Prospectus For Documentary Film and Social Change A Rhetorical Investigation of Dissent

Running Head: DOCUMENTARY FILM AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Prospectus For

Documentary Film and Social Change: A Rhetorical Investigation of Dissent

Angela J. Aguayo

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Abstract

For well over a century, non-fiction film has figured prominently in the public

sphere as a powerful means of persuasion. My dissertation will explore the intersection ofcultural texts and social change by investigating the history of contemporary activistdocumentary film. Using all the available means of persuasion and coercion at theirdisposal, social movements have collectively developed a diverse set of tactics andstrategies to prompt social change. Among these documentary films deserve scholarlyattention.

Documentary films that reflect the interests of social movements are important

but to what ends and in what rhetorical situations are these strategies most effective forsocial change? This study will not call into question the importance of cultural texts likedocumentary film, but rather will explore how constitutive cultural strategies constrain oraid the instrumental goals of contemporary social movements. In this dissertation I willargue that mediated, politically driven and aesthetically dressed activist documentary filmand video not only has the potential to be an act of political oratory but under the correctconditions can transform into a public communication between private people that has thepotential for social change. This project will explore the commitments of early activistmedia, theories of social change, the second wave of activist media and finally, thefunction of contemporary activist documentary.

There is much left to be studied about the relationship of activist cultural texts and

social change. The manner in which activist documentary film is conceptualized intheoretical literature or in film reviews, primarily qualifies the term “activist” with theintentions of the film maker and his or her ideological commitments outside of

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filmmaking. There is, however, another tendency to label documentary film as “activist”based on content. If the film mediates as political or moral controversy, the inclination isto label it “activist.” However, such labels are fruitless if the film does not actuallyintervene in a larger public space to create active political agents that will extend andexecute the political work initiated by documentary film. It is not enough fordocumentary film to “be” activist; it must help in creating the space for activism andinvested in producing material and cultural change.

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Introduction and Rationale for ProjectPostmodern social critic Fredric Jameson argues that after World War II, a new

society began to emerge. Jameson refers to a society invested in creating meaning andunderstanding through cultural texts such as music and film (19). Prior to this period,theorists and artists alike had placed a great deal of import on the potential of highart—as opposed to popular cultural texts—to influence political subjects. Although socialtheorists may disagree about why popular cultural texts play a significant role in meaningproduction, few can deny the impact and mass consumption of culture in thecontemporary public sphere.

If cultural texts play a significant role in meaning production, how can these texts

function in the process of social change? In social movements theory, a significant debateensues around the function of cultural strategies utilized in the process of social change.In his article Culture and Social Movements, Doug McAdam argues that there is asignificant “rationalist” and “structural” bias in the studies of social movements that denythe impact of culture on the process of social change. Until recently, he argues, “culturein all of its manifestations, was rarely invoked by American scholars as a force in theemergence and development of social movements” (37).

While scholars like McAdam insist that cultural forces have been ignored in the

process of studying social movements, others insist that cultural strategies are the primarymeans of social change for an era of new social movements that began to emerge out ofthe 1960s. With the emergence of “new social movements,” Alberto Melucci argues thatconstitutive cultural strategies are the primary and the most important acts ofcontemporary social movements,

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Conflicts [of new social movements] do not chiefly express themselves throughaction designed to achieve outcomes in the political system. Rather, they raise achallenge that recasts the language and cultural codes that organize information.The ceaseless flow of messages only acquire meaning through the codes thatorder the flux and allow its meaning to be read. The forms of power nowemerging in contemporary societies are grounded in an ability to ‘inform’ that is,to ‘give form.’ (102)

As a result, the production of cultural texts that challenge important language and culturalcodes of the institutions of power, according to Melucci, is the primary political momentto be seized.

For well over a century, non-fiction film has figured prominently in the public

sphere as a powerful means of persuasion. In 1928, Stalin attempted to coordinatedocumentary film content with political goals. During World War II, the United Statesgovernment heavily invested in documentary bugle-call films, designed to sell war tosoldiers and teetering allies. The Nazi party had a documentary film unit, at times headedby Leni Riefenstahl, to bring highly aesthetisized images of political practices to themasses (Barnouw 99-182).

More recently, after winning an Academy Award for best documentary in 2003,

Michael Moore ignited a firestorm of controversy by denouncing President Bush and thewar on Iraq to a 33 million-person television audience. Moore, responsible for makingone of the most commercially successful political documentaries of all time, recognizesthat the Oscars are not normally a place for political commentary (United Press

International, March 28, 2003). After receiving a robust round of boos and cheers, Moore

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defended his actions by stating, “[I]f I had won the Oscar for a movie about birds orinsects, I’d say something about them. But I made a movie about violence—and globalviolence—so I felt I had to say something about that. I just hope I generated a discussionabout Mr. Bush and the war” (Salt Lake Tribune, March 29, 2003). In popular culture,documenting reality or a derivative of it, has become the new hip form of mediaentertainment.

More than just a new hip form of media entertainment, the genre has significant

rhetorical implications. Documentary film “can perform many of the actions for whichlanguage is used—warning, asserting, identifying, informing, ridiculing, critiquing, ect”(Plantinga 1). The documentary genre marries three distinct speech acts, image, soundand word. These speech acts, employed in the package of an entire documentary film orvideo text, makes understanding the rhetorical aspects of the documentary genre quitecomplicated.

Yet, the most interesting facet of documentary at the turn of the 21st century is

non-fiction film and video pragmatics. Study of non-fiction film and video as a pragmaticart is to investigate the rhetorical process of documentary to perform various social tasks.However, there is a paucity of research that attempts to understand documentary filmhistory as an instrumental rhetorical text, which means conceptualizing documentary filmas a force of social change. Theoretically, there is much left to be studied concerning thespeaker (filmmaker)-text (documentary)-audience dynamic of documentary film. Bystudying this rhetorical relationship, scholars may come closer to understanding of thecivic, social and political functions of documentary film.

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This project will explore the intersection of cultural texts and social change by

investigating a history of activist documentary film. Using all the available means ofpersuasion and coercion at their disposal, social movements have collectively developeda diverse set of tactics and strategies to prompt social change, documentary films beingone of the most understudied texts. Thus, there are several questions to be answeredabout the pragmatic functions of activist documentary film and video. What is activistdocumentary film and video? Documentary films that reflect the interests of socialmovements are important but to what end and in what rhetorical situation are thesestrategies most effective for social change? What role does documentary film play in alarger political program for social change? Does activist documentary only publicizesocial injustice or does it act as an instrumental rhetorical text? How do actually existingcounter-publics function to create social change, from or with, documentary film? Inwhat manner does the rhetorical tradition stand to enrich documentary film studies? Thisstudy will not call into question the importance of cultural texts like documentary filmbut rather how constitutive cultural strategies constrain or aid the instrumental goals ofcontemporary social movements. In this dissertation I will argue that mediated, politicallydriven and aesthetically dressed activist documentary film and video not only has thepotential to be an act of political oratory but under the correct conditions can transforminto a public communication between private people that has the potential for socialchange.

The manner in which activist documentary film is conceptualized in theoretical

literature or in film reviews, primarily qualifies the term “activist” with the intentions ofthe film maker and his or her ideological commitments outside of filmmaking. There is,

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however, another tendency to label documentary film as “activist” based on content. Ifthe film mediates as political or moral controversy, the inclination is to label it “activist.”Some documentary films articulate the experience of a marginalized group, which is alegitimate cultural need. However, such labels are fruitless if the film does not actuallyintervene in a larger public space to create active political agents that will extend andexecute the political work initiated by documentary film. It is not enough fordocumentary film to “be” activist; it must help in creating the space for activism andinvested in producing material and cultural change. By studying activist documentaryfilms, it is my intention to develop an instrumental rhetorical theory that better explainsthe process of social change.

This project will explore non-fiction texts that most closely engage—whether in

practice or method—the activist documentary impulse. Initially, John Geierson is widelynoted as the father of documentary film. He was the most vocal about the potential ofdocumentary to create social change. Geierson has been widely studied, however, hiswork has not been studied in relationship to other moments of activist filmmaking. Thestudy of his work will be coupled with the first activist video collective, The WorkersFilm and Photo League. This was the first social movement to coordinate political dissentwith the recording of a documentary text. During the second wave of activistdocumentary in the 1960s, the impulse to coordinate filmmaking with political protestmorphed and changed. New strategies and technological innovation altered the manner inwhich filmmakers like Fredrick Wiseman approached the documentation of social issues.Analysis of the 1960s counter-publics will illuminate Geierson’s contribution and howvideo collectives evolved from the objectives of the Workers Film and Photo League into

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the guerilla television movement. Finally, this project will focus more specifically on thecontemporary approaches to documentary film and social change. This will involvelooking at high profile activist documentary films such as Paradise Lost: The ChildMurders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) and its sequel Paradise Lost Revisited (2000), bothscreened on HBO. In addition, the project will focus on the work and rhetoric of activistfilmmaker, Michael Moore. Coincidently, at the turn of this century, the guerillatelevision impulse was re-born into the activist internet video movement. As a result, thisproject will study the most successful, self-publishing activist media collective on theinternet, the Independent Media Center.

This is an especially timely project given that at the turn of this century,

documentary films are becoming more visible and politically viable in public life. Sincethe inception of non-fiction film at the turn of the 20th century, documentary film hasroutinely played a supporting role to its more famous relative, fiction film. However,during the past century documentary film has figured prominently in the public sphere asa powerful means of persuasion utilized by governments, rich patrons, academics andworking people alike. A myriad of historical and social contextual circumstances havesituated the documentary genre in a unique historical exigence at the turn of the 21stcentury. It is the rebirth of the activist documentary impulse. Consequently, a hundredyears of documentary film history has resulted in numerous approaches to production, asignificant audience and has given birth to a new field of inquiry, documentary filmstudies (Nichols, 2001, xiv).

