I listened to two examples of radio documentaries which fall under the historical documentary genre this week - June 16, and Mandela: An Audio History. They each reveal contrasting methods of framing documentaries which cover similar events, but are aimed for a different audience.
June 16 is a documentary which was produced in 1996 by the Ulwazi Edicational Radio Project of Johannesburg. It covers the events of the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising from the completely from the perspective of the people who were living in Soweto at the time, and those who were in Soweto on that day, and witnessed the event. Mandela: An Audio History is a radio series which focused on the struggle against apartheid, from the inception of apartheid to the birth of a democratic South Africa. I listened to the part of this series which dealt with the 1976 Soweto Student Uprising. The people who add voices to this documentary, feature the icons of the resistance struggle against apartheid and political prisoners, such as Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko and Ahmed Kathrada.
Both these documentaries are very effective to different audiences. Due to its overview nature, Mandela: An Audio History would be effective to an international audience, or one which does not have a great grasp of apartheid history, and the events which led to the Soweto Uprisings. June 16 would be more appropriate for an audience which is knowledgeable on the events which led to the Soweto Uprisings, as it provides little scope to the build up towards that day, due to its focus on the perspective of people who witnessed the uprising.
Although they arguably target different audiences, I believe that these two documentaries follow the same knowledge paradigm, an interpretivist paradigm. In Mandela: An Audio History, the interpretivist paradigm is reflected in the documentary through the different ways the various voices in the documentary viewed the news of the advent of apartheid. Their insight into their experiences of living in apartheid South Africa, and the ambient sounds used in the documentary, such as the voice of an apartheid-era South African President and Steve Biko, attempted to create an understanding into how different cultures in apartheid South Africa, interpreted apartheid. June 16 followed an interpretivist paradigm through the use of the knowledge of the people who were present at the Soweto Uprisings. It is used to describe the reality of what really happened that day. It is also used to create a context of that day, its aftermath and significance, where the calm nature of the beginning of June 16 is described by the voices in the documentary, and also its chaotic and anger-filled aftermath of the uprising. This highlights the significance of the event in changing the scope of the liberation struggle against apartheid.
While these documentaries have the same knowledge paradigm, they also have similar ways in which they have been presented, regarding the relationship between the listener and the documentary itself. Nichols (1981) comes into the equation here, with his modes of address. The modes of address identify how viewers or listeners of documentaries implicated in the documentary. In a direct address, the audience is spoken to directly by the documentary maker, while an indirect address allows people in the documentary to speak for themselves and the audience to judge for itself. In both documentaries, citizens and liberation heroes give their respective views of the Soweto Uprising, and enable the audience to create an understanding or response to the documentary.
While the documentaries share the same knowledge paradigm and mode of address, they differ in their audience. The content of Mandela: An Audio History provides a larger context, and shows itself as being one part of a sequence of events in the fight against apartheid. It also features commentary of those who were not part of, nor present in the Soweto Uprising, but who are recognized as liberation struggle icons. June 16, while containing some recognizable voices of people who are noted in the fight against apartheid, only included people who were in Soweto and witnessed the uprising. It also has no context to the day of the uprising, merely being a detail of the actual day itself. This documentary is clearly aimed at people who know a lot about the events surrounding this day and its significance.
Entry 1
A few days ago, I listened for the first time to a radio documentary called Ghetto Life 101. Produced by David Isay, this documentary saw two boys, LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, being radio diarists, where they recorded sequences of their daily lives. They reflected life in their neighbourhood and interviews with some of their family members in the documentary. This documentary was an attempt to tell the story of a black American working class neighbourhood, using people who lived in the respective neighbourhood to record interviews and their daily lives. I was particularly struck by the stereotypes that were at play in shaping the documentary. In the documentary, there was the account of a drunkard father, a teenage mother, a wise grandmother who took care of her grandchildren, and little boys who were oblivious to the struggle around them. The evidence of these stereotypes in Ghetto Life 101 initially made me question the documentary producer, Isay’s intentions with the documentary, which allowed itself to display these stereotypes.
I think that while the Ghetto Life 101 documentary was an effective exercise in getting individuals from within a community, to generate content for a documentary themselves, it allowed itself to reinforce stereotypes of citizens from that community. I use Matthew Erlich’s argument of the documentary falling into the trap of the “four informational biases in journalism” (Ehlrich, 2003: 425), to justify my point. These informational biases show the kind and focus of news produced through the media. They include news which is personalized (news looking at individuals rather than institutions); dramatized (news which focuses on dramatic personalisties and conflict); fragmented (which gives little political context and commentary to daily events); and normalized (focus on reassuring and the routine rather than critically examining troubling issues).
Isay attempts to give LeAllan Jones and Lloyd Newman, the two protagonists in the documentary, the platform and freedom to interview some of their respective family members in the documentary. Indeed, it is clear that their journey through Chicago’s Ida B Wells housing project forms the spine of the documentary. They are, in other words, mapping the community for us, as people who live there; an approach that seems inherently empowering. Erlich suggests, however, that the strong focus on these two individuals means that the documentary is not able to adequately tackle issues raised by the interviewees in the documentary. This is why the four informational biases are so clear in this documentary, as it is deeply personalised, focusing on the lives of the two protagonists and the people the two boys interviewed. The dramatized (Ehlrich, 2003: 425) element of the informational bias was shown in the kinds of interviews and the people the boys interviewed, who all could be interpreted as being classical representations of certain stereotypes, in the way they were portrayed in the documentary. The personalities in the documentary exhibited working class black American stereotypes in a dramatic manner: The father being a drinker; the sister being a partygoer who fell pregnant as a teenager; and the grandmother being a wise and deeply religious old woman.
The documentary was a good look at the lives of the two radio diarists. It contained a combination of interesting, thought-provoking and funny interviews with the respective people who were interviewed. What detracts from all of this though, are the stereotypes which have been reinforced in the documentary. The risk Isay took in making Jones and Newman the radio diarists in this documentary, will also fuel a possible negative of this exercise, in letting children generate content for such a documentary.
