Arresting Narratives: True Crime mock/documentary and the performance of authenticity

Lex Griffiths

Research Master Thesis Department of Media Studies Universiteit Van Amsterdam Completed 06/07/18

Supervisor: Toni Pape Second Reader: Mark Stewart Griffiths (11312513)

Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1

1. Documentary: An Authentic Construction and the Puzzle of ‘Truth’…………………………………….4 1.1. True Crime – Sensationalism and Investigation……………………………………………………………….……4 1.2. Authenticity – How Documentary Depicts Reality………………………………………………………………..5 1.3. ‘Authorial Voice’ as a Rhetorical Strategy……………………………………………………………………………..6 1.4. Modes of Representation – How Documentary Frames the Authentic………………………………...7 1.5. Modes of Representation and True Crime…………………………………………………………………………...9 1.6. Narrative Patterns and Authentic Reality……………………………………………………………………………..10 1.7. Audiovisual Strategies Towards Constructing Authenticity…………………………………………………..12 1.8. Key Points…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...15

2. Case Study – Making a Murderer……………………………………………………………………………………….16 2.1. Aesthetic Style and Mode of Representation……………………………………………………………………...17 2.2. Authorial Voice – and Audience………………………………………………………………………………………….19 2.3. Making a Murderer and Criminal Narrative………………………………………………………………………...23 2.4. Media ‘Complicity’ - Making a Murderer and News Media………………………………………………...25 2.5. Closing Thoughts………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..28

3. Critical Strategies of Mockumentary………………………………………………………………………………….29 3.1. Defining Mockumentary…………………………………………………………………………………………………….29 3.2.Further Definition – Degrees of Mockumentary………………………………………………………………….30 3.3. Mockumentary and Authenticity……………………………………………………………………………………….32 3.4. Authorial Voice in Mockumentary……………………………………………………………………………………..35 3.5. Revisiting Modes of Representation – Modes as Critique…………………………………………………..36 3.6. Narrators in Mockumentary – Straight Man to Unreliable………………………………………………….38 3.7. Reframing Documentary’s Tools…………………………………………………………………………………………40 3.8. Key Points, American Vandal……………………………………………………………………………………………..41

4. Case Study – American Vandal………………………………………………………………………………………….43 4.1. Series Overview – Seriousness and Subversion………………………………………………………………….43 4.2. American Vandal and Authentic Representation………………………………………………………..……..46 4.3. Tautological Investigation……………………………………………………………………………………………...….47 4.4. Critical Shift – From Implicit to Explicit Critique in American Vandal……………………………..….49 4.5. Interviewed Subjects and Authority………………………………………………………………………………….52 4.6. “It didn’t prove anything, it had nothing to do with Dylan”…………………………………………..….55

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………56 References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………59

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Introduction Since the release of crime podcast Serial (2014) and HBO series The Jinx (2015) there has been an increasing prevalence of True Crime documentary in the cultural mainstream. As it has increased in popularity, there has recently also been an emergence of True Crime mockumentary and other satirical forms of media targeting these series. Some comment could certainly be made on why this development has happened now – for example how the move to a “quality television” (Alvey, 2004) format has impacted the popularity and in turn the critique of True Crime as a sub-genre. Certainly True Crime has roots in more sensationalist low-culture media (Biressi, 44) and the transition to a more culturally accepted media could lead to backlash, or a critical reconsideration of the tropes of the sub-genre. However, what I am primarily interested in is how this emergence and response is an instructive overview of the mechanism of documentary and mockumentary; how one emerges to be changed by the other. The forms have a complex structure; mockumentary exists purely based in the aesthetics of documentary, but is revealing of flaws within documentary that are not always typically reflected well by documentaries themselves. This recent transformation in True Crime means that both can be usefully examined as they emerge in a contemporary context. In this thesis I intend to examine recent examples of True Crime series from both documentary and mockumentary. I am primarily interested in how the formats intersect in relation to authenticity, the structures through which they present a convincing representation of reality (Trilling, 93). This is a primary concern of documentary, the need to present truth is the essence of the form. As such the success of that authentic representation is of great interest, and a useful place to examine the interaction with mockumentary. Furthermore in a social moment increasingly moving towards “post- truth” (Keyes, 2004) it is useful to consider those forms of media and art that we consider to have some unique mandate to the truth and to authentic representation, and how that mandate is expressed. Part of the argument of this thesis is that authenticity beyond being a construct of representation, is also heavily aestheticised – as the documentary form has a mandate to the truth, so must its techniques come to possess a culturally understood quality of truthfulness. In adopting this

1 Griffiths (11312513) aesthetic, mockumentary can expose the artifice of the style and question the associations of authenticity that these styles have. True Crime has been selected as a sub-genre in part due to the implications of the name – as a sub-genre it is incredibly interested in confirming for the audience that its content is true, and as such it has a particular focus on the aesthetic of authenticity. As mentioned above it is also useful as a gauge on the interaction between documentary and mockumentary due to its recent cultural relevance and subsequent mocking. As such a case study has been selected for both documentary and mockumentary, to analyse how authenticity is constructed, and how mockumentary responds to documentary. The case studies have been selected for their responsiveness to one another – the mockumentary series is directly inspired by the documentary – and for their interest in the nature of authenticity and their methods of authentic depiction. This interaction will be assessed largely through study into mockumentary by researchers Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight – they have provided perhaps the most comprehensive study into mockumentary as a form to date and provide many useful tools through which to assess mockumentary as a response to documentary. Their work on taxonomising mockumentary is a useful position from which to start any analysis and subsequently much of their understanding of the functioning of mockumentary forms the basis for a theoretical understanding of the genre. I have also chosen to include documentary theory as it pertains to the construction of authenticity to better show the specific interaction between the two forms. In addition to examining the construction itself, analysis has been performed on the way authenticity is use within the case studies, what it contributes to the documentary and how its construction affects arguments made therein. As authenticity functions as an aesthetic choice, it is useful to see what purpose this aesthetic serves beyond a convincing representation of reality. This study begins with a breakdown of the theoretical framework of documentary studies that is being used, as well as some insight into specific theoretical elements of True Crime documentary that have relevance to authenticity. After this theory chapter there is an in-depth case study of the series Making a Murderer (2016), with an interest in how it uses authenticity to frame a persuasive argument. This structure then follows on with mockumentary; beginning with a theoretical breakdown

2 Griffiths (11312513) before moving into the second case study; the series American Vandal (2017). The final case study will look at how the various elements of authentic representation are responded to in mockumentary, and what critique it presents of the current True Crime zeitgeist.

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Chapter 1: Documentary – An Authentic Construction and the Puzzle of ‘Truth’ A primary interest of this thesis are the specific ways in which authenticity affects documentary representation. The authentic takes on an extra layer of significance in the case of the True Crime documentary sub-genre – as the name suggests, the specific ‘truthfulness’ of the presented subject is a primary interest and repeated aesthetic motif. To begin I will provide an overview of the development of True Crime, before exploring the facets of documentary that work towards producing authenticity.

1.1. True Crime - Sensationalism and Investigation True Crime is a sub-genre of documentary, focused on the criminal procedure. It has emerged from a tradition of public fascination in particularly gruesome crimes that have been committed. Anita Biressi traces a “constellation of ‘beginnings’” (44) in her exploration of the literary form of the genre. While much of the tropes of True Crime documentary can be found in the literary form Biressi describes, the documentary movement also has roots in a “tradition of crime cinema” Matthew Sorrento outlines, drawing on noir cinema and other criminal narratives (245). Sorrento does discuss an adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966), which Biressi considers an “American landmark of True Crime”, suggesting some narrative link between the literary and filmed movements. Her history is comprehensive, drawing tangible links between contemporary True Crime and 17th century broadsheets and news pamphlets (45). The subgenre often involves tracing police investigations into serial killers, or on occasion the attempts of the killers themselves to not be caught (Surette, 92). Importantly, True Crime follows real cases, typically with a sensational quality. Biressi’s history shows that there is a sensationalist aspect to the interest in crime and outlandish cases are often depicted with lurid detail given to the specifics of the crime, typically a rape or murder (45-6). Throughout the history of the genre much has been changed and reframed as societal conceptions of crime change, but recurring themes include that element of the sensational and a relationship with the criminal justice system. For example in the 18th century editors of crime magazines considered themselves as having an effect on the police and could call for improvements of the legal system (54). We can see parallels here with qualities from what Sorrento identifies as an “avenging narrative” in filmed True Crime documentary, where documentary filmmakers present themselves as investigators avenging an injustice, often in conflict with the judicial system or exposing weaknesses in the police that lead to unjust judgment (244).

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This quality of investigation is another crucially important element of True Crime. The subgenre is very interested in questions of truth – Biressi identifies that a running theme in literature and early recounting is an emphasis on the truthful nature of the recounting and Sorrento’s concept of the avenger casts a filmmaker as an investigator attempting to penetrate the truth of cases. So True Crime can be understood as a sub-genre with two motives in balance – pursuit of an authentic truth and a sensational recounting of crime.

1.2. Authenticity – How Documentary Depicts Reality The notion of authenticity is important to documentary. This will be expanded on in the subsequent chapter, as it is a key juncture at which mockumentary stages its critical intervention, but a brief overview is necessary now to understand how it fits into the goals and aesthetics of documentary film making. Simply put, authenticity is the method through which a work appears real or “true to life”. This is largely affectation and could be understood as constructed (see Chapter 2 “Mockumentary and Authenticity” (32)). In effect, many works take steps to appear “authentic” to an audience. This effort to appear more real has a number of effects – it can improve the public opinion of a work, it can give a work a convincing authority, and establish a recognizable world and atmosphere for a piece of media, as some examples. In documentary authenticity is a part of the express goal of the project – to depict some level of truth, a piece of media that directly represents the “real world”. Documentaries have a varied and changing relationship with this goal and some more creative works (such as the subgenre “docudramas”) eschew it – for example recent work Primas (2017) depicts the life of a teenaged girl after her brutal assault largely through emotional affect, with dreamlike sequences and seamless movements through different time periods and locations. However even in this instance there is some commitment to an emotional truth, and the film must still do work to present to the audience that the events are or were real, and did indeed happen. So documentary in doing its work to appear real cultivates aesthetics of authenticity; it does this through a number of methods, using a mixture of representational styles and visual elements. Primarily the different styles and visual elements of documentary can be summarised and understood through what Jane Chapman calls the authorial voice.

