Off the Charts (2003), dir. Jamie Meltzer
As you might have been able to gauge from Lacie’s excellent portrait of me, I’m a bit of a guarded person. Because of that I’ve been thinking a bit about the exploitation that, on some levels, seems inherent in a lot of documentaries. A lot of great moments in documentaries come from people letting their guards down. They share something very emotional or strange about themselves and it resonates. It's the kind of moment you have to build a relationship with someone to get, but since there is a camera, the audience can get it during the running time of the documentary. That’s not wrong or unethical; it just creates a sensitive situation that the filmmaker needs to be conscious of. What makes it OK is when the filmmakers treat the subject in a sensitive and respectful way. They have to create a relationship between the subject and the audience that enables the audience to honor that personal confession and empathize with the confessor, instead of just feeling awkward about the confession or laughing at the strangeness of it. Off the Charts does not do that.
Off the Charts does not endeavor to get much deeper then the ridiculous surface of the industry it is profiling and the individuals who play some part in it. It is a ridiculous subject. And the people and their songs are hilariously strange. I laughed and I quite enjoyed the spectacle, but I kept feeling uncomfortable about the nature of what the film was doing.
This gets you into the responsibility of the filmmaker. It is not their job to safeguard these people from themselves. The commentary confirmed that the subjects made their own decisions about what they wanted to do and how they wanted to present themselves. These people are adults and, really, it would be more disrespectful for the filmmakers to intercede on their behalf and say, “Come on. You’re making a fool of yourself.” Still, regardless of how silly these people and their passions are, chances are they take themselves and what they do seriously. They have to have humanity and a drive, but the filmmakers don’t try to explore what that might be.
Part of the problem with the film is that there are so many characters we only get to know many of them on a surface level. There are some people who barely register. There’s a man who wrote a worshipful song about Jimmy Carter, and another who wrote a song about a dancing alien – who seems very offended by the liberties taken with his lyrics. There’s never even any pretense of getting to know these people, and since there’s no personal connection the only thing we can do when confronted with their eccentricities is laugh. They are just there to add to the parade of oddities.
This light, breezy style sabotages some moments that could have had real weight. There’s a potentially great story about a guy who collects and studies the music because his depressed, drug addicted father who committed suicide was involved in the industry. That story is squeezed in the middle of the film and largely glossed over in order to get to more weirdoes. The film ends with one of the prolific artists, Gary Forney, performing some of his music live for the first time. You can’t help but cringe during the show. If the filmmakers had fostered a sense of who Forney is and what his music means to him, it would be a painful moment of a man being confronted with his own ineptitude in his chosen art form. As it is, I was left with the same thought I had been having throughout the film: “Poor dope. Still… that’s pretty funny.”
Hi Isaac, I felt similarly watching OFF THE CHARTS. I'd say that the first half of the film seemed to be mocking in the way you describe, that sort of 'look at these sad rubes who are getting exploited- isn't it hilarious?" That's the worst kind of documentary filmmaking, a la DANCING OUTLAW, which I despise. But then something happened while I watched, and that was, at least for me (maybe not for you), the documentary redeemed itself and I started to see this business as more humane, not exploitative, but instead giving people an outlet to express what was inside of them. The tone shifted for me. Unfortunately by the end, when Gary goes 'on tour' it returned to the cringe-worthy mocking, but for about fifteen minutes, I saw beyond all of it to the humanity. I'm glad you posted this, because when I chose it, I wondered if anyone would experience the same sort of conflicting reaction I had to the film. I think this is a central dilemma of documentary, a line that's all too easy to cross. It's much more difficult to make respectful films that still let you laugh with the subject (as opposed to at). That's the challenge for everyone.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, anyone else out there have a different (or similar) reaction? I'd be interested to hear what everyone else in the class experienced.
ReplyDeleteI agree with almost everything Isaac says. I found myself cringing throughout the film, and not only because I was embarrassed for the characters, but because I was appalled at how the filmmakers were treating their subjects. My journalism background tells me that maintaining a distance between the filmmaker and the subject allows for more objective reporting of the story, but the times I have ever worked on longer documentary projects, where I got to know my subjects very well, I have found it pretty impossible to remain objective. I usually end up developing a friendship and a certain level of respect for the people that I work with, and I would have a hard time making a film that just blatantly mocked them. Maybe that’s not a great way to approach documentary either, because maintaining that distance is important in order to keep your perspective on a story. But as Isaac says, it does an injustice to the story as well, making it more about laughing at these people than really understanding them. In a way, that approach to documentary defeats the whole purpose of the genre for me – I think it should be about showing people something unexpected about a subject – teaching them something worthwhile, not just entertaining them at your subject’s expense.
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