Television Documentary Volume: Mirror of Survival

Author: Jiang Yiwen
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Publish Date: 2000-06-01
Features: There is no universal "truth" in this world. Truth is first a philosophical metaphysical assumption, a product of human concepts, and a creation of human reason to achieve an understanding of the world. It refers to an absolute state, which cannot be proven by human experiments or observations, and science only describes the world approximately through certain assumptions. Second, the concept of "truth" we use in daily experience is dependent on certain conditions; without these conditions, there is no truth. Any so-called truth is a product of a certain method, and the method determines the result. For each individual, their experience determines their judgment of truth. For example, if the world is an apple, as sketchers, we only see one side of the apple, so the sketches we leave on the paper, and the apple we see, are definitely different, at least the angle of the light the apple is exposed to is different. But they are all true. Here, we need to define "documentary." A documentary must be based on real people and real events; this is the foundation. I am not against using the concept of truth (authenticity) in documentary studies. I am against defining it as the essential attribute of a documentary. And it is precisely at this point that documentaries are distinguished from news. Documentaries are not news, although they sometimes resemble the currently popular in-depth reports, "focus interviews" are definitely not documentaries. First, documentaries do not pursue timeliness as their goal; they pursue historical value. This does not mean that documentaries cannot track social hotspots; the success of many documentaries depends on this, but this is not a necessary condition for them to become documentaries, only a condition for gaining attention. Second, documentaries are concerned not only with news events but also with the mindset of people in the events. To put it into practice and make it dominant, the event is just a carrier. In terms of the concept of authenticity, the authenticity of news reporting refers to reporting events that conform to a society's common moral and cultural value system. To gain the recognition of this common concept is to possess authenticity. In other words, news requires providing a perspective of shared value standards to judge events. Therefore, the authenticity within one cultural system may lose its authenticity in another cultural system. For example, the scientific explanation and reporting from this perspective on the spread of AIDS or a mysterious virus in Africa are different from the reporting by religious people who believe this is God's (divine) punishment from this perspective. We accept the former reporting because the scientific perspective is the stance chosen by modern civilization and accepted by most modern civilized people, which determines its authenticity. Documentaries are concerned with people and human nature, and the concept of authenticity in news is not as important for documentaries. Because for people and human nature, "truth" is not an important word; it is only a premise. What is important is the degree of our understanding of people and human nature. It is precisely through this that documentaries ultimately break away from the realm of news and approach art, so we can use words like "creation" in documentaries, but not in news. The rise of the documentary style in recent years seems to be an endorsement of the documentary's essence as authenticity, leading us to believe that when making documentaries, we are left with only tracking shots, synchronous sound, and long takes, as if anything else would be untruthful. In fact, there is a misunderstanding here. The documentary style pursues the natural flow of things, but as long as there is a television camera, there can be no true natural flow. In front of the camera, people have an instinctive desire to perform, instinctively hiding their faults and exaggerating their virtues. The development of things will also change due to the camera's presence. For example, in "The Story Behind the Murals," if it were not for the TV reporter tracking with a camera, would that rural child with cancer, without any background, have received so much help? This is self-evident. The Shanghai Oriental TV station's "Unrequited Love" and "Love Unfulfilled" had a reporter's intervention, bringing the daughter of a former youth worker in Yunnan back to Shanghai to meet her father, whom she had never met. In my opinion, it is precisely because of the camera's presence that the father, who has a gentle love for his daughter but also great self-control, and the daughter, a young woman with dreamlike fantasies about Shanghai and her father, could not establish a normal father-daughter relationship, because the camera stood in the way, disrupting that private, sensitive, and fragile emotional exchange. The director wanted to see a scene of the father and daughter recognizing each other and shedding tears, so they tightly focused the camera on it, but the result was that such a scene, even if it had a chance to appear, would not. The camera only increased their sense of strangeness. They are not actors. In the camera, the daughter moves among sponsors without expression, attending discussions and visiting factories like a living prop. The dream is shattered; she wanted to live with her father but insisted on returning to her hometown in Yunnan. I think the camera's intrusive interference in this subtle emotion bears some responsibility. The camera's influence on things is not an issue to be avoided but one to be faced squarely. Whether consciously trying to hide the