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1.3. ‘Authorial Voice’ as a rhetorical strategy

The authorial voice of documentary is a complex mixture of its elements coming together to present the documentary’s “message”, the way it expresses its arguments and other facets of its content (Chapman, 113). Chapman discusses a number of features, including narration/voiceover, the “thickness” of a text using Corner’s aesthetic spectrum of thick versus thin – that is documentaries that have a greater focus on aesthetic beauty (‘thick’) or their documented contet (‘thin’) (Corner, 95) - use of interviews or the cinematic school from which the documentary is influenced. This concept is more nuanced than simply being the intended message of the filmmaker; rather than being a strict vision or argument Chapman argues “the message of a film depends on an unavoidable triangle of authorial intention and skills (both aesthetic and technical), subject matter, and audience interpretation” (93). The voice then is a message not just as expressed by the creator but as received by audience. As a metaphor for how documentary functions it’s a useful one; a number of elements of documentary come together as a cohesive text or project to analyse. As such authorial voice can be understood as a rhetorical strategy: the summation of the argument a documentary has made. ‘Argument’ here is a loose term used by Nichols and does not necessarily mean that a documentary is explicitly framing an argument (114). More, the authorial voice represents the overall statement of the documentary, explicit or implied, and how it is further translated by the audience. As such understanding it as an argument is useful regarding the broader ‘statement’ of the text – even if the argument is no more complex than a nature documentary illustrating the aesthetic beauty of the natural world. It is through the authorial voice that authenticity is constructed. The different elements of the voice have different contributions to the authentic sense the documentary builds, and will be assessed in detail below. First, it is worth expanding documentary to better understand the elements of the authorial voice, through the styles documentary adopts. Chapman makes reference several times to the modes of representation outlined by Bill Nichols, which will now be discussed in some detail.

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1.4. Modes of Representation – How Documentary Frames the Authentic What Bill Nichols calls “modes of representation” (32) can be considered a documentary framework, a set of aesthetic styles and film-making ideals that create a specific ‘mode’ of documentary as it depicts an authentic reality. Nichols observes that these modes are in dialogue with one another and in some cases work as a reaction to older styles. These modes are not prescriptive categories, Nichols has observed that “documentaries adopt no fixed inventory of techniques, address no one set of issues, display no single set of forms or styles” (21) – rather these modes of representation are loose categories of styles that fit into regular and recognisable patterns or historical movements – for example Cinema Verité is listed in his description of the observational mode but it is not the only style found within this mode. What follows is a specific outlining of the different modes that Nichols identifies, as well as an outlining of how they present an authentic reality. The expository mode is the oldest mode and commonly features direct address from a “voice of god” narrator, and is often likened to propaganda (34). It is a direct address to the audience and makes frequent use of location shooting of landscapes and large-scale imagery. A reasonable contemporary example is March of the Penguins (2005), with vast polar expanses and entire colonies of penguins depicted under the soothing, authoritative tones of Morgan Freeman. The expository mode depicts the authentic through a strong factual authority, the narrator declaring the reality of the subject matter with the imagery as evidence. The observational mode is a more contemporary form and Nichols places Cinema Verité into this category, as documentary projects which emphasise the non-involvement of the filmmakers and act as a “fly on the wall” recording of subjects as they go about their daily lives (39). Also called direct cinema, the observational mode is commonly thought of when using an example of documentary cultivation of authenticity. By taking a step back from the subjects and acting as a non-presence in their work, the filmmakers create a neutral atmosphere that suggests objectivity – more than any other mode of representation it presents its subjects as doing what they would do even if the camera was not present (Roscoe and Hight, 21). Furthermore they cultivate an authenticity of the personal – these documentaries are often smaller in scope, depicting the everyday lives of subjects and following individuals rather than documenting sweeping social issues. Examples include Hospital (1970) or the first case study of this thesis, Making a Murderer (2015) – though it is an odd example that will be discussed in more detail in chapter two. While objectivity is a complicated subject, it will not be a primary focus of this thesis, although it is a major topic of observational documentary. Instead, I would contend that in this case objectivity is one discursive strategy of documentary among many to construct

7 Griffiths (11312513) authenticity. The observational mode in this case makes objectivity a primary focus of its authentic construction. The interactive mode directly places the filmmakers within the project, often including themselves on screen and conducting actions relevant to the progress of the documentary, often emphasising the relationship between filmmaker and filmed subject (44). Here the filmmaker’s presence is a testament to the authentic reality of the documentary. By placing themselves into the frame of the camera they make both the physical locations and their own involvement real. These works can be investigative and play out with the filmmaker as a participant in finding out the truth that is being filmed, placing themselves alongside the audience in a quest for information, or they can have a more personal involvement in the process with other concerns as well as an investigation – for example in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005), Herzog already knows the basics of the life and death of Timothy Treadwell and devotes as much time relating Treadwell’s obsessions to his own as he does taking the audience through Treadwell’s story. The reflexive mode plays with the formal qualities of documentary on a self-conscious level. Nichols identifies this as a more recent genre transformation, an element of what Linda Williams calls postmodern documentary or “New Documentary” (Williams, 11). This mode often has a primary or secondary focus on the form of documentary film-making itself, as Nichols puts it, “the reflexive mode addresses the question of how we talk about [the documentary subject]” (57). Nichols cites works such as The Man With a Movie Camera (1929) and The Thin Blue Line (1988) which make the process of and ethical issues surrounding filming a documentary as much a subject of the film as the literal filmed subjects and events. Another modern example would be The Act of Killing (2012) which uses the premise of making a film as the lens through which the filmmaker encourages the subject to comprehend the violence he has enacted on others, returning frequently to the theme of the transformative power of cinema in building empathy. Authenticity is made complex here, as the functions and aesthetics of documentary are reconsidered within the text itself. Nichols contends that authenticity is more a talking point for reflexive documentaries – they are interested not only in how representation works, but the question of if a representation can be “adequate to that which it represents” (57). A transformation Nichols identified later is the performative mode (1994: 93). The performative mode has a focus on aesthetics of production and what Nichols calls “the subjective aspects of classically objective discourse” (95), in Corner’s previously mentioned spectrum these could be considered thick text documentaries. Their construction of authenticity is much more abstract, using poetic language and visuals to

8 Griffiths (11312513) give the viewer an emotional understanding of what still nevertheless builds and indexical link to reality (99). The previously mentioned Primas would be a strong example.

1.5. Modes of Representation and True Crime As discussed, Nichols’ modes are not prescriptive. When considering True Crime as a subgenre of documentary it can be understood through a number of ways – narrative, aesthetic and here, how it uses modes. Commonly True Crime makes use of the observational mode of documentary, unobtrusively documenting a criminal injustice for a viewer to observe, but the presentation of that injustice does set it apart from the daily life structure observed by Nichols. It has been suggested that True Crime, particularly on television, might be described as being part of an “investigative mode” of documentary (Hill, 45) – a negotiation between the observational and interactive modes as the filmmakers investigate a crime with varying levels of engagement. This is illustrative of the changing nature of documentary – as the form negotiates different modes as ideals change, individual documentaries negotiate them as part of the development of their argument and the exploration of their subject matter. It is also worth considering to what degree these modes can be performative. As Nichols styles them as movements they are all adopted consciously by filmmakers, even if a filmmaker doesn’t always refer to them as modes. Different filmic techniques give an impression of a mode – even if the motives are more complex. When I describe modes as performative I mean documentaries can convey the impression of a mode through its text, but this can be contradictory to the mode’s general intentions. With True Crime for instance, there is a question of how sincere their investigatory capacity is. We know that from the sub-genre’s origins the nature of much of the crime it depicts has been salubrious, and a breathless re-counting of the details of the criminal act is remarkably common. For example, Making a Murderer devotes much time to the specifics of a murder victim, repeating the details several times. Is this investigatory or is this sensational? There is an intentional link to the performative mode of documentary here. As a mode of representation it can be a common shift from other modes – there are weaknesses to the mode as identified by Nichols in its intentional “loss of referential emphasis” (95) but the shift to emotional affect from “objective” representation does have wide implications for the authorial voice of the documentary – an argument can change to an emotional one with different limitations and new responsibilities. Beyond the filmed content, the style itself can be a performance – Corner’s theory of thick and thin texts suggest a conscious production of style can supersede the content of a work as the documentary’s role as a piece of aesthetic art becomes important (here we see one of those limitations of the performative mode).

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Referring back to True Crime’s recounting of criminal acts, the ways in which these details are reproduced – witness interviews to dramatic music, full reenactment with actors, CGI constructions of crime scenes – in some cases could be argued to be the end point in of themselves. Here the documentary modes are a style being reproduced for their own end, not necessarily with an interest in representation of reality. We can consider modes then to be element of documentary performance, and that True Crime shows a particular combination of motives in that performance. There is a tension between the supposed motives of a mode, such as the non- interference of the Observational mode, and the artistic intentions of the filmmakers.

1.6. Narrative Patterns and Authentic Reality In Representing Reality Nichols prefers to avoid using the term narrative when describing documentary. His contention is that narrative conflates documentary too much with fiction and that there are crucial differences between the two; “at the heart of documentary is less a story and its imaginary world than an argument about the historical world.” (110). As such his preferred term is ‘argument’, he suggests that for documentary more important than a narrative framework (which he does agree exists) is the indexical link it makes to historical reality and arguments made about that reality, supported by factual and material evidence. He adds that he does not consider all documentaries to explicitly be making an argument, but rather uses the term to indicate that their choices of representation speak to the historical world. As such the ‘argument’ is that representation - “this is so, isn’t it?” (114). I have no intention of conflating argument and narrative, but I do think that narrative is a useful phrase to understand the intersection between documentary and mockumentary. Furthermore as Keil has noted in writing on early factual and fictional cinema, “One can begin by stating that most films, fictional or not, possess a narrative structure, and that we can distinguish fiction films from nonfiction by the means of presentation rather than by content” (40). I consider this argument to mesh with Nichols, his primary example of the distinction highlights presentation – a film making an “argument” differs in how it presents its content and that presentation carries with it the implicit agreement with the audience that this content is a representation of the world we live in, however stylised or abstracted it may be (Nichols, 113). Preferred terminology aside, it is clear that documentary does have a narrative and follows narrative patterns. Beyond the more experimental forms, most documentaries follow a path of increased knowledge and understanding of a subject, and follow a subject through a narrative structure. The degree to which narrative is important can vary – Corner has mentioned before that a “strong narrative” can be an indication of a thick text documentary (683), as the more explicitly it is telling a story, the more the focus on how the aesthetic and

