Essay on Documentary Critique - 952 Words

This is a critique ofquot; Roger And Mequot;, a documentary by Michael Moore. This is a film about a city that at one time had a great economy. The working class people lived the American dream. The majority of people in this town worked at the large GM factory. The factory is what gave these people security in their middle working class home life. Life in the city of Flint was good until Roger Smith the CEO of GM decided to close the factory. This destroyed the city. Violent crime became the highest in the nation, businesses went bankrupt, people were evicted from their rented homes. There were no jobs and no opportunity. Life was so bad that Money magazine named Flint the worst place to live in the entire nation. When news of the†¦show more content†¦The city is doing so bad that the rat population actually increased the human. These comments made me sick because he actually believed what he was saying. The well to do or very rich people in Flint had different statements b ut they were just as disturbing. quot;Get up and do somethingquot;, quot;They don’t want to workquot;, quot;We have such a good welfare program these daysquot; and quot;there being lazyquot; were just some of the comments. These people just seemed really naive to me. I got the impression, and I am confidant that their families has had money for years and that they were brought up on this type of attitude. The sheriff of the city was interviewed as he evicted people from their homes. He said he was so backed up with evictions that he had to kick people out of their homes on Christmas eve. So many people were leaving this town that people getting evicted couldn’t call a moving truck. All of these interviews shows the depth of the entire story, not just one side. Roger Smith was finally asked at the end of the film what he thought of people being out in the street in Flint. He said that it had nothing to do with GM. The director’s choice of authorial voice certainly impacted my feelings about the film. The director showed all sides of the story but anyone who watches this film will side with the city of Flint. One reason for this was showing the archive footage of theShow MoreRelatedBill Nichols and the Discourse of Sobriety2932 Words   |  12 Pagessobriety’? Throughout film history, documentary and fiction films have denoted the polar opposites of film form with each representing two distinct and separate traditions, the cinema of reality and the cinema of fiction (Doherty 16). However what was once a clear distinction has become blurred as the increasing popularity of mockumentary continues to weaken the assumed boundaries between fact and fiction (Sicinski). Prior to this ‘blurring of the lines’ the documentary genre enjoyed a privileged positionRead MoreHow Do Documentaries Produce ‘Truth Effects’? Essay1379 Words   |  6 PagesHow Do Documentaries Produce ‘Truth Effects’? The role of media has often been a subject of much debate, particularly in terms of its role in portraying and conveying truth to the target audience. Some argue upon its utility as a means to disseminate information and to rectify perceptions and facts in the minds of the viewers; while others squabble on the amount of misrepresentation which is often adopted by media as a means to project baseless arguments which lead to severe impact on the minds,Read MoreExit Through The Gift Shop Analysis1722 Words   |  7 Pagesas an anthropology or documentary is inherently difficult; the task involves portraying the beauties, flaws, nuances, and relevancies of an often under-appreciated movement in a finite amount of space. A documentary, already tasked with capturing the intricacies of a movement, also requires capturing this spirit in a neutral, fact-oriented, honest, yet still entertaining fashion. Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop is widely considered an example of a successful documentary on street art due to itsRead MorePhotography And The Carnegie Museum Of Natural History1218 Words   |  5 Pagescreates books and exhibits to educate a mass public audience about social problems without minimizing their complexity.† I think these two quotes from the article really add too it and explain. Those as photographers, especially photojournalists and documentary photographers, have to shoot their work, without creating any biases within their work. Like the photographers that are apart of Women of Vision said to us they have to learn and submerge themselves in a culture and learn about these people andRead MoreThe s The House Is Black2141 Words   |  9 PagesForugh Farrokhzad’s The House is Black is a harrowing, disturbing, artfully made documentary, one of the few films directed by the Iranian poet Farrokhzad. Her subject here is leprosy, and she looks directly, uncompromisingly, at the devastation that this disease causes the human body. Sh e does not look away, not from the cruelest deformations this disease generates. Her purpose was to expose the punishing and superfluous way that lepers continued to be treated in Iran, funneled into quarantinedRead MoreThe Bible Is No Different1898 Words   |  8 PagesWonders of the world often collaborate to create timeless pieces of art; the Bible is no different. The Documentary Hypothesis proposes this same ideology of the Bible. Past scholars have devoted countless years determining the origin or sacred text. This particular source critique aims to understand the theory of multiple authors and publications to comprise the Pentateuch, Torah, or Old Testament. In Recent Scholarship on the Pentateuch, some scholars struggle with the methodological questionRead MoreThe Film Kony 2012 and Invisible Children3099 Words   |  13 Pagesmillion views in a single day and since has gathered almost over 99 million view on YouTube. The campaign was a 30-minute video made by filmmaker and Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell can be considered a political documentary by traditional standards. The political documentary intended to persuade bystander viewers to hold certain beliefs about Kony, a leader of the rebel militia group the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Viewers were asked to act immediately to raise awareness through socialRead MoreUse Of Film As A Propaganda Tool3428 Words   |  14 Pagesradio and television contributed to this new era, offering their unique characteristics for exploitation. In this essay, I am going to focus on the particular use of film as a propaganda tool. A propaganda film, can take either the form of a documentary film production or a fictional screenplay that aims at convincing the audience about certain issues. They can be driven by politics, social conflicts, environmental problems or simply personal incentives. Propagandistic content in films can be realisticRead MoreBra Boys - a Documentary Case Study1696 Words   |  7 PagesBra Boys Practice Essay Documentaries reinforce or criticise dominant representations of groups in society. Discuss in relation to a documentary you have studied. Images are a complex communication tool – the intention of the creator and the interpretation of the viewer may not be harmonizing. While Bra Boys seeks to criticise their infamous reputation as an anti-social and law-breaking gang, the construction of the documentary has reinforced that dominant representation of the surf group. SunnyRead MoreAn Ethnography Of Wall Street986 Words   |  4 Pagespositions are white males while those in lower positions tend to be more females. As discussed in the documentary Inside Job, the males in corporations featured tended to be impulsive risk takers which can be related to the idea of â€Å"doing masculinity†. Using these sources, one is able to create a critique of the theory emancipation in accordance to corporate crime. Through the analysis of the documentary Inside Job and the article An Ethnography of Wall Street, it can be determined that corporations are