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Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film CARL R. PLANTINGA 1997
Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press pp. x + 255; $54.95 (cloth)
During the past decade there has been a revival of interest in the documentary film after a period of neglect during the 1970s and 1980s in which non fiction film making and criticism held little importance in the development of film studies. More recently, the traditional views of an older generation of historians, such as Erik Barnouw and Lewis Jacobs, have been reassessed, contested and revised by scholars such as Bill Nichols, Alan Rosenthal, Michael Renov and Brian Winston. The theoretical concepts and critical attitudes of post-structuralism and other contemporary practice have been brought to bear as well as a post-1960's mixture of scepticism and disappointed radicalism. Many of the commentators seemed to conclude that documentary film making was plagued by a naive empiricism married to a quixotic aspiration to truth that doomed the practice to a backwater of cinema culture. Only a reflexive discourse which testified to the limitations of documentary attracted the respect of leading scholars. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film testifies to the continuing interest in documentary, but serves as a response to these recent trends. Carl Plantinga has produced an excellent book which may turn our thinking about non-fiction film from a surrender to scepticism and into a lively debate.
Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film engages the central theoretical issues of documentary and responds with balanced, well-defined positions which back away from the kamikaze theorising that finds documentary film making impossible or magnifies the reflexive gesture into a revolutionary act. For Plantinga the distinguishing characteristic of non-fiction film is its implicit assertation that the stated affairs represented occur in the actual world. Of course, that assertation may be contested or even be shown to be wrong, but it is this claim which marks off non-fiction from other cinematic practice. The essential...