10 Griffiths (11312513) emotional delights of being told a story come to the forefront. This is another area of tension for documentary, following on from the risks of a thick text – the more “storylike” a narrative becomes, the more there is a risk of narrative bias and a movement into fictional patterns. The presence of a narrative does not elude viewers and in fact, some argument could be made that the negotiation between narrative as a construct of fiction and the more factual style of presentation is part of the appeal. In analysis of factual television Annette Hill has suggested there is an element of uncertainty to the factual presentation of documentary that has links with the viewer’s acknowledgment of the often-fictional nature of Reality Television (104). This suggests that part of the negotiation of authenticity is conscious on behalf of viewers and part of the appeal – this is important to understand as games with authentic reality make up a large part of the style of mockumentary and how they entertain viewers while challenging documentary. Furthermore in the case of True Crime documentary it suggests that a focal point of the subject is often the nature of truth and authenticity, with a sub-textual implication of their own authenticity being an open topic. As previously discussed much of the work of True Crime is on investigation and here we can see a layered aesthetic of investigative work, following strands of police and other detectives, filmmakers after the fact and eventually the viewer, making sense of it all as they watch it. As filmmakers take on a role of investigator, so too does the viewer. Sorrento brings this investigatory element into particular prominence with his work on the idea of the filmmaker-as-avenger (243). He contends that within True Crime documentary, there has emerged a style of film that presents the film as an investigation performed by the filmmakers. His argument is that this investigation follows the ethos and trends of crime cinema (with a special attention given to Noir), and the filmmaker takes on an archetypal narrative role of the investigator, while other subjects are cast as victims or criminals in the narrative framework of the documentary (244). In this instance the common theme of truth is an active pursuit of the investigator in the style of classic crime fiction, as they sift through contradictory evidence to get to the core of truth. Also common to this style of True Crime is a conflict between the filmmaker and the police or judicial services. Victims Sorrento identifies have often already been judged by the state. Here the details of True Crime are less specifically focused on the grizzly, sensational details of the crime and more of the injustice suffered by victims at the hands of criminals, watched on by an unhelpful and often uncaring police force. This narrative doubling of investigators is a prime example of the uncertainty Hill discusses and avenging narratives generate authenticity through their uncertainty and through a similar mode to Hill’s suggestion of an investigatory mode somewhere between interactive and observational documentary styles. The filmmaker places either themselves or the text in a position of narrative inquiry that is also a

11 Griffiths (11312513) testament to their presence and the authentic nature of the narrative. We can see an example of this in Serial – part of the compelling nature of the investigation is Sarah Koenig (and subsequently her public)’s need to approach the facts of the case critically, and the air of uncertainty surrounding the killing provides a motive force. Continuing with the example of Serial, it also exemplifies what Sorrento identifies as a common victim in avenging narratives – not the murder victim herself, but her accused murderer. Avenging filmmakers often pursue cases where the judiciary has already made a decision regarding the guilt of its subject (244) and contend with false or unsympathetic accusations. The contention of Serial from the first episode is that its subject Adnan Syed may not be guilty, and has protested his innocence long past the point where it would win him any favours. Sorrento’s identification of falsely accused victims is usually less ambiguous, his primary example is Randall Dale Adams in The Thin Blue Line being falsely accused for a murder he provably didn’t commit. But regardless of the culmination of the narrative, there is a clear framework in place surrounding the concept of false accusations. By its nature this narrative plays with uncertainty as the case for prosecution is challenged and “official” stories are often called out as incorrect. The filmmaker challenges the police by disagreeing with their story and injecting doubt, and the victim narrative plays into this.

1.7. Audiovisual Strategies Towards Constructing Authenticity Beyond the brief indications of how authenticity may be created outlined in the modes of representation, common to all of them is a use of audio-visual language to construct an aesthetic of authenticity. Mockumentary adopts much of the same strategies and as such it is useful to assess them from both perspectives to see how documentary produces arguments before mockumentary in turn attempts to skewer them. Common to many forms of documentary is the use of archival footage. The culturally assumed line, often attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, is that “the camera never lies” (Wood, 2014). If that is so, then archival or “found” footage can appear to possess a deeper level of truth. Like presenting an artifact or first-hand account in other forms of storytelling, this footage is often presented as “evidence” of the documentary’s narrative. This is often prevalent in forms of True Crime, Biressi observes that archival material’s “status as evidence and truth underwrites the sensational elements of the story, lending it ‘representational legitimacy’”(137), a phrase she borrows from Hamilton who argues “the apparent objectivity of the camera-produced image may help to fix the meaning of a given

12 Griffiths (11312513) text” (87). There is a historical element to the authenticity archival images provide – if footage seems older, rougher, of lower quality, then it seems less likely to be fake. It provides a certain quality that allows it to build that indexical link to history. Creeber addresses this when discussing online footage; the raw quality of “ordinary people filmed in real time, in everyday habitats and viewed through aesthetically diminished images” makes the footage seem more intimate, more real (597). Crucially to the argument being built by the filmmakers, archival footage can often be presented as work that provides a voice not belonging to the filmmakers, an eye witness account that gives authority to their claims. It is also important to note that as an audiovisual strategy, the aesthetic of archival footage is what provides the authenticity as much as the indexical links – the footage itself contains a visual component of the authentic. As such, it is an aesthetic component than can specifically be purposefully achieved or, as we will see in chapters 3 and 4, mimicked for the purposes of mockery and subversion. Interviews are another common staple of documentary – interview subjects can act as protagonists, witnesses, suspects and exposition, among many other roles. Almost all the modes of representation discussed above make use of interviews – a common style is the ‘talking head’ of a static camera focusing on the upper quarter of a subject as they speak to the camera and often, by extension, the filmmaker. The link to authenticity here is in the subjects – providing ‘real’ people to speak of events better frames and places the reality of them. Interview subjects in effect can be used to give a viewer access to “the real world” of the documentary setting (Chapman, 104). There are a number of complexities to documentary interview and its relation to authenticity. Chiefly there is the question of accuracy or truthfulness – how reliable a witness is, for instance. Chapman suggests there is of a hierarchy to interviewed subjects; in her own writing she mentions that members of the public are often given a privileged status over “experts” in fields or public officials. In the context she is discussing this is mostly a matter of access – there are documentary styles that are focused on the stories of witnesses or the public in which case their voices are given the main focus and respect. She goes on to add “This is not always the case in documentaries about history, science and specialist issues, including current affairs television documentaries, but it is true that not all contributors who speak in documentaries have equal status” (105).

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There is a relevance here to the construction of authenticity and the pursuit of “truth” in True Crime. First, the matter of privileging voices speaks to how True Crime relates to authority. The challenge of the filmmaker against the judiciary in avenging narratives for instance resonates with privileging of witness voices – there are of course questions in True Crime about the reliability of subjects, as the above example of Serial illustrates, but there is also (and this is a criticism that is raised) a tendency in Serial to use “witnesses” - for instance Syed’s friends and family – as more reliable voices than the police story that lead to his conviction. Chapman discusses how the negotiation of reliability in interviews is an ongoing concern for documentary filmmakers that is resolved in a number of ways. For example, she outlines that different subjects have different qualities of reliability – members of the public can present an impression of the world, a sense of how “normal people” feel, so the contextual choice of interview subject can speak to the constructed authenticity of the interview. In other cases the recorded interview can be juxtaposed to dramatic re-enactment of their words or other subject matter to confirm or challenge their testimony. She also adds that some interview subjects are simply left untouched; no interviewer’s voice is heard and nothing is on-screen but their seemingly unedited soliloquy, which the audience must interpret themselves (106-7). Beyond the ethical need to frame a subject in context then, a filmmaker has a choice of authentic framing with each interview; whether to provide the qualities necessary to authenticate the testimony, to challenge it to provide a sense of narrative complexity or to leave it uncommented upon to allow the audience to make judgements. All of these decisions in interview build authenticity of different qualities but ultimately all speak to a similar sense of a real person’s presence behind the camera; sometimes an unreliable one that must be interrogated, but a person whose comments speak to the authenticity of the work itself. The presence of a narrator is another important contribution to authorial voice and to the construction of authenticity. There is a clear difference between a voice-over narration and the voice of interviewed subjects; where interviewees can provide a witness testimony, narrators almost always provide a sense of authority (Nichols, 48). The authority of the role will be unpacked in some more detail in Chapter 3, as the subversion of it in mockumentary is rather complex and has broader applications to the documentary project, but in brief a voiceover carries with it a sense of

14 Griffiths (11312513) authoritative omniscience (Chapman, 107). A narrator often acts as a guiding presence in documentary, with this authority they can state more explicitly aspects of the documentary’s argument or make narrative connections for the viewer. This has advantages, in that it can remove possible misinterpretation of the text and clarify details about the documentary, but can also have the disadvantage of being an obvious piece of artifice. In constructing authenticity, it is common in true crime documentary to either omit a narrator (as with Making a Murderer) or use the voiceover as part of the role of the filmmaker as an avenger, if they do not appear directly on screen their voice can provide a presence to the investigator’s role. It is important to acknowledge that a filmmaker’s presence is not however necessary for the true crime documentary to have an avenging quality – Sorrento’s preferred example of The Thin Blue Line had a complete absence its filmmaker. In this instance, the documentary text itself is the testimony of the filmmaker – the filmmaker serving as a “meta-avenger” in their filmed absence (245). Furthermore as the narrative of the Avenger is an aspect of a documentary’s authorial voice, it can still contain this narrative component without a literal narrator to provide it. As Chapman says; “No factual film can escape [the authorial voice], even if the filmmaker is consciously trying to subvert convention” (113).

1.8. Key Points As we have seen authenticity is a complex structure – it is both a goal of documentary in its attempt to depict the ‘truth’ and an aesthetic strategy through which documentary expresses its authority towards presenting that truth. Documentary takes many steps to construct authenticity, through use of different representational modes, a construction of its rhetorical ‘voice’ and specific aesthetic techniques. As a sub-genre, True Crime documentary makes authenticity a primary subject matter and engages with it in a discursive puzzle-like fashion as it places itself as one of a series of investigations in pursuit of the “real truth” of its chosen subject. We have also seen that True Crime has roots in sensational recounting of these injustices – there is a clear tension between its sensibilities towards the puzzle of truth and its sensationalist motives. I will now examine this tension, and the specific construction of authenticity towards a rhetorical argument in the first case study of this thesis, Making a Murder.

