the great divide: arguing for argument's sake?

The first reading for this week, written by Paul Ward (entitled Fiction and Nonfiction: The Grea Divide?) highlights an ongoing debate between the respective genres of doco and drama that has been simmering away in the cauldron for decades. Personally, I don't see why so many people get their knickers in a twist when one mode borrows stylistic elements from the other and appropriates them as it sees fit. To me, it's kind of like that whole naturalistic VS digital photography debate... it's old! And anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get with the times and move on, and accept the fact that technological convergence has given birth to a certain convergence in genres over the years, that is not nearly as much of a bad thing as the puritans would have us believe.

Take, for instance, Aussie filmmaker Murali K. Thalluri's feature length debut of last year - 2:37. Though it was a completely dramatised account of one girl's final day in school (the day the commits suicide), it contains several interview-style black and white sequences typical of documentary, but used in this case to heighten the sense of drama and conflict within the narrative. In this day and age, filmmakers don't just use these unconventional effects willy nilly, they're there to serve a particular purpose. And if blurring the distinctions from time to time makes anyone uncomfortable, I feel sorry for them!

In postmodern times, we should be revelling in the opportunity to experiment and borrow from other genres. We plan to use aesthetic elements from both naturalistic and experimental documentaries.. there's nothing wrong with hybrids, people! If you can balance one thing with another, then that is a work of genius - not madness. The fact of the mater is, documentary to modern audiences consists of far more than your average discovery channel polemic - it requires artistry and craftsmanship if it is going to succeed against its increasingly stiff competitors - yes, including drama.

snippetts.. or teasers if you will

I find it curious that we are doing both 'drama' and 'documentary' this year when the latter is enduring quite a significant transition. I wrote a Media Ethics paper last year, relating Baudrillard's theme of seduction to the lucrative advent of 'Reality TV'. Also dubbed 'docu-drama', shows such as Big Brother have called the nature of the genres under question, raising a number of ethical questions along the way.

This is just the beginning of the essay. I'll be saving the rest for later on.


Perhaps the most seductive television format to emerge over the past decade is what can loosely be termed 'reality TV'. Programs such as Big Brother, Australian Idol, Survivor, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and The Block have continued to dominate network ratings both nationally and abroad. This mode of observational 'docu-drama', or fly-on-the-wall camera has arguably transformed the viewing style of millions (, playing on presumably different aspects of audience engagement than its 'fictional' predecessors. Most notably, the scriptwriters and actors we've come to know and love are finally eschewed in the process; in which the dramatic displacement of reality masquerades as a kind of voyeuristic 'entertainment', of other peoples (edited) lives (Davies 2000, pp37). Apart from sparking fierce debate about the changing nature of documentary, ethics has resurfaced as an arena for intense discussion - partly because the ethics of this new form - at first glance - appear questionable indeed (Armstrong 2005, pp73).