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Discuss Bruzzi’s notion of the ‘performative documentary’, with detailed

reference to two documentaries.

The aim of this essay is to address the notion of the performative documentary mode

as ‘a mode which emphasizes – and indeed constructs a film around – the often

hidden aspect of performance, whether on the part of the documentary subjects or the

filmmakers’ (Bruzzi, 2000: 153). Using Bruzzi’s article on the performative

documentary, it will firstly give a brief explanation of the mode itself, how it is

constructed and why – according to Bruzzi – it is an important part of the

documentary canon. The essay will explore in detail the films Aileen: Life and Death

of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003) and Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew

Jarecki, 2003) in order to demonstrate the various ways in which the performative

documentary is constructed. Using Bruzzi’s article as a framework, the analysis of

these two documentary films will attempt to provide an understanding of the mode,

leading to the conclusion that, as Bruzzi notes, the performative documentary holds an

important place in the history of documentary film because it acknowledges the

intermediary function of the camera and crew as well as the subjective, inescapably

biased nature of the medium (Bruzzi, 2000: 180).

In psychology, the term ‘reactivity’ refers to the common phenomenon that arises

when an individual (or subject) adjusts their behaviour as a result of the knowledge

that they are being observed. The importance and effect of reactivity is often taken

into account during the analysis of any psychological study where it may be present.

In short, it is acknowledged that by observing something, one undoubtedly changes it.

In terms of the still image, Pierre Bourdieu noted a host of effects the camera has

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upon its subjects as they play out their archetypal roles (Bourdieu, 2007: 73-98). It

seems conceivable that simply the presence of a camera documenting an event will

alter the event itself. One of the adjustments in behaviour in the presence of a still

camera that could be said to appear is the pose. In the presence of a constantly

observing, constantly recording camera, a continuous version of the pose could be

referred to as the performance.

Earlier forms of documentary film, such as cinéma vérité or direct cinema, held the

concept of a single, objective truth as an ideal to be reached. In order to achieve this,

these forms of cinema would attempt to collapse the boundary between subject and

representation (Bruzzi, 2000: 68). In contrast, the performative documentary is

partially defined by a direct reaction or opposition to these earlier aims of

documentary. By the use of narrative and filmic techniques, performance of the

filmmaker (as in the films of Nick Broomfield) or subjects and talking head

interviews (as in Capturing the Friedmans) it highlights the constructed nature of the

documentary by revealing the presence of the camera and its intrusion, marking a

distinction between the unadulterated reality of the event or subject matter and the

‘reality’ of the documentary itself.

The performative documentary can be roughly broken down into two categories.

Firstly, there is the documentary that focuses on the intrusive nature of the filmmaker

and the process of making the documentary itself. Secondly, there is the documentary

that focuses on the performance of the subjects it chooses to represent. Although there

is often a certain amount of overlap between these two approaches (Bruzzi, 2000:

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154) – no less in the two focus films of this essay - it is Broomfield’s Aileen: Life and

Death of a Serial Killer that perhaps best demonstrates the first category.

Firstly, it is important to note that Broomfield’s Life and Death was marketed

alongside the fiction film Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003), a biography of Aileen

Wuornos. There is a point to be made here regarding the relationship between reality

and fiction; the cross-marketing of these films seems to have influenced the way

audiences see Aileen Wuornos. Critics often considered the films as closely related or

reviewed them alongside each other (Doherty, 2004); Monster was the fictionalised,

dramatised companion to the truth of Life and Death, a reality that many deemed to be

far more engaging than fiction (Horeck, 2007: 142). The close relationship between

the marketing of drama and documentary seems to reflect the performance of Aileen

herself, who is often clearly shown to be ‘acting up’ for the cameras, as well as the

star director Broomfield, whose films are often noted for their acknowledgement of

subjectivity.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer follows the story of Nick Broomfield as he

returns to speak with Aileen shortly before her execution. As his first film about

Aileen (Broomfield, 1992) argued that she had been exploited by almost everyone

around her, Broomfield returns over a decade later to argue that the death penalty,

when applied to the criminally insane, is an injustice.

Broomfield’s films focus on the documentary form itself and how it is constructed.