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Text and Historical ContextWith the infancy of travel at the turn of the 20th century, documentary film

functioned as a window to the world. The innovators of documentary film were

anthropologists, ethnographers, explorers and showmen. Early documentary film exposedthe audience to places foreign and unknown, such as the “Coronation of Nicholas II” inRussia or the “Melbourne Races” in Australia. But documentary film, in the early days,also functioned as a mirror: “The idea was to lure people to the shows in hope of seeingthemselves—which they sometimes did (Barnouw 11).” Documentary film has servedvarious functions in the last century, often dictated by historical exigence.The First Wave of Activist DocumentaryIn the early part of the 1930s, economic collapse had festered and produced

significant political tension and strife. Media outlets were dominated by discourseconcerning political ideology. At this moment, the practice of documentary filmtechnology had just acquired sound and celebrated the last moments of silent film. Forthe first time, spoken word could be added to image. It is at this moment thatdocumentary film enters into the arena of social change for the first time. However,documentary films of the 1930s are part of a larger body of cultural discourse that hasaccompanied the efforts to accomplish grassroots social change in media during this time.

In his book The Cultural Front, Michael Denning addresses the cultural strategiesof the labor movement in the United States that took root in the 1930s: “The thirtiesbecame an icon, the brief moment when politics captured the arts, when writers went left,Hollywood turned Red, and painters, musicians and photographers were socially minded”(xvi). This cultural front “reshaped American culture. Just as the radical movements of

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abolition, utopian socialism, and women’s rights sparked the antebellum AmericanRenaissance, so the communisms of the depression triggered a deep and lastingtransformation of American modernism and mass culture—the laboring of AmericanCulture” (xvi).

Some of the most rudimentary forms of activist documentary film were born

during the time Denning identifies as “The Cultural Front.” Leading the charge was JohnGrierson. While studying at the University of Chicago, Grierson traveled around theUnited States interviewing filmmakers, scholars, politicians and journalists but above allobserved the workings of the American melting pot. He, like many of his contemporaries,began to question the expectations of what seemed like an illusory democracy in theUnited States. According to Grierson, social problems had grown beyond thecomprehension of most citizens and their participation was non-existent, apathetic orperfunctory. At the same time, Grierson believed that the popular media could acquireleverage over ideas and actions once influenced by church and school. It becameGrierson’s mission to produce films that dramatized issues and their implications in ameaningful way. It was his hope that documentary could lead citizens through thepolitical wilderness (Barnouw 85).

There are several reasons why Grierson’s work began the groundwork for activist

documentary film. Overall, his approach to the production and distribution ofdocumentary film was unique. Instead of conceptualizing the documentary film

experience as one of consumption and entertainment, he believed documentary film couldbe instrumental. He claimed that the medium had the potential to change people andinstitutions, specifically documentary could inform a citizenry and improve a crumbling

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democracy. In his film The Drifters (1929), Grierson set out to bring the work of herringfishermen to life in manner that astonished audiences in packed theater houses.

According to Eric Barnouw, a prominent media historian, “There was nothing doctrinallyradical about it, but the fact that British workingmen—virtually ignored by Britishcinema except as comedy material—were the heroes, gave the film an revolutionaryimpact” (Barnouw 88). The work had given a new dignity to the workingman andprovided a critique of production new to the documentary film genre. In vivid detail,Grierson edits together sequences depicting the relationship between man and machine.His idea was to bring the image of the workingman away from the Edwardian, Victorian,capitalist attitude (90).

During this time, a politically minded documentary film movement was

mounting. It was a movement that formed as a collective body and was committed todocumenting worker’s strikes, foreclosures, and elections. The Workers Film and PhotoLeague was the first body of activist filmmakers joined by their commitment to documentthe economic and social crisis of the time. The League was a national group operating inmajor cities in the 1930s and produced a prolific body of workers newsreels and films.The upshot of this movement was that it managed to bring workers consciousness to thepublic sphere through documentary film texts and organized collectives around theseobjectives. However, does documentary film have the potential, as Grierson suggests, tocreate instrumental social change?

The cultural front was the expansion of social movement consciousness into

mediums and texts that were not traditionally read as political. It was the encounterbetween a powerful democratic social movement and the modern cultural apparatuses of

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mass entertainment and education. Denning speaks to social change and the laboring ofcultural texts in the 1930s in four distinct ways: 1) the pervasive use of the critique oflabor and its synonyms in the rhetoric of the period, 2) the increased participation ofworking-class Americans in the world of culture and the arts, 3) the new visibility oflabor in cultural production through the organization of unions by the workers, includingscreenwriters and cartoonist and 4) the Cultural Front was a new rhetorical moment, asecond American Renaissance (xvi-xvii). Denning recognizes an important aspect of theinteraction of cultural texts and social change; there is an important relationship betweenan activist cultural text and the bodies of people who are agitating on behalf of the issuesemphasized in the text.

At this moment, the primary revolutionary impulse for socially minded cultural

texts—specifically documentary film—was to acquire visibility for the people and ideasthat were situated at the margins of society. It was here that the lives of the working classwere placed on display for democratic ends. The assumption of filmmakers like Griersonis that multi-vocality through documentary would provide the missing ingredient for atroubled and homogeneous democracy (86). But are activist cultural strategies, asMulucci suggests, designed to constitute the audience, organize information and acquirenew meaning through cultural codes, enough? Utilizing the literature on the public spheretheory, the following section of this project will analyze the second wave of activistdocumentary film that grew significantly out of the political and social strife of the1960s.

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The Second Wave of Activist DocumentaryThe spark for the second wave of activist documentary film began in the late

1950s and was reacting against an era of documentary that was closely tied to corporatesponsorship and interests. In this moment of capitalist expansion, instead of corporationsproducing to meet demand they were working to increasing the desire for demandthrough the documentary film genre. During the first decade after World War II,corporate sponsored documentaries rose to 4,000 a year while news media outlets,dependent on advertising, kept strict control over broadcast documentary film content(Barnouw 219).

Reacting to an era of promoting cooperate interests, filmmakers of the 1960s

began embracing the role as observer. The films of this period—often called directcinema—were ambiguous, leaving conclusions to viewers yet the content often pokedinto places that society was inclined to ignore or keep hidden. Fred Wiseman, lawyerturned filmmaker, was one of the most masterful documentaries of the direct cinemagenre: “He selected institutions through which society propagates itself, or whichcushion—and therefore reflect—it’s strains and tensions. All of his films became studiesin the exercise of power in American Society—not at the high levels, but at thecommunity level.” (Barnouw 244). In his film Titicut Follies (1967) he created a portraitof the Massachusetts institute for the criminally insane. Although the state ofMassachusetts attempted to block the film through legal action because the fear ofpolitical embarrassment, Wiseman argued that if state institutions receive tax funds fromcitizens then they have the right to know what happens in them. Additionally, in his filmHigh School (1968) he compiled several months of footage and edited the footage asDocumentary 15

though it was one day in the life of the subjects. Using perspective by incongruity,visually he contrasted the ideology of American public schools—the egalitarian approachto education designed to collapse the distinctions between rich and poor—against imagesof bored and apathetic students inclined to rebel against their instructors.

The liberating potential of this genre is that 1) it gave legitimacy to groups at the

margins of society but it also 2) exploded the rhetorical potentialities of documentary byforegrounding the ideas and speech of the film subjects. Unlike the earlier era of activistdocumentary film where the filmmaker—often the narrator—could manipulate footage tocreate their own arguments, the methodological commitments of direct cinema demandedthat subjects speak for themselves:

In the new focus on speech—talking people—documentaries were moving into anarea they had long neglected, and which appeared to have surprising, evenrevolutionary impact. Since the advent of sound—throughout the 1930s and1940s—documentaries had seldom featured talking people, except in brief staticscenes (Barnouw 234)

Now film subjects, with the help of technology that recorded synchronized sound andimage, took significant interpretive control out of the hands of the editor. It was duringthis moment that the vernacular voice of marginalized communities began to take root indocumentary film.

The function of direct cinema was to bear witness and to place judgment in the

hands of the audience. Although the activist moment for direct cinema is limited by thereluctance to be an advocate, the genre began to carve the way for vernacular discourseand the production of documentary films for the average working person. A new

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movement in activist documentary was mounting. The trend was percolating away fromobservation and towards intervention. Filmmakers came out from behind the camera andintervened in the world around them. It was a movement that did not conceptualize theintervention of the filmmaker as a limitation, rather, as a political catalyst of socialchange.

The cinema verite approach to documentary film was highly experimental and

committed to the pursuit of truth. Direct cinema documentaries would take the camera toa situation of tension and hope for a crisis, as opposed to cinema verite filmmakers werecommitted to intervention and precipitation of circumstances. The movement involvedabandoning the shroud of objectivity for an instrumental public text. This was a radicalreconceptualization of documentary film and social change. Instead of conceptualizingthe moment of social change as one of constitution, like Grierson whose pursuit formulti-vocality in documentary hoped to repair a crippled citizenry, the cinema veritemovement moved to publicize and intervene in political dissent. In a move critical to thedevelopment of an activist documentary genre, cinema verite filmmakers acknowledged adirect goal for social change “outside” the film screenings, often political demonstrationsand films were planned in conjunction with one another in order further the goals ofcounter-publics agitating in the public sphere.

Given the impulse of direct cinema to foreground vernacular voices and the

commitment of cinema verite practitioners to intervene in the project of political dissent,documentary film and social change found new feet. In the early 1960s heightenedpolitical crisis and the development of low-cost video technology created the breadingground for a new population of filmmakers. This time, the people from the margins were

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making their own film and activists were creating their own media. It was the birth ofactivist documentary film and video movement.

