Pin Up! The Interactive Documentary

Abstract

Pin Up! The Movie: An Interactive Documentary uses oral history to explore an international subculture. In it, women and men adopt vintage style and advocate for social and political change. Specifically, they use the subculture to advocate for anti-racist practices, call for body positivity, and lobby for full equity and acceptance of LGBTQI subcultural members. These advocates do this with acknowledgement of historical racism and sexism, which is sometimes echoed in the contemporary subculture. This i-doc intentionally uses non-professional storytelling tactics (vertical video, online video recordings, strait to camera interviews) to transform notions of a proper “aesthetic” within the documentary genre. It also invites subcultural members to take over its social media feeds. This paper argues that actively approaching the i-doc as a shared authority demonstrates how emerging formats, gamification of storytelling, and non-narrative structures can result in a sense of subcultural authenticity: a way to use the documentary format to provide agency to both members of the subculture featured in the project, as well as to audience members.