They are often ‘built around the torturous chase after elusive subjects and the

collapsed interview that sometimes fails to materialise’ (Bruzzi, 2000: 171). As a

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result of this, Broomfield himself often takes centre stage. The opening of Life and

Death reflects this, as we are shown a point of view shot of from behind the

windscreen of a car; Broomfield’s – and our – new journey has begun. The film’s

narrative is structured accordingly; there are no observational sequences in which we

are invited to simply watch the events unfolding onscreen and the story begins and

ends when Broomfield himself deems it complete. Every scene that takes place is

mediated by either a deadpan voiceover explaining the situation or by Broomfield

himself stepping in front of the camera, physically leading us from one point to

another.

In a sense, the success of Broomfield’s films and his onscreen presence signifies a

conscious awareness of the filmmaking process and an end to the idealised truth

documentaries try to capture (Bruzzi, 2000: 164) If one of the chief aims of the

performative mode is to create awareness of the documentary process, Broomfield

provides ample examples of this in Life and Death. One of the most notable instances

of this is the scene in which he is called to testify in court regarding the authenticity of

his previous documentary on Aileen some 11 years before. Here, several levels of

reality seem to come to a confusing fore. Firstly, there are the three levels of reality

which can be found in all forms of documentary: the putative (the unmediated reality

which seems to exist only as an awareness and only in the sense that it is required to

in order for other levels to follow), the profilmic (the mediated reality created by the

presence of Broomfield and his crew) and the screened. In addition to this, the reality

of his previous documentary exists, with its own putative and profilmic levels, all of

which are being addressed during the filming of another documentary. When

questioned as to the authenticity of this reality (specifically regarding a car journey in

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which the t-shirt of a character changes between shots) Broomfield replies ‘I don’t

know about the pasting, but you certainly cut’. He goes on to defend the truth claims

of his previous documentary in his trademark naïve manner, suggesting that he

doesn’t recall the specifics, but if he were driving a car for a long period of time, he

too would probably change his shirt. This scene appears to have little relevance to

Broomfield’s argument regarding the injustices of the death penalty, but it does

question – as many of his films do – the reality in front of the camera, highlighting the

fact that Broomfield’s films exist as little more than one modified perspective of an

event. By filming this scene and including it in the documentary, it seems that

Broomfield the filmmaker is emphasising the ironic nature of his films being

considered worthy of standing as evidence in court, thus highlighting the notion that a

documentary is a subjective mediation – or form - of reality. The argument could be

made that documentary has the power to create social or political change (Calhoun,

2003), but in order to do so, its limitations must be acknowledged. It is these

limitations that the performative mode – and in particular the films of Broomfield –

seem to emphasize.

Another aspect of Broomfield’s filming that could be deemed performative is the

tension between the realities of the filmmaker/auteur Nick Broomfield and the subject

‘Nick Broomfield’ that appears as a character in the documentary with his trademark

boom microphone and white shirt. (Bruzzi, 2000: 172). For example, Broomfield’s

voiceover is notoriously absent of enthusiasm or emotion – an effect which seems to

highlight the definite split between an omniscient filmmaker and an insistently

playful, inquisitive character. If documentary is to enter a contract between filmmaker

and spectator – a bond of trust (Beattie, 2004: 11) – then it seems that, by using

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somewhat discordant techniques of voiceover, director versus character and

acknowledgement of various levels of reality in play, Broomfield the filmmaker is

laying his cards down on the table.

There is one final aspect of performance to be discussed in Life and Death, which is

that of Aileen Wuornos herself. The main points of this category will be addressed

further in Capturing the Friedmans, but as previously stated, there is often some

degree of overlap between these two types of the performative mode.

The performance of Aileen herself is highlighted throughout the film; there are

several scenes in which we see her preparing for the camera by arranging her hair or

taking a moment to physically compose herself. Often, it appears as though she is

reciting previously written lines that she has prepared before the interview or

conversation takes place. In one particular scene (a clip of which is used for the

trailer) she is seen reacting to Broomfield’s question regarding how her life would

have turned out had she not needed to leave home and sleep in cars. Her monologue

appears to be a recital, most obviously when she begins to reel off a list of career

paths that would have been available to her, slipping up and asking ‘did I say

archaeology?’ It seems no coincidence that this scene uses an extreme close-up on

Aileen’s face to the point where it appears monstrous, detached and worn; the

combination of Aileen’s own willingness to perform, coupled with the penchant of

Broomfield’s camera for subjectivity creates ‘Aileen Wuornos’, the criminally insane

serial killer who evokes both revulsion and sympathy from the spectator. Her

monstrous face is the telltale sign of her trauma (Horeck, 2007: 144) and her words

poorly hide an ulterior motive that helps support Broomfield’s argument.