According to Deirdre Boyle in her book Subject to Change: Guerilla TelevisionRevisited, the activist video movement began with the development of lightweight,affordable and portable video recording equipment in the early 1970s. This gave the babyboomers access to the resources to make their own brand of television (Boyle VI). This“new brand of television,” also called guerrilla television, was part of a larger alternativemedia tide that swept across the country during the 1960s. For a generation that grew upin the shadows of the civil rights and anti-war movements, television had been thewindow to the world. Troubled by the political and social unrest of the 1960s, theguerrilla television movement focused on a utopian program to change the structure ofinformation in America by creating a distinct parallel broadcast system: “Optimism abouttelevision and its dynamic impact not just on communications but on contemporaryconsciousness was seized by the first generation raised on television, who found …aeuphoric explanation of themselves and their changing times [in television]” (Boyle 13).Television, technological innovation and the political unrest of the 1960s had re-directedthe potential of activist media to create social change. However, the political moment waspotentially misguided. Instead of mobilizing around political issues, activist mobilizedaround video collectives whose objectives were to democratize access to technology.Political contestation was solved “not by directly assaulting the system—as in a politicalrevolution—but by extending the unifying properties of electronic media to everyone”(Boyle 31).

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For example, in 1972 New York’s Downtown Community Television Center

(DCTV) was founded by Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno. In the past, Alpert has worked as ataxi driver in a multi-ethnic area. Together Alpert and Keiko produced a documentaryabout the taxi unions and issues of exploitation facing taxi drivers. Seeing their livesmirrored in video, the citizens became excited about the potential of television to find anaudience for their concerns. As a result, Alpert and Keiko launched free training sessionsin video production in three languages. The work that emerged out of DCTV wasproduced in 15 languages and received by stations in various parts of the world (Barnouw289). The movement attempted to shift television’s content from placid entertainment andnegative images of youthful protest to counter-cultural values and a new televisionreality, “fueled by adolescent rebellion and utopian dreams, video promised an alternativeto the slickly civilized, commercially corrupt, and aesthetically bankrupt world of[broadcast] television”(Boyle 4). The aim of portable video movement “was ‘guerrillawarfare’ insofar as it enabled citizens to fight the ‘perceptual imperialism of broadcasttelevision’ on a small scale in what was then an irregular war”(30). But how do counter-publics create social change through texts?

The focus on building community and access to resources was the primary goal of

activist video movement in the 1960s and 1970s: “[G]uerrilla television was configurednot as a weapon, but as a cultural tool bringing people together” (Boyle 30). By givingpeople access to tools that allowed them to document their lives and negotiate the worldon their own terms, the movement created a vernacular space that countered theprevailing dominate ideology of broadcast television: “[V]ideo could involve people bymaking them active participants in the “video environment” rather than passive viewers

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of network TV fare…video’s potential [was] to offer people a variety of viewpointsrather than the official, objective one promoted by Walter Cronkite’s ‘And That’s theWay It Is’”(6). However, this strategy was more concerned with “appearing in public” asopposed to “acting in public.” Attempting to avoid the ideological warfare on broadcasttelevision, early video activist like Frank Gillette commented that we he was notimposing his structure on people rather he was letting people “give their raps on tape”(7). In addition, the movement located the political moment of social change in theidentity of counter-publics (on a good day) but mostly in the identity of an individual(s)within a counter-public. Given the abandonment of instrumental political goals, the newbreed of video activist was primarily concerned with the effects of constitutive strategiesof social change.

Consequently, any instrumental platform for social change was lost or at best not

made a priority in the early activist video movement at the expense of developing acommunity and culture with finite human resources. Marco Vassi, an active member inthe early video scene commented on the environment of a grassroots video collective:“We sit stoned and dig each other’s worldview. We rap and eat and fuck and watch tape.And for us, it’s about the same as it has always been: just living fully; openly, honest towhat is” (Boyle 11). The political moment was primarily constitutive—in that it wasconcerned with disseminating multiple viewpoints and developing a counter-politicalcommunity through identity and not necessarily committed to agitational forces that maybetter guarantee the redistribution of economic resources that are also at the foundation ofoppression and marginalization. As a result, the movement failed to reach it’s objectiveof radical social change: “As a part of the counter-culture, guerrilla television helped

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raise a critique of American Society that went beyond the bounds of the political Left,even if it missed essential leftist insights about power, economic exploitation, and class”(191).

Many early activist videotapes fell under the heading of street tapes in which

activist videotexts placed people in their living rooms, bedrooms and the streets for thefirst time with the help of portable video equipment. The videos primarily addressedthose who were a part of the community and not those who resided outside. Images ofmassive protest mean very little if one was not aligned with the commitments of thoseagitating for social change. Haphazardly, the early activist video movement became acommunity in itself and not a community for itself.

The guerrilla television movement asserted that “no alternative cultural vision

could succeed without its own alternative information structure, not just alternativecontent pumped across the existing system…guerrilla television would coexist withbroadcasting, restoring balance to the ‘media ecology’ of America” (Boyle 33). Thevideo activist counter-public was separatist in orientation not because of its commitmentto a distinct parallel broadcast system but the drive towards producing isolating contentthrough videotexts. The movement did not attempt to dialectically engage the audience ofthe public sphere outside the activist community. At some point, counter-culturalinterests must engage or speak to dominant hegemonic interests. The video activist workneeded to create a massive viewership in the public sphere to stay afloat. But they alsoneeded to engage in persuasive appeals that met the audience at the point of stasisbetween counter-cultural interests and dominate hegemonic discourse.

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Although the second wave of the activist documentary movement conceptualized

social change outside of the film screening, the movement primarily concentrated onidentity and consciousness raising strategies. The video activist movement had acommitment to consciousness raising that implicates discourse as the site of socialchange:

Once the critical moment of consciousness is reached, evolution becomes apsychosocial process based on the cumulative transition of experience. Videotheorists would read a role for themselves in Teilhard’s universe as disseminatorsof ‘video data banks’ of experience. Even higher degrees of organization and newpatterns of cooperation would lead to the ultimate good of global unity. Love,good will, and cooperation; personal integration and internal harmony; andincreasing knowledge lay at the end of this evolutionary/spiritual quest…some ofthe best motives of the video underground reflected this cosmic vision. (Boyle 12)

In practice, the production of documentary for enlightenment, identity and a sense ofcommunity ignored the economic redistribution interest also necessary for love andharmony, not to mention social change.

Reflecting on the objectives of the activist video movement, Marco Vassi

remarked, activist documentary filmmakers must realize “that all their complexequipment is just so much metal junk, toys and tools, which have no more worth than thehands and hearts of the people who work them” (Boyle 29). Therefore, a new set ofobjectives is needed in order to create an activist video movement. Given the previoushistorical movements in which social crisis and documentary film have collided, a newmovement must be invested in developing rhetorically astute social criticism that creates

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the public space for viewers to develop social organizations. An activist documentaryaudience should be drawn to facilitating critical-rational debate in the public sphere andto act instrumentally to alleviate injustices forgrounded in the text. The activist film andvideo movement must be less concerned with developing community to appear in publicand more concerned about acting in public in order to create a space for social change ina larger political public sphere. Much like the early cinema verite filmmakers of 50 yearsago, activist documentary filmmakers must intervene in the world around them.The Third Wave of Activist FilmmakingThis section will focus on the potential of documentary film as a medium for

creating public deliberation and instrumental political change by analyzing the third waveof activist documentary film beginning in the 1990s to the present. The cultural front inthe 1930s began a rich history of leftist social critique through cultural texts thatcontinues to influence the political landscape through documentary film. The third waveof activist documentary began planting roots in the late 1980s and extends upon thestrategies Denning identifies in The Cultural Front. The strategies and approach to socialchange are varied and numerous. During this time there was a proliferation of union filmsthat depicted a societal transition in worker-management relations. Films like BarbraKopple’s American Dream (1990) were portraits of living with American workersthrough crisis. Community access channels in the rising cable market continued toproduce an interesting range of activist programming from teaching media literacythrough “Herbert Schiller Read the New York Times” to the expansion of parallelbroadcast networks like Paper Tiger TV.

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Filmmaker Michael Moore developed one genre, a mixture of cinema verite,

guerilla documentary and personal film essay. His works Roger and Me (1989) andBowling for Columbine (2002) have played a significant role in contemporary activistdocumentary. However, Moore’s work is strategically different from much of the activistdocumentary films that came before him. Unlike the second wave of activistdocumentary that characterized social change as fight between surly commercialbroadcasting and activist media, the new struggle for power is issue driven. In fact, muchof contemporary activist media is at home in the slick world of corporate broadcastingwhich is dependent on maintaining a loyal viewership. Therefore, the strategy of thirdwave activist documentary is to place films in major distribution houses for the maximumaudience without compromising film content.

What is specific about the third wave of activist documentary is that it coincides

with the development of a new computer technology, the internet. Much like thedevelopments in recording technology and television drastically alerted the project ofactivist documentary, the internet provides a new addendum to the process of culturaltexts and social change.

There has been a paucity of research concerning the implications of the internet

for public sphere theory and practice. As Catherine Palczewski suggests, “[D]iscussionsof the internet have not attended to the developments in social movements and protesttheory, particularly to counter-public sphere theory. As a result, internet studies replicateboth traditional studies’ focus on the state and modernist’ limited understanding ofpolitical participation” (162). We have learned from the previous moments of activistdocumentary that particular aspects of modernist understanding of political participation

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are critical, if social change is the objective. The internet may alter the traditional processof political participation by overcoming the limitations of the geographical divide and thelimited access of information resources between activists, even multiplying the strategiesof agitation. However, collective instrumental politics of agitation must not be abandonedfor new and innovative strategies through the internet. Living breathing bodies are anecessary part of social change. Not to mention that accountability and agitation is stillbest done in person. The strategies must be brought together in order to expand thepotential of the public sphere for the process of social change. One way that the publicsphere and the internet are being brought together is through activist documentary film.

