Constant Vigilance

The Truth. To recount the number of philosophical and religious methodologies for determining and defining Truth would require immense volumes, if in fact any distinct methodologies for determining Truth could be discerned. (I use “Truth” instead of truth to indicate an existential concept of an ultimate or everlasting fact, as opposed to “truth” to mean something humankind would consider to be factually accurate.) Needless to say, the amount of intellectual attention given to Truth indicates a human fascination with the subject; I believe this is because we rely on the idea there can be a foundation Truth. Of course, this is the question Descartes address in his Second Meditation: “How can we know if anything is true?”Descartes is not the only philosopher to challenge our ability to truly know anything. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” suggests that in fact we cannot know the Truth of anything in this world, because we as humans experience only the shadows or impressions of things. 

First, let us consider the concept of Truth in terms of documentary film in a broad sense. The genre of documentary seems to be an attempt to provide a truth to its audience; the goal of each film is to inform the audience of something that they were previously unaware of or at least relatively unfamiliar with. To consider this goal using Plato’s terminology from the allegory, documentary film attempts to unfetter the audience so that they might experience the truth of something. This goal has a distinct irony to it, since the medium of film is in fact only an impression of those attempting to reveal the truth. Additionally, this medium that supposedly had the purpose of sharing the truth is subject to editing tricks to manipulate the truth. The audience oftentimes forgets to temper their film watching experience when viewing a documentary as they do for other film genres. In other films, the audience is prepared to suspend reality in order to enjoy the film. Documentaries, though, because theoretically they depict some aspect of reality, require less of that suspension of reality. Audiences accept truth from documentary very differently than they accept plot-related truths in fictional narratives because of this different intention of the film. Intention does not (or should not) remove a viewer’s need to employ critical doubt when experiencing film. 

This viewer interaction with the concept of truth becomes even more confounded when documentaries (by their nature a matter of depicting “truth”) when documentaries are expressly asking questions of truth. This is, as previously suggested, the question posed by all documentaries; that there is a documentary about it at all means that there must be some misunderstanding to be corrected or new truth to be revealed. More subtle examples of this would be nature documentaries that have a more exploratory feel. However, films like The Thin Blue Line deal explicitly with questions of truth. The Thin Blue Line is the story of Randall Adams, who was wrongly convicted of murder and put on death row in Texas. Central figures to the case talk about the means by which Adams came to be accused. Interestingly, this film was made before Adams was actually released from prison; there were doubts surrounding his conviction throughout the investigation, as indicated throughout the film through interviews with the lawyers involved in the case. The justice system, which is set up such that many people are in theory able to determine truth as it relates to crimes and criminals, is fundamentally challenged. Like the entire genre of documentary film is ironic (because it claims to represent truth while by its very nature being a representation), this subject in documentary film takes this to a new level. The Thin Blue Line is using a medium that questions truth to tell a story that is meant to challenge the ability of anyone to identify the truth, however in order to do so, the story relies on reenactments and skillful editing. 

I suggested previously that the intention in documentary film in term’s of Plato’s allegory of the cave is to unchain their audience and give them a glimpse of the truth behind their impressions of reality. I think it is clear that documentaries perhaps do the opposite. Because these films seems to give a glimpse into truth, they further solidify the false conviction that there can be truth at all. Indeed, if truth is going to exist, it will not be through a medium that is by its nature only an impression of reality itself. The moral being, I suppose, that Descartes question of “How do we know if something is true?” should be with us always, but perhaps even more so when something attempts to convince us that we are in fact experiencing the Truth.