Re-forming vision. On the governmentality of Griersonian documentary film

Abstract

This essay traces and discusses John Grierson's programme for documentary film and its projected function and operation within liberal democracy. It is argued that documentary film as envisioned and propagated by Grierson neither set out to advance ‘open’ and/or controversial public discourse ‘from an Enlightenment standpoint’ (Rosen, Philip. 2001. Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 249) nor to educate its popular audiences through the dissemination of facts. As such Griersonian documentary film should be less located within the pedagogical tradition of the Enlightenment and was not to mainly function as a ‘discourse of sobriety’ (Nichols, Bill. 1991. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Rather, it was to insensibly shape subjectivities and agents by strategically arranging ‘visions of the real’. Documentary set out to model what Grierson termed ‘the subconscious’, the implicit framework that shaped citizen's thoughts, desires, emotions and agency by which they governed their selves, others and by extension society at large into the future. Grierson's documentary programme decisively governmentalised so-called non-fiction film as a specific technique of democratic government. It sought to render the formative and ‘creative’ aspects of its production transparent in favour of effect through affect by shaping appropriate visions for a reality yet to become. Thereby Grierson's programme set out to strategically subjectify popular audiences/‘ordinary citizens’ towards a desirable and ‘better’ national and global future.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Because of space restrictions, no references to particular films have been made. However, numerous Griersonian documentary films made by the New Zealand National Film Unit are discussed in detail in Weckbecker (forthcoming) with particular reference to Grierson's governmentality on documentary film.

2. The concept of ‘governmentality’ was first developed by Michel Foucault and in his work has multiple and shifting meanings (see, for instance, Foucault 2000). For the purposes of this essay it is sufficient to understand governmentality broadly as being concerned with the ‘conduct of conduct’ and to ask how, historically, one began to calculate and strategically aim at shaping and governing the conduct of populations/citizens through visions of the real imparted through (documentary) film.

3. See, for instance, Grierson's remarks about the invention of news in the Hearst Press, which he regarded as legitimate ‘so long as the invention made a useful point’ (Grierson n.d.).

4. Grierson sometimes used this term to refer to the singularising and normalising concept of the ‘ordinary’ or ‘average’ citizen. See, for instance, Grierson (1966j, 149).

5. However, Grierson did not adhere to his own demands as his own film Drifters (1929) demonstrates. In it he made use of studio reconstructions and further ‘creative’ techniques. See, for instance, Beattie (2004, 37).

6. For a more detailed discussion of Grierson's notions of ‘the actual’ and ‘the real’ and the influence of idealist philosophy on his thought see Aitken (1992, 60–64 & 184–195; 1998, 35–44).