Under the common denominator of human interests, Jurgen Habermas argues that

“mixtum compositum” emerges. In other words, aesthetically pleasing mass media textsare created to communicate pleasant and convenient entertainment. Profit motiveencourages the substitutes of reality for a more palatable representation. The consumptionof these texts only give rise to impersonal indulgence in stimulating relaxation rather thanpublic use of reason (170). However, looking at the HBO documentary films ParadiseLost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) and its sequel Paradise LostRevisited (2000), the exact opposite occurred. Both films’ chronicle a murder trial inArkansas in which three teenage boys are convicted of killing three adolescent boys. Thefirst film documents the trial while the second film reflects on the first films impact onthe trial. There is a significant question as to whether the convicted are guilty and aninstrumental social movement has developed from the viewership of the first film.

As depicted in the second film, a group of viewers in Los Angeles began meeting

on a regular basis to deliberate about the facts of the case after they watched the first film

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Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. This group in Los Angeles beganto research the case, share information, and gather on a regular basis to engage in whatHabermas calls public communication in the private sphere. As one movie reviewernotes, “No documentary released in 1996 challenges an audience the way this one does.The questions it proposes are profound, and there are no answers. Paradise Lost is one ofthe very few films that completely absorb the attention [of the audience]. WatchingBerlinger and Sinofsky’s movie is like witnessing an execution: it’s horrifying, gut-wrenching, and impossible to turn away from (Berardinelli).” The movie acted as acatalysis for social change by creating the environment for a public concerned withmiscarriages of justice while creating rhetorical identification with the convicted, “TheWest Memphis Three.” In the films absence, counter-narratives silenced in the officialcourt hearings or by the corporate media would have never proliferated in a significantway. Hence, the documentary film acts as a means for counter-publics to create socialchange by transferring discourse from the private to the counter-public sphere.

The film not only avoided a more pleasant and palatable entertainment platform,

as Habermas suggests, but turned passive consumers of communication into deliberatingagents. These agents, collectively turned public communication in the private sphere intopolitical communication in the counter-public sphere by sharing their evidence of thecase on a public website, gathering support internationally with a postcard petition, andformed an instrumental social movement organization called “Free the West MemphisThree.” In praxis, the “impersonal indulgence” and “relaxation” resulting from theconsumption of aesthetics in the mass media prove unfounded. The internet has the

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potential to unite unlikely citizens because it provides the medium to overcomegeographical distance between activists and facilitate critical-rational debate.

In the second film, Paradise Lost Revisited the most active members of the socialmovement, “Free the West Memphis Three,” talked candidly about viewing the firstmovie. The film provoked a strong sense of identification with the teenage young boysconvicted of murder. One man says:

A typical scenario people go through when they first join the [internet] list is ‘Iwatched Paradise Lost. I also wore black t-shirts. I was an alienated teenager.’And I think that might be the initial attraction that brings people in. But what Ithink is really important and that brings people together to the point where youwill travel across country to come to Jonesborough, Arkansas on your week ofvacation, are more important issues such as justice…such as a corrupt,incompetent police force and justice system working in a vacuum here inArkansas when no one is watching. That is why I am here. I don’t want them tothink they can operate in the dark (Paradise Lost Revisited).

The films functioned rhetorically in a way that provided an essential form ofidentification with the audience. However, the result was not the curtailing of rationalcriticism that Habermas predicted (172). Rather, private citizens in the public sphereconstructed a systematic analysis through critical rational debate on the internet and inperson that identified the institutions of law and order as the sites of practical blame forthe derailing of justice. More importantly, the medium of documentary film has theability to create counter-publics.

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Another way that the public sphere and the internet are being brought together

with documentary video is through the resurgence of street tapes and activist videocollectives. The internet is a medium most closely associated with e-mail and e-commerce. As a result, the development of web-based communication has slowlyurbanized into a new breading ground for low cost advertising and marketing. However,a new movement, with democratic motives and not all concerned with profit margins, isutilizing the potential of internet communication for slightly different ends. Perhaps themost significant and sweeping site for activist internet journalism of late is the

Independent Media Center. Touted as the “newest phenomenon to hit the political scene,”the Independent Media Center has become a “surprising effective news organization”(wired.com) that includes thousands of volunteer reporters in 37 cities in the UnitedStates and 45 locations around the world. It is an internet based activist video movement“born out of protest against corporate interests and governments’ role in globalization. Itis a movement that has joined diverse groups, from grassroots organizations to laborunions.”(Globe and mail). The Independent Media Center is the newest version of alarger activist video movement—committed to the marriage of low format sound andvideo technology with activism—that began in the early 1960s and has been revitalizedin the later 1990s.

Activist internet journalism developed roots in 1999 during the World Trade

Organization meeting in Seattle. The meeting of the WTO spawned one of the largest andmost cohesively organized instances of social protests in recent decades. Tens ofthousands traveled to Seattle from around the world to protest the World TradeOrganization’s meeting to discuss the possibility of further opening economic markets.

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While the Seattle Times invited guest columnist like U.S. Secretary of CommerceWilliam Daley and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner towrite for the paper, the internet based Independent Media Center was reporting a fardifferent story.

On their internet website, The Independent Media center reported over 1 million

hits during the WTO meeting while streamlining stories investigated by the IMCvolunteers and captured with donated video and audio equipment. The volunteers—manyof them WTO protestors themselves—logged footage around the clock of protest eventsand street interviews with everyone from black dress anarchist to the police. The storiesemphasized the concerns of the protestors and functioned as a means to bear witness tothe numerous acts of police brutally waged in an effort to control the crowds. Such storiesincluded a “man who said he had been hit in the face with rubber bullets fired by police.Another [story] showed police firing canisters of tear gas into a crowd” (salon.com). Theimages from the street reported by the Independent Media Center were reminiscent of amilitary invasion while the Seattle Times published stories from Clinton Administrationthat justified the WTO meeting.TextThis project will analyze documentary text from three different yet similar

moments in history. In the 1930s, the late 1960s and at the turn of this century,filmmakers and theorists negotiated the function of documentary film for civic purposes.Coincidently, technological innovation at these particular historical moments of socialcrisis, called documentary film into the arena of social change. As a result, this project

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will focus on documentary film and video that most closely engages the spaces and ideaswhere documentary film and social change converge.

Analysis of the first wave of documentary and social change will include works

by John Geierson and the Workers Film and Photo League. The trajectory of the secondwave of activist documentary film will foreground the major strategies of activistdocumentary through the work of Fred Wiseman, an unnamed cinema verite filmmakerand a sampling of street tapes from just about any video collective I can find. Analysis ofcontemporary activist documentary will include Barbra Kopple’s American Dream(1990), the HBO documentaries Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills(1996) and it’s sequel Paradise Lost Revisited (2000), the works of Michael Moore andthe grassroots video reporting on the Independent Media Center website.

These documentary works will be used to answer the proposed research questions

by a rigorous analysis of film grammar and context. This project is a multi-methodapproach that includes interviews with filmmakers and public officials, analysis of themovie text, interviews with members in activist community organizations, analysis ofhistorical materials, and analysis of data distribution patterns.MethodWhere does the propositional content of documentary film come from? How is

rhetorical meaning created through cinematic language? The propositional content ofdocumentary text is not nestled in a particular arena, such as the image. Rather, adocumentary text is the product of three complex speech acts; moving image, sonicinformation and spoken word. These speech acts work in conjunction with one anotherand perform many of the same actions for which language is used. This project will

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explore how documentary films create meaning through the grammar of the movingimage, the persuasiveness of the sonic track and the argument of the discursive text. Eachof these complex speech acts operates in concert with one another to perform

deliberative, epideictic and forensic functions in the public sphere with documentary filmtexts.

Alone, each of these speech acts—image, sound and word—is communicatively

effective in distinct ways. For example,

[C] onceptual argument could be communicated more efficiently, if perhaps lesspowerfully, through words. And words could make explicit the connections andconclusions that remain implicit in the sequence; film images alone may imply orsuggest propositions, but cannot assert them with the directness of verballanguage. Film without words can communicate conceptual information, butcannot match the efficiency, intricacy, directness, nuance, and complexity ofargument that words allow. (Plantinga 73).

Therefore, not only does meaning construction with image, sound and word need to beaccounted for but also how these properties work in conjunction with one another tocreate rhetorical force within a documentary film text.

Many scholars have attempted to explain the rhetorical properties of meaning

supplied by still photography (Finnegan 2001; Lucaites and Hariman 2003; Lucaites andHariman 2001). Composition, framing, the disbursement of light, focus, and angle haveall been properties identified as creating meaning within the photographic frame. Thework on still images most certainly applies to the context of documentary film. However,documentary texts utilize still as well as moving photographs to create rhetorical impact.

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The moving photographs provides a unique set of choices for the rhetor (filmmaker) anddistinct opportunities for creating meaning with moving images through concepts such asaxis of action, cut-in image movements, eyeline match images, rhythm, following shotsand graphic matches between scenes. For scholars concerned about the rhetoricaldimensions of documentary, “the real value of moving photographs may be their capacityto provide information unavailable by any other means, and with a force unique tophotography. Whereas the context of the image directs the spectator toward preferredmeaning (via diverse discursive strategies), the image often exceeds that, providingdetails that are extraneous to the text’s purpose” (Plantinga 75). Hence, the photograph,moving or still, can provide plentiful detail that exceeds the capsity of language toexplain the complex minutia of a given frame with such sensory proficiency. This projectwill utilize the concepts of still and moving photography to unpack the function andmeaning of the image in documentary film and video.

