Chapter 15: Family Film: Ethical Implications for Consent

"Ethics in Documentary Film" YouTube Video

"Official Trailer -- Best Boy (1979), Best Man (1997)" YouTube Video

     This article written by John Stuart Katz presents many ethical issues regarding documentaries surrounding family life. While having a close, familial relationship with the filmed subjects, a filmmaker like Ira Wohl of Best Boy (1979) and Best Man (1997) can have more creative leeway . But when can one's creative leeway go to far and step over the fine lines of ethics? Well, Katz evaluates how Wohl's 'familial autobiographical' films best appeals to his audience as the public and to himself as a filmmaker and individual by clearly providing his intentions for sending his mentally-ill cousin, Philly to a group home. But what Wohl failed to protect were the interests of his filmed subjects. Because his filmed subjects were family relatives who easily gave him the creative leeway to make these films, he overlooked as to how his production and wide distribution of these films can have dramatic effects on the subjects so that they do not have full control over what is happening. He should have been more "aware of the potential impacts that [his] suggestions and [his] filming can have on [his family], including the effect of making a family's private life public" (341). Wohl also failed to acknowledge his cousin's reactions to his suggestions like going to the cementary and choosing a tie, so that his cousin remains to not have much agency over what is happening to him. Consequently, the director presents himself as the hero, while making his cousin the victim, which drives the films' narrative and keeps the audiences' attention. After reading this article and watching the videos above, I believe documentary filmmakers like Wohl have the good intention of educating the masses about various topics, i.e. mental illnesses, Jewish culture, etc. But evidently, those intentions can eventually become overbearing and manipulative, such that the subjects' normal behavior gets altered for the sake of entertainment. So again, there arise the big implication of whether a film, specifically a documentary that is meant to record 'so-called realistic' events, can still educate the public through entertainment.

85 C: Final Project Proposal, Sections A3 & A4, TA Di Fede

Topic(s): The Relationship Between Racism and the News Media: The Depiction of African-Americans on Online News Websites

Format:  I like to use a Prezi, a cloud based presentation software, for it visually depicts concepts with images and editing so that the viewer has some interaction to material. But if turns out my research is too complex to present on a simple Prezi, I will write an academic paper.

Thesis question(s): To what extent, does the racist, inaccurate images of African-Americans changed, through the coming of online news media from newspapers?

Sources: http://das.sagepub.com/content/11/1/7.short, http://www.laprogressive.com/race-racism-online, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/CCT510/Sources/Anderson-extract.html, http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/7/1085.abstract, http://das.sagepub.com/content/11/1/7.full.pdf+html

Two sources on history and how they relate:

1. “Online News Consumption Research: An Assessment of Past Work and an Agenda for the Future” by Eugenia Mitchelstein & Pablo J. Boczkowski (http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/7/1085.abstract)            

2. “Community or Colony: The Case of Online Newspapers and the Web” by Patricia Riley, Colleen M. Keough, Thora Christiansen, Ofer Meilich, & Jillian Pierson (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1998.tb00086.x/full)

How They Relate: Both sources analyze how the news media both online and printed help establish images of community, where viewers identify themselves to certain images that it depicts. By watching and accepting these images, viewers place themselves in this imagined community. 

Two sources on theory and how they relate:

1.  “Race, Racism and Online News & Sports: What the Research Tells Us” by Jessie Daniels (http://www.laprogressive.com/race-racism-online/)

2. Racism and the Press by Teun Van Dijky

How They Relate: Both sources theorize that certain images depicted by online news media are more superior than others based on race. Specifically, civilized images of white Americans are widely accepted as normal individuals that best define America as a whole, while uncivilized images of African-Americans and other minorities are widely perceived as the 'Other' or non-Americans who practice crime.

