Mockumentary

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A mockumentary (a

portmanteau of mock and documentary) is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a documentary which in itself is a subset of a faux-documentary style of film-making.[1]

Overview

Mockumentaries are often used to analyze or comment on

current events and issues by using a fictional setting, or to parody the documentary form itself.[2] While mockumentaries are usually comedic, pseudo-documentaries are their dramatic equivalents. However, pseudo-documentary should not be confused with docudrama, a fictional genre in which dramatic techniques are combined with documentary elements to depict real events. Nor should either of those be confused with docufiction
, a genre in which documentaries are contaminated with fictional elements.

They are often presented as historical documentaries, with

Panorama
in 1957.

Mockumentaries can be partly or wholly improvised.

Origin of the term

The term "mockumentary", which originated in the 1960s, was popularized in the mid-1990s when This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner used it in interviews to describe that film.[3][4][5]

Early examples

Early work, including

The War of the Worlds, various April Fools' Day news reports, and vérité-style film and television during the 1960s and 1970s, served as precursor to the genre.[3] Early examples of mock-documentaries include various films by Peter Watkins, such as The War Game (1965), Privilege (1967), and the dystopic Punishment Park (1971).[7]

Further examples are "

documentary and fiction, a docufiction), Smile (1975), Carlos Mayolo's The Vampires of Poverty (1977) and All You Need Is Cash (1978). Albert Brooks was also an early popularizer of the mockumentary style with his film Real Life, 1979, a spoof of the 1973 reality television series An American Family. Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run is presented in documentary style with Allen playing a fictional criminal, Virgil Starkwell, whose crime exploits are "explored" throughout the film.[8] Jackson Beck, who used to narrate documentaries in the 1940s, provides the voice-over narration. Fictional interviews are inter-spliced throughout, especially those of Starkwell's parents who wear Groucho Marx noses and mustaches. The style of this film was widely appropriated by others and revisited by Allen himself in films such as Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story (1971), Zelig (1983) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999).[8]

Early use of the mockumentary format in television comedy can be seen in several sketches from Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969–1974), such as "Hell's Grannies", "Piranha Brothers", and "The Funniest Joke in the World". The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour (1970–1971) also featured mockumentary pieces that interspersed both scripted and real-life man-in-the-street interviews, the most famous likely being "The Puck Crisis" in which hockey pucks were claimed to have become infected with a form of Dutch elm disease.

All You Need Is Cash, developed from an early series of sketches in the comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, is a 1978 television film in mockumentary style about The Rutles, a fictional band that parodies The Beatles. The Beatles' own 1964 feature film debut, A Hard Day's Night, was itself filmed in mockumentary style; it ostensibly documents a few typical (and highly fictionalized) days in the life of the band as they travel from Liverpool to London for a television appearance.

Since 1980

In film and television

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the mockumentary format has gained considerable attention. The 1980

The Gods Must be Crazy (along with its 1989 sequel) is presented in the manner of a nature documentary, with documentary narrator Paddy O'Byrne describing the events of the film in the manner of a biologist or anthropologist presenting scientific knowledge to viewers. In 1982, The Atomic Cafe is a Cold-War era American "mockumentary" film that made use of archival government footage from the 1950s.[9][10] Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig stars Allen as a curiously nondescript enigma who is discovered for his remarkable ability to transform himself to resemble anyone he is near, and Allen is edited into historical archive footage.[8] In 1984, Christopher Guest co-wrote and starred in the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner. Guest went on to write and direct other mockumentaries including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind, all written with costar Eugene Levy.[8]

In Central Europe, the first time that viewers were exposed to mockumentary was in 1988 when the Czechoslovakian short film Oil Gobblers was shown. For two weeks, TV viewers believed that the oil-eating animals really existed.[11]

Tim Robbins' 1992 film Bob Roberts was a mockumentary centered around the senatorial campaign of a right-wing stock trader and folksinger, and the unsavory connections and dirty tricks used to defeat a long-term liberal incumbent played by Gore Vidal. Man Bites Dog is a 1992 Belgian black comedy crime mockumentary written, produced, and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, and Benoît Poelvoorde. In 1995, Peter Jackson and Costa Botes directed Forgotten Silver, which claimed New Zealand "director" Colin McKenzie was a pioneer in filmmaking.[12] When the film was later revealed to be a mockumentary, Jackson received criticism for tricking viewers.[13]

REC, a 2007 Spanish film by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, uses journalism aesthetics to approach a horror universe set up in a real building in Barcelona. The film was remade in the United States as the 2008 film Quarantine.[14]

