the constructedness of all media--especially so-called realist media--to be critical media consumers.

Below, a quote from artist Georgia O'Keefe.

So, what *is* real? And what is realist when it comes to media? For this discussion, I'll limit myself to talking about film and television, and for purposes of analysis, I find it helpful to distinguish between two main types of realism: (1) realism in nonfiction media (documentary forms, journalism/television news, and Reality TV in all of its manifestations), and (2) dramatic or cinematic realism (in fiction films and television), a style of film language that became the hallmark of classical Hollywood cinema.

DOCUMENTARY REALISM

The producers of nonfiction or documentary forms of media base their arguments on claims of truth, actuality and authenticity. As viewers, we expect certain conventions of these kinds of media whether they are based upon the codes of journalism, on one end of the spectrum, or the norms of reality television programming, on the other end--with various types of documentary film falling in between.

What do we expect from these types of media forms, veiled in "truth," authenticity and objectivity (for the most part)? The norms for nonfiction film and television include unstaged action, “real” people (i.e., not actors playing a fictitious role), and naturally-occurring events.



However, despite the illusion of transparency of "truth" encoded into these forms of media, documentary realism in its style covers up the many levels of selectivity and structuring that go into making the media text.

It's important to remember that if filmmakers or producers go out looking for a certain type of action or certain kinds of characters, they will usually find them. So the first step in the selectivity process is in selecting a focus or story topic that fits into a preconceived notion of what will make an interesting or compelling story or film.

The next level of selectivity comes into play when the person(s) directing or operating the cameras or conducting the interviews decide what to shoot and who to spotlight. Not all perspectives will be represented.

The next stage is evaluating the rough footage and deciding what to make of it. Most documentaries and news programs are indeed scripted, but in general the scripting takes place *after* the footage and material are gathered, so that the script becomes a script for editing and structuring rather than a script for shooting. This is a significant way that Documentary Realism differs from dramatic realism.

Various models have developed over the years within each genre--television news, various types of documentaries, and subgenres of reality television--for styles of structuring this material to present it to an audience. All involve in their structuring:

a. the selective choices of what is filmed, who is interviewed, what perspectives are chosen (and not chosen)

b. the heavy hand of an editor, who selects, arranges, sequences, chooses to highlight or ignore certain information, and shapes the “real” information into a well-crafted presentation

c. the structuring of this “actuality” information and events into either structures of narrative (stories) with characters, plots and other characteristics of good storytelling or into informative or persuasive arguments (and these often use narrative as well)

Below, a clip from an extraordinary documentary film by Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins, called The First Movie (2010), using lots of footage shot by Kurdish children in Northern Iraq. How does this film signify and encode realism? It is a good comparison and contrast with The Color of Paradise, a fictional feature film (see below).




REALIST MODE OF REPRESENTATION IN FICTION FILM

The Realist mode dominated the Classical Hollywood narrative style of visual storytelling; it has been supported by a set of conventions of cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, plot structuring, etc. that work to create a smooth, unbroken narrative flow ("suture"). Everything that we as viewers see and hear is the result of strategic creative decisions involving photography, lighting, sound recording, editing, as well as other aspects of staging the production.

Even if they are clearly works of fiction and thus not "real" in the same documentary sense of embodying objective truth, authenticity or actuality, media that employ dramatic realism SEEM true because they encourage the viewer to believe in them and to emotionally identify with them. Realism creates a sense of verisimilitude ("true-seemingness").

THe following clip is from The Color of Paradise (1999), an Iranian feature film by Majid Majidi, a drama about the life of a blind little boy who returns home to his rural village from his special school for the blind in Tehran. In what ways is it realist?



There are, of course, many different approaches to realism in film (as in art and literature), and you will encounter discussions of magical realism, poetic realism, social realism, (as well as socialist realism!), and various types of neorealism in articles, books and film reviews. Here, we are only discussing realism at its most basic level.

Realism (both dramatic and documentary) encourages viewers to suspend disbelief, to forget they are watching a story constructed for them, and to get sucked in to the diegesis ("story world") of the film. We become passive spectators. We are invited to sit back and enjoy the ride, and not think about the way the film is constructed. We are not to do any work involving critical thinking; we are to be entertained or informed.

With both dramatic and documentary realism, we are encouraged to believe, if only for an hour or two, that a coherent and bounded world (in which these characters live and within the social and moral order of which they act) exists. We are not to be critical of the film or report, not to question (but to accept as natural) the ideological statements that it produces--statements about social and ethical values, gender roles, class, race and ethnic relationships, for example.

REALISM: REALLY?

In summary, these are the basic characteristics of classical film narrative having to do with the teller, the tale and the viewer. We can also question the degree to which these same mechanisms apply to documentary realism:

(1) The filmmaker's or producer's job is to make sure the mechanics of production and storytelling are invisible: to disguise his or her mediating presence as the constructor of the images and narrative.

(2) The text itself is a "closed" text, being self-contained and complete within itself: both the diegetic (story) world, and the plot.

(3) The audience is conditioned to be unconscious of their active participation in the construction of meaning, and in fact, the mechanisms of the text's construction work hard to keep the viewer from critically engaging but rather encourage the viewer to sit back and "enjoy the ride."