15 Griffiths (11312513) Chapter 2: Case Study – Making a Murderer I think it’s great to have viewers engaged and to have people getting involved in the world. But our hope is the dialogue reaches beyond these cases or beyond Manitowoc County or Wisconsin, for that matter. This is an American story. – Moira Demos, Co-creator of Making a Murderer (2015)

Making a Murderer (2015) simmers with a sense of injustice. It follows the story of a working class man from Wisconsin, tracing both a false conviction that placed him behind bars for 18 years, and his subsequent arrest and trial for an unrelated murder, four years after his release. The documentary’s subject, Steven Avery, is a sympathetic figure pulled into the criminal justice system by forces outside his control, to such an extent that it has defined his adult life. The filmmakers trace his new conviction, the murder, and the work of his defence team in trying to clear the charges. It also paints the world around Avery, with interviews from his family and partners well as local news coverage and comments from others involved in the trial, such as the victim’s family, presenting what appears to be a comprehensive take on the murder and trial. As a documentary it functions in both an investigatory capacity and a historical presentation: it was produced over a period of ten years, from the beginning of Avery’s trial for murder through to the present day, tracing the impact on his family. The length of production that went into the work makes it a fascinating study already – it functions as a retrospective investigation of the case while still presenting the information and narrative serially. As a True Crime work investigating an injustice, it presents its case dramatically and with gloss. There is a complexity to this presentation, as it shows reflexive qualities that address some of the problematic elements of media discourse surrounding the reporting of crime, while perhaps illustrating limits to reflexivity which mockumentary goes on to address. In terms of True Crime it fits many of the narrative elements identified in the previous chapter. It is focused on an injustice, the filmmakers conduct an investigation alongside the trial proceedings and it has a central focus on the psychology of its subject. It exhibits many of the investigative characteristics of True Crime and has a recognisable authorial voice, including an obvious adherence to Nichols’ identified modes. There is also a tension in its structure between its aesthetic interests and the content it presents – there is a push and pull between its status as a thick or a thin text. It’s an excellent study of how True Crime

16 Griffiths (11312513) constructs authenticity, and of the tensions and limitations that make True Crime a target for mockumentary. Beyond its inspiration to the writers of American Vandal (which will be discussed in chapter four) it has a curious relationship with reflexivity and the sensational qualities of True Crime. In this chapter I will explore what Making a Murder’s aesthetics and formal content do to create an authentic work, and how they potentially impact its argument – as well as interrogating the impact of the work. I will begin by discussing its creation of an authorial voice and formal qualities in relation to authentic construction. I will also discuss the media context surrounding the work, situating it within the lives of the filmed subjects, and examine how the text reflects on its own project and the aforementioned media context that surrounds it.

2.1. Aesthetic Style and Mode of Representation Making a Murderer presents a chilly atmosphere. Its title screens use muted colours and gloomy lighting, and much of the location footage features buildings plastered with snow. This is a push towards authenticity through location similar to the location shooting of expository modes; it presents its Wisconsin setting in winter, setting a bleak tone and touching on common associations with the northern states of snow and rural Americana. The title sequence is evocative of industry and small- town America, with a focus on lonely roads and fields with rusting cars and water towers. In many ways it bears aesthetic resemblance to the opening titles of the first series of True Detective(2014), and touches on similar themes of modern Neo-Noir and Gothic traditions (Franck, 2016), and collapsing industry. As an interesting aside, previously mentioned work Serial explicitly references True Detective as an inspirational material for the narrative framework of the series (Berry, 171); as discussed in the previous chapter True Crime often makes reference to crime fiction (Sorrento, 243). In this way, Making a Murderer presents its narrative of injustice within the context of rural discontent and alienation within modern America, and that’s how it presents the central criminal case. Steven Avery is a simple, rural man from a family that becomes a target for the machinations of the government as he is drawn first into a genuine case of mistaken identity and later a prolonged and very public criminal trial.

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This presentation is created through a mix of low-fi and high-value production aesthetics fairly constantly. Much of the footage of the series is archival or interviews filmed near the beginning of the ten-year production. In contrast, the editing techniques, intro titles and much of the graphical elements are glossy and high budget. This is in-keeping with the general tone of the show, which is clinical. The effect is something of a gilded frame – through its high editing standards the series provides a contrast to its low quality footage that emphasises that aspect of it, making it seem more raw, and similar to archival footage, this constructs authenticity as it draws on the codes we associate with lower quality footage being more ‘realistic’. This is an interesting result of the timeframe of the production. As the footage was shot in 2005 it is then-current footage that has been repackaged for contemporary viewing. It isn’t strictly archival footage but uses the same aesthetic codes of authenticity, producing an explicit historical bond. It is a documentary primarily performing the observational mode – the filmmakers are never present on camera, their questions unheard, their presence barely figures into the narrative at all. Instead we have tight, quiet interviews interspersed with footage from police interrogations, court hearings and news channels. The filmmakers present themselves as stepping back from the process of the film and leaving the viewer with the content, the evidence. This is also part of how it sells the authenticity of the footage and the narrative. It draws attention to the presentation style and emphasises the aforementioned raw quality of the footage captured. As Biressi suggests, it provides a representational legitimacy to the content. As a result the footage is sued to create authenticity through an aesthetic strategy of looking objective – a discursive quality regularly associated with the observational mode (Chapter 1, 7). This shows that the series is interested in performing the observational mode as a primary goal. The series also consciously presents itself as a thin text (Corner, 94). The presentation is meant to provide a sense that it is just the viewer and the evidence that matter, and that from that evidence displayed they can draw judgment themselves. This is a tension within the work. As mentioned above, the production values or the series are fairly high, regardless of the quality of much of its content. It takes steps to create an aesthetic atmosphere drawing on Neo-Noir and moves slickly between intertitles, graphical maps and the old footage. From this, it can be understood that Making a

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Murderer makes use of the codes of thin text and observational documentary – neutrality, absence of filmmakers, ‘raw’ footage – but by mixing them with its other aesthetic interests it creates a feeling of thinness of text, the thinness is part of its aesthetic moves that go towards constructing the authenticity of the work. This does create an aesthetic tension – much of its aspects are about trying to push away from the artifice an aesthetic suggests while still maintaining and evoking an aesthetic atmosphere. As such while producing the codes and qualities of observational thin-text documentaries to make its case, the series paradoxically has qualities of thick text (and performative mode) documentary. This suggests a limitation to documentary – modes instead of conveying information can be fetishized, aesthetics repeated to channel the style of documentary rather than necessarily delivering content. This is not to suggest Making a Murderer misrepresents its content completely but the tension is nevertheless present, and as we move into mockumentary in the following two chapters, the flaws are made more present.

2.2. Authorial Voice – and Audience As discussed in chapter 1, the voice of a documentary is its rhetorical strategy as well as a combination how that rhetoric is received and executed. The ‘voice’ of the documentary is the most direct way through which it constructs an authentic representation of its content. It is the “argument” of the documentary (Nichols, 114). Making a Murderer conveys its argument mostly through interviews and presentation of evidence. There is no voice-over narration throughout the entire series, but it makes use of inter-titles frequently. It is the presentation of its content and the tonal atmosphere set that convey the much of the text’s rhetoric. It does so while maintaining a ‘neutral’ Observational style. As the series adopts its gilded frame aesthetic, this shapes the authorial voice. As such the comments the series intends to make are largely drawn from choice of interview subject and framing. A large part of the rhetoric of the show is about the injustice of Steven Avery’s convictions – his initial wrongful imprisonment and his later conviction for murder, for which his guilt is argued to be dubious by the filmmakers. Ultimately the tone of the piece suggests he is innocent, or that there is

19 Griffiths (11312513) enough of that doubt that he should not have been imprisoned. It makes this argument through choice of framing and presentation of information. The inter-titles the show uses are a key component of its voice. They primarily function as a transition element; providing context for the viewer as the episodes move from one piece of footage to the next. Here they functionally operate as a narrator – providing exposition on the content of the series, making narrative connections (Chapman, 107). They act as part of the frame of the series through which the footage is understood. In serving narrator-like functions, the inter-titles possess the authoritative quality of a narrator. By setting up and explaining pieces of footage the titles have the previously discussed sense of omniscience and act as an authoritative guide to the viewer’s experience. They are also characteristic of the series’ observational aesthetic. No opinions are stated explicitly through the titles, they simply present information. The titles as such control the construction authenticity, the juxtaposition of stripped-down titles with raw footage gives the viewer a sense of a neutral viewing experience. It is also through this authentic framing that the series voices its argument for Avery’s possible innocence, using the observational aesthetic as a reinforcing of the documentary’s authority. As such, the argument is made through suggestion – as mentioned above, as the events are presented “neutrally” without narration, much of the argument is made by what footage has been chosen and in what order it is presented. For example, it suggests innocence through association. In the first half of the series, the documentary presents a police interrogation of Avery’s nephew, Brendan Dassey (episode 4). The interrogation is straightforwardly and obviously coercive. The detectives tease a story out of Brendan by repeatedly giving him leading prompts, and asking him again until he gives them an answer that fits their understanding of events. This is at its most egregious when, upon asked “what happened to [the victim Teresa Halbach’s] head”, Brendan says that he cut her hair, only shifting to agreeing with the police that he shot her after they specifically ask if he did. After the interrogation Brendan clearly shows little understanding of what he’s confessed to and asks about when he can get back to class. This entire sequence of events is an obvious miscarriage of justice, caught on camera. Tellingly, Dassey’s conviction was overturned the summer after the series’ release (Ansari, 2016). The event is also presented in the series as a complicating factor in Avery’s defence. This is the only episode that

