In the first meeting for my film production class this semester, my teacher began speaking about documentaries. She posed a rhetorical question: “Do documentaries have a responsibility to be objective?” This question has really stuck with me for the past few days. Of course, many documentaries are incredibly subjective, but they are supposed to be. These documentaries are being made to tell the point of view the director wants to show the world. Can we really expect a director or writer to work on a film about a subject they are passionate about, but force them not to adopt a point of view on the topic? That doesn’t seem fair. On the other hand, many viewers of these films will not necessarily see how subjective these films are. Director Michael Moore, for example, has very biased viewpoints and may be very convincing in getting viewers to adopt his point of view. Viewers may not even consider the opposition’s side if they do not know that he is being subjective.
One film that best exemplifies the dilemma of seemingly objective films that actually aren’t is “Blackfish.” Many people who have viewed this 2013 documentary believe it to be a 100 percent objective view of how SeaWorld treats its animals. Truly, it is not quite that simple. Regardless of how you may view SeaWorld, the documentary filmmakers went into production with one goal: to convince people of how poorly SeaWorld treats its animals without showing any counterpoints. On top of that, a number of SeaWorld trainers who were interviewed said that their words in the film were twisted around or taken out of context to fit into the greater narrative of the film without accurately reflecting their viewpoints. I am not writing this to say SeaWorld is either great or terrible to their animals — I am simply saying the film is not necessarily objective in any sense.
Again — do documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be as unbiased as possible? Or should we expect them to take a viewpoint and make a film that showcases what they believe?
Let’s again use “Blackfish” as an example. If you are in the first group and believe that these films should be objective, then you should know that “Blackfish” takes liberties with the truth and is, in a sense, lying to the audience. You believe the filmmakers have a responsibility to tell the audience the truth, and the creators of “Blackfish” instead chose to use the film as a platform for their viewpoints. However, if you are in the latter group, you may agree that the aforementioned liberties “Blackfish” takes to make its point are fair, even if the audience does not necessarily know it is being given information that is not objective.
After careful thought, I believe the answer to the question of objectivity is somewhere in the middle.
I know this probably seems like a cop-out of an answer, but it’s the only sensible solution I see for such a complex question. No matter what happens, filmmakers are going to have opinions and those opinions are going to make their way into the work. And the audience has a right to hear the truth at the heart of the subject on which the documentary focuses without being misled as to what that is.
The only way to deal with both of these countering points is to accept that the opinions of the filmmakers are going to bleed into the film, but to also expect the filmmakers to create a piece that stays mostly objective. This is obviously the ideal situation, but it is very unlikely that filmmakers who want to assert their opinion are going to back down in favor of what’s best for the audience. As a counter measure against this, when you watch a documentary, just remember that there is going to be at least little bit of a bias towards the filmmaker’s perspective, and that this is not always a bad thing. After all, bias is what makes some movies worthwhile. Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” is an extremely subjective film, but almost all the people who enjoy it like the film because of its subjectivity. And maybe that’s exactly what certain subjects need. If you made a documentary about human trafficking, you would not want to look at it in a positive light. So, maybe a little bit of bias is a good thing, as long as the audience is aware that there is bias.
