In my other graduate class, Teaching Literature to Adolescents, we have been focusing on the dividing line between fiction and nonfiction. Our conversations have had a great deal of overlap with our recent discussions on documentary vs. fiction film.
We recently read an article titled "Truth is Another Country" by Timothy Garton Ash. Ash makes a number of provocative points in his attempt to differentiate between fiction and "fiction of fact."
He argues that fiction of fact "records what the eye sees" and fiction "discovers what the imagination knows."
The most compelling point with the strongest correlation to documentaries reads:
"To create literature of fact we must work like novelists in many ways. We select. We cast light on this object, shadow on that. We imagine what it is like to be that old Albanian woman weeping over the body of her murdered son, or what it was like to be a 14th century French serf. No good history or reportage was ever written without a large imaginative sympathy with the people you are writing about. Our characters are real people; but we shape them like characters, using our own interpretation of their personalities...Imagination is the sun that illuminates [both fiction and fact], but this leads us into temptation and [this temptation] must be resisted."
I find it fascinating that imagination finds its way into both fiction and nonfiction, but that we need to be very careful how we use it. Today in class we discussed "truth" vs. "fact" and decided that they are not synonymous. You can stack a million facts up in an effort to present A truth, but there is a very real possibility that they will not represent THE truth. Documentarians do this everyday. What truth do they want us to take away from their film? What will they incorporate into their audio, visual, and textual tracks in an effort to communicate this truth to their viewers?
Golden discusses something very similar in his section on different tracks used in documentary. When exploring text tracks he states, "Michael Jackson could be identified as 'pop star' or 'acquitted child molester.' Both are truthful, but depending on the text track, we get entirely different impressions of him" (Golden 22). He also states, "Text track is just another tool, like sound and visuals, that documentary filmmakers can use to construct the meaning they want" (22).
"Truth" seems to be a very slippery concept, and I find myself wondering if objectivity, TRUE objectivity, can ever really be achieved. Without it do we have the truth or simply versions of it?
Link to article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/nov/16/fiction.society
Part 1 (because I'm such a windbag I went over the character limit)
ReplyDeleteIf I may, I'd like to take a shot at answering this, Kirsten. You'll have to allow me to philosophize a bit here with a bit of my own theoretical perspective.
I happen to believe that "The Truth" with a capital "T" is a "dynamic" concept. It exists, but it changes. This flies in the face of the traditional concept of "Truth" as being something that endures and never changes.
However, I stop short of saying that everything is "relative" and whatever you believe, because I do *not* believe that it is entirely up to you to decide what the "Truth" is. If it was, I like to say that a lot more of us would be whatever and whoever we wanted to be by now.
So I believe it is something that exists both as part of who we are *and* outside of who we are. How? I consider all Truth to be framed inside interaction. In this way, the "context" of the interaction shapes the "Truth" as it is for any given "moment" of "reality" that we experience. As each of us are part of any interaction we experience, we inevitably have a hand in shaping the Truth as it is, but our hand is not the only one.
This plays directly into film and documentary, fiction and non-fiction, because as you quote Ash as saying "We select. We cast light on this object, shadow on that." Just as our eyes and our minds--in order to function--*must* select and choose what to focus on, so do we do this in film.
However, my concept of "Truth" is further informed by the concepts of Change and Difference. For example, if you make a film, and you select and choose which parts to light, which parts to throw shadows on, I guarantee you that someone else will not see the film you made the exact same way you do.
So what was the film you made then? Your version? Their version? I say you had part in the interaction of the film, but so does each person who views your film. Your part was to make the film as you intended, as you saw it (and for all you know, you honestly saw those things!). Your viewer's part is to see the film the way they see it.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteThis is the same reason a novelist does not have total control over what the reader's will see in his/her book. S/he can write it, true, but the reader reads it, and in so doing, sees something different than the author saw, "reads" something that that author didn't "read" him/herself when s/he wrote it! Are we going to say that what the author saw wasn't there? Are we going to say that to the reader? The fact is, the Truth lies in what each saw, within an interaction they each do not have total control over.
Isn't it just relative? No, certainly not. There is a shared recognition about some things. There was a film made that was watched. We know who made it. We know who watched it. We know when they did this. We know who acted in it, and what happens, just as we perceive experience. But we don't see *everything* the same. So there is a shared recognition of "something" outside of ourselves that can be confirmed but not everything will be shared. The fact that anything can be shared, affirms that there is something beyond what we say is there for ourselves. The fact that we cannot simply make reality and "The Truth" whatever we wish it to be reaffirms this. Both of these "facts" counter the argument that Truth is completely subjective and relative.
But the fact that the "Truth" is *not* the same in all respects for each of us, and the fact that for each of us, the "film" for example, upon consecutive viewings may *change* (ie, we see something different in it than last time, or reconsider something we saw before differently) affirm that the "Truth" is *not* a static thing either, for any of us; that it is based in an interaction-by-interaction framework.
I hope that helps shed some light on the subject without clouding it too much.
*My perspective is drawn from my Protean Meta-Theory, which I did my thesis on this past Spring semester. I'm always open to explaining further my crazy notions of Truth and reality if you want to go further down the rabbit hole!
Lochran,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! You definitely shed some light on this issue for me. The idea that truth simultaneously exists as part of who we are and outside of who we are is strangely beautiful. I was also drawn to your point that truth is not a static thing, and that it is "based in an interaction-by-interaction framework." It seems like such an obvious idea, but I don't know if I ever would have seen that if you hadn't brought my attention to it.