20 Griffiths (11312513) explores Brendan as a person, but his confession is mostly related to Avery’s case and his lawyers’ reactions to the information, as well as their unhappiness with the way the interview was conducted and the judge’s decision to allow it in court. The way it is presented makes the case for Avery’s innocence in two key ways. First in terms of content, it is straightforwardly a hole in the prosecution’s story. With the way the series focuses on facts and evidence this is clearly a clue for the audience that strikes a heavy blow against the case for Avery’s guilt. It also makes a tonal case. The series is thematically straightforwardly about injustice. It opens with a retelling of Avery’s wrongful conviction and that sets the tone for the rest of the series. Brendan’s interrogation is another unambiguous case of a man being victimised by the police force, beyond the physical evidence of a hole this sequence presents, it makes a thematic argument by adding to the injustices of the case, and the Avery family’s thematic position as a poor family attacked by a judicial system set against them and convinced of their guilt. In this way, it works powerfully as an argument. As such the two elements of the use of footage work together to build the rhetorical position of the documentary – evidence from archival footage builds an authentic framework and through this authenticity an emotional assertion about the content is made. By presenting facts of the case in this manner the documentary creates an implied argument for Avery’s innocence. The series also constructs its argument through choice of interview subject. Predominantly the subjects interviewed by the filmmakers are Avery’s family and associates or his defence team. The prosecution and the victim’s family are presented, but through their appearances in court and press conferences they gave. As such a lot of the information that the audience receives is from Avery’s perspective – this matches comments made by Sorrento in his unpacking of the avenging narrative in True Crime documentary, explored further in the next section. In terms of authorial voice, the interviews are presented as a combination of expert opinion and emotive appeal – the primary subjects being Avery’s direct family and his two defence lawyers. The lawyers provide exposition on the development of the case – explaining how the process works, and discussing the evidence. Their position as experts is backed up by mixing the audio over images illustrating points they are making – for example a number of shots of Avery’s junkyard as they discuss the details of where a car relevant to the case was found. Avery’s family are presented much more emotionally, with his mother

21 Griffiths (11312513) especially filmed in moments of emotional vulnerability and crying on camera. Here again we can see the series combination of authoritatively presented evidence combined with an emotional framing that constructs their argument and the voice of the series. This also shows once more the tensions in the series between the factual and the sensational – repeated emotive addresses from the family do provide exposition on the case but also an element of drama and a continuing narrative of the impact of the events on Avery’s family, often to the exclusion of other figures such as Teresa Halbach’s family. There is a clear perspective from which the series is coming from. The audience response to the documentary also forms a part of the voice, as Chapman outlines. To be explicitly clear, some of that audience reaction has been highly problematic – for example the state prosecutor Stephen Kratz who was a central figure in the investigation has received a large number of death threats as a result of his case against Avery. He has subsequently condemned the documentary for bias and a misrepresentation of facts and published a book that presents his own case – the filmmakers have denied Kratz’ allegations and stated that he was given multiple opportunities to provide his perspective for the series but turned them down (Holloway, 2015). This can be taken in contrast with experiences of Avery’s lawyers. In an interview, Dean Strang has commented that since the release of the series he and Avery’s family have received a lot of well- wishes and positive comments from the audience. He also mentions that at the time of the trial it was quite the opposite – as news reports followed the case he received hate mail and threats. But as he goes on to comment: “neither of them represent any particular reality other than what’s going on in fevered social media at the moment among a self-selected portion of the population” (Joyce 2015). As such we can see these reactions as a functional part of the authorial voice of the documentary – the conversations surrounding it form part of its argument. That Kratz and Strang have had such different and extreme reactions from the audience further enforces the perspective the series has on Avery’s guilt. Ultimately then we can see an authorial voice that makes a suggested argument for Avery’s innocence through framing of evidence – the controversy surrounding Kratz’ perspective reveals how this is just a singular presentation of elements of the case – there are over 700 hours of footage from which the filmmakers created the series. With the audience reaction we can see how effective their

22 Griffiths (11312513) presentation was towards constructing an authentic reality based on their perspective of the facts. This particular authentic framing shows how documentary presents just a singular interpretation of the facts it uses in its construction. How those facts are selected and presented can often be a result of a documentary’s narrative framing, it is to that narrative that we now turn.

2.3. Making a Murderer and Criminal Narrative Sorrento presents the filmmaker-as-avenger conducting an investigation as a response to the law, which “has already passed judgement”: here Sorrento suggests that the filmmaker investigating case in the True Crime style positions themselves in conflict with the judicial system. Furthermore the avenging filmmaker can be in direct conflict with the system as there are running themes of the police being incompetent or corrupt (244). True Crime documentary in the avenging framework typically has a big focus on victims and criminals – it “avenges” wronged parties but also misunderstood perpetrators, exploring their psychology and building sympathy for them. As such the typical narrative framework pits the filmmakers against the police as they pursue a case for the accused, often through pursuing their own investigation and framing of events. Sorrento also details how another strategy of the style is providing a voice to the victims and the “case for the defence”, letting those sympathetic to the wronged party have their say on record – which as we have seen above is a practice Making a Murderer engages in throughout (257). As was explored in the previous chapter, this intersects with documentary’s goals of authenticity and exploration of truth complexly. “Official” stories are questioned and put into a place of doubt. The filmmaker-as-avenger is determined, like investigators in crime fiction, to pursue the truth through concealing and confounding falsehoods and mysteries (255). Making a Murderer follows much of what has been previously discussed as the crime documentary narrative. Through the ongoing sequence of the episodes it carefully leads the viewer through an investigation, presenting evidence and questioning motives. All the major interviews conducted for the documentary are either Avery’s family or his defence team. In the filmmaker-as- avenger narrative proposed by Sorrento it is certainly highlighting an injustice that the police cannot

23 Griffiths (11312513) correct, either through incompetence or corruption. Indeed, it argues for their complicity. This is perhaps the element of the series that is its most nuanced, and also often the source of its more problematic tendencies. As an example, during a later episode one of Avery’s lawyers comments “No sane lawyer looks forward to presenting a defense that the police framed his client. No sane lawyer” (Episode 6). This serves its avenging narrative – while it acknowledges the difficult position of the case for Avery’s defence, it’s also presenting the defence as an underdog. No sane lawyer wants to suggest it because the police can and will come after you – this is an implication from the very first episode. In presenting the defence team as an underdog the series builds sympathy for their case as the viewer relates to their “passion and determination to succeed when the odds are against them” (Pahria and Keinen, 777). Beyond building sympathy, the underdog narrative also contributes to the emotional case for their argument – the ultimate guilty verdict of the case is no longer proof of Avery’s guilt in the mind of the audience due to his associations with a disadvantaged and sympathetic position. While the series is largely presented as observational and neutral it’s very clear on where it stands in regards to this element. The opening episode is focused almost entirely on Avery’s false conviction in 1985 and presents a series of moments where he could have been released earlier but wasn’t, due to inaction or incompetence at the hands of the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department. By devoting this time to the injustices Avery has already faced at the hands of the American judicial system it hangs over the rest of the documentary and frames the viewer’s perception of the trial. The lawyers involved in the case present this trial as just another indignity an innocent man is facing at the hands of the police, and as previously discussed, the filmmaker’s presentation of events suggests this is correct. This is not inherently problematic but the documentary framing that the filmmakers use adds a troubling element. The neutral observational style and thin-text-aesthetic suggest an objectivity to the material being filmed; but as we have seen this objectivity has been challenged by figures like Stephen Kratz. Avery for his part presents an ambiguous blending of the typical figures that a filmmaker “avenges” in Sorrento’s work. He fits a number of narrative templates Sorrento identifies. Steven

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Avery has parallels with many of the documentary subjects identified in Sorrento’s chapter. Like Brother’s Keeper (1992), Avery is an unintelligent man from a rural community, his family in conflict with the “modern” America of the state government (255). Like the teenage boys that make up the primary focus of Paradise Lost Avery is already the victim of state prejudice and a wrongful conviction, and is even subject to state prejudice from prosecutors certain of his guilt (258). But unlike these subjects there is an ambiguity to Avery’s case. The boys of Paradise Lost were definitely innocent and the central figure Delbert Ward of Brother’s Keeper was definitely guilty, but sympathetic. Avery was declared guilty but the filmmakers inject doubt into the proceedings – they do not prove his innocence with the series but they make his guilt a subject to be questioned. In doing so, the filmmakers suggest his innocence. Through the framing of the observational mode and the narrative the avenging filmmaker, the documentary places Avery’s case in a position where by asking if he was guilty the unvoiced response is that he probably isn’t. As such it illustrates the subjective nature of authentic construction. While presenting itself as an authentic and neutral representation of the facts of the case it also guides the viewer from a specific biased viewpoint, couched in the narrative of their role as avengers.

2.4. Media ‘Complicity’ - Making a Murderer and News Media Early in the series, outside a courtroom the filmmakers come face-to-face with a producer from the TV series Dateline. When asked about why she’s here, she responds with one of the most compelling quotes from the series: “It’s a story with a twist, it grabs people’s attention. [...] Right now murder is hot, that’s what everyone wants, that’s what the competition wants, and we’re trying to beat out the other networks to get that perfect murder story” (Episode 4). This quote arguably defines how the documentary relates to news media, and is revealing of where it positions itself in the debate of ethical responsibility in representation. While in many ways journalists within the series play a chorus role, asking questions for the different legal teams to answer, they are also presented as driven by a need to entertain, to make murder into a consumable product. Dateline here is presented as ghoulish and exploitative. However this reflection does not extend to the documentary itself. This is not uncommon, as Nichols remarks, self-reflection can be

25 Griffiths (11312513) curiously absent in reflexive documentary – while it is able to point the finger at problems of representation and bad documentary practice in other works it is uncommon that the accusations ever return to the text itself (59). It is for instance revealing that in an interview, when elaborating on their first trip to Manitowoc one of the filmmakers comments “it was really to test the waters and see if there was a story” (Murphy, 2015). By presenting the documentary from the perspective of a neutral observer, this parallel is absent within the series. An immediate example of this lack of self-reflexivity is the representation of the murder victim Teresa Halbach. Beyond photographs, there is a single piece of archive footage of Halbach before her death, presented at the beginning to episode two: a home movie. In the movie Halbach discusses how her family should feel if she were to hypothetically die “let’s say I die tomorrow” she says, “I want the people I love to know that when I do die, that I was happy.” In the series’ stripped down aesthetically- neutral framing the inclusion of this footage has an element of ambiguity, but the context of Halbach as a murder victim makes the inclusion questionable and potentially exploitative. In terms of True Crime narrative the stereotype of the murdered girl has been discussed frequently (Biressi, 120). Halbach is here presented as an innocent, certainly cut down before her time but reassuring her family that she had a happy life. Its inclusion at the beginning of the episode is also questionable. What follows is an investigation into Avery and his arrest, along with footage of Avery speaking to reporters about Halbach and not seeming to understand why he is under suspicion. This is an instance of the show’s dramatic intentions showing their hand – a dead woman’s testimony is hard to present neutrally, and it becomes a part of the series’ emotional framing. This could be read similarly as exploitative as the series presents the prosecution giving a detailed breakdown of Halbach’s body and the manner in which she died – showing a movement towards sensationalism as discussed by Biressi (45). An interview with Avery’s defence attorney Dean Strang in part speaks to the reception of the documentary, as he discusses the filmmakers following him out to Avery’s junkyard in his legal work:

The filmmakers’ willingness to do that is why I cooperated with them and why I don’t cooperate with the ilk you see an emblematic symbol of in the series with the young woman

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from "Dateline" or "20/20" or wherever who tells us, “Murder’s hot right now!” That’s the much more common approach; it’s a one-off, a quick-hit, driven-by-viewership paradigm or some sort of simple theme and I try to avoid that as much as I possibly can (Joyce, 2015).