Another powerful component of documentary filmmaking is soundtrack and sonic

information. Sound in documentaries can be characterized across two dimensions.Diegetic sounds are the elements recorded in the world of the film, such as voices, theambient sound in rooms or birds singing near a park bench. Nondiegetic sounds are theelements that do not originate from the film world and are added to the soundtrack duringthe editing process. Examples of nondiegetic sound are musical accompaniment, voice-over narration and sound effects. Holistically, there are three kinds of sound found indocumentary text—spoken word, sound effects and music—all three can be diegetic ornondiegetic (Plantinga 76). The physical qualities of sound can also be assessed in terms

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of pitch, loudness and duration (78). The important element, however, is that sound isdeployed within the textual system of the documentary for rhetorical purposes (79).

It is important to interrogate the deployment of cinematic language such as the

moving image and sonic information. However, these elements are only one part of therhetorical project of documentary filmmaking. As Carl Plantinga has argued, “There is nosingle ideological function or effect of photography and sound recording in the nonfictionfilm; both can be superficial or informative, veridical or misleading, depending on theirspecific use and context. Theory cannot predict in advance, independent of historicalcontext, the ideological effects of the images” (81). Therefore, the presence of spokenword in a documentary text functions to clarify, explain, direct and advocate for apreferred reading of image and sound evidence.

In the early 1930s, film technology acquired sound. This resulted in the marriage

of voice over narration and moving image into a new genre of filmmaking called“documentary.” In the 1960s, the cinema verite movement had influenced documentaryfilmmakers to foreground the spoken word of the film’s human subjects. For the firsttime, film subjects were the primary authors of the documentary’s discursivecontribution. However, the spoken word in documentary films is one of the mostunderstudied components of this genre. Given that documentary film studies was bornand continues to evolve in the film departments of academic universities, the role of thespoken word has taken a back seat to the analysis of image and sound. The study ofdocumentary word text is a critical component of film’s rhetorical force. Hence,rhetorical theory, such as argumentation theory and critical rhetoric, could provide themuch-needed understanding of the function of spoken word in documentary films.

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Meaning is created through the complex interplay of speech acts in a documentary

text. However, the framing of images and the employment of sounds are all creativenorms that do not guarantee universal meaning for the filmmaker or the audience in someabstract or sterile way. The meaning of documentary film grammar is always changingand dependent on its placement within a film. Not to mention that recording and editingtechniques that help construct the rhetorical dimensions of documentary films are subjectto changes in developing technology. Although image, sound and spoken word are thebuilding blocks of rhetorical meaning, documentary film and video also has the potentialto become instrumental in the public sphere as a text: “At a global level, film discoursedoes not passively represent a reality from which it is totally separate. As discourse, it notonly itself becomes an element of the actual world, but it has the potential to transformthat reality in certain cases, as a part of the cultural discourses which carry on the processof transformation” (Plantinga 45). Therefore, it is important to couple the grammar ofimage, sound and spoken word with the pragmatic functions of activist documentaryfilms in the public sphere.

Documentary film as a rhetorical force of social change is not a new concept but

one that is rarely interrogated by theorists. The critical approach to documentary filmstudies is to link the close analysis of text to broader questions of social and culturalchange. It must situate documentary film in relation to a theorization of social processesas they affect the status of marginalized people. The connections between documentaryfilm and social change cannot be satisfactory established by means of a subjectivistreading of an individual film, however complicated and sophisticated. The second part ofthis project will explore film and video pragmatics. Specifically, how and under what

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conditions do documentary films intervene in the process of social change, much in thesame way speeches once did. In order to explore this phenomenon, it is important to notethat documentary film studies and rhetoric is dependent on social theory, which can relatetext to changing ideological structures that produce social change.

My methodological/theoretical framework can be defined as ideological criticism.

I am part of a group of critical scholars who have embraced Michael McGee’s charge tounderstand the intersection between rhetorical theory and social theory. My approach torhetorical theory is materialist AND in a pre-Althussairan kind of way. Like the Marxistrhetorician Cloud, I believe “[T] he materialist project [. . .] is a critical perspective thatemphasizes that role discourses about race and gender play in larger contexts of socialand economic power [. . .] the materialism I am advocating here is insistent upon the needfor extra-discursive standards for critical judgment, optimistic about collective humanagency, but also critical and cognizant of constraints posed for such agency in classsociety. This approach is rooted in the classical Marxist tradition, which distinguishesbetween material reality and discursive reality, positing a dialectical relationship betweenthem” (Cloud \"Null Persona\" 179-180). As a result, my approach to this work is to positthe analysis meaning created by the grammar of the documentary text against materialreality. This material reality includes analysis of 1) historical materials, 2) interviewswith filmmakers, activist and public officials and finally, 3) assessment of the distributionpattern of the documentary text.

The political value of activist documentary film can only be determined by its

social function in a particular context. In order to ground oppositional politics, a notion ofideology that recognizes the duality of structure is necessary:

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[S] tructures are both constituted by human agency and yet at the same time arethe very medium of this constitution. In other words, the relationship betweenstructure and agency is dynamic, not static; human beings do not simplyreproduce existing structures in the process of action and communication, but inturn modify those structures even as they are shaped by them. Structure is bothmedium and outcome of the reproduction of practices; structural determinantsboth influence and are themselves influenced by social action and interaction.(Felski 56)

A dialectical approach means thinking about documentary film as a force of socialchange. Activist documentary film as a text “can be understood as both a product ofexisting social conditions and a form of critical opposition to them” (Felski 1) and thisdialectic can be useful in understanding the function of documentary in the process ofsocial change

In line with Terry Eagleton, I believe that hegemony is most successful when somepart of it rings true to our experience living in the world. Given the commitment toadvocacy and social justice inherent in the development of the documentary genre, thisproject will not only unpack how meaning is constructed in the film but also attempt toidentify for what ends. In his book, Ideology and Modern Culture John B. Thompsonproposes several symbolic strategies of hegemony or ways in which meaning serve toestablish relations of dominance. He distinguishes five modes in which ideology canoperate: legitimation, dissimulation, unification, fragmentation and reification (60).

Using the grammar of meaning constructed with image and sound while coupled witha rhetorical analysis of the film text, this project will use the concept of hegemony to

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explore how counter-publics use documentary films as a means of social change.However, like Antonio Gramsci, I believe economic interests have significant

consequences for the process of social change, rhetoric and the struggle for hegemony inthe public sphere. According to Gramsci, \"compromise cannot touch the essential; forthough hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be basedon the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus ofeconomic activity\" (161). Therefore, like Nancy Frasier’s analysis in Justice Interruptus,social change should be conceptualized and evaluated on several levels, withoutexcluding cultural recognition AND economic redistribution as critical components ofsocial change. Therefore, this project will infuse the conceptual tool of rhetoric with theobjectives of documentary film and video pragmatics to better understand the social,civic, and political functions of documentary film.

Simply put, few prior works in communication studies have yet to explore theintersection of documentary film and rhetoric. This topic fills a niche because it is thefirst attempt to understand the relationship between documentary film and social changeas a rhetorical process: the speaker (filmmaker)-audience-text (documentary)relationship. Few works have begun to understand how cultural texts like documentaryfilm function in the process of social change from a rhetorical perspective. I will fill thisgap with the proposed research questions, by interrogating the theories of social changein rhetorical theory, intergrading the documentary studies literature, and contributing tothe prevailing theoretical trends in rhetorical studies.

The strengths of this methodological/theoretical framework are pragmatic as well astheoretical. I will be able to generate some specific knowledge about how practitioners of

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film can better create social change. I will be able to hold the process of social changeaccountable to economic redistribution AND cultural recognition in the study of rhetoric.Finally and most importantly, I will be able to enrich the rhetorical tradition with thestudy of documentary films and video. Because the complex marriage of speech acts(image, sound, text) in documentary, rhetorical studies has much to gain from the richform of the genre and the medium of the text.

Literature ReviewDocumentary Film StudiesThe academic work on documentary film studies is expansive yet disperse.

Although the documentary process has been a domain of study since the inception ofmoving photographs, documentary film as a theoretical subject is a much more recenttrend in the last 30 years. What is missing is a conception of the documentary process andtheory that investigates the phenomenon as an interactive rhetorical process as opposed tostatic analysis of history or insights into the production process.

Most coherent work in documentary studies is published in the form of books.

There are three types of books in documentary studies: 1) the interview book, 2) thebooks that provide a theoretical contribution and 3) books of documentary history. Giventhat documentary studies is not necessarily a clear and established domain of academicstudy, there are many publications that attempt to shed light on the production processand its filmmakers (Goldsmith 2003, Levin 1971, Rosenthal 1971, Stubbs 2002, Tobias1998). This work is primarily archival work on an archival process. The insights areinteresting and important yet exclusive of understanding the dynamic process on atheoretical and social level. However, there are groups of theorist that have attempted to

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build the groundwork of documentary as a theoretical subject of investigation (Barsam1992, Corner 1996, Guynn 1990, Leach and Sloniowski 2003, Nichols 1991, Nichols2001, Ponech 1999, Renov 1993, Rosenthal 1998, Vaughan 1999, Waldman and Walker1999, Warren 1996, Waugh 1984). Many of these works attempt to build conceptualframeworks for the definitions and domain of the documentary process. Most recenttheoretical contributions attempt to integrate critical cultural work influenced by post-structuralism such as Lacan with documentary theory (Bruzzi 2000, Grant andSloniowski 1998, Nichols 1994, Winston 1995).

Finally, the most exhaustive studies of documentary film are those works that

attempt to tell the history of documentary film with similar yet different cognitive maps(Aitken 1998, Barnouw 1993, Ellis 1989, Jacobs 1979). These works provide thenecessary history to documentary film yet shed only an obscure light on the strategies ofdocumentary film and their effectiveness. There is also a body of work that attempts tofocus on documentary film during specific time periods. Consequently most of the workin historical time periods investigates the first wave of expansive documentaryfilmmaking during the 1930’s (Alexander 1981, Hardy 1971). There are some importantworks beginning to understand the implication of the second wave of activist

documentary (Boyle 1997, Rosenthal 1980). However, there has been very little historyand theoretical work done on the third wave of activist documentary.

