Introduction

Abstract

Documentary films are inherently subjective: they construct a recognizable likeness of the world, speak for the interests of others, and make a case for a particular view of the evidence they present to an audience. A filmmaker consciously or unconsciously shapes the construction of a documentary through his or her attitude toward a subject, who expects the filmmaker to represent him or her in a responsible way, and the viewer adopts specific intellectual and emotional outlooks when making sense and meaning of a documentary. Subjectivity-which assumes the mediated nature of any visual representation-is thus inseparable from the processes of making, appearing in, and consuming documentaries. If documentary filmmakers attempt to satisfy the audience's desire for and pleasure in knowledge, they do so by turning upon their subjects what Don Alan Pennebaker describes as the fearsome machinery of the camera. Given the inherent subjectivity of documentary filmmaking, a question arises: what ethical obligations do documentary filmmakers have to their subjects and audience?Ethics becomes a measure of the moral implications that arise from negotiations between filmmaker, subject, and audience. Sometimes, the interests of filmmakers and subjects are at odds with each other. As a representative of the group he or she films, or of the institution that sponsors him or her, the filmmaker wants to make a compelling documentary. As an individual, the subject wants his or her social rights and personal dignity respected before an audience. Viewers of a documentary assume that the text's sounds and images have an indexical relationship to the historical world we share. The tension that often arises from the interdependent expectations of this triad of participants raises the question of ethical rights and responsibilities in documentary filmmaking.Postmodernists argue that this question of ethical rights and responsibilities is interwoven with the concept of identity politics. Various identifications (in addition to class) now serve as key determinants of identity: feminism, sexual politics, national liberation, and black struggle. Paralleling this rise of a politics of identity have been debates about the indexical relationship between truth and reality and about how to represent the pride and integrity of marginalized or ostracized groups.Different modes of documentary filmmaking provide means of establishing frameworks within which individual filmmakers may address the politics of identity. The desire to find different ways of representing the world contributes to the formation of each mode, as does a changing set of circumstances. New modes arise partly in response to perceived shortcomings in previous ones, but the perception of deficiency stems partly from a sense of what it takes to represent the historical world from a particular perspective at a given moment in time. The following essays consider the ethical strengths and weaknesses of the expository, performative, and reflexive modes (Nichols, 33- 34).The expository mode assembles fragments of the historical world into a rhetorical or argumentative frame. Images serve a supporting role by illustrating, illuminating, evoking, or acting in counterpoint to what is said. Exposition can accommodate elements of interviews, but these tend to be subordinated to an argument offered by the film itself. Any sense of give and take between filmmaker and subject is minimal. The voices of others are woven into a textual logic that subsumes and orchestrates them. Witnesses thus give their testimony within a frame they cannot control and may not understand.In Contra Queer, Alice Liao explores how gay and lesbian affirmation documentaries that rely on expository devices such as talking head interviews and an argumentative style of narrative logic and verbal commentary construct the process of coming out in narrow and constricting terms. She argues that the claim of an essential queer identity, undertaken for political purposes, limits a more inclusive definition of gay and lesbian selfhood. …