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Gary D Rhodes

I can see why you like [looking through] this video camera so much. It's not quite reality.... It's like a totally filtered reality, man. It's like you can pretend everything is not quite the way it is.

--Josh, to Heather, in The Blair Witch Project (1999)

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Mockumentaries--films made to look like documentaries, despite their fictional or partially fictional status--have become one of the most exciting filmic forms to emerge in the late 20th century. Though a few other terms have been proposed for this filmic style, including the hardly accurate ''metadocumentary,'' the mockumentary label has caught on in academic, industry, and popular environments.1

Nevertheless, this label is open to interpretation now that it belongs to us, as it is not always clear just who or what is being mocked. Aspects of documentary film storytelling and visual aesthetics are mimicked in this form, so perhaps these are what constitute the ostensible target. But perhaps it is the subject matter, the content of a specific mockumentary, that is more pejoratively being mocked. After all, the arrogance of rock musicians is surely being sent up in Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap (1984), as are the super-competitive dog owners in Christopher Guest's Best in Show (2000). Or perhaps it is the audience members whose sophistication (or at least cinematic intelligence) is being mocked; at least, those audience members who are made to believe in what is actually largely or completely fictitious.

The purpose of mockumentary is also very much open to interpretation. A film like This is Spinal Tap attempts to parody its subject matter by using a documentary-esque form to frame its commentary. But a film like The Blair Witch Project (1999)--from its advance publicity, to its ancillary televised mockumentary The Curse of the Blair Witch (1999), to its onscreen appearance--seemed to suggest that we were supposed to believe it was actually a documentary. And, to swing the pendulum away from filmmakers' purpose and intent to audience reception, we can also readily use Blair Witch as an example of a film that many viewers believed was authentic. I even remember debating a handful of students who argued vehemently that it was not just a movie: it was ''real.''

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