After watching documentaries or reading non-fiction novels or biographies or autographies, I think it is always interesting to consider the levels of mediation that exist in any attempt to still time and to document a particular moment in the expanse of our lives. In director Sarah Polley’s documentary film, Stories We Tell, she takes viewers through the unravelling of a personal family secret. Through a series of interviews, footages from family home videos, and the reconstruction of certain memories, she, in a sense, recreates history. However, the documentary format, with individual holding cameras and the b-roll footages constantly establish both a distance and serve as a reminder that the video itself is being mediated by the documenter.

Interestingly enough, with the availability of social media and the Internet, I often read reviews of a movie before spending close to two hours watching the movie itself. What I end up doing with a documentary film is read a review on a person’s review of their own life. The complexity is stated in that sentence itself. In a review by Nicole Sperling in the LA Times, she references explanations by Polley regarding the choices that she made as a documentarian. Polley reveals that she was making a movie about storytelling and part of the premise of the movie was to “not pretend that this was some factual thing, that this was as close to the truth as we could possibly get with a million different versions — and one of those versions [was] this film” (Link to statement here). Despite the fact that she tried to get everyone’s perspective into the film, giving each of their voices equal weight, she cannot escape the fact that each voice was mediated in some way. This is represented in the framing of the scenes in which there is always the sense that there is a camera. Oftentimes, the viewer sees the video of a video being filmed. Reviews of these sorts also contribute to the uncovering of the ‘truth.’ John Buchan, Sarah’s Polley older brother is a casting director himself who worked collaboratively with Polley to cast people who would recreate the scenes narrated by Michael Polley, their father. In that same article, Buchan talks about how when he was casting himself at age 18, he made sure that he got something “who was way better-looking…because [he] like[s] the idea of rewriting history.” Related to this, Buchan references how the scenes recreated and the actual home videos melded together in a way that a couple of times, even Buchan could not tell the difference himself between which was the ‘real,’ and ‘authentic’ footage as opposed to one that was recreated. In the end, Polley is apt to call this work a story and her father and all others involved “storytellers” as stated in the closing credits. They recognize the fact that this is an act of reconstruction and inherently flawed in that sense but the alternative seems to be to not to document or to document only one voice.

In also thinking about WHY to document, Polley says in an interview with Studio Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqBe1DSY1Vc

that some journalist had found out about this family secret before most of her immediate did and was planning on posting it. In a sense, I think she wanted to preserve the right to tell her story just as Harry Gulkin felt adamantly in the film that he was the only one who had the right to tell the story. All in all, documentaries raise ethical questions of how to document and who has the right to document.

In contributing to the ongoing discussion on the ways in which life narratives take on different formats and the genre of life narratives itself that is amorphous in the digital age, Ben Breedlove’s youtube video is significant. I remember three years ago, 18-year-old Ben Breedlove’s video on youtube, “This is my story (Part 1)” and his subsequent video, “This is my story (Part 2),” went viral across social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. As well, local news networks had reports conducted due to its popularity on the web. Reaching over eight million viewers, Breedlove, in the form of words written on flashcards, reported on the three times that he cheated death due to a heart condition. After yet another close encounter with death, Breedlove remembers in the second video, “I wish I NEVER woke up” and asks his viewers, “Do you believe in Angels or God?,” replying himself, “I do.” A week later, on Christmas day, Breedlove passes away.  For me, this video raised questions of mediation and media and the choices that the producer or autobiographer makes to communicate his or her ideas. As well, I wondered about the contextual factors surrounding this video and whether it accounted for its popularity. In a video devoid of a speaking narrator, Breedlove makes a deliberate choice in being silent and allowing his pre-written flashcards to speak for him. The only times that when expression and nuance is added is when he capitalizes some of the words on the flashcard or underlines or smiles as he puts the card up for the screen. In comparison to other videos he has posted on youtube such as the one in which he gives dating advice, this video on his ‘story’ commands attention and highlights the graveness of the topic in which he is addressing. Furthermore, the stark contrast between his previous videos and this one is that it compels the viewer to pay attention to every cue card. Instead of being able to multitask because of the voiceover, these two videos ground the attention of the viewer and perhaps for this reason, the video has gained so much attention. Furthermore, it is also relevant to contrast videos in which he improvises as opposed to one that is scripted on paper as he did in this particular video. In doing so, this action underscores the fact that he is paying attention to the question of representation and the medium through which he will relay this story.

Additionally, in thinking about the subject matter in which he addresses and the timing of the post (the week before Christmas and him passing away on Christmas Day), it does breed a favourable environment (intentional or not by Breedlove) for a topic about Angels and God. Ultimately, this videos demonstrates the importance of medium in life narratives as well as the contextual factors that may influence whether a video gains salience in the media and the implications of this popularity.

Works Cited:

Breedlove, Ben. “This is my story (Part 1).” Video. Youtube.com. Youtube, 18 Dec 2011. Web. 6 Nov 2014. 

In Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Art (the character) quotes Samuel Beckett in one of the panels as having “once said: ‘Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness’” (Spiegelman 45). In this context, Art was reflecting upon the act of writing, of documenting in some form the Holocaust and his inadequacy and even the inadequacy of the form itself when the survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust do not or cannot tell their stories. In this instance, Spiegelman conveys both the difficulties associated with representation of experience as well as the necessity of it. The relevant question is: can we remain silent? And if we cannot, in what forms do these representations manifest?

In comparison to other forms of life narratives, Maus incorporates the use of images.  Furthermore, the act of mediation is apparent in the choices that the documenter must make. In Spiegelman’s Maus, the book is mediated by himself — the documenter who recreates images he has never seen but only hears about from his father and through his research in the form of drawings featuring mice, pigs, cats and the occasional figures resembling human beings. Rarely does the book feature real-life photography of individuals and the few instances it does stand out. One is the dedication in both Maus I & II in which it features a photo of Richieu, Art’s deceased brother, a photo of his mother in Maus I, and a photo of his father in Maus II. These photographs stand in contrast to the comic-esque features of the book that is multi-layered with acts of mediation as Spiegelman interprets his interviews with his father and makes the decision to represent characters as animals for example. However, in thinking back at questions of truth and authenticity, are the real-life photos any less mediated? The photographs are portraits — they are dressed in their Sunday best with their hair combed back especially in the photo of Vladek (Art’s father) and Richieu. In the photo of his mother, Anja (Art’s mother) stands with whom I can only interpret as a younger Art. One one hand, if Maus is to be interpreted as a life narrative or a testimony, then their black-and-white photos is a testament to the lives of those who are no longer alive. On the other hand, these photos, like all photos strip them of their contexts. There are no photos that represent the suffering and the horrors that they have witnessed and undergone. Interestingly, Spiegelman’s choice to place these photos in his text is significant considering the type of photos that we see, for example, in the genre of photojournalism. In a website featuring the 14 most popular photos on instagram by photojournalists, there are photos of suffering, poverty, and war. However, just as in a text, these photos convey a single frame in a moment in time and that very frame cuts out the context and its surroundings. In other words, the complexity of the situation may or may not get eliminated depending on how wide the frame is and whether or not it focuses on a single individual. In Maus, the same choices are being made by Spiegelman who must negotiate with himself and the history the images, the details, and the people he will include especially in thinking about its political, historical, and social consequences.

We struggle with abstractions such as truth and authenticity but perhaps the reality is that there is no truth nor authenticity. Perhaps there is simple just a scale of how close you can get to a form of truth but never at that ultimate Truth that everyone seeks to find in life narratives or in journalism because everything in its reporting becomes mediated.

Works Cited:

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1973. Print.

—. Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Print.

Hiscott, Rebecca. “14 Instagram Photojournalists Who Will Open Your Eyes to the World.” Mashable. N.p., 26 Dec. 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.

In my attempt to create a blog post, I turn towards the masters of blogging — daily bloggers. Among the myriad that exist on the interweb, I am particularly drawn to one — Humans of New York (HONY). This blog offers ‘“daily glimpses into the lives of strangers in New York City.”

In our first class, we were asked, what are life narratives? From one standpoint, HONY is the very definition of this term. In particular, a recent post features a woman from Odessa, Ukraine, who initially refused to pose for a photo but after a conversation with a passerby, she agreed. In the post, the passerby had told the woman that she should not refuse a photo because she must represent the women of her land. In this instance, I thought it was powerful reminder of how we must continually work towards breaking down preconceptions about different cultures. As well, I think part of the appeal of HONY is its succinctness and its capacity to evoke emotions of nostalgia or empathy or solidarity such as with the story of a woman who had been raped. In recounting the stories of strangers on the street, HONY gives voice to the ordinary (and the flawed). Ultimately, this unites people globally in a sort of universal experience.

However, as much as I enjoy reading this blog, I believe that we need to think critically about what this blog does in terms of identity and voice which are often at the core of life narratives. For example, are the individuals featured given credit for their stories? What are the implications of such stories for identity politics? In terms of identity, these posts have a Western centric audience — their posts are written in English and in order to garner likes and retweets, they must appeal to an audience with a certain set of values. A post from Jammu, India, presents a woman who claims that arranged marriage is slowly declining in India and that ‘love marriages’ are becoming more popular. While this may the truth, this story was hand-picked. The creator of this blog has the right to decide which stories get posted and the fact that this story was published is consistent with Western ideals of gender equality. For feminists of the West, this is a win and could be an indicator that their ideals are peculating across the globe. Thus, a consequence for identity politics is that identities are being brought into commonness — people are able to empathize because these stories are made relatable despite cultural traditions. In a single week, at least five posts are about fathers, mothers, sons, daughters without specific names. There was a post of when a father told of the time he was most proud of his son, a post of a son who told his mother of what he wanted to be most when he grew up. As much as these stories give voice and value to everyday life narratives, there is a filter in place. This reduces the quality and the credibility of the story being told. While no names are posted to protect the identities of these individuals, it also remove credit from them when their names are no longer attached to these stories.

HONY are life narratives — they tell one of the many stories in the lives of ordinary people. However, the remove the identity and the voice of the people who these stories belong to and to this end, I think we need to conceptualize ways to restore them while still achieving the success that HONY has had with raising awareness about the different life narratives that exist in the world.