camera or consciously letting it directly participate in the process of things, like "Looking at the Great Wall," it is because of the awareness of the camera's "destructive" nature to the natural flow of life. The former wants to minimize the degree of destruction and uses the extent to which the camera is hidden as a standard for value judgment; in reality, it is impossible to completely hide the camera. The latter turns negativity into positivity and creates a different aesthetic style. Only by fully realizing the camera's intervention in life and its consequences can we truly dispel the myth of authenticity in documentaries. In news reports like "Focus Interview," reporters often actively intervene in events, such as farmers struggling to sell sugar, teachers not receiving salaries, etc. Due to the reporters' intervention, certain issues can be resolved. But unlike the camera in documentaries, their camera represents the force of public opinion and potential official authority, seeking to maintain social public value concepts, so they often have a superior perspective. The camera in documentaries, however, represents a personalized exploration and understanding, concerned with the emotional journey, so it adopts a perspective to better and more deeply observe, and precisely because of this, the camera's influence on the flow of life must be cared for and valued. The proposition "Documentary is not authenticity" is only valid in documentaries and becomes invalid when it extends beyond them. On the other hand, documentaries are also different from literature, which is based on fiction, although both seek to explore human life and survival, their aesthetic purposes are different. The fictional nature of literature gives it a freedom of imagination, so one hundred readers can have one hundred Hamlets, and every viewer can imagine themselves as the Danish prince. Hamlet embodies the common human nature, the virtues and weaknesses of humanity, passion and hesitation, so it provides people with a space for self-identification and a spiritual solace of self-love. Documentaries, limited by real people and real events and not carefully selected and polished actors, rationally destroy the illusion of self-identification, creating a rational barrier between the audience and the film from the beginning, so documentaries provide a form of observation, reflecting on oneself through observing others. If literature is a dream, a daydream, then documentaries are a mirror, a mirror of human reality. From this mirror, we understand our own situation and state. Taking the documentary genre that is particularly fond of "people and nature" as an example. From "Nanook of the North" and "Baka, People of the Jungle" to "The Mosuo People," "Tibetan North," and "The Last Mountain God," they all select the lives of ethnic minorities in areas with a significant contrast to modern civilization and relatively far from the center of modern civilization. This selection perspective is actually rooted in the Western cultural background. This is because Western industrial civilization has increasingly exposed its flaws today. The development of material civilization cannot guarantee the happiness of the soul; it may even destroy this guarantee. Crime rates, suicide rates, and the predatory exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution all contribute to a social trend of reflecting on modern civilization. The myth of the European civilization center has been broken, and the historical view of evolution has been questioned. Against this backdrop, the enlightened people in the West began to cast their gaze toward the indigenous peoples, once considered ignorant and backward, to re-examine and understand their lifestyles and their relationship with nature. The 20th century was a period of great development for Western cultural anthropology, which also influenced many fields of social science. It broke down the concepts of racial and cultural superiority, placing Western modern civilization in a study alongside other civilizations in the world. Comparison leads to discrimination. Civilizational models outside the modern civilization circle became cultural references and reflections for modern civilization. It is precisely because of this broader cultural context that such documentaries have gained attention due to the need for self-reflection on human survival. The voice-over at the end of "Tibetan North" says: "The life of herdsmen is like the thread in their hands, repeating and cycling, always harmonious, tranquil, distant, and peaceful." The implication here is a contrast to the hustle, restlessness, and turmoil of urban life in modern civilization; it is a message for civilized people. However, it has a certain tendency to cater to certain concepts, and its conclusions are too simplistic, blocking the audience's ability to understand and think from multiple perspectives and levels, essentially replacing the function of the mirror with the creator's own image. The animal world is an independent and special documentary genre. It examines the processes of animal foraging, mate selection, mating, reproduction, social interaction, and other survival and reproduction processes. On the surface, animals are the only protagonists, but in reality, there is another potential protagonist, which is the human eye. It is essentially comparing and understanding the animal world in relation to human survival. Therefore, it provides another reference for survival. The reason these programs attract viewers is that they project human traits onto animals everywhere. Watching animals is essentially watching oneself. Therefore, these programs often use humanizing adjectives to describe animals, such as smart, clever, kind, lively, shy, and lonely.