“Point Your Finger and Say, ‘That’s the Bad Guy’”: Performativity in Donal MacIntyre’s A Very British Gangster (2007)

Abstract

winner of grand jury prize at 2007 Sundance film festival, Donal MacIntyre's A Very British Gangster (2007) is an intriguing example of a critically acclaimed documentary. This article seeks to explore structure of film and how constant allusions to pop culture within it create a frame of reference that is performative and playful. Like any documentary, film is beyond simple categorization. However, this article engages with processes of labeling and defining of modes in order to show film as an expression of reality that is caught up in a very definite desire to entertain rather than educate. One of John Grierson's original principles of describes it as arrangements, rearrangements and creative shapings [of natural material] (First Principles 146). This principle appears to accept certain elements of subjectivity and construction as part of form and thus suggests a close connection between factual and fictional forms. However, other work, such as that of Ellis and McLane, asserts that is purposive; it is intended to achieve something in addition to entertaining (4), which is related to Grierson's desire for to educate and inspire. Both interpretations are valid, though appearing to be at odds. Documentary can both entertain and educate. It can also be constructed and factual. It is perhaps useful to note, as John Corner does in The Art of Record, that Grierson's definitions were in fact designed to promote argument for as a recognized form, rather than to be definitions of form. Therefore, such definitions should be viewed as discursive rather than fixed. In view of this, it is most useful to see all definitions as opening of a discussion rather than fixed, in that all films utilize a variety of modes and purposes. The following discussion of definitions is designed to offer such an opening. The development and popularity of reality TV continued to blur distinctions between reality and entertainment, and this had a profound influence on how other forms of are being defined. Bruzzi notes that reality TV as factual entertainment brought entertainment and drama further into arena, and John Corner coined label as diversion to account for growth in lighter topics or treatments in television (Performing Real). Paul Arthur suggests that one new style has begun to attract film viewers who before might have chosen a dentist's appointment rather than pay to see a documentary (75). The documentary, often with filmmaker as visible interviewer, seeks to investigate subjects and entertain audiences through a mix of observational, archival, and interview modes. Such documentaries, Arthur states, focus on the business of public voyeurism, media celebrity, and political economy of imagemaking (74). The label tabloid is appropriate, according to Arthur, because this style of filmmaking mainly prioritizes voyeuristic pleasures rather than specifically educational or critical discourse, and consequently its function resembles entertainment as much as, if not more than, actuality. Arthur uses term tabloid in order to identify such documentaries within a readily understood framework of reference that is associated with television format that dominates cable TV channels, such as Biography Channel,1 or alternatively, broadcast network programs such as NBC's Dateline (US) and BBC's Witness (UK). He suggests that this format appears in varying degrees in feature-length, critically acclaimed films such as Berlinger and Sinofsky's Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), Nick Broomfield's Fetishes (1996) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005). A basic similarity between television and film formats is their participatory structure, in that voice of text, through presenter or filmmaker, a significant role onscreen, in voice-over, or both. …