Ivo Raza's 2020 mockumentary Reboot Camp is a comedy about a fake cult that uses an ensemble cast of celebrities from the film (David Koechner, Eric Roberts, Chaz Bono, Ed Begley Jr.), performing arts (Ja Rule, Billy Morrison), and TV (Lindsey Shaw, Pierson Fode, Johnny Bananas) to play fictional versions of themselves.[15]

In television, the most notable mockumentaries in the 2000s have been

TV series: Comedy verite.[16]

The series

IFC, created by Saturday Night Live alumni Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and Seth Meyers, spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style and subject of each documentary. Hight argues that television is a natural medium for a mockumentary, as it provides for "extraordinarily rich sources of appropriation and commentary".[17]

In 2018 BBC released the series Cunk on Britain created by Charlie Brooker and starring Diane Morgan about British history with Philomena Cunk, an extremely dim-witted and ill-informed interviewer, asking various experts ridiculous questions. The follow-up Cunk on Earth featuring a similar plot was released by BBC Two in 2022 and is available on Netflix.

On radio

The BBC series People Like Us was first produced for radio in 1995 before a television version was made in 1999. Kay Stonham's Audio Diaries was a similarly short tenured radio mockumentary that premiered the year after People Like Us's run on Radio 4 ended.

See also

References

  1. ^ "the definition of mockumentary". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 15 January 2017.
  2. ^ a b Campbell, Miranda (2007). "The mocking mockumentary and the ethics of irony" (PDF). Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education. 11 (1): 53–62. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 26 July 2010.
  3. ^
    ISBN 0-7190-5641-1
    .
  4. ^ "mockumentary, n.". Oxford Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2010. Archived from the original on 1 December 2012. Retrieved 1 June 2013.
  5. ^ Don Giller (26 December 2015). "Paul Shaffer on Late Night, March 20, 1994". Archived from the original on 3 November 2021. Retrieved 17 October 2017 – via YouTube.
  6. ^ Otway, Fiona. "The Unreliable Narrator in Documentary". Journal of Film and Video, vol. 67, no. 3–4, 2015, pp. 3–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jfilmvideo.67.3-4.0003. Accessed 19 November 2020.
  7. ^ "This 70s Sci-Fi Mockumentary Predicted Our Current Political Climate". Vice. 18 August 2017. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  8. ^
    ISBN 2877753344
    .
  9. ISBN 9780199838851
    .
  10. ^ "The Atomic Café (1991)". Horrorview. Archived from the original on 7 February 2020. Retrieved 18 May 2018. Straddling the fence between surrealism and pop culture is this eccentric "mockumentary," subsumed entirely by stock footage from the height of the Cold War. "The Atomic Café" is pieced together with a certain clairvoyant vision that captivates and inspires as the seamless fluency of the film builds to a denouement. In the same neighborhood as "Dr. Strangelove," this cynically festive mock-serious piece /../ Because the documentary is just that, fashioned entirely out of a seamless montage of newsreel footage, government archives, and military training films, the movie itself is just a deadpan reflection of history's charade executed with an assertive wry humor that makes us question the sanity of Cold War politics.
  11. ^ TV2 (Hungary) Jan. 23 1991 23:35, Napzárta. Interview with the producers of Ropaci and Vilmos Csányi (In Hungarian)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BauXIDKrNyc
  12. ^ "Colin McKenzie – NZ On Screen". Nzonscreen.com. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
  13. ISBN 0816642516
    .
  14. ^ Miska, Brad (6 May 2013). "Exclusive: '[REC]4 Apocalypse' Teaser Poster Sees Red!". Bloody Disgusting. Bloody Disgusting LLC. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
  15. ^ Pfeifer, Paige. "'Reboot Camp' Will Recruit Even the Most Stubborn Viewers! | Young Hollywood". younghollywood.com. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  16. ^ Mills, Brett, Comedy verite: contemporary sitcom form
  17. ^ Hight, Craig. 2014. "Mockumentary." In Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Salvatore Attardo, Thousand Oaks: Sage, pp. 515-516.

Further reading

  • Hight, Craig 2008: Mockumentary: A Call to Play, in Thomas Austin and Wilma de Jong (ed.), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices. Berkshire: Open University Press.
  • Hight, Craig 2010: Television mockumentary. Reflexivity, satire and a call to play. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.
  • Juhasz, Alexandra/Lerner, Jesse (eds.) 2006: F is for Phony. Fake Documentary and Truth's Undoing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Visible evidence, vol. 17).
  • Rhodes, Gary D. (ed.) 2006: Docufictions. Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
  • Roscoe, Jane/Hight, Craig 2001: Faking it. Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality. Manchester/New York.

External links

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