The documentary studies work in periodicals often falls under the same subject

headings as books. However, the documentary work in periodicals is much moredisparate. Fields like anthropology, library science, history and sociology have attemptedto grapple with the phenomenon of documentary film with a given subject field

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(Godmilow and Shapiro 1997, Jarvie 1983, Rabinowitz 1993). This body of workproduced a scatter plot of methodological approaches as well as theoretical and practicalunderstanding of documentary film. In order to move towards a better understanding ofdocumentary film and social change, documentary studies must further explore thequestion of film pragmatics. More specifically, focus on how the documentary genre hasthe potential to perform social tasks (Plantinga 1997).Rhetoric, Culture and Social Movement StudiesSocial theorists—mostly committed to the work in cultural studies—have argued

that popular culture is a significant site of struggle for resistance against hegemonicnorms in the public sphere. To better understand the theoretical debates that

contextualize—historically and theoretically—the process of social change, the followingsection will review the relevant literature in cultural studies and rhetorical theory.

Early work in Cultural Studies in the 1970s focused on reading cultural texts

oppositionally against the state, using the construct of hegemony to understand theprocess of social change. However, feminist scholarship—mostly influenced by thepostmodern intellectual movement—began to theorize that the political moment ofcultural texts function primarily by affirming “other” ways of being: “Emphasis shiftedfrom communities positioned against large power blocs and bound together as classes orsubcultures to ethnic and women’s groups committed to maintaining and elaboratingautonomous values, identities and ethics” (During13) through texts. Theorizing that thetext functions as a quasi-political moment displaces the politics of hegemony from theagitational political struggle for the redistribution of economic resources to the discursive

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struggle over meaning. The postmodern movement in the academy precipitated thetheoretical focus on discursive relationships to understand the process of social change:

Postmodernism suggests that the limits of modernism have been reached, at leastin the West, and that the pursuit of unshakable foundations for analytic truth isfruitless. In addition, it appears to many that the promise of modernity to achievethe emancipation of humanity from poverty and prejudice is no longer feasible,and that politics of revolution, forms of knowledge, and subjective experienceshave less liberating potential than once was thought (Brown 23).

Despite the critical strides gained by social movements throughout United States history,postmodern theoretical developments had abandoned instrumental political agency as aviable strategy for social change.

An inevitable implication of the alleged erosion of political agency in late

industrial capitalism is that theorists began hailing cultural texts as “the” moment ofpolitical resistance while isolating political agency to text production (if you haveresources) and text consumption (if you don’t). According to popular cultural theoristJohn Fiske, texts provide “pleasure in the process of making meanings” (1987: 239).Resistance is the act of consuming critical cultural texts as opposed to political resistancein the public sphere. As a result, the instrumental goals of social change—objectives thatseek to redistribute resources to the exploited and oppressed through agitationalpolitics—only vaguely concerned critical and cultural theorists of the last two decades.

The theoretical trends that characterize agency as a discursive enterprise and an

act of performative invention to social change have also influenced the study of rhetoric.In his article “Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois,” Maurice

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Charland argued that there has been a significant bias towards conceptualizing rhetoric aspersuasion as opposed to a constitutive conception of rhetoric influenced by KennethBurke’s notion of identification. Therefore, Charland set up a dichotomy betweentheorizing the rhetorical process as persuasion (instrumental goals) or identification(constitutive goals). Charland’s position on constitutive rhetoric centers the space ofsocial change squarely in the arena of discourse. For Charland, rhetorical theory aspersuasion doesn’t account for “social identity, religious faith, sexuality, ideology[which] is beyond the realm of rational or even free choice, beyond the realm ofpersuasion” (211). He insists that rhetoric as persuasion for instrumental ends neglectsthe constitutive aspects of communication that precede persuasion, such as thenegotiation of identity. Therefore, Charland argues that scholars should look for andappeal to an audience through their identity.

The major contribution of Charland’s work is in the reformulation of the

ontological assumptions of the subject in rhetorical theory. He argues that history anddiscourse form the ground of subjectivity and retheorizes agency through identity and theconsumption of discourse. Characterizing constitutive rhetoric as embracing a form ofagency Charland argues:

Constitutive rhetorics, as they identify, have power because they are orientedtowards action. As Althusser and McGee both stress, ideology is material,existing not in the realm of ideas, but in that of material practices. Ideology ismaterial because subjects enact their ideology and reconstitute their materialworld in its image. Constitutive rhetorics are ideological not merely because theyprovide individuals with narratives to inhabit as subjects and motives to

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experience, but because they insert “narratized” subjects-as-agents into theworld.”(223)

Much like the debate over the politics of the text in the process of social change thatensued in Cultural Studies, constitutive rhetoric maintains that agency comes fromconsuming texts, which have influence over individual behavior. This reformulation ofthe subject not only erases a conception of agency as a collective struggle againsthegemonic blocs—while locating the emancipatory moment in identity—but alsoconstrains subjects by theorizing their inability to escape the structures of discourse withrationale thought.

Locating the struggle for hegemony within the domain of identity has significant

implications for how scholars analyze, theorize and prescribe social change. Thepostmodern influence on the academy, which re-theorizes the politics of social change, isimportant to Celeste Condit's theoretical development of hegemony. Condit's theoryshifts the traditional commitments of hegemony to a focus on political consensus, a termshe names concordance. According to Condit, power relations are no longer uni-directional, therefore, ruling ideologies must incorporate a broad range of interests thatleads to \"active assent from allies and passive from others\" (Concordance 209). As aresult, Condit's work repositions Gramsci's theory of hegemony to accommodate a “newand complex historical condition” where material inequality is no longer a significantfactor in the process of social change. She argues, \"culture, language and identity are assignificant and as real as economies\" (Rejoinder 1999). Much like Charland, CulturalStudies scholars and those developing theories around new social movements, Conditforegrounds identity and other discursive strategies as the primary location of social

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change but also strangely miscalculates how rhetorical theorists assess the process ofhegemony in political struggles.

Condit’s critiques of concordance centered on how discursive formations are

negotiated in the public arena. First, the critic must understand the ways in which socialorganizations arrive at a concordance. Condit argues, methodologically, the residue ofconcordance is evident in the text. Therefore, hegemony or the negotiation of

concordance can be evaluated by identifying the different categories of discourse in textsand recontextualizing them (Concordance 212). In addition, the critic should identify theaccommodations made and missed while negotiating concordance. An assumption ofconcordance is that \"text[s] usually tell[s] us what parties are involved, and what theyhave at stake\" (221). Condit’s theory of concordance is part of larger body of literaturethat emphasizes political struggle as primarily a discursive encounter in theory, methodand practice.

A limitation of Condit's theory is that the methodological approach and theoretical

assumptions to understanding concordance are highly uncritical of the negotiation ofpower relations in the public sphere. Tallying the themes of discourse to ensure multi-vocality does not paint a complete picture of political negotiation nor does it deal witheconomic conditions that constrain choice. Although Condit's approach to consensusidentifies the types of poly-vocal discourse present in a text, she does not take intoaccount the conditions of hegemony that do not begin and end with the text.

Perhaps no other critic has challenged the primarily discursive approach the study

of power and social change more than Dana L. Cloud. In her article \"The Materiality ofDiscourse: A Challenge to Critical Rhetoric,\" she makes a poignant statement about a

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growing number of scholars who have embraced rhetoric as a tool of social justice. Shechallenges \"the idea that discourse itself is influential in or even constitutive of social andmaterial reality\" (Cloud Materiality 141). The postmodern influence on the rhetoricaldomain has resulted in two versions of what Cloud calls \"the materiality of discoursehypothesis\": 1) that discourse should be considered material because it affects materialinterests in the world and 2) that discourse not only affects material reality but is reality.Cloud concludes that perspectives which adopt idealist or relativist assumptions aboutrhetoric overestimate the power discourse has to rectify material inequality andoppression:

The project of the critique of ideology, modernist as it may be, is the only criticalstance that suggests discourse may justify oppression and exploitation, but textsdo not themselves constitutes the oppression. In other words, when one assumeseither that historical agency lies with text (idealism) or that textuality is all there is(relativism), one risks leaving behind the project of critique. (Materiality 157)

Cloud argues that we must not over estimate the influence discourse has to control, createand rectify the struggles for power in the public sphere. Therefore, the postmoderninfluence on scholarship, represented in the new social movements literature, culturalstudies and rhetorical theory account for two flaws in theory building: 1) it emphasizessymbolic change at the expense of material change; and 2) it tends to consider socialchange absent any economic and class influence.

Building a theory of social change that minimizes and sometimes all together

ignores important economic structures in the public sphere, risks masking the exploitationof marginalized communities by placing agency at their discursive fingertips. This

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masking of domination in the name of liberation is particularly conceivable whentheorists conflate the power of economic and cultural injustice. One may find culturalliberation but that moment does not necessarily rectify or erase economic exploitation,especially when the structures of production are a significant constraint in thecontemporary public sphere. Condit's misguided assumptions give rise to a taintedconstruction of political negotiation that is not critical of hegemony, oppression and/orexploitation.

A materialist approach to text would acknowledge the reality of a society divided

by class as critical to understanding social change. Although Gramsci may have beenvague about the various facets of hegemony, he was clear about the role of materialinterests in the process of social change. Economic interests have significant

consequences for the process of social change and mediating the struggle for hegemonyin the public sphere: \"[M]aterial inequality is on the rise in most of the world'scountries—in the United States and in China, in Sweden and in India, in Russia and inBrazil. It is also increasing global, most dramatically across the line that divides Northfrom South\" (Fraser, 11). Although there may be a perception of economic stability andsecurity in the United States, however, there is a significant economic concern for mostAmericans:

In the richest societies in the world, including the United States, the working classstill experiences oppression. Oppression takes many forms: regressive taxationpolicies; inferior schools; substandard or inaccessible medical care; prevailingideologies that teach workers that they are less intelligent or less capable then thebetter-educated middle and upper classes; even the sitting of toxic waste dumps,

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never installed anywhere but in working class areas [. . .] [O] ppression isendemic to capitalism (Smith 40).