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The performance of Aileen in Life and Death is crucial to this argument but relies on

a single scene of a more putative nature in which Churchill (Broomfield’s co-author

for the film) continues to record as Aileen believes the camera to be turned off. Here,

she offers a reason for her performance and, arguably, a more truthful insight into her

beliefs; the conspiracies that she has constructed, along with her attempt to hide them,

show us another disturbing side of Aileen that supports Broomfield’s claim.

Interestingly, it is this scene in which the filmmaker maintains character and the

subject is seen in a more candid light which seems to stress both the importance of the

performance (without which we may simply see Aileen as insincere and lashing out)

and the notion that truth can often be, even without the intermediary of the camera,

subjective or elusive.

It is this subjective or elusive nature of truth that is found in Capturing the Friedmans

(Jarecki, 2003). In contrast to Life and Death, Jarecki’s film focuses much more on

the performance of the subjects (often overtly), with only occasional direct

interference from the director himself. The nature of the film itself seems to reflect the

nature of the performative mode and the original intentions of Jarecki in this case

seem irrelevant; the focus is on the finished piece, a documentary that emphasises the

notion that a definitive, single truth is either rare or misleading (Hammond, 2003:

A6).

Capturing the Friedmans is a combination of found footage (provided by the son,

David Friedman), talking head interviews, as well as narrative and editing techniques

including reconstructions that attempt to present a story to the audience which relies

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heavily on their own interpretation of the supposed facts. Cut together, the film tells

the story of the Friedman family, the victims and the authorities involved after father

and son, Arnold and Jesse, were arrested and charged for the molesting of children

during computer classes held at the Friedman’s home.

The most prevalent element of the performative mode in this film is the performance

of the subjects themselves, to the extent that one critic stated ‘the Friedman family’s

near pornographic obsession with home video suggests an onanistic existence in

which the boundaries between performance and real life have simply ceased to exist’

(Kermode, 2004). One of the most notable examples of this appears later in the film;

as the family begin arguing at the dinner table, the video camera continues to record,

apparently having been given a seat of its own. Here, the presence of the camera has

become so integral to the family that it is accepted into their daily rituals. The

eccentric nature of Jesse as a young adult and of Arnold as his father seems to blur the

line between documentary subject and fictional character; it becomes difficult for us

to imagine how they would act off-screen.

Jarecki often emphasises the performative nature of these characters through a host of

filmic techniques which thread the spectator into a narrative that seems to be driven

by its desire for subjectivity. For example, toward the beginning of the film, we see a

montage of establishing shots which show us a quiet suburban street cross fading into

an old video journal of David Friedman in his bedroom. The effect of these

establishing shots seems to emphasise the constructed nature of the documentary itself

by being planted directly in between David as an adult interviewee and participant of

the documentary and David as a member of the Friedman family during their crisis.

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For one of the few times in the entire film, Jarecki himself becomes an active

participant in the interview by questioning David about his family and his past. This

sequence appears crucial to the performative aspect of the film because it weaves both

categories of the mode together. Firstly, Jarecki is established here, simply by this

brief interjection during the interview, as the author of the perspective that the film is

constructed around. The sequence also sets up David as a crucial character in this

story by use of the montage that establishes a time and place that is the focus of the

documentary. By appearing in his video journals shortly after he has referenced a time

that he ‘doesn’t want to talk about’, David Friedman has become a main focus of the

documentary and the audience creates the narrative link between these three short

sequences.

David’s video journals provide further fuel for a narrative element to the

documentary; his plea (‘if you’re not me then you really shouldn’t be watching this’)

that addresses privacy and the spectator establishes a curiosity in the audience that

later branches out to the ensemble of interviews which refuse to provide any hard

evidence at all and are often edited to appear contradictory. For example, several shots

or scenes that Jarecki deems key information (such as the sexuality of Arnold’s

brother or the remarriage of Elaine to another man) are often kept back until the

audience feels relatively comfortable with a certain position. Though this thematic

ambiguity may appear frustrating and reflect Jarecki’s inability to maintain an

argument or deal with the complexities of the material (Arthur, 2003) it does appear to

highlight Bruzzi’s notion of documentary as ‘dialectical and open to reinterpretation’

(Bruzzi, 2000: 180).

