New Persuasions

In 1973 Tom Wolfe published a controversial essay entitled 'The New Journalism'. His aim was to elucidate the importance of social realism to any writing, be it fiction or non-fiction, which aims to absorb or grip its reader. The essay was in effect a spirited defence of the application to contemporary non-fiction writing of techniques of realism hitherto used by novelists such as Dickens and Balzac, an application enthusiastically pioneered and endorsed by Wolfe.

For Wolfe the introduction of social realism to eighteenth century English literature was like the irreversible discovery of electricity. In his essay he proposes that its power was drawn from just four devices. Firstly, tell the story using scene-by-scene construction. Secondly, realistic dialogue is pre-eminent in revealing character. Thirdly, construct a third-person point of view by purposely interviewing any protagonists on their actual thoughts and emotions. Fourthly, the details of an individual's behaviour or possessions are richly symbolic of what Wolfe terms their 'status life', their current position, or current perceived position in their world.

How might such a modus operandi compare with the growing impact of documentary cinema? Let us consider two recent examples of very successful European non-fiction films, 'Touching the Void' and 'Etre et Avoir'.

In Kevin Macdonald's film the narrative is clear, crisp and linear. He cuts strategically from the staged reconstruction of events in the Peruvian Andes to the actual protagonists articulating their own thoughts and emotions. As the actor who plays him slumps brokenly at the pit of a seemingly inescapable crevasse, Joe Simpson recounts to the cinema audience his own strange epiphany of Nietzsche's metaphysical void. As another actor digs out a snow-hole in which to take refuge from that bitter night on the Suila Grande, and later burns his lost companion's clothes at the base camp, the emotional reality of Simon Yates's experience as he experienced it is clarified. What too could be more obviously symbolic of the 'status life' of the two climbers on the mountain than the safety rope that bound and eventually separated them?

'Etre et Avoir' follows a year in the life of a one-class rural school in the Auvergne region of France. There is poetry in this strict chronology: from the shy tortoises at the beginning of the cold and lightless year, to a spring field trip where a young girl is temporarily lost in the overgrowth, until finally a telling cut at the end of the school year to a summer harvest with neatly tied bales of fresh hay. The documentary relies almost entirely on dialogue to reveal the relationship between its pupils and their teacher M. Lopez. An extended interview with M. Lopez where he explains in his own words both his lifelong vocation to teaching, and a corresponding pedagogic philosophy, establishes his key third-person point of view. The school and its immediate surroundings are rich with detail of the 'status life' of both its pupils and their teacher, as is a brief evening with the family of JoJo, one of the pupils, in their rural home.

Marcel Ophuls in recent interview with Nick Fraser on BBC4 called for the abolishment of the 'Griersonian' voice-over narration in documentary film (in a similar way Wolfe had called for a third-person point of view in non-fiction "giving the reader the feeling of being inside the character's mind and experiencing the emotional reality of the scene as he experiences it"). But is there anything in Wolfe's 'New Journalism' that conflicts ideologically with John Grierson's idea of "new persuasions" in documentary filmaking. When Grierson applauds Robert Flaherty for illustrating one of the first principles of documentary, namely to "master its material on the spot, and come to intimacy in ordering it", is it any different than when Wolfe hails Hunter S.Thompson for 'running' with a chapter of the Hells Angels in order to write 'Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang'? And doesn't 'New Journalism' similarly exhibit Grierson's other first principle of documentary - "make the primary distinction between a method which describes only the surface values of a subject, and the method which more explosively reveals the reality of it."

The availability of High Definition Digital Cameras ('Touching the Void' was shot partly on HDCam) and the development of the Digital Intermediate process will surely afford documentary filmmakers further opportunities with which to test the boundaries of versimilitude and find "new persuasions" that will absorb and grip cinema audiences. Wolfe himself revelled in these delicious dilemmas, much to the consternation of his fiercest critic, 'The Literary Gentleman.' Like Grierson, he regaled his peers forward, as he famously put it in his finest book 'The Right Stuff' (and imagine the non-fiction film it might have produced) to "push the edges of the envelope."


Michael Reilly
Docspace Researcher
11/04