"Documentaries"

My article on how business is portrayed in film does not bother with documentaries because of the transparent political slant in this work. Think Farenheit 9/11, and Supersize Me, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, etc. (The word "documentaries" is an odd one, given that what Michael Moore "documents" is about as real as an old Hollywood soundstage.)

Today's Washington Post asks why this is. Not because there are no right-leaning documentary filmmakers – there are, but they can’t find an audience, as the article discusses. Because it’s “meaningless for a documentary filmmaker to put six years of his life into a film that reinforces the dominant paradigm,” as the maker of The Corporation, (another film I don’t plan to see) suggests? But, the article asks, “why couldn't there be, for example, a documentary about the rise of political correctness on American campuses?”

The answer, I believe, has to do with markets. Think about who has the time and money to blow on a couple of hours of having their faces rubbed in the awfulness of America. So these filmmakers are pandering to what the market wants. Just like McDonalds.

P.S. Daniel Henninger does a good job discussing the "reality" of Farenheit 9/11.

Comments

[wlpeak]

If I had to go with my own anecdotal experiences, I would say the most likely reason is a skewed market, most likely due to the near monopoly distribution that the left ‘might’ have.

Why go to such a radical supposition without direct evidence? Well, documentaries like ‘Waco Rules of Engagement’, a documentary critical of the government took many years before it found a large distributor, HBO I think. It could be rented but I never saw it on a big screen anywhere. Why the delay? The market, in the guise of the execs at HBO, seemed to find it worthwhile but only after years of languishing. How to explain that delay?

Here’s another argument, if the absence of a particular product is usually explained by a lack of interest in the market then how does one explain ‘The Passion of the Christ’? It seems to me there was a huge demand for the product and yet the producers seemed very reluctant to even consider making it. I submit that when the market fails to produce what the market wants, the best explanation is non-market considerations trumping the market.

Since the question was why right of center documentaries are so rare I have to conclude that there is a bias in the producers and distributors of documentaries against making them. In both cases personal bias against certain products probably delayed their appearance.

[fmk]

you may find this article in sigla mag on documentaries interesting: http://www.siglamag.com/arts/0410/CinemaDocumentaries.php