Ethical Responsibilities to Subjects and Documentary Filmmaking

Abstract

Documentary filmmakers have ethical responsibilities to the subjects of their films. Specifically, they have an ethical responsibility to prevent harm to their subjects if they are in a position to do so, even harm not directly related to being in the film. Justification for this comes from documentary's status as a practice of a social institution and can be supported by Utilitarian and Kantian considerations, as well as the Aristotelian discussion of practices. Three films, The Thin Blue Line, Dope Sick Love, and Born Into Brothels, are used as examples for the requirement to prevent harm to subjects. These examples cover several different possibilities of how documentary filmmakers behave concerning the welfare of their subjects and are evaluated in light of ethical considerations offered.

Notes

1. Roger & Me, Michael Moore's breakout film, details the demise of Flint, Mich., and Moore's attempt to get General Motors CEO Roger Smith to meet with him. Shoah, the lengthy Holocaust documentary, consists of interviews with former Nazis, Holocaust survivors, and witnesses without using typical news or war footage expected in such a film.

2. March of the Penguins, a nature documentary, looks at the dangerous journey taken by Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. As a nature film, it does not pose the same ethical issues of harm to subjects as the three films that will be primary examples in the final section. In Super Size Me, filmmaker and main subject Morgan Spurlock does confront issues of harm to subjects, namely the harm he causes to his own health in attempting to eat only fast food for a month. Bowling for Columbine, another Michael Moore film, looks at the risks guns pose in America after the school shooting at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo.

3. Incident at Oglala also helps illustrate the point about entertainment films telling a true story or being inspired by true events. Michael Apted, the director, also directed Thunderheart, an entertainment film inspired by the events covered in the documentary.

4. While Grierson's work is still a mainstay in documentary film theory, much has changed since World War II. For example, one type of film to be discussed here is cinema verité, a post-Grierson style of documentary employing different methodology.

5. Sandra Borden makes a similar argument for journalism as a practice; see especially chapter 2.

6. For further discussion on consent and documentary filmmaking, see also Pryluck, C. (1988). Ultimately we are all outsiders: The ethics of documentary filming. In A. Rosenthal (Ed.), New challenges for documentary (pp. 255–268). Berkeley: University of California Press.

7. See Winston (1995). Further, universities, for example, having an institutional review board would likely have these more stringent standards for informed consent. They also would have another body review the information given in the informed consent form. This serves as a check so that the interests of the researcher do not overshadow the interests of the subjects. This model might serve documentarians very well but would certainly take more time.

8. Morris has come under scrutiny for paying interviewees in one of his films, but this controversy did not affect his work in The Thin Blue Line.

9. The reason I say attempt is twofold. First, the subjects routinely talk to the camera. Therefore, it is not as though the subjects did not notice the cameras. In some sense, the claim to nonintervention is moot. Second, the subjects were followed into often close quarters (e.g., bathroom stalls, stairwells, elevators), so it is not as though the action just unfolded in front of the cameras. Those with the cameras sought it out and likely had an effect on it.

10. Nor do they have obligations to put themselves in mortal danger. Still, there are some obligations that they do have.

11. There is potential for documentary, like most other practices and institutions, to oppress those already at risk of marginalization such as women and children.