Ch. 8: 'Robin Hood' in the Digital Media, ie. Internet & Music

 "Where Do Artists Draw the Line with Copyright Law?" YouTube Video

 

                       "Do Copyright Laws Stifle Creativity?- Lawrence Lessig" YouTube Video

According to Stephen E. Weil who is the author of the article, Fair Use and the Visual Arts: Please Leave Some Room for Robin Hood, there should exist within the copyright laws, a 'Robin Hood' that "within limits,...permits the artist---not infrequently envisioned as a sort of rogue---to poach on the content-rich so long as excessive harm is not done and so long as something within a value beyond that of the original is thereby made available to everybody else" (181). In other words, he believes that there should be a fair use of copying and rennovating original texts to some degree, for it enables individuals to participate in the creative realm. But as seen in the videos above, especially in the second video, this idea of fair use in digital media has its implications such that the copyright laws cannot always draw a clear line on what is and what is not original. When you think about it, 7/10 of internet content especially on YouTube references and recreates past original texts/music/videos/events to entertain or educate current viewers. So it is rational and lawfully practical for a mother, who uses someone else's song in a private video of her son dancing, be charged with copyright infringement, when her intentions was not to bootleg music but to entertain a grandmother? In the end, I walked away from this article with the conclusion that the copyright laws are not always black and white depending on the specific situation and that they strongly influence the 'democratic', creative sphere of what-we-call, the internet.

Ch.4 Instant Transmission: Covering Columbine's Victims and Villians

                                         "Columbine Video Footage" YouTube Video

  Honestly, me writing a response to Marguerite Moritz's article is hard for me. This chapter discusses how the media that covered the 1999 Columbine high school shooting had many ethical implications due to its widely-accessible technologies and 'shock-level' content. For example, both the local and even national stations relied on weak sources like telephone calls to get 'specific' details of the tragic event. But when you think about it, if students supposedly from the actual school are first calling the newrooms and not the police and hospital, you would think this would be illogical and quite ridiculous. The fact the newsrooms even considered the calls to be reliable sources shows me how cell phone technology is in fact an easily accessible technology where anyone can use for any purpose. Regardless, the newstations violated the "ethics policies forumlated by the Radio-Television News Directors Asssociation for covering hostage situations" by hastily broadcasting and not checking up on some of their sources which turn out to be hoax calls (73). But what unsettles me the most when reading this article and even watching YouTube videos like the one above, is how the media took control of the situation by showing graphic, highly shocking footage afterwards. Yes, the murderers,  Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took their lives and the lives of 12 students and 1 teacher. But the media failed to present what other factors could have led them to commit such an act of hate and violence. The new coverage instead depicted the teenagers to be animals and not human beings which in turn justified its unethical act of glorifying the victims' fear for the sake of entertainment. No, I am not downplaying how malice and horrific Harris's and Klebold's crime was...but then again they too were people. By shooting the reactions of the victims and non-victims with and without their consent and by offering slightly simplified versions of the actual event, the media to some degree take the place of the Columbine shooters. So like the actual shooters, the media have its faults.

Ch.3 "New Norms & Emotion": Pictures of Pain

"Emmett Till- Part 2,Civil Right Movement History Documentary" Video

 

            In this chapter from Image & Ethics in the Digital Age, Jessica M. Fishman argues how the news ethically depict corpses and death for the public eye. By investigating a variety of published and non-published photographs featuring the funeral of one of the murdered students in the Colombine High School shooting, Fisherman highlights the various ways the news can cover death for non-entertainment purposes. For example, she mentions how each picture is rated based upon its "shock-level" or the degree to which it shocks the viewer with the harsh realities of mortality, through the spacing of other objects in the frame and the close-up angle/placement of the actual corpse. But when you think about it, these factors in rating a picture of a corpse as ethical and non-ethical can be quite subjective, depending on the perspective of the person rating the photo. And yes, this idea of censoring images of death and cruelty on the news is still necessary, since content can in some way "incite a phantasym take on meaning, and excercise an effect" (67). So there rises the issues of what defines the public interest and what images can or cannot directly influence the viewer psychologically and politically?

