Realism = Retailism?
I also wrote under Prompt #4. I tried to tie in the idea of “emotional reality,” which I think is very important, sort of the idea that you can have an emotional reaction that makes the cause seem real, even if it may not be. An example would be in Boys Don’t Cry, when Pierce keeps cutting down the rape scene, because the emotional reaction of the audience was more necessary than the fact that the scene was supposed to be longer. Also, in Watermelon Woman, how Fae was not a reality at all, but still helped Cheryl find herself as a woman and as a filmmaker. I consider these aspects of media just as important as to the factual evidence. Well… I suppose it depends on how truthful the media-maker is claiming to be. So I used this outlook, plus the idea of authorship, ethics, the gaze, spectatorship, and filmic construction to look at the differences between narrative films ‘based on true stories’, mockumentaries, documentaries, and reality TV. I think I should have started a lot earlier.