Therefore, theorists invested in the process of social change must consider important andsystematic economic interests when developing rhetorical theory.

Applying the theoretical conceptions of social change with the practical

implications of political struggle, Fraser argues that instead of fighting oppressionthrough systematic critique and instrumental change, agitators for social change nowgravitate towards mobilizing around recognition concerns:

The \"struggle for recognition\" is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of politicalconflict in the late 20th century. Demands for \"recognition of difference\" fuelstruggles of groups mobilized under the banner of nationality, ethnicity, \"race,\"gender, and sexuality. In these, \"post socialist\" conflicts; group identity supplantsclass interests as the chief medium of political mobilization. Cultural dominationsupplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural recognitiondisplaces socio-economic redistribution as the remedy for injustices and the goalof political struggle. (11)

As a result, recent scholarship in rhetorical theory, cultural studies and social movementsstudies have advocate a description of social change that shifted from political agitationfor the purpose of material redistribution into recognition of cultural texts as sites ofresistance and self-actualization. However, Fraser reminds theorists to identify two typesof injustice: 1) socio-economic which is a result of the political economic structure, and2) cultural or symbolic injustice that is rooted in social patterns of representation,interpretation and communication (14). Given that social change is much more

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complicated than discursive struggles for recognition and the consumption of rhetoricaltexts as a site of resistance, how do counter-hegemonic texts function in the publicsphere? It’s not that identity and discursive political struggles are meaningless. However,how do cultural and material struggles create social change in the public sphere throughcultural texts such as documentary film?

In their book The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control, Bowers, Ochs and Jensenidentified four strategies of social movement agitators: 1) petition which involvesdiscourse that approaches the establishment and proposes change occur, 2) promulgationwhich includes the all of the tactics designed to win social support for the agitatorsposition, 3) solidification which is rhetoric primarily used to unite followers and 4)polarization which involves tactics designed to move individuals into agitational ranks byforcing a conscious choice between agitation and control (20-36).

Within the activist video movement, consciousness raising through

representational video texts functioned to promulgate, to solidify and that’s pretty muchit. However, for some activists and theorists, consciousness-raising is an essentialstrategy of social change:

[T]he process is transformative as well as perceptive, since thought and thing areinextricable and reciprocally constitutive…just as the state as coercion and thestate as legitimating ideology are indistinguishable, and for the same reasons. Thepursuit of consciousness becomes a form of political practice. (MacKinnon 84)

The important project of consciousness raising needs to be situated in the largerinstrumental project of social change. The commitment to a separatist media communityas a form of consciousness raising, which was not connected to any specific social

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movement, only marginally aided the process of social change because documentariescannot petition; people do. In addition, polarization requires that movements must becommitted to specific issues in order to force conscious political choices. Theabandonment of an instrumental political program meant that there was no collectiveorganization to advocate for the social change punctuated in a given documentary, oncethe film or tape reached a wide audience. Without that instrumental body, how can amovement sustain the stage of petition and grow? These questions evoke themes from thescholarship developing in the area of public sphere theory, especially in regard to thedevelopment of new media technology such as the internet and inexpensive digital videoproduction.

Public Sphere TheoryThe study of the public sphere is a critical component of understanding

democratic order. Public sphere theory can be drawn upon as a means of theorizing thecomplex mediation between documentary film, ideology and the broader social domain.Although there is a considerable academic debate over the boundaries and functions ofthe public sphere, the developments in understanding counter-publics is the mostapplicable to the project of social change. While some scholars have defined counter-publics as primarily constitutive entities evoked by the act of being addressed (Warner56-63), I will argue that counter-publics are stratified societies that emerge in response toexclusion. Members of a subordinate social group strive to circulate vernacular discoursein order to gain support for identities, interests and needs (Fraser 122-124). Thesecommunities are also known in theoretical literature as social movements. Ansen andBrouwer note that the most recent work suggests that the public sphere should be thought

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of as a “multiplicity of dialectically related public spheres rather than a singleencompassing arena of discourse” (6). Hence, the historically contextualized study ofsocial movements has the potential to ground public sphere theory and add to the richconceptual history. However, the foundation of public sphere theory can be traced backto the works of Jurgen Habermas.

In his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, JurgenHabermas argues that there has been a shift from a culture debating to a culture-consuming public. Reading the development of the literary public sphere through letters,Habermas concludes, “The public sphere in the world of letters was replaced by thepseudo-public or sham-private world of culture consumption (160).” This process beganwith the fragmentation of the private sphere into two arenas.

According to Habermas, when the conception of property-ownership was

naturalized, a separation occurred within the private realm. One area of the private realmwas concerned with “affairs that private people pursued individually each in the interestsof the reproduction of his own life (160).” While one area of the private realm wasconcerned with tasks and activities that keep life moving, the other area of the privatesphere involved the “interaction that united private people into a public (160).” Habermasthen compares the consumption of pleasure and desire through the media is akin to thearea of the private sphere that is consumed with the interests that aid in the reproductionof ones own life.

It is these two activities, the affairs of reproducing one’s own life and the

consumption of aesthetically driven media texts, according to Habermas, have notransformative potential for the public sphere. He even goes as far as to claim that the

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consumption of the mass media does not have the ability to transform into publiccommunication between private people. Instead, he theorizes, public communicationbetween private people continues to be hollowed out by the mass media and it’s aestheticelements: “[A] pseudo-public sphere of a no longer literary public was patched togetherto create a sort of superfamilial zone of familiarity (162)” The consumption of massmedia, in his estimation, facilitated the absence of literary and political debate and gaveway to more or less noncommittal group activities that resulted with informal sociabilitywith no specific institutional power. Because these leisure activities required no furtherdiscussion and lacked the interconnectedness of institutional affiliation, no public isformed around such group activities (163). For Habermas, participation in the publicsphere demanded that private people become active in engaging in rational-criticaldiscourse.

In his book, “Publics and Counter-Publics,” Michael Warner argues that the idea

of a “public” is a cultural form, a kind of fiction. Commenting on Habermas’ conceptionof the public sphere, Warner argues,

[T]he public-sphere environment Habermas describes can be seen as the contextof modern social movements, including identity politics. Social movements takeshape in civil society, often with an agenda of demands vis-à-vis the state. Theyseek to change policy by appealing to public opinion. They arise from contexts ofcritical discussion, many of them print-mediated. The question for debate, then, isto what extent the environment for critical social movements is becoming moreundemocratic, ‘refeudalized,” or colonized by changing relations among the state,mass media, and the market. (50)

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This project will ground the theories of publics and counter-publics in the historicalcontext of activist documentary. Embracing Warner’s observation and given the changingrelations among the state, mass media and the market, what are the potential politicalmoments of social change for counter-publics?

With technological advancements such as television and the internet, viewers

have the potential to connect and engage in critical rational debate and communitybuilding around problems communicated rhetorically in documentary films. Thefragmentation expressed by Habermas concerning the consumption of mass media isunfounded in a world that is no longer divided by geography but connected in

cyberspace. The lack of institutional power to create instrumental change is alleviated bythe ability of counter-publics to appropriate the tools of public relations to generatesupport outside the conception of the state such as media publicity and financial supportto sustain the social change process. One could read this new historical moment as one ofpublics becoming “constituted through mere attention” (Warner 87-89) or as a moment tobe critical about what actions and level of participation has the potential to createinstrumental social change.

Warner’s contribution is a new conception of publics and counter-publics for a

new contemporary historical epoch. Unlike the traditional understanding of socialmovements politics as instrumental, action-oriented entities, Warner proposes thatpublics are not instrumental but a constitutive grouping: “To address a public or to thinkof oneself as belonging to a public is to be a certain kind of person, to inhabit a certainkind of world, to have at one’s disposal certain media and genres, to be motivated by acertain normative horizon, and to speak within a certain language ideology” (10).

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Warner’s position lowers the entrance requirements for what counts as participating in apublic from private persons exercising rational-critical discourse into simply becoming aparticipant in a public by sheer attention or identity (87-89). This reformulation hasliberating and constraining implications for social change.

Given the complex interplay between documentary film viewership and the

potential connections between audience members on the internet and other mass media,distribution plays an interesting role in social change. Although the market fordocumentary film fluctuates and can be influenced by competing corporate interests,when assessing the complexities of activist documentary film, the expanse of distributionis a significant concern. What good is a rhetorical argument against social injustice(documentary film) if the viewership (audience) is small and insular (festival circuitaudience or a sparsely used parallel broadcast network)? Inherent of the assumption ofactivist documentary film is that social critique must reach an audience. To engage theprocess of social change, activist documentary film must play out in a larger publicsphere (Palczewski 166). Warner’s idea that publics are partially constructed throughcirculation of text helps explain how documentary films could achieve a civic function.However, circulation of text is only one part of the process of social change that involvesseveral other stages, collective organization and instrumental action.

Warner’s inclination to lower the entrance requirements for participation in a

public to the act of sheer attention is not without foundation. For the need to commandsheer attention speaks to an essential stage of social change, promulgation. At somepoint, social movement publics must engage in rhetorical strategies that gain the“attention” of potential supporters outside the movement. However, this does not

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necessarily equate to participation, nor should it. The history of social movements is astory of living—breathing bodies that are moving, acting, debating, petitioning,protesting and creating in the public sphere. The history of social change is not a historyof passive viewership, nor should the potential for human agency be characterized in thatmanner. By lowering the entrance requirements for what counts as participation in apublic, Warner problemtizes the necessary dialectic between public and counter-public.In the broader communicative process of social change, sheer attention cannot count asadequate civic participation in a counter-public sphere, if instrumental social change is apriority. But more specifically, Warner seems to deny publics the agency to createcollective opinion and to act instrumentally: \"There is no moment at which theconversation stops and a decision ensues, outside of elections, and those are given bylegal frameworks, not publics\" (p.97). Counter-publics need to be recognized as sites todevelop critical rational opposition in practice and in theory (Felski 1989; Fraser 1992).Therefore, this project will use the study of social movements and documentary film toground public sphere theory and Warner’s contribution.