           But I like to add that there are some implications in only exhibiting photos that best suit this so-called public interest. The video above features some disturbing photos of Emmett Till's tragic death in 1954 Mississippi. A photo that stuck out the most to me and had the highest 'shock-level' was the clear, close-up of Till's corpse in his casket. Here, his face is highly unidentifiable from all the bumps and bruises, which in turn makes him to forever be remembered as a victim of hate violence and racism. As mentioned in FMS 85B, Till's mother had an open casket for his funeral so that the media can widely publicize and shred light on the dark reality of racism in the South. Consequently, Emmett Till's murder encouraged many Americans to stand up against hate crime for the sake of African-American Civil Rights. So unlike now, the nature of death and human cruelty back then was a hot topic widely broadcasted for the sake of educating the public about 'taboo' social/racial relations so that all can have some idea of what's happening. So how might this tragic photo of Emmett Till's corpse be any different from photos of commentary media? And does censorship transforms the media to be a non-democratic sphere where certain info/images is more valued than others?

       

 



Ch.16 "Shaping the 'Me' in MySpace": Social Network Sites Also Lacking Authenticity?

"Dos and Don'ts When Using Social Networks" Video

"Web 2.0 Summit: Self Expression through Social Media- Chris Poole" Video

As stated previously, “the ‘rules’ of what counts as a digital story are often clearly defined” and “certain forms and content are clearly encouraged” (287), since each digital story contains the same voice, plot, and montage. This standardization in digital storytelling might then prevent its author to fully express themselves, thus lacking some authenticity and realism. But when comparing digital stories to social network sites (SNS), it appears otherwise. In this article, David Brake, a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Communications at the University of Bedfordshire, evaluates whether SNS like MySpace prevents the self-expression its users through its unauthentic programming. And I agree with him after reflecting how I use SNS like Facebook and YouTube to not define who I am as a person but to connect to the other people who share the same music, games, and movies interests as me. By SNS’s constant display of mainstream movies, music, restaurants, and other consumerist goods that generally define popular culture, users are limited as to what things they like and don’t like. Likewise, a user is encouraged to “‘commoditize’ one’s self” to the degree of defining his or her personal attributes to material things (295). As seen in the second video above, there rises the issue of SNS being a consumerist space and not a democratic space, through its overly simplistic and standardized programming of giving its user only one page to describe who they are.  Users thus connect to other users not for the basis of understanding one another’s identities but for the basis of consuming and advertising products. Users generally make up consumers and not individuals. This is also clearly seen in the first video which reveals the constant advertising on social networks while ironically advertising its sponsor, Mc Afee. So SNS appears to have less authenticity than digital stories, since they are standardized spaces for the communication between consumers, not between human beings.

 

Ch.6 "Mediatized Lives": The Question of Whether Digital Storytelling is Authentic?

                           

The Seven Elements of Digital Storytelling.

Pain - a digital story by Anh Vuong

Honestly, I have mix feelings while reading Knut Lundby’s Digital Storytelling.  Chapter 6“Mediatized Lives: Autobiography & Assumed Authenticity in Digital Storytelling” rises the issue of whether this new social media, digital storytelling truly “represents the personality and identity of its [human] creator” while seeking to make its thematic messages appeal to many viewers (Lundby 106). As seen in the given video links, the style of digital storytelling is quite standardized, for all include dialogue, non-diegetic music, and transitioning photos. So most digital stories seem to follow the same format in narrative, editing, and sound to better grasp the viewer’s attention. Following this logic, there is the possibility of the creator’s life story being glamorized and altered for entertainment purposes. Hence, digital stories on YouTube that do not have catchy narratives, soundtracks, and images or good sound and image quality would most likely have fewer viewers. And this would make the creator’s life story less comprehensible and shared to other individuals who might have undergone similar life situations. 

However, I somewhat view this question of whether digital storytelling is authentic storytelling, not quite relevant because there are many other forms of expansive media like feature-length films, art, and written autobiographies whose details can be tweaked for entertainment purposes. For example, there is Sean Penn’s film, Into the Wild (2007) that includes various flashbacks and music scores to present the life, Christopher McCandless as adventurous and spiritual. Likewise, the second digital story above uses music scores and images of concrete sidewalks to further tell the depressing story of an Asian-American girl and her father. But sure, one is uses more technical the other, but in either case, the presentation of the narrative is influenced by various film techniques (sound, editing, mise-en-scene, cinematography) to better appeal to the audience’s emotions. So I don’t really know where the authors, Lundby and Hertzberg was going with this idea because when you think about it, most stories founded in media is exaggerated and altered to some degree to go beyond reality.