What signifiers of reality have emerged from the documentary genre?
The documentary genre in relation to reality is conveyed through capturing the actuality and truth of the lives of ordinary people in a everyday scene. This reality in documentaries “becomes measured through the subject matter being reconstructed and that realism depends on notions of suffering, raw experience and personal struggle as emblems of the real.” (Hill, 2005) It is, in other words, another way to represent the social world and its values of “embracing flaws in a spontaneous style of filming.” Filming in documentaries show the ‘ground-breaking’ turn in ordinary people’s lives and therefore has a sense of accessibility and intimacy for the audience viewing like that in reality tv. “We shoot everything with one camera. You as the viewer., become one camera.” (Hill, 2005)
Hill, A. (2005) The reality genre. In A. Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. (pp. 14 – 40). Oxon: Routledge.
It would have been useful to have developed this discussion further. Check out what others have said.
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