True stories?: documentary drama on radio, screen and stage

Abstract

True Stories are an often controversial feature of modern cultural production which disrupt the fact/fiction boundary on stage acreen and radio. Always potentially transgressive, they have developed from a widespread faith in facts and an exploration of documentary modes of representation, which began around the time of the Russian Revolution. The author considers examples from past and contemporary practices in the UK and US, showing how the media confronts issues such as Vietnam, South Africa, the Falklands War and the nuclear holocaust. The cultural materialistic approach seeks to undermine the assumptions behind the social realism of film amd television, and to claim that alternatives to this disrupt the political project of the hegemony. The book may be of interest to academics and students of media, cultural and theatre studies.