ConclusionDocumentary film has the potential to aid—and in moments create—instrumental

social change. However, there are many lessons to be learned from the history ofdocumentary film. Specifically, what are the political moments for cultural texts? How dothey function in a larger political program for social change? Cultural texts, alone, cannotevoke all the stages of social change. In the case of documentary film, the texts have thepotential to contribute to the process of solidification and promulgation. However,

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documentary film is only one strategy used to solidify or promulgate a movement in theprocess of social change—a process that involves many other stages.

However, the ability for documentary film to reach significant audiences through

such a powerful medium makes the genre a natural and necessary tool for activism, onethat can no longer be overlooked in the study of rhetoric and social change. In practice,the affordability and access to new video technology allows counter-publics to maximizepromulgation and solidification approaches in the public sphere, with little difficulty andexpense.

Identity is a questionable locus of social change. Charland’s proposal that the

rhetorical moment should be wrapped up in identity has significant consequences forsocial change. In theoretical discussion and in practice, identity tends to 1) maskeconomic struggles critical to social change and 2) limits agency to discursiveconsumption. In addition, foregrounding discursive strategies of social change whichneglect or minimize economic interests privileges a population of subjects who arematerially sustained enough to find economic exploitation a minimal concern.

Hegemony is discursive as well as material. As a critic, it is not enough to locate

interests in text by counting rhetorical themes as Condit suggests. Cultural recognitionmay appear in text but material exploitation or redistribution does not. Therefore, anextra-discursive check on discourse is a critical component of assessing hegemonicstruggle. Without an extra-discursive check, conception of concordance is highlyuncritical of hegemony and risks masking domination by settling for counting discourseas social change.

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Counter-publics must resist the impulse to become mired in developing

community. Counter-publics must be instrumental and act within a dialectical

relationship with other publics. Activist documentary film must recognize that there is aproject for social change outside the film screening. The constitution of the audiencethrough documentary film is only one strategy, in one part of the project of social change.

The history of documentary film and social change is still left to be written. Given

the commitment to civil engagement inherent in the theoretical assumptions of rhetoricalstudies and documentary film studies, each field has a great deal to learn from oneanother. In practice, the theoretical studies of activist documentary film and public spheretheory may yield important practical information about how activist documentary filmsand video may function more effectively in the process of social change. In doing so, thestudy of documentary film and social change has a significant potential to ground someof the most contentious debates in critical theory.

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DISSERTATION CHAPTER OUTLINE

HISTORYChapter One: Introduction to Documentary Film and Social Change

For well over a century, non-fiction film has figured prominently in the public

sphere as a powerful means of persuasion. This project will explore the intersection ofcultural texts and social change by investigating the history of contemporary activistdocumentary film. Using all the available means of persuasion and coercion at theirdisposal, social movements have collectively developed a diverse set of tactics andstrategies to prompt social change, documentary films being one of the most understudiedtexts.

Documentary films that reflect the interests of social movements are important

but to what end and in what rhetorical situations are these strategies most effective forsocial change? This study will not call into question the importance of cultural texts likedocumentary film but rather how constitutive cultural strategies constrain or aid theinstrumental goals of contemporary social movements. This project will explore thecommitments of early activist media, theories of social change, the second wave ofactivist media and finally, the function of contemporary activist documentary.

There is much left to be studied about the relationship of activist cultural texts and

social change. The manner in which activist documentary film is conceptualized intheoretical literature or in film reviews, primarily qualifies the term “activist” with theintentions of the film maker and his or her ideological commitments outside offilmmaking. There is, however, another tendency to label documentary film as “activist”based on content. If the film mediates as political or moral controversy, the inclination is

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to label it “activist.” However, such labels are fruitless if the film does not actuallyintervene in a larger public space to create active political agents that will extend andexecute the political work initiated by a documentary film. It is not enough fordocumentary film to “be” activist; it must help in creating the space for activism andinvested in producing material and cultural change. This chapter will explore therhetorical and theoretical questions my dissertation as well as provide an introduction tothe project.

Chapter Two: The First Wave of Activist Documentary Film.

In the early part of the 1930s, economic collapse had festered and produced

significant political tension and strife. At this precise moment, documentary filmtechnology had just acquired sound and celebrated the last moments of silent film. Forthe first time, spoken word could be added to image. Coincidently, technologicalinnovation in a historical moment of social crisis, called documentary film into the arenaof social change. This chapter will explore the rhetorical challenges and limitations ofearly activist filmmaking in the work of John Grierson and in the first documentary filmcollectives such as the Workers Film and Photo League. Grierson believed that thepopular media could acquire leverage over ideas and actions once influenced by churchand school. While The Workers Film and Photo League was a movement that managed tobring workers consciousness to the public sphere through documentary film texts andorganized collectives around these objectives Consequently, these early films are part ofa larger body of cultural discourse that has accompanied the efforts to accomplishgrassroots social change in popular culture during the 1930s. This project addresses

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theoretical questions concerning documentary studies, social movements studies andrhetorical theory.

Chapter Three: The Second Wave of Activist Documentary and the Birth of StreetTapes.

This chapter will investigate the second wave of activist media born out of the late

1960s and precipitated by the development of low-format, portable video technology.Given the impulse of direct cinema to foreground vernacular voices and the commitmentof cinema verite practitioners to intervene in the project of political dissent, documentaryfilm and social change found new feet. In the early 1960s heightened political crisis andthe development of low-cost video technology created the breading ground for a newpopulation of filmmakers. This time, the people from the margins were making their ownfilm and activists were creating their own media. It was the birth of the activist

documentary film and video movement. Troubled by the political and social unrest of the1960s, the guerrilla television movement focused on a utopian program to change thestructure of information in America by creating a distinct parallel broadcast system.Political contestation was solved “not by directly assaulting the system—as in a politicalrevolution—but by extending the unifying properties of electronic media to everyone”(Boyle 31). This project addresses complex theoretical questions concerning publicsphere theory, audience reception studies, rhetorical theory and social movementsstudies.

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THE THIRD WAVE: CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTARY FILM AND VIDEOChapter Four: Street Tapes and the Contemporary Internet Activist VideoMovement

The internet is a medium most closely associated with e-mail and e-commerce. As

a result, the development of web-based communication has slowly urbanized into a newbreading ground for low cost advertising and marketing. However, a new movement,with democratic motives and not all concerned with profit margins, is utilizing thepotential of internet communication for slightly different ends. With the growth of theglobalization movement, the technological advancements in video production, and thedevelopment of the internet, street reporting re-emerged in the late 1990s. Contemporaryactivist internet journalism developed roots in 1999 during the World Trade Organizationmeeting in Seattle. The meeting of the WTO spawned one of the largest and mostcohesively organized instances of social protests in recent decades. This chapter willfocus on the use of documentary video produced by the Independent Media Center as astrategy of solidification and promulgation in the process of social change. This projectaddresses theoretical questions concerning public sphere theory, radical democracy,computer mediated communication, rhetorical studies and theories of social change.Chapter Five: Commercial Documentary Film and Social Change

There appears to be a divide between theorists who argue that meaningful

political discussion is hollowed out by the mass media and the practices of everydaycitizens who use the media and internet to engage the political process. Therefore, what isthe function of mass media texts like commercial documentary film, in the process ofsocial change? Can the process of social change be sustained through anesthetized

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cultural texts? This chapter will explore the intersection between mass mediatedaesthetics, the public sphere and social change through contemporary documentary film.This chapter will analyze two HBO documentaries, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders atRobin Hood Hill and Paradise Lost Revelations. Both films chronicle a murder trial inArkansas in which three young men are convicted of killing three adolescent boys. Thefirst film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hill, documents the trial ofthe three young men while the second film reflects on the impact of the first documentarypolitically, socially and legally. I will argue that mediated, politically driven andaesthetically dressed rhetorical texts not only have the potential to be acts of politicaloratory but under the correct conditions can transform into a public communicationbetween private people that has the potential for collective social change. This projectaddresses complex theoretical questions concerning aesthetic theory, cultural studies, andtheories of social change.

Chapter Six: Documentary Filmmaker as Activist: A Case Study in Michael Moore

After winning an Academy Award for best documentary, Michael Moore ignited

a firestorm of controversy by denouncing President Bush and the war on Iraq to a 33million-person television audience. Moore, responsible for making one of the mostcommercially successful political documentaries of all time, recognizes that the Oscarsare not normally a place for political commentary (United Press International, March 28,2003). After receiving a robust round of boos and cheers, Moore defended his actions bystating, “[I]f I had won the Oscar for a movie about birds or insects, I’d say somethingabout them. But I made a movie about violence—and global violence—so I felt I had tosay something about that. I just hope I generated a discussion about Mr. Bush and the

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war. (Salt Lake Tribune, March 29, 2003)” This chapter will analyze the rhetoric ofMichael Moore as a filmmaker/activist by exploring his films, books, and pressinterviews.

Chapter Seven: Conclusions and Implications

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Time Table for Completing the Dissertation ProjectTaskGathering of Principal DataResearch on SubjectResearch on MethodWriting Chapter Drafts:Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter Four Chapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenCompleting Final DraftOral Defense

Deadlinecompletedcompletedcompleted

First Draft INRevisions INMay 24thJune 1stMarch 22ndApril 19thApril 12thMay 17thMarch 1stMarch 29thFebruary 16thMarch 8thMay 10thJune 7thJune 14th

June 28thJuly 5thJuly 26th

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