Nanook of the North- Inuit Wasn't True. (Get it?)

Through the viewing of Nanook of the North, This is Spinal Tap and the required readings for this week, several of my longstanding ideas regarding documentary were reinforced, and I was able to glean some additional ideas in the course of the last week.  Documentary seems to be like salt in the sense that one inherently knows what documentary is (sometimes) but has a difficult time describing.  This supposed inherent knowledge can, however, be sometimes tricked or made fun of with interesting results.

The first thing we watched in relation to the question of what documentary is was the 1922 film Nanook of the North.  I was quite charmed by the seemingly authentic nature of the piece in documenting the day to day life of an Inuit named Nanook and his family.  In talking with my friend Hayley about the film on a later occasion, we even talked about how cool it was to learn about the tribe and their way of life.  We truly thought it was an authentic record of the lifestyle of the Inuit people during that time.

However, once I started reading this week’s assignment, I discovered much to my chagrin that the record wasn’t as authentic as I had originally believed!  Flaherty obviously realized the narrative power and romance that the medium of film had.  He definitely did portray the Eskimos, but he portrayed them in a way that more closely matched his original thoughts concerning them rather than portraying them as they actually were.  This made me realize several things about documentary.

This experience helped me realize that a filmmaker is still involved in the creation of the piece.  This means that they will be editing things out, directing our attention to the things they believe to be important and sometimes narrating what is being exhibited.  All these things decrease the validity of the subject.  Real life is never edited, we direct our attention where we want to and narration seldom occurs in reality.  I don’t feel that I was necessarily misled in the viewing of Nanook of the North, but this experience helped me realize that I too am susceptible to being tricked.  Everything in this documentary seemed so valid to me that I never once questioned its authenticity.  Documentary is often exploited and its form employed in so-called Mockumentaries, but the audience is usually in on the joke.  When a filmmaker is showing things in a manner that is contrary to reality and audiences take the piece as truth, documentary all of a sudden can become a dangerous and manipulative tool.