SubscribeThat image gives way, quickly and successively, to a series of others: a young black woman smoking, smiling at the camera through a reinforced glass window; three teenage girls in a car, laughing, filmed through the windscreen; a whip-pan to the American flag, pierced by sunlight, drifting in the breeze; a DIY programme on a pixellated TV screen; a ride-along shot of a family in an oversized golf buggy; two different angles of a man alone in a lecture theatre; two more of traffic at night; a woman, suspicious of the camera, wearing a polka-dot dress and partly obscured by glassy reflections; a blurry shot of a long windowless corridor; a man wearing shades in a crowded street; a woman pursued down the cosmetics aisle of a supermarket; and, as Curtis comes to the end of his three short sentences, a woman seen jogging in the wing-mirror of a moving car. The entire sequence takes 26 seconds. There’s too much to take in. Or, you don’t know what you’ve taken in, and how deep the impression has been.
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Curtis is not claiming, as far as I know, that his documentaries are substitutes for firsthand research or a textbook - he's claiming they are documentaries, and he makes them to actually get his ideas out there. Personally, I find them to be fascinating, informative, and exhilarating pieces, and they've led me to read further on the topics he introduces. A fear that Curtis is somehow unfairly tricking his audience is mostly just condescending to his potential audience, and invoking the brainwashing sequence from Parallax View as a comparison seems about as valid as picking up any didactic book and saying "look, this is exactly like The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion."
It's an interesting read, but I don't see much substance here.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:54 PM on June 20, 2007