mockumentary???

[Lily Alexander]

Mocumentary is a genre very popular among the young filmmakers of the 
last decade, which includes a parody on a documentary genre, a 
self-parody, a carnivalesque quasi-documentary, or a postmodern 
quasi-documentary with the elements of (self)irony and sarcasm.

It emerged in the postmodern context implying that a documentary genre's 
claim on truth is impossible, and only irony holds a perspective (close 
to the) of truth.

In post-Soviet context, Kovalov's Scorpion's Gardens is an attempt on 
mocumentary (and much more). See my article "The Soldier, the Girl, and 
the Dragon" in Cinema Journal (No 38.2, Winter 1999).

Soviet underground necro-realism of the 1980s, that was making fun in a 
brutal way of the Soviet pantheon of heroes, was of course "mocumentary."

In US, while teaching film students, I recall how some very talented 
young filmmakers complained to me (because I taught carnivalesque film) 
that the "old generation," in particular their documentary teacher was 
giving them  "Fs," for refusing to make a conventional documentary, 
while they wanted nothing else but to make mocumentaries and make fun of 
all kinds of establishment and their forms of self-expression.

I found these students'  mocumentaries to be absolutely brilliant, but 
of course did not question the decision of my teacher-colleague. Btw, 
these young people's careers later took off. So, is it also a 
generational, and ideological matter, and postmodernism, part of 
conceptualism, part of the carnivalesque tradition, etc.

Mocumentary attempts can of course be very bad and tasteless, like any 
attempt on humor - it works or it does not. It requires boldness, wit 
and good taste.

A well known movie "The Dog Show" (recently shown again on HBO) is 
considered to be a fictionalized version of mocumentary genre, while 
personally I think it is not. It is simply an awful film, tasteless and 
ruthless, implying that all dog owners are nothing but freaks and 
extracting condescending laughter a la American Idol. It encourages 
laughing one's head off at the unfortunate Other (versus laughing at 
ourselves in a Bakhtinian sense). I suspect that every national cinema 
may have bad and good attempts on mocumentary.

In its constructive aspect mocumentary deals with the established forms 
and content, which outlived themselves, and are holding culture back in 
a dangerous and regressive way. Well, Bakhtin had explained it before 
the word "mocumentary" emerged.

But it is a historically spiraling phenomenon, similar to the 
Futurists's throwing apples or tomatoes at the public from stage in 1916 
- it could have been called "mocu-performance," or "mocu-poetry reading 
from stage." In sum, it is (self)irony via documentary.

Cheers,

Lily Alexander

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