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Unlike Broomfield, Jarecki does not appear as a character in his film, though his

presence is openly felt. As mediator, Jarecki includes a variety of filmic elements

including the establishing of a white, middle-class suburbia through the use of

metonymical shots of brilliant white picket fences and sprinklers in the garden. His

inclusion of talking heads and interviews with the family and investigation teams, as

well as non-diagetic music during the more distressing or emotive scenes and a brief,

abstract reconstruction seem to emphasise the lack of objectivity available in the film.

As everything contradicts the point that preceded it, effectively leaving the audience

to decide, Capturing the Friedmans seems to play as a courtroom melodrama without

entering the courtroom.

Like many true crime documentaries, Jarecki’s found footage, as well as the

interviews and archival footage, become part of the pool of vehicles for confession

that draw upon the iconography of fiction in order to dramatise the factual (Biressi,

2004: 412). Whether or not the documentary itself can be deemed entirely

performative, the Friedman family – and perhaps our reaction to them - seem to

demonstrate the idea that the intrusion of a camera inevitably alters the reality that

existed before it. In not presenting itself as anything other than subjective, Captuing

the Friedmans highlights one of the most important previously mentioned ideas of

Bruzzi, that, in documentary, ‘a pursuit towards unadulterated actuality is futile’

(Bruzzi, 2000: 68).

Ultimately, it seems that both the films of Broomfield and Jarecki discussed contain

elements that, together, provide an understanding of the performative documentary

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mode. Bruzzi often stresses the importance of acknowledging the bias of the film

medium and remembering that it is only a construction of reality (Bruzzi, 2000: 180).

If the performative documentary is built around the hidden aspect of performance then

in the work of Broomfield, this is demonstrated through the multiple levels of reality

that the character and filmmaker of Nick Broomfield bring into focus. In the case of

Jarecki, it is the performance of the subjects themselves that make us ever more aware

of the blurred line between reality and fiction.

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Bibliography

Arthur, Paul (2003) ‘True Confessions, Sort of: Capturing the Friedmans and the

Dilemma of Theatrical Documentary’ in Cineaste 28, 4 pp. 4-7

Beattie, Keith (2004) ‘’’Believe Me, I’m of the World”: Documentary

Representation’ in Documentary Screens: Nonfiction Film and Television

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Biressi, Anita (2004) ‘Inside/out: private trauma and public knowledge in true crime

documentary’ in Screen 45: 4 Winter

Bourdieu, Pierre (2007) Photography: A Middle-brow Art California: Stanford

University Press

Bruzzi, Stella (2000) ‘The performative documentary: Barker, Dineen, Broomfield’

and ‘The legacy of direct cinema’ in New Documentary: A Critical Introduction

London/New York: Routledge London/New York: Routledge

Calhoun, Dave (2003) ‘Camera, Lights, Justice’ in The Times London: 6. Academic

OneFile. Gale. Anglia Ruskin University. 30 Oct. 2008

Doherty, Thomas (2004) ‘Aileen Wuornos Superstar’

in Cineaste 29.3: 3(3). Academic OneFile. Gale. Anglia Ruskin University. 30 Oct.

2008

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Hammond, Pete (2003) ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ in Daily

Variety 281.49: A6(1). Academic OneFile. Gale. Anglia Ruskin University. 30 Oct.

2008

Horeck, Tanya (2007) ‘From documentary to drama: capturing Aileen Wuornos’ in

Screen 48:2 pp. 141-159

Kermode, Mark (2004) ‘Film: video nasty; A documentary of a family so

dysfunctional you wouldn't believe it if it weren't true’ in New Statesman

133.4683: 45(1). Academic OneFile. Gale. Anglia Ruskin University. 30 Oct. 2008

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Filmography

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer Nick Broomfield (2003) UK/USA

Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer Nick Broomfield (1992) UK

Capturing the Friedmans Andrew Jarecki (2003) USA

Monster Patty Jenkins (2003) USA

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