The Ethics of Representation: Documentary Film and Islam

Abstract

In the words of Bill Nichols, a documentary film is one of the “discourses of sobriety” that covers numerous topics related to culture, science, economics, politics, and history discourses that lay claim to tell the “truth.” Nonetheless, a documentary film like any other filmic material presents entertainment and knowledge, art and document. Most importantly, a documentary film stands on both sides of fact and fiction. The famously elusive definition of documentary film set by John Grierson is worth mentioning here: a documentary film is the “creative treatment of actuality,” Brian Winston wrote “Surely, no ‘actuality’ (that is, evidence and witness) can remain after all this brilliant interventionist ‘creative treatment’ (that is, artistic and dramatic structuring) has gone on. Grierson’s enterprise was too self-contradictory to sustain any claims on the real, and renders the term ‘documentary’ meaningless” (Qtd. in Breitrose 2002: 9-10). Hence, the very idea of documentary is impossible; objectivity is also impossible, and the ethical responsibility of documentary is undermined and questioned. The acts of framing and editing are acts of selection, and selectivity is necessarily biased. The act of editing alone has made documentary film indefensible. Any documentary film claiming to be factual is but a discourse and all discourses are equally privileged.