‘The greatest love stories on Earth?’: the ethics of community in social documentaries

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the documentary Occupy Love (2012), the filmmaker proposes social movements can be love stories. Taking the filmmaker’s claim seriously, this article questions whether social documentaries can be understood as love stories and, if so, how different formations of love in documentary shape the communities they produce. Looking at three key examples, Triumph of the Will (1935), Roger & Me (1989), and Occupy Love, this article uses the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy to analyze the different types of communities and loving attachments engendered by each film. Taking the view that not all documentary love stories are ethical, it demonstrates how some documentaries subvert the ethics of community by reinforcing neoliberal individualism, while others violently eradicate difference in their drive toward total communion. Finally, some documentaries render the community ‘inoperable’ by illustrating the collective as a network of heterogeneous individuals who are nevertheless committed to a shared ethos. In the final analysis, all three documentaries raise questions about the possibilities and problems associated with thinking community through documentary.