A clear distinction is being drawn by Strang between the behaviour of the documentary filmmakers and journalists during the case, which is reflected in the documentary itself. The presentation of journalists throughout focuses on this “quick-hit” approach to storytelling. This presents a curious instance of that lack of reflexivity – Making a Murderer is directly engaging in the same things the journalists it condemns are doing. It has access to the same court sessions, the same subjects to interview, the same evidence, and as we have discussed shares at least some of the same qualities of interest in the spectacle of the killing. The difference in time and practice should not however be disregarded; Making a Murderer was released ten years after the fact while reporters were pursuing details in the immediate present. As such the consequences are different – there is no risk of the documentary biasing the trial for instance. The filmmakers have access to both time and depth – some of this is reflected in the difference in audience reactions discussed above, as the attitude towards Avery and his lawyers shows a distinct shift. This however makes the similarities to the news media it depicts more confounding. The difference in time and thoroughness has added additional context to the case but it nevertheless still possesses the criticised tendency towards a focus on sensational characteristics – as outlined above it devotes time both to dramatic recounting of Halbach’s murder, and frames the series through heavily a heavily emotive lens as it relates the case to the emotional impact Avery’s family has experienced. As such the way it depicts journalists within the series contains a curious double-framing. While there are reflexive qualities on crime media, and justified critique of the motives of the journalists involved, the documentary shows itself to have limitations and ultimately does not position itself within the crime media cycle.

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2.5. Closing Thoughts Making a Murderer’s construction is a continual negotiation between different components. Its aesthetic is a movement between aestheticised editing and low-fi footage, the voice moves between objective observational and emotive argument. It carefully presents its footage through a classic True Crime narrative of injustice, much of it touching on recognisable themes of murdered women and misunderstood convicts. The work it puts into constructing authenticity carries a persuasive quality about the nature of the case, while this is a result of careful selection of archival footage. We have seen that there is a distinct tension in the process of documentary as these different elements are negotiated. While Making a Murderer remains an effective and compelling piece of film-making, ethical issues and representational challenges are distinctly present. As we move now into the study of mockumentary we will begin to examine how these aspects of the authentic construction of documentary become twisted and questioned.

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Chapter 3: Critical Strategies of Mockumentary Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight are a critical foundation of much of this thesis, and their discussion of mockumentary in Faking It (2001) is the basis for a firm understanding of the mockumentary form. In this section the text of Faking It will be examined and compared to other theoretical writing, such as documentary theory from Bill Nichols, to both determine the critical modus operandi of mockumentary and to understand how it uses and reacts to the various elements of documentary in building its critique.

3.1. Defining Mockumentary Mockumentary is the common vernacular term for the form of media being discussed here. Roscoe and Hight, key developers of this field of study prefer the term mock-documentary, emphasising the form’s reliance on documentary as a pre-existing practice from which it derives (1). There are further terms that define different approaches to the form (for instance Juhasz and Lerner’s “fake- documentary” (1)) and in fact assign different films to a place within the category. A definition is in order. Mockumentary as understood by Roscoe and Hight is a fictional form of film and television that mimics documentary’s aesthetic style and techniques. Mockumentary here is distinct in its adoption of those techniques – unlike “comedy verité” (Thompson, 63) series like Arrested Development (2003), mockumentary treats the documentary film style as part of its diegesis. While the content is fictional, the premise of that content is that a documentary is being filmed and we are being presented with the final result. This brings up the question of whether “Found Footage” cinema such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) could be called mockumentary. While also mimicking an aspect of documentary, in this case archival footage, found footage cinema is typically presented as being produced by amateurs using consumer-grade equipment and often left in an unedited state (Heller-Nicholas, 7). Roscoe and Hight do mention the film in their conclusion refer to it as a mock- documentary – their contention is that while the public discourse surrounding the film suggests the aesthetic mimicry of documentary is seen as just “the latest trend” of amateur films to heighten the horror, this ignores an implicit critique of the form in use of those aesthetics (187). Indeed, the horror

29 Griffiths (11312513) content of the film could be considered an extreme example of giving the documentary filmmakers a code-breaking vulnerability, an aspect of mockumentary discussed towards the end of this chapter. If Blair Witch is to be considered mockumentary, the critique must lie in the consistent use of the documentary form rather than specific genre trappings. So mockumentary can be handily defined as a critical convention of fictional media that adopts the form of non-fiction documentary as a consistent element of its narrative and diegesis. This essay will use mockumentary rather than mock-documentary largely due to the fact that it is the vernacular term and sees more use in discussion of popular culture; the definition is essentially the same as that used by Roscoe and Hight.

3.2. Further Definition – Degrees of Mockumentary In their writing Roscoe and Hight further define mockumentary by splitting works up into three degrees of mockumentary; parody, critique and deconstruction (64). These degrees are non-fixed and are mutable; they are used to recognise an increasing complexity in the purpose of mockumentary’s appropriation of documentary aesthetics. Parody is a surface-level mimicry used to “mock” subjects from popular culture while ultimately reinforcing them. In the context of their degrees, Parody (“Degree 1”) is the least reflexive form, while possessing an inherent reflexivity. The suggestion of their reinforcement is that parodic documentary often picks “easy targets” (68), media whose zeitgeist is long past making it easy to mock. Roscoe and Hight’s contention is that this perspective is conservative and reinforces cultural reference points, making fun of things that already seem less-serious or ridiculous. This is perhaps debateable, for instance their example of This is Spinal Tap while not containing a complex critique does still skewer the hyper-masculine fetishism present in heavy metal music (123), a subject still worthy of criticism and satire. Most important then is their contention that degree one simply contains the least complex form of reflexive critique, degree 1 texts do not have an explicit agenda of targeting documentary representation of authenticity and as such their critique has a narrower range (100).

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The second degree ‘Critique’ then moves into a more specific critical approach to subject matter, and is more advanced in its critique. It is suggested that Degree 2 mockumentary is more advanced in its critical discourse and its targets more contemporary – consequently it also creates more space for viewers to recognise the flaws in documentary “codes and conventions” (70). Finally deconstruction attacks the form of documentary itself as a primary goal. Their primary example is the Belgian film Man Bites Dog (1992); the key subject matter of the film is a documentary crew getting increasingly involved in the crimes of their filmed subject; a charismatic but oddball serial killer. The film questions the ethical issues of representation made by documentary and the role of ethics in documentary film-making as well as the audience relationship with extreme subjects and their expectations of documentary text (Roscoe and Hight, 74). Deconstruction is a direct critical challenge against the documentary project. The degrees Roscoe and Hight propose are a useful taxonomy of mockumentary works. They are not strict categories and many documentaries occur in between the key points of the spectrum. For example the case study subject for this thesis, American Vandal, begins as parody and as its narrative arc moves forward its critique develops complexity and urgency. These degrees are useful for positioning the critical elements of a mockumentary work and identifying both the critical target of the work and its modus operandi. It is also worth focusing on the inherent reflexivity discussed by Roscoe and Hight. Their contention is that the act of mimicking documentary modes and aesthetics is in of itself a silent critique – that these styles can be adopted for a piece of fiction challenge documentary’s supposed representation of reality, even if the form of critique is mild. For example refer back to degree 1’s narrower range – while adopting the form is implicitly critical, it is not directly aiming at representational authenticity and thus that element of critique is less complex. I would contend that this is supported by an ethical dilemma identified by Brian Winston in Lies, Damned Lies and Documentaries (2000); as a creative form, the creative desires/needs of a documentary filmmaker can be in conflict with the need to depict events truthfully (154). Therefore the creative needs of documentary have some effect in shaping its form and content, and can impact the representation of reality – documentary’s construction of authenticity is motivated by artistic reasons as much as factual

31 Griffiths (11312513) ones, and as such this can lead to creative biases mockumentary targets. It is this aspect of how reality is represented and defined, and how mockumentary reacts to representation itself that I’d now like to look into in some more detail.

3.3. Mockumentary and Authenticity The term authenticity refers to a sense of how ‘true to life’ a subject appears to be. It’s a term found in existentialist writing, used by a number of philosophers as “an antidote to the meaninglessness and lurking danger of fatalism” present in a modern, artificial society (Holt, 4). It also bears some resemblance to Walter Benjamin’s aura, in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1969) he discusses how the aura that art projects is impacted by being reproducible and instead “original” works gain some semblance of an aura based on their being the original – this is an excellent example of authenticity, as the artwork’s status as the real thing acquires cultural cache. Works can be made to feel more real in comparison to an inauthentic other (e.g. reproduced copies). From this we can understand that authenticity is constructed. Peterson argues that: “authenticity [...] does not inhere in the object, person, or performance said to be authentic (Grayson and Martinec, 2004). Rather, authenticity is a claim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance and either accepted or rejected by relevant others” (1086). It is a value that changes as the context surrounding it changes. As Trilling observes, authenticity engages in “fulfilling its nature by dealing aggressively with received and habitual opinion, aesthetic opinion in the first instance, social and political opinion in the next” (94). Therefore while it is not inherent to a subject it is an aspect through which the value of the subject can be judged, and how authentic a work is both alters how the work is viewed, and is liable to alteration and judgment from those viewing the work, as the political and aesthetic ideals of the surrounding cultural context change. Authenticity’s role in documentary film-making was explored in the previous chapter, but relevantly the style and aesthetic techniques of documentary play towards instilling a sense of authenticity, their work is described by Nichols as “realist” (151); the documentary project presenting its filmed subjects as being authentically real. Authenticity is then a primary value of documentary and also its chief aesthetic.

