This last blog really is not about any specific documentary but about documentaries all together. Documentaries are suppose to attempt to document reality but the definition of what exactly a documentary is suppose to be is an ever changing definition with an every changing debate. The question is what exactly makes a documentary a true representation of reality and what makes it a misrepresentation? There are a lot of documentaries that are scripted and set up, and because of legal issues most of the people in documentaries need to sign release forms. In fact there is almost no documentary that is without some sort of agenda or goal. Sherman’s March is the only documentary that I can think of without a clear purpose but even in Sherman’s March upon close examination you can see that there is a hidden agenda nestled in a seemingly pointless agenda. The fact that documentaries go through the process of getting produced adds an agenda to them no matter how unbiased the documentarian attempts to be. For example in Sherman’s March, the fact that Ross produced and distributed this film showed that he wanted people to get something from it. It may have not been a great cause like ending racism and it surely is not the cause of informing people about the real Sherman’s March, but Ross wanted us to think about him. He wanted us to feel like he was the victim in these relationships; Ross’s hidden agenda was himself. In the documentary of Life and Dept the agenda was to draw attention to Jamaica, not so that we help, just so that we feel bad about our government’s actions. Sometimes the agenda of the films is just to make money. I would argue that this is the primary agenda for Michael Moore. At some point sure Michael Moore cares about all the causes that he attachés himself to. He does genuinely care about healthcare reform and is against governmental corruption. The thing is on top of that Michael Moore just wants attention and money. He wants everyone to look at him and believe what he believe, he really does. In a way documentaries fail at their purpose the second that someone besides the documentarian watches it. Documentaries are just as biased as when someone tells you’re their side of the story. No matter how unbiased they try to be it is still their side of the story and therefore telling the story is done with a purpose. All documentaries are is someone telling a story about real life the way they see it. In this light, documentaries do not really document reality; they just tell someone’s story and not just any story, a story the documentarian wants you to listen to. It is kind of like the nonfiction section of books, there may be a lot of truth in the books but there is still an author and still an opinion hidden somewhere in the book. Now with all this said purely informational documentaries, like the ones on the discovery channel, do have an agenda, but it is important to note that agenda is not always a bad thing. The agenda in nature documentaries is simply to inform you about an animal in some context. For example, a documentary about the hippo may tell you that they are more dangerous than alligators or that they are in need of help or something like that. There are few nature documentaries that stray completely away from opinion, in fact I think you could find at least one opinion in every documentary, thus distorting it from “reality.”