The Television Documentary and the Real

She: "I always speak the truth"—so what do you . . . say about that? . . .
I: No one ever speaks without at the same time saying, "I speak the truth."
She: Except for the person who says "I am lying.". . .
I: And even if I say "I am lying," I am saying nothing but "it is true that I am lying"—which is why truth is not the opposite of falsehood.

—Lacan, Television

The document vis-à-vis a truth or a falsehood often relates to the law in terms of something presented as evidence of truth and the real. This evidence can of course occur in a written form such as an affidavit, passport, or driving licence. The television and the popular press has during the twentieth and, indeed, twenty-first century created an additional function for the document. This function might be termed "entertainment". This paper explores how and why the British media document yokes desire for the truth, the real, and entertainment through appropriations of the Provisional IRA (PIRA).

At either a conscious or unconscious level, the televised documentary recruits its audience into a type of game. At stake during this game is the credibility of the implicit declaration: "'I always speak the truth.'" But, following Lacan in Television, "credibility" can be challenged through the question: "While we play this game, must I have confidence in you, believe that you know something I don't, and that there is something to know?" (xiii). One way in which the televised documentary might persuade an audience that there is something real to know is through the mediation of a symbolic exchange between "truth" and "confidence." This idea coincides with Stuart Hall's proposal about how "'true' means credible, or at least capable of winning credibility as a statement of fact" (1057). For Hall, winning credibility demands a statement which synthesizes truth and fact. But truth and fact are not the same thing, because oppositions such as true / false, fact / fiction, and illusion / reality deconstruct to problematize clichéd and automatized narratives of false completeness. In spite of narratives promising "the whole truth," "the entirely false," "the solid fact," and "pure fiction," completeness is an illusion. However, although "saying it all is literally impossible . . ., it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real" (Lacan xxiii).

Thus, the real equates with incompleteness. The "real is always traumatic; it is a hole in discourse; Lacan said 'trou-matique' [literally 'hole-matic']; in English one could perhaps say 'no whole without a hole'?" (xxiii). This said, even though truth in terms of the real is both "a fiction [and] a paradox," Lacan reminds us that "a paradox is not always a falsehood" (xxx). British representations of the PIRA vis-à-vis the televised document summon traumatic repetitions which are symptomatic of a British desire to displace, gain access to, and appropriate, the real and complete Irish other. But, since completeness is impossible, desire remains intact.

In order to explore these ideas, I will discuss how the British media seeks to appropriate the PIRA and thereby plug a gap in the real with, for instance, so-called "evidence." A Lacanian psychoanalytic framework supports this argument, which, in turn, submits some important notions about the political, ideological, cultural, historical, and legal significance of the televised documentary.

Program makers are always vulnerable to accusations of faking evidence. Indeed, there have been a number of examples where such accusations have resulted in legal action being taken against broadcasting authorities. ¹ Media, moral, and legal repercussions inflicted upon those accused of faking televised evidence are symptomatic of a desire for the real which is sought through the credibility of the program maker's product. Such a desire is not especially new. For instance, influenced by cinema direct and cinema vérité, during the 1960s documentary makers pursued credibility through a "scientific . . . rhetoric" (Winston 403). This rhetoric attempted to place "the camera as...