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Authenticity is constructed in a number of ways in mockumentary. Primarily it is a source of critique – the deconstructive style Roscoe and Hight outline takes to task the supposedly-factual underpinnings of documentary and subverts their implementation, appropriating aesthetics to attack them (72). As the authentic style of documentary is parodied it is critiqued as being a construct, and as Peterson suggests that authenticity must be “accepted or rejected by relevant others” (1086), mockumentary plays the part as a relevant other that challenges the authentic nature of documentary. Mockumentary does also carry within it a different form of authenticity in that as it builds an aesthetic mimicry of documentary and uses the features and elements of the documentary style to make this mimicry convincing. Unlike the specific aesthetic critique, this element of authenticity is found in all three degrees of mockumentary; while the individual techniques of documentary can be mimicked by works belonging to any number of genres, mockumentary specifically must adopt them in such a way that it convincingly emulates documentary’s aesthetic throughout the text. Mockumentary then both specifically engages in an aesthetic emulation of documentary authenticity and exposes these emulation as a disingenuous performance of the documentary aesthetic. Authenticity as a source of critique can be implicit and explicit in different mockumentary texts, correspondent to Roscoe and Hight’s degrees. As these texts build in critical complexity their critique of authenticity becomes increasingly explicit. The critique being built is a mixture of specific address and general critique of the documentary form. As discussed above, by simply applying the “template” of documentary to a fictional subject matter the validity of the form is being questioned; documentary style presumes that certain aesthetic techniques contain within them an inherent authentic or truthful representation of the world. Mockumentary however shows that the same techniques can be used in fictional contexts, often farcically. As such documentary’s claim to being an authentic representation is questioned just by using the same techniques in fictional contexts. While some mockumentary texts go out of their way to address specifically concerns with the documentary project – challenging its factual authority or discussing ethical implications or problems – to an extent the fact that these texts can borrow the

33 Griffiths (11312513) aesthetics of documentary and be recognisably doing so is a critique. The form is just a framework, and into that framework any content can be put. Where Roscoe and Hight are interested in mockumentary’s subversion of factuality I am more interested in specific critical addresses being made. Alexandra Juhasz in the introduction to F is for Phony, mentions how “the two systems [mockumentary and documentary] refer to, critique, and alter each other’s reception” (9). As mockumentary increases in popularity the formal modes through which documentary presents itself change in response, and mockumentary in turn changes its critique, and so on. Hutcheon discusses how parody is part of an ongoing critical discourse on art and the role of art (15); I would further this and suggest that parody (and through parody mockumentary) subject art to a re-calibration. This suggests a cyclical quality to the relationship. As problems in documentary forms become more obvious and as documentary forms continue along specific well- trodden paths, mockumentary that subverts those forms increase both in quantity and in precision of critique. From here then mockumentary participates in a critical dialogue with documentary, picking apart its conventions as they reach the end of their cycle. We can already see this at play. The increased popularity of True Crime documentary has led to a number of common criticisms of the current project of True Crime; for example there is an ethical question with the depiction of its subjects, presenting victims or perpetrators of crimes as commodities to be consumed for entertainment by a public. As these critiques have increased so has the number of subversive depictions of True Crime, both more comedic presentations of the subject matter and mockumentary projects addressing the sub-genre. Beyond the next case study of American Vandal, such projects as A Very Fatal Murder (The Onion, 2018) provide broad-stroke critiques of a number of the formal qualities of true crime and imply an indictment of the ethos of the sub-genre and the abuse of the form in which it is presented. The other main mode through which authenticity is a present subject in mockumentary is its own attempts to appear “authentically fake” - the formal qualities employed to make the critique of documentary explicit. This is mostly a matter of the viewer being lead to recognise specific effects of documentary, and a number of these are outlined by Roscoe and Hight. For example they discuss categories of

34 Griffiths (11312513) documentary identified by Bill Nichols; the expositional, interactive, observational and reflexive modes of documentary, as well as identifying key aesthetic sensibilities of different modes and styles of documentary (20). How Nichols’ modes fit into mockumentary’s critique will be discussed in more detail below, but it’s worth already noting that the different facets of documentary’s authentic voice that mockumentary mimics form a crucial part of its critique. These elements are after all authenticity as an aesthetic – they instill a sense of authentic reality in the film subject, providing what Nichols calls an “indexical bond” between the filmmaker and the lived reality of the viewer, placing them in the same context (Nichols, 151). Here one of mockumentary’s implicit critiques of the documentary form can be identified – the aesthetic qualities adopted by documentary do not in of themselves instill any kind of inherent authenticity. As Nichols points out, “the indexical quality of the image proclaims its authenticity but this is also a self-substantiating claim akin to the remonstration by the Cretan that he is telling the truth as he tells us that Cretans always lie” (151). This critical address from mockumentary is largely an act of encouraging greater medium awareness from a viewer – they are encouraged to view documentary with an awareness of the form, and awareness that the form is in of itself a creative decision made by the filmmakers, as is the construction of authenticity. Nichols suggests a tautological quality to the documentary aesthetic of authenticity – it looks real because it looks like a documentary. Mockumentary makes this tautology more present by the simple matter of replicating the aesthetics in a fictional context. If narrative events that didn’t happen can be presented as authentically real, how persuasive is the reality represented by these aesthetics?

3.4. ‘Authorial Voice’ and Mockumentary Mockumentary’s critical project can be better understood through the ways it makes use of the same formal tool set as documentary. In general as mentioned above through mimicry of documentary in fictional and comedic reframing, mockumentary implies a general critique of the form, but there are components that carry within them more specific critique. Before analysing specific formal devices used, I would like to return to the authorial voice.

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As discussed in chapter 1, the authorial voice of documentary is a combination of its formal qualities and narrative content that present the documentary’s “message” and how that message is translated by the audience (Chapman, 113). Authorial voice is then the centre point of mockumentary’s critique; as a nexus of formal strategies, audience reception and social contexts it is a summary of the rhetoric that mockumentary aims to subvert. The authorial voice is chiefly a source of parody as the different elements are challenged and subverted and it is here that we can see the most direct example of mockumentary as implicit critique – by parodying the authorial voice of a documentary, the rhetorical style documentary uses to make its case is put into a place of doubt. In the interplay between documentary and mockumentary, authorial voice can be understood as a rhetorical strategy, the summation of the argument for documentary that mockumentary challenges. To best understand how this challenge is made, I am now going to revisit facets of the authorial voice.

3.5. Revisiting Modes of Representation – Modes as Critique A critical element of documentary style that contributes towards the authorial voice (and a construction of authenticity) is what Bill Nichols refers to as “modes of representation”, briefly mentioned above (32). Discussed in more detail in chapter one, these are observed styles of documentary that come into and out of fashion as the understanding of documentary changes; Nichols observes that these modes often arise out of the limitations of previous modes and respond to perceived flaws:

“New modes convey a fresh, new perspective on reality. Gradually, the conventional nature of this mode of representation becomes increasingly apparent: an awareness of norms and conventions to which a given text adheres begins to frost the window onto reality. The time for a new mode is then at hand.” (32)

Two critical ideas can be found here.

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First, modes of representation are the ways in which the “reality” of documentary is attained; in essence the mode a documentary adopts defines the techniques it uses to develop authenticity. This in of itself makes the modes an important theory to entertain in relation to mockumentary’s critique of authenticity. These frameworks of authentic construction become a primary target of mockumentary, momentarily we will observe the modes Nichols lists and consider how they construct authenticity, before considering how mockumentary attacks them. Where new modes of representation arise according to Nichols out of documentary’s own desire to adapt, mockumentary acts as an outsider acting on these modes to provide an intervention. Roscoe and Hight even suggest that mockumentary is at an advantage in its critique here, as any mode of documentary is still limited by its adherence to the relationship documentary has with attempting to depict authentic reality, meaning it cannot mount a sustained critique of the project of documentary itself (Roscoe and Hight, 32). This brings us to the second critical point, that of critical response. Nichols suggests documentary undergoes adaptation in response to itself. Roscoe and Hight argue that there are limitations to this reflexivity. They discuss reflexive documentaries as critiquing from within the genre where mockumentary critiques from outside; their contention is that fiction is in a better position to make a full use of parody; while reflexive documentary does question the codes and conventions of depicting authentic reality in documentary, it nevertheless adheres to some indexical link to reality, and must in turn be on some level convincingly authentic (32-3). Williams expands on this, describing reflexive documentary’s relationship with truth; “far from being abandoned, [truth] still operates powerfully as the receding horizon of the documentary tradition (11). While Roscoe and Hight consider the adherence to documentary representation a limitation on the ability to critique, documentaries that are self-reflexive of their content could usefully be considered the bottom end of the spectrum of degrees of mockery that they propose; of course the intention of their taxonomy is to accurately categorise styles of mockumentary alone, so a revision of the schema is not necessarily what I propose. More accurately, for this thesis it is useful to consider documentary and mockumentary as different critical aspects of the same conversation about

37 Griffiths (11312513) representative reality, narrative and authenticity. Before going further it is worth re-iterating Nichols’ categories. The expository mode is considered by Nichols to be the oldest mode and commonly features direct address from a “voice of god” narrator, this mode is often likened to propaganda (34). The observational mode is a more contemporary form and Nichols places cinema verité into this category, as documentary projects which emphasise the non-involvement of the filmmakers as they act as a “fly on the wall” recording subjects as they go about their daily lives (39). Th-e interactive mode directly places the filmmakers within the project, often including themselves on screen and conducting actions relevant to the progress of the documentary, often emphasising the relationship between film-maker and filmed subject (44). The final mode is the reflexive mode, this is what Roscoe and Hight consider to be a (limited) critique of documentary: Nichols cites works such as The Man With a Movie Camera (1929) and The Thin Blue Line (1988) which make the process of and ethical issues surrounding filming a documentary as much a subject of the film as the literal filmed subjects and events (57). Each of these modes contains within it limitations and ethical concerns of documentary that mockumentary addresses, and as the framework of the authorial voice of documentary can be considered the critical aesthetic tool that mockumentary mimics.

3.6. Narrators in mockumentary – Straightman to Unreliable Narration is a common feature of every mode of documentary and is a key source of parodic writing in mockumentary. Narrators in mockumentary can be used in a number of ways; Roscoe and Hight address several. Degree one mockumentary for example often presents narrators as a straight man – a voice of authority that takes the comedic elements seriously, acting as a deadpan comedic element. For instance in The Simpsons episode “Behind the Laughter” (2000) the narrator of the fictional documentary retains a serious and authoritative tone while describing cartoonish and ridiculous events, which is a primary source of the comedy of the episode. As a voice of authority, the serious narration makes the cartoonish events all the funnier, and in turn expose the inadequacy of the serious narration.

