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F i l m - P h i l o s o p h y
ISSN 1466-4615
http://www.film-philosophy.com
Volume 3 Number 20
May 1999
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David Cullen
Visual Reality
Derek Paget
_No Other Way To Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television_
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998
0-7190-4532-0
237pp.
In 1915 the visual triumphed over the literary. That year D. W. Griffith's
_Birth of a Nation_ appeared. Following a private screening of the film,
President Woodrow Wilson remarked that the movie was, 'history written in
lightning'. The president assumed that the future presentation of
historical reality would be visual. Based on a novel that dramatizes the
historical period in United States history known as Reconstruction,
Griffith presented the film adaptation as a visual reenactment of a
historical place and time. In one year more persons saw the film than the
cumulative audience who read novel, _The Clansman_, that inspired the
movie. [1] As a result, since 1915 the visual image has had far greater
impact on people than any mass-produced text. And since the 1950s,
television has made the visual image available to everyone as easily as the
mass-produced paperback books brought written text to society in the late
nineteenth century. And, like those penny presses of the last century, the
television screen attracts its viewers with promises of dramatic stories
involving real persons confronting real issues. But the representation of
reality is vastly different than the presentation of reality.
This latter point is the subject of Derek Paget's new work, _No Other Way
To Tell It_. A reader in Drama at the University College Worcester, Paget
has spent the last decade concentrating his research efforts on this
subject. These efforts have resulted in over a half a dozen articles, his
1990 book, _True Stories?: Documentary Drama on Radio, Stage and Screen_,
and being guest editor for the 1994 _Critical Survey_ issue on 'Television
Dramas -- TV and Theory'. Paget's new work reveals the conclusions of this
decade-long reflection.
_No Other Way To Tell It_ provides the reader with an introduction to the
development of the fusion of the factual approach of documentary and the
fiction of drama: dramadoc/docudrama. In addition to a discussion of the
evolution of this fusion, Paget includes a discussion of the production
process of television films and a consideration of the influence of the
media lawyer to the making of such films. He also examines the codes and
conventions of contemporary dramadoc/docudrama, through a series of case
studies of eight controversial films, including the British produced
_Hostages_ and America's series of films about accused murderer Amy Fisher,
the 'Long Island Lolita'.
Most of the book, however, is an exploration of the history and development
of dramadoc/docudrama. Paget argues that the reader must accept the fusion
of the two disparate forms, drama and documentary, as 'a form in its own
right rather than some kind of mongrel, hybrid or even bastard form' (3).
He traces the history of this fusion by examining their development in
Britain and America. The first phase occurred between the end of World War
II and 1960. During this period veterans of BBC Radio moved from the behind
the microphone to behind the camera. In quick succession, viewers watched
_It's Your Money They're After_ (1948), _The Course of Justice_
(1950-1951), and _Return To Living_ (1954). All three productions
dramatized a realistic person or event, as had BBC Radio for years. During
this period in the United States the emphasis was on the dramatization of a
perceived reality. Producers of such acclaimed shows as Philco Television
Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse used fiction as the catalyst
for a discussion of reality. The exception, notes Paget, was Armstrong
Theater. The producers of this program remained in New York while their
counterparts headed to California. New York, at the time, was the economic
and cultural capital of the world and of the United Nations. This produced
a substantial amount of material for the producers of Armstrong Theater.
The drama of the world was outside their doors; and they responded to it.
In 1957 the theater showcased 'Freedom Fighters of Hungary', only a few
months following the death of those freedom fighters. However, Armstrong
Theater dissolved due to financial problems, leaving the production of
television drama and documentary to Hollywood.
The second phase of the fusion between drama and documentary occurred
between 1960 and the 1980s. It was during this period that, in the United
States, the 'Made For TV' movie developed. More often than not this genre
relied upon the dramatization of reality, past or present. The most famous
case being the multi-part series _Roots_. In Britain, Granada TV through
its series World In Action contributed to the fusion of the two by mixing
dramatic reconstructions with documentary footage from the inception of the
program. Gradually the fusion of the two became one, concluding with,
according to Paget, Granada's first drama-documentary _The Pueblo Affair_
in 1970. The 1970s closed with the controversy surrounding the production
of _The Death of a Princess_. By the mid 1980s, the Tramadrama had come
into its own, increasing the speculation about the end result of
media-driven reality. Thus, the decade of the 1990s opened with both
scholars and the general public concerned about the ethics of dramatizing
reality.
This concern reached a climax with the production of _Hostages_ in the
early 1990s. The film represented the final phase in Paget's suggested
development of the fusion of the two disparate forms. The movie was a
co-production of Britain's Granada TV and America's HBO cable network.
Technology and world events removed the borders that had separated the two
countries and the two production studios. Paget spends considerable time
discussing the controversy that surrounded the production of _Hostages_ and
in the process establishes his point about understanding the
dramadoc/docudrama form in its own right, as a new approach to an old
problem: the representation of reality. Thus, the new visual form re-states
an old problem, regardless of the form used to convey reality, the argument
will be about the content within the form, not the form of the content.
Although Paget concludes that dramadoc is a 'very British genre' and
docudrama is a 'very American one', he adds that both are social realist in
purpose, concluding that, with journalist input, the dramadoc form provides
'more claim to documentary power' (195). But he believes that the power of
American money and technological innovation may determine that the United
States will dominate any co-production effort, thus making Hollywood's way
the 'only way to tell it' for producers in England and elsewhere.
Scholarly concern with this new form receives a separate chapter from
Paget. He opens it by reminding the reader about 'the common end-of-century
view that many things that were once clear are now blurred means that easy
assumptions can no longer be made about the ways in which media represent
reality' (116). The author then provides a synthesis of the debate over the
representation of reality and the reality of that representation, including
a chart comparing and contrasting the characteristics of documentary with
those of drama. He concludes the chapter by suggesting that 'the
dramdoc/docudrama is an inherently indexical form: it points more
insistently towards its origins in the real world than other kind of drama'
(136). Readers, however, might conclude that this definition would
encompass all drama.
Finally, Paget concludes his work by arguing that 'television spectatorship
involves a subject position that is more dominantly feminine' (202). He
bases this assumption on the notion that 'looking activity' is
self-reflexive and 'reality testing' and not about control or dominance
(202). Paget does not adequately explain this assumption nor the terms
involved in the discussion. Since we are only beginning to understand how
moving images affect brain activity differently than stacked lines of text
on a printed page, any suggestions about spectatorship are premature. In
addition to this problem, his final chapter concludes with a brief
speculation about the future of television viewership, suggesting that
interactive TV might re-condition the 'subject position' of the viewer. He
also fails to note the interactive role of the web and the influence of the
computer in this discussion. These final pages seem out of context given
the previous 200 pages of text, and would have better served the author if
published as a separate article or monograph.
_No Other Way To Tell It_ does serve as a excellent introductory text for
undergraduates interested in the development of dramadoc/docudrama. For
those interested in placing the subject of Paget's book in a larger
context, see Mitchell Stephens's _The Rise of the Image, The Fall of the
Word_. [2]
Collin County Community College, Plano, Texas, USA
March 1999
Footnotes
1. Mark C. Carnes, _Past Imperfect: History According To the Movies_ (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), pp. 136-37.
2. Mitchell Stephens, _The Rise of the Image, The Fall of the Word_
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Copyright © _Film-Philosophy_ 1999
David Cullen, 'Visual Reality', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3 no. 20, May 1999
<http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy/files/cullen.html>.
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