Comm-Entary, Spring 2009

Editorial Board Beth Reny Co Editor-in-Chief Andrew Long Co Editor-in-Chief Katie Ramsay Associate Editor Mallory Sustick Fundraising Chair Jenna Heinz Co Publicity Chair Lauren Gancarz Co Publicity Chair Leah Reed Co Publicity Chair Haley Dunn Co Secretary Samantha Bell Co Secretary Jamie Blumenthal Editorial Board Member Brian McKenney Editorial Board Member Kim Rogers Editorial Board Member Lauren Sica Editorial Board Member Faculty Advisors Sheila McNamee and Melissa Deem Cover Art Leah Reed Comm-entary would like to extend many thanks to the Student Press Organization and the Student Activity Fee Committee for their funding efforts. We are also grateful to the authors who submitted manuscripts and the faculty who supports them. Finally, we would like to thank University Printing Services for their cooperation and assistance. Table of Contents Zelig: The Faculty of Mockumentary David Trefethen....................................................................................1 Marriage and Gender Roles: The Reality of the 21st Century Woman Ashley Bournival..................................................................................8 Mutual Adoption Clubs: A Social Constructionist Approach to Family Brian McKenney.................................................................................28 Hollywood’s Compliment: Hollywood and its ‘National’ Cinema Counterpart Katrina Ingrham................................................................................ 35 The Effect of E-mail on Student/Professor Relationships Anna Bruning......................................................................................42 When Even No News is News: An Analysis of the Media Coverage of the O.J. Simpson Trial and the Effects on the Media Today Beth Reny............................................................................................49 CONTRADICTORY GRAMMAR: The Influence of Production Variables on Audience Evaluation in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Brian McKenney.................................................................................57 The Future of Television Brian McKenney.................................................................................66 Representations of Jewish People in the Media Haley B. Dunn.....................................................................................76 Facebook & Other Social Networking Sites: Candy-coating Surveillance Haley B. Dunn....................................................................................86 I can see Russia from my house; Tina Fey & Political Parody Leslie Dow..........................................................................................95 Scheming on Screen: The Art of Audience Manipulation as Manifested in John Q. Jenna Heinz......................................................................................109 Buck vs. Bell and the Eugenic Sterilization Movement in Early 20th Century America Andrew Long...........................................................................116 Comm-entary 2008-2009 Zelig: The Faculty of Mockumentary By Dan Trefethen There are a number of well-crafted feature length films that have exploited the modes and tendencies belonging to documentary that have created a relatively new genre: Mockumentary. One film in particular that stands out among the genre of mockumentary is entitled Zelig. Zelig is a 1983 fictional film written and directed by Woody Allen and also features him playing the lead role, Leonard Zelig. Allen’s character is that of a human chameleon who physically and mentally adapts to the company he is with and in doing so, is considered by 1920’s American public as a phenomenon. The creation of Zelig is a clear demonstration of how the genre of mockumentary employs the long lineage of documentary modes and methods in order to construct an aesthetic to which only media experienced audiences understand. Zelig mimics the classic styles of most expository documentaries through meticulous creation an authentic illusion of its subject matter. The production of the film is stylistically based on widely held perceptions of what makes motion picture film realistic and how audiences view what they see on screen as fact or fiction. In doing so, Zelig teeters on the edge of a reflexive documentary, its mocking approach of documentary film was one of the first of the genre and is a strong representation of the validity mockumentary film presents. Documentary films, through extensive tradition and historical presence, have employed certain identifiable and expected methods of projection. They are seen as something other than fiction, as non- fiction, a resemblance to reality through which film has been able to achieve thus far. Of course, there are numerous works that have aimed at challenging those perceived pillars of the medium, and have expanded the notion of reality through film, but at large, there are certain tendencies in documentary that tend to render the viewer as seeing something that’s unpolished, a more accurate depiction of fact and history. These methods have emerged from the origins of filmmaking and have created a normative perception on viewers of certain filming techniques. Mockumentary film steps in and applies those filming techniques to create an illusion of realism much like documentary does. Gerd Bayer puts it nicely in his essay entitled Artifice and Artificiality in Mockumentaries “Within the frame work of mockumentary film making, the presence of staged artifice disavows a film’s actual artificiality. Where as the cinematic aesthetic of fiction 1 Comm-entary 2008-2009 films – through its perfected hyperrealism of imagery – clearly if subconsciously indicates that the visual representations really must be artificial, the absence of this perfection with in the documentary genre aims to indicate that reality is actually presented in its actual form.” (Bayer p.165). Zelig employs these methods in an attempt to gain authenticity in the historical realm of its subject matter. The film, excluding contemporary interviews, is shot entirely in black and white; cinematographer, Gordon Willis, used original lenses, lighting, and sound equipment from the 1920’s era to shape a genuine appearance of the historical content. On top of that, flicker-mattes were used while filming to re-create the flickering of historical films and the black and white film negatives were purposely scratched by technicians to achieve the worn and aged appearance of film footage from that time (Schwartz p.273). Zelig heavily relies on insight from intellectuals and witnesses of the phenomenon that is Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen’s character), which are shot “modernly” in color. These interviews create a stark contrast of past and present, which makes the viewer see the color film of a particular “high” quality and the black and white film of a particular “low” or “aged” quality. In Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight’s one of a kind publication Faking it: Mock-documentary and the Subversion of Factuality they stress the subconscious effect black and white film has on viewers in noting, “the use of black and white footage and stills is seen to be more authentic, and, given that so much contemporary material is manipulated, this material is assumed to be ‘original’, because manipulation is a recent phenomena associated with the development of certain digital technologies.” (Roscoe and Hight p.17). Zelig’s realism does not solely come from trick photography. Mostly relying on the expository mode of documentary, Zelig presents actual untouched stock footage of the 1920’s as much as possible. Scenes shown with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charlie Chaplin are not manipulated and are linked through an unseen narrator who directs the viewer through the film. Likewise, several scenes of jazz clubs and speakeasies, crowded Time Square parades and traffic jams are used to incorporate the non-fictional trends and attitudes of the American public at the time. These scenes play a large role in themes the film explores, and added with the consistent input by actual intellects and “experts” of that time period, like Saul Bellow and Irving Howe, create a non-fiction text with in the fictional story of the film, not unlike strategies used by early documentary filmmakers like 2 Comm-entary 2008-2009 Flaherty and Bunuel, although they reversed the technique. (Bayer p. 168). For scenes and evidence of Leonard Zelig’s existence before the media caught wind of him, the film continues on its expository path by employing the use of still photography that show, Zelig as a gangster, as a college student, and as a jazz player. These scenes are well as the aforementioned photos are done in black and white and use techniques introduced by Ken Burns that incorporate motion into a still photograph. Here, Allen is relying on the factuality of a photograph which is correlated with documentary stanza’s – here is evidence of the subject content the film speaks of, with out motion film footage of said subject, where Allen begins to question the medium of documentary as a whole, a subject to be touched on later. With the strict cannons of documentary practices followed entirely throughout Zelig, it brings to the question of audience involvement. How does the audience react to such illusionary tricks? Is it any different from watching a “serious” documentary? Bill Nichols speaks in his 1991 publication Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary that the pleasure in watching fictional films comes from “scopophilia”, a sense of identifying

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