Steyerl talks about how the “unbroken belief” of the documentary form is challenged. What does Steyerl mean by this? Certain movies and films are based on a true story. How does truth inform the fiction? How might fiction inform the truth?
Steyerl means that because documentaries become abstract and do not focus on the incident itself, people no longer fully believe the truth that documentaries show. Therefore, the “unbroken belief” of the documentary form is challenged.
In my opinion, truths are sources for creators to represent or adapt in fiction. Fictions based on truth are channels spreading real stories to more people. For instance, “Silenced” and “Hope” are two famous Korean movies that were adapted from the real truth. After the movies were released, more and more people started to pay attention to sexual abuse, and the Korean government even establish new law. Therefore, I think truth informs fiction by providing materials and inspiration, and audiences may be attracted due to the works being more realistic than human-created ones. Moreover, the public may turn to research the truth and related issues after watching the fiction.
On the other hand, the way fictions inform truth sometimes may be a little exaggerated because creators want them to be more artistic than just reproducing the real. Nevertheless, documentaries are still better tools to understand the truth in comparison to movies and novels. Their original purpose is to show the truth to the public so that even though they may be abstract and less focused to render the emotion, the contents definitely exist in real life. However, other types of fiction just consider truth as part of the inspiration for creation, which may somehow twist the truth.
What is the significance of the authenticity and representation of the truth in the media that you consume on a daily basis? What is the role of a live broadcast?
From my point of view, the media plays an important role nowadays for people to know faraway news. Because humans are too busy now that we have many things needed to do daily, we can not put down the work at hand and go to understand how the news happened. Hence, I believe that it is very significant for the media to represent the truth. Moreover, if the contents on the media are fake or not credible, due to the Internet’s quickly spread characteristic, a large number of people may believe the misinformation compared to before.
In addition, I think live broadcast is a useful tool to represent truth because there is only a little time deviation, which seems no time to adjust or twist the truth. Therefore, people are more willing to believe in live broadcasts rather than recorded videos. For example, journalists report news instantly via live broadcasts to better prove the authenticity. In addition, the audience can see what happened as quickly as possible even though they are distant from the location of the incident. In this case, they do not need to worry about the message delay.
Source: The Uncertainty of Documentarism
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