Falsehoods in film: documentary vs fiction

ABSTRACT

I claim that we should reject a sharp distinction between fiction and non-fiction according to which documentary is a faithful representation of the facts, whilst fiction films merely invite us to imagine what is made up. Instead, we should think of fiction and non-fiction as genres: categories whose membership is determined by a combination of non-essential features and which influence appreciation in a variety of ways. An objection to this approach is that it renders the distinction too conventional and fragile, undermining our justification for criticising documentaries like Bowling for Columbine or The Hunting Ground for playing fast and loose with the facts. I argue that this objection is misguided, misidentifying the justification for criticising non-fiction films that mislead or deceive. I develop an alternative account that explains why we also criticise many fictions for inaccuracy.

KEYWORDS:

• documentary
• fiction and non-fiction
• genre
• assertion
• belief
• imagination

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Enrico Terrone and Mario Slugan for inviting me to present this material at the Documentary and the Fiction/Non-fiction Divide Conference, and the audience for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gregory Currie’s (1999) claim that documentaries are predominantly constituted by ‘visible traces’ of the pro-filmic objects is usually taken to contrast with assertion-based definitions. However, by ‘documentary’ Currie means a specific sub-genre of non-fiction film (see Currie 2000). He agrees that non-fiction is defined by assertion; but assertion is insufficient for the more specific classification. I follow most philosophers in focusing on the broader category.

2 I discuss JFK in some detail in Friend (2003, 2010).

3 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.

4 Clip at https://www.bbcearth.com/video/?v=417176.

5 The statement is at https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2012/12/feinstein-releases-statement-on-zero-dark-thirty.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust for the Research Project 'Learning from Fiction: A Philosophical and Psychological Study' (grant number RPG-2017-365).

Notes on contributors

Stacie Friend

Stacie Friend is a Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, the President of the British Society of Aesthetics, and an organiser of the London Aesthetics Forum. Her research is at the intersection of aesthetics, language and mind, especially as these relate to fiction. She is currently a co-investigator on a Leverhulme Trust research project on Learning from Fiction, with Gregory Currie (Philosophy, York) and Heather Ferguson (Psychology, Kent).