Many previous blogs by my classmates have discussed truth, versions of the truth and “authenticity” so I figured it was my turn to do so.
After having watched Stories We Tell, the documentary by Sarah Polley about her family’s story, I began to question which scenes were real historical footage as opposed to re-enactments within the film. The narrative is told through several characters where it mixes old with faux-old footage and towards the end, the audience is somewhat enlightened as to which is historical versus re-enacted. To this effect, the film undermines the question of “authenticity” to the point where the mimicked past blurs into the “real” past.
This question of authenticity reminded me of art forgeries and their worth. While being a curious crime, forging great works of art has sometimes lead to famous cases like Michelangelo’s Cupid or the Etruscan terracotta warriors. If art, including biographies and autobiographies within literature, are considered based on their aesthetic composure alone, then forgery in the sense of “inauthenticity,” should not be considered blasphemous. Similarly, “faked” memory or narrative that fools audiences should be celebrated and revered in its ability to mimic reality – just as the Viennese Museum for Art Fakes posits.
With regards to artfully “faking” or embellishing the truth, I looked at how Art Spiegelman draws/writes his father’s accent in the graphic novel Maus for my term paper. When reading Vladek’s Eastern European voice in Spiegelman’s graphic memoir, the accent stood out to me. After doing some research, I found that a scholar that compared the writing of Vladek’s way of speaking to the actual tape recordings of him that Art Spiegelman used to compose Maus. It appears as though Spiegelman had deliberately curated the speech bubbles of Vladek to sound specifically more Eastern European in terms of syntax but not phonetically. Here, I concluded that this fragmentation of Vladek’s voice is reflective of the trauma of the Holocaust, the incompetence of language (English) to recount the Holocaust as well as a way in which the author adds to the “authenticity” of the voice. Although not depicted exactly as Vladek sounded, Spiegelman mimics the Eastern European accent, and adds his own intonations.
I think that it is really interesting to think of the acted scenes in The Stories We Tell as something positive, opposed to the way we discussed it in class. I feel that from talking to others about this, there is originally a sense of distrust that comes along with finding out that the Super Eight footage is not real. Throughout the film we put our trust in Polly as a film maker and when we learn that the footage is not all authentic, our perspectives shift. Does this have to be a bad thing? Perhaps this shift allows for a clearer understanding for the viewers. For example, knowing that all of this footage was controlled and managed by Polly, allows for me to gain a deeper understanding of the story she was trying to tell- something that is somewhat ambiguous throughout the film.
Hi, I liked the comparisons you drew, and agree with how you stated that the mix of real and ‘re-created’ scenes is misleading. I had trouble at first distinguishing them, and thought they were authentic myself. This indeed created a sense of authenticity that may not have been warranted. I think the Super Eight footage used adds another layer to the film, and as the commentator above me stated. This is a layer that allows the viewer to critically engage with the film, and realize that documentary is rhetoric, too.