The Measure of Success for Documentaries in U.S. Political Scene 2007

Tempting as it may be to single out the importance of our own times, it is imprudent to contemplate the commercial success of "documentary now" in relationship to the American political climate without looking at the political roles of "documentary then." Unarguably, there are more overtly political documentaries being made and made available in 2007 than at any previous time. There are also more books, magazines, fiction films, and television, more news coverage, Web sites, blogs, more of everything and everybody discussing political and social issues. Proportionally, then, are documentaries more vital and more influential in our time than in others? Possibly the form has reached a peak, but documentaries must still be considered within the continuum of history.

Film has, almost since its birth, been used to document political issues and sway public opinion. It was the popularity of films about the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898 and about the subsequent Spanish American War that raised a young and fragile movie industry out of a series of boom-and-bust cycles to economic stability.¹ Both Edison and Biograph (read Paramount and Universal of their day) sent cameramen to Cuban waters before and after that war began. The famous reenactment for the camera by Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill glorified American imperialism for an avid moviegoing public and helped in "the making of a president."

Similar examples abound in most decades. In 1930 the Film and Photo League was established in New York to produce media that would present the "true picture" of American life, in this case, a picture based on a Marxist point of view. Films like Bonus March and Hunger (both 1932) were strident calls for reform. The federal government itself sponsored Pare Lorentz's magisterial The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937), both shown extensively in commercial theaters. In its day Plow's depiction of Dust Bowl suffering was as affective as present-day documentaries of Hurricane Katrina catastrophes.

The key role of political documentaries in World War II is indisputable. It was in theatrical documentaries that the American public saw and rallied behind this war. The form's importance was such that it even moved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to award the first documentary Oscar to The True Glory (Garson Kanin and Carol Reed, 1945). The 1950s saw the rise of the brilliant era of television documentary, the power of which perhaps culminated in the outcry following the broadcast by CBS of Harvest of Shame on Thanksgiving Day in 1960. Its depiction of the wretched conditions and the hunger of migrant workers drew outrage from people and the press across the nation, adding to the social conscience that was ultimately manifested in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society "War on Poverty." Even as television's golden age of investigative documentaries drew to an end, The Selling of the Pentagon (Peter Davis, 1971) provoked a congressional committee to investigate the fairness of that film's exposé of the military-industrial complex. The size of the audience for the CBS special was, in the era of three major broadcast networks, far larger than any television channel can deliver today.

The number of young people inspired to take on a radical new lifestyle after seeing Warner Bros.' release of Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970) is uncountable. For over twenty years it remained the highest grossing theatrical documentary film of all time. Opposite this corporate appropriation of "youthquake" rose the 16mm work of highly politicized filmmakers like the Newsreel Collectives. Shown widely during an era when college campus screenings provided a chief alternative to Hollywood releases, these documentaries helped to spread the politics of student revolt, black power, and especially the antiwar movement. Following quickly were significant documentaries that emboldened the feminist and gay rights movements. Although there was little access to Hollywood distribution for this work, there was a large and profitable 16mm business that brought thousands of political documentaries to schools, community groups, libraries, film societies, art houses, and even prisons. It was not until the...