Chapter 13
True Lies? The Rise of Political Documentaries
The purpose of this chapter is to look at the increasing number of politically salient
documentaries produced over the past two decades and analyze them for their political
content and intent and to suggest the range of effects such works can have and even
have had on the American political system and public.
Objectives for Chapter 13:
1. Chart the ascent of popular documentary film with Bowling for Columbine (2002),
a landmark hailing the trend.
2. Explore the distinctions between documentary films and others, especially their
fictional counterpart.
3. Explain recent developments in documentary form that blur genre distinctions with
other kinds of popular film.
4. Introduce “actualities,” early short nonfiction films and the ethnographic
foundational documentary Nanook of the North (1922) that manipulated reality
despite appearing as “truthful.”
5. Introduce the work of Frederick Wiseman on various public institutions.
6. Note the rerelease of old documentaries from the 1940s and 1950s played to
contemporary audiences of the 1980s and 1990s for humor and camp value.
7. Describe and analyze landmark documentaries like The Thin Blue Line and Roger
and Me.
8. Question to what extent “documentary” is a viable genre or film category.
9. Describe and explain Fahrenheit 911 and its political impact, noting that it did not
actually alter the presidential election of 2004.
10. Introduce the concept of “filmanthropy.”
11. Describe and analyze the political advocacy documentary The Invisible War and the
actual impact it had on legislation.
12. Describe and analyze the economic documentaries, those appearing to predict
calamity and those tracing the causes and effects of the 2007 worldwide economic
downturn.
13. Chart the documentaries that addressed natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina,
the potential and documented environmental damage caused by hydraulic
fracturing to extract oil from shale deposits, and the Iraq war.
14. Describe and analyze the conservative corollary to Fahrenheit 911, the documentary
2016: Obama’s America, noting that it, too, failed to sway the vote.
Discussion Questions for Chapter 13:
1. What is an “actuality” and why would audiences be interested in them?
2. Why does the staging of parts of Nanook of the North matter? Is it no longer a
valuable ethnographic record? What other political information might the film
provide if not an undiluted view of its subject?
3. How do popular political biopics like Milk and Lincoln or even Dallas Buyers Club
compare and contrast with popular documentaries?
4. Why is one decade’s informative, nonfiction documentary about the evils of certain
behaviors and the threat of nuclear war able to translate into humor for a later
generation? How do facts change in these circumstances?
5. What is filmanthropy and how does it differ from propaganda?
6. What is an advocacy documentary and why are they successful if audiences in
general resist overt political messaging and are more open to political persuasion
when least expecting to see such content?
7. How did Moore and D’Souza both attain success with such radically different
messaging in their respective documentaries?
Assignments for Chapter 13:
1. Compare and contrast the styles and messaging of WWII documentaries like the
Why We Fight series and the postwar Let There Be Light with documentaries from
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and especially the broader documentary on
American militarism, the Why We Fight of 2005, directed by Eugene Jarecki.
2. Compare and contrast the liberal Fahrenheit 911 with the conservative 2016:
Obama’s America. How did promotion for each film express its political position?
How do the films manipulate imagery to sway audiences? Are these films really two
sides of the same coin or are there enough substantive differences to distinguish
them as documentaries and as opposing ideologies?
3. If you were a filmanthropist, what kind of documentary subject might you want to
fund? Write a 2-page description. How would you get audiences interested in this
political project of yours?