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This authority is also however a major tension underlying the use of narrators in mockumentary, and often an element of unreliability is injected. In F is for Phony mockumentary film- maker Marlon Fuentes explicitly states this as a goal of his work; “the authorial voice of the Narrator clues the viewer into the potential fissures of the tale” (124). By positioning the narrator as unreliable mockumentary levels the same accusation at documentary – this voice of authority may not be a voice you can trust. This critical aspect exposes a general bias of documentary narration, particularly the authoritative and impersonal Voice-of-God style. While documentary narrators may not be unreliable in that they are putting forth falsehoods, they come from a position of bias and mockumentary makes this clear, this is another way in which mockumentary encourages an audience to be reflective of factual qualities and aspects of documentary, here the position from which a narrator speaks. The authority of narrators is often a stand-in for the authority of the documentary, and different forms of narrator often face critique from mockumentary. While there is no rigorously enforced set of categories for narrators, a number of trends have emerged across styles and genres of documentary that suggest different styles of authority, and that have in turn been copied by mockumentary projects. One of the earliest forms emerges from the expositional mode of documentary, that of the aforementioned author as a disembodied “voice of god” (Chapman, 96). This mode of address is common in early examples of documentary, a regular feature in what Chapman through Corner refers to as a “project of democratic civics” (95). In this style the narrator is apart from the content of the documentary and comments on it as an ultimate voice of authority over the subject matter; the inclusion of a narrator’s voice here guides the viewer’s interpretation of the visual content of the documentary and influence what conclusions a viewer may draw (Chapman, 96). Still popular in nature documentary, this style is less common elsewhere and has been subject to critique, Corner reflects how the “observational authoritarianism” of the narrator here has been questioned and challenged for some time (682). Its use in mockumentary mostly falls into the role of the straight man, as discussed above. In some examples it has itself been a direct target of the mockumentary’s mocking, for example the BBC series Look Around You (2002) presents as a series of educational films

39 Griffiths (11312513) and subverts the supposed authority of the narrator by making his narration both factually incorrect and often complete nonsense. More common to mockumentary is the interactive mode of documentary, where the narrator is often a direct presence within the documentary text, and is often the filmmaker or director (Roscoe and Hight, 20). Here the viewer is a secondary witness to events as the documentary filmmaker participates in or observes events and draws conclusions, interpreting the world for the audience. The visual language and the on-screen presence of the filmmaker contribute to the documentary’s authority in this mode, as the film is a testimony to the filmmaker’s having “been there” and cementing the reality of situations in which they find themselves (Nichols, 181). Mimicry of this style is tremendously common in mockumentary, and can be seen from the deconstructive horror of Man Bites Dog to the parodic appearance of Rob Reiner as the filmmaker in This is Spinal Tap. The presence of the filmmaker within the mockumentary text allows for a number of different critiques and provides more creative avenues of exploration, likely the reasons for its frequent use. Chiefly the filmmaker is more directly a character and can have narrative impact on the events of the mockumentary, following the formal critique of documentary filmmakers interfering with the subjects of their films; Brian Winston for example outlines how the filmmaker’s presence can have a coercive effect on documentary subjects and in some instances puts them at risks they would not normally have undergone were it not for the film (Winston, 146). By placing a filmmaker within the world of the mockumentary, the film can more directly comment on these tendencies and habits of filmmakers in general regarding the documentary form, providing as it were a straightforward representation of their flaws. This is especially obvious in Man Bites Dog, whereas Roscoe and Hight have identified, the more the film-makers participate in the action of the film, the more depraved and unsettling the violence becomes (173).

3.7. Reframing Documentary’s Tools The final suggestion of Man Bites Dog above speaks to an element of mockumentary that makes its critique more interesting; the shift in mode as the film-makers become participants in the carnage.

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This shift is a literal transition from observational to interactive film-making, and that shift can be seen elsewhere in mockumentary. In Taika Waititi’sWhat We Do in the Shadows (2014) for example, towards the end of the film it becomes a key plot point that the until-then barely present film-makers are in active danger, culminating in a cameraman losing his life to an attack by a werewolf. While the contextual circumstances are different with one set of film-makers going on to cause harm to others and the second set coming into harm, both show a cracking of the authority of the film-maker as they are moved from a position of authorial omnipotence to the same vulnerability as their filmed subjects. This is a straightforward, almost blunt visual representation of the transition between modes. This is perhaps one of the most important features of mockumentary. Of all the elements of authenticity and the authorial voice mentioned in this chapter, mockumentary chooses to mix and match styles, forms and modes to test and challenge them. Mockumentary is composed of the same materials of documentary but not just through the lens of fiction, but through a lens that refracts these materials and observes them from different angles. This is ultimately the core of mockumentary’s critical and parodic strategy; it reframes and represents documentary so that its conventions may be questioned and its flaws may be better observed.

3.8. Key Points, American Vandal In this chapter I have outlined a number of key theories in how to relate mockumentary to the construction of authenticity. I have established a working definition of mockumentary using the schema outlined by Roscoe and Hight – a critical convention of fictional media that adopts the form of non-fiction documentary as a consistent element of its narrative and diegesis. I have explored how this form has been taxonomised by them and how this taxonomy relates to the construction of authenticity as it relates to factual representation, and how these forms apply to documentary. The critical conversation between documentary and mockumentary should now be clear. As documentary makes use of a number of conventions in its authorial voice to create a convincing sense of authentic reality, mockumentary adopts those same conventions to question this authentic

41 Griffiths (11312513) representation and indeed challenge the implicit authority these aesthetics and formal styles have in depicting authentic truth. I have explored how key elements of this style – the authorial voice, modes of representation and use of voiceover are specifically constructed as critical responses in mockumentary. The next chapter is the final case study – I am going to examine Netflix series American Vandal using the outlined schema of mockumentary’s critical tools: to assess how it builds its own critique, what elements of critique are its focal points and specifically how it relates its critique to the subgenre of True Crime, as well as what this says about True Crime as a documentary project.

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Chapter 4: Case Study – American Vandal “Honestly, Sam and I just got caught up in the madness” - Peter Maldonado, American Vandal (2017)

American Vandal (2017) is a clear and biting critique of contemporary True Crime television. It is in part directly inspired by Making a Murderer – the creators remark how they were compelled by Steven Avery as a central character and wanted to reimagine him as “a SoCal stoner” (Zuckerman, 2017). The series follows a similar case of unfair victimisation – similar to Avery, American Vandal’s primary subject Dylan Maxwell takes a largely passive role in the ensuing narrative as he is targeted by the establishment and persecuted due to public perception of him, and the series is primarily interested in the evidence placed against him. While touching on Making a Murderer in several key ways such as the above, the series primarily functions as a critique of True Crime documentary in a broad sense. Through its aesthetics, narrative content and surrounding context it suggests that true crime as a project has become clichéd, formulaic and sensationalizing; and therefore unethical. As a work of mockumentary fiction it illustrates well the relationship between mockumentary and documentary and as a contemporary work speaks to the current situation of both. In this chapter I will present the critical elements of the series as it responds to True Crime, both in terms of its formal qualities and narrative content. I will outline specific arguments relating to how it shifts between seriousness and comedy in tone to build a critique and how aesthetic practices and audiovisual strategies both produce this shift from comedy to seriousness and build some specific commentary on audience involvement.

4.1. Series Overview – Seriousness and Subversion Roscoe and Hight discuss how mockumentary uses its role as an outsider to documentary to build its critique (33). Largely this outsider status is achieved by it being purely fictional content as compared to documentary – as such the narrative content of mockumentary can be considered a part of the critique, and the events that occur as documented on film within the diegesis provide commentary on the documentary form and its ideals. American Vandal uses its narrative both implicitly and explicitly.

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The choice of subject matter often challenges high-minded ideals of documentary’s mandate to authentic reality through capturing inconsequential or textually uninteresting subjects, and the narrative thrust of the series reveals ethical and technical problems in filming a True Crime documentary. As the show progresses it both begins by implicitly challenging the legitimacy of documentary – the comedy comes from serious aesthetics applied to banal or childish subjects – before moving into a nuanced criticism of the failings of documentary. It builds an argument identifying the risk of falling into leading narratives, the impact documentary can have on its subjects and the supposed objectivity of the film-makers, and how that objectivity often rings false. The series roughly follows a narrative structure in its movement from comedic to critical. The initial episodes lean heavily on the absurdity of the juxtaposition of subjects: narrator Peter speaks in serious tones, carefully presenting his work (in some articles there is reference to his mimicking of Sarah Koenig’s cadence as she narrates Serial (Zuckerman, 2017)). His content subverts this self- serious presentation – the crime being analysed by the series is an act of admittedly large but ultimately juvenile vandalism. All the staff cars in the Californian high school around which the series is set have been graffiti’d with large penises. This is essentially the main joke of the series – Peter is treating an incredibly ridiculous act with the utmost seriousness and gravitas. This main joke is core to American Vandal’s critique of true crime. First it subverts the formal and narrative qualities of documentary by juxtaposing them against such a banal topic. Here it suggests that since it is able to use these aesthetics on such a subject matter, their legitimacy is questionable, we can understand this as one of the inherent critiques of mockumentary that Roscoe and Hight put forward. The central joke itself is an implied criticism of the fetishization of documentary aesthetics. As explored in the previous chapters, the aesthetic style of documentary can take precedence over the subject at the expense of the subject itself – an example used previously being Corner’s thick vs. thin texts (95). Protagonist Peter is consciously creating a documentary in the style of True Crime works that are current; he even explicitly describes the series as being “like Serial” when speaking with someone – who importantly responds “that’s a terible idea” (episode 4). The editing and

44 Griffiths (11312513) cinematography and style of the series are incredibly technically accomplished, but put to work on a crude low-stakes subject, largely due to Peter’s obsession with the documentary style. This specifically critiques an obsession with style at the expense of subject matter and content. As Peter describes the series as being like Serial he reveals a self-indulgence; the filmmaker protagonists of the series are reproducing a style and narrative tone of other True Crime documentaries without paying attention to the specific implications of the content. This in turn suggests that those elements of style are part of a self-indulgence of the subgenre as a whole, as they can be so easily and uncritically reproduced in contexts and circumstances outside of their original scope. In terms of Roscoe and Hight’s approach to mockumentary, the series is deconstructive in nature, but engages in a shift across their schema of degrees. As mentioned, it makes use of the implicit critique of documentary that mockumentary contains through its comedic juxtaposition. But as the