The Critical Intersection of Documentary & Journalism: Hell House and Rhetorical Articulation

Abstract

Because of their mutual interest in nonfiction storytelling, documentary and journalism are assumed to be quite similar, which results in confusion and misunderstanding. This article addresses this problem by analyzing the differences between these two forms, demonstrating ways in which documentary can help to articulate journalism, enhancing our literacy in both areas. After an analytic discussion of these differences, an analysis grounded in rhetoric shows how literacies in the two nonfiction forms can illuminate each other. These questions are brought together through a critical rhetorical analysis of the documentary Hell House (2001).

Notes

¹This list, from the site Box Office Mojo, excludes large format films (i.e., IMAX), concert films, clip compilations, and reality-TV movies.

²A June 16, 2005, story from the Toronto Globe and Mail identifies Bennett as the Business Development Manager for a company called “1-800-GOT-JUNK?” The company contracts out as a junk removal service. See Ingram (2005).

³ Ponech (1999) took up the limitations of the notion of correspondence ideas of nonfiction cinema and proposed a consideration of figurative comparisons as a way to balance the problem. He discussed Milgram's obedience experiments and their accompanying film as a way to discuss how viewer responses can sometimes demonstrate an influence that indicates some less tangible effects of force. Ponech wanted to understand these as a participatory response (p. 267). The idea of juxtaposing Milgram's ideas against documentary opens up a much larger series of questions about the qualities of experimental research. But I would argue that these are more part of a change in surveillance culture, as reflected in reality television programs, and more recently the fragments that appear on YouTube and other video buffets.

⁴The “Jeremy” in the room is likely an allusion to the Pearl Jam song and video of the same name, which was also about teen suicide. The year previous to this Hell House, the classroom violence scene re-created the 1999 Columbine shootings. The strong reactions to the Columbine scene brought a great deal of attention to Trinity for its depiction. It's interesting to think of this idea that it was “too soon” in the terms of Rosen's (1993) discussion of the distance between an event, production time between its recording and its distribution in a news or documentary form, and the idea of “cultural time” to come to different kinds of understandings that change through the passage of time.

⁵The audience appears to be more racially diverse than the performers in the Hell House. One sees a higher percentage of people of color in the audience than we see in the Hell House cast and crew.

⁶In a particularly difficult moment, the girl who plays the rape victim reveals her own experience having been raped. While she is in the Hell House scene performing the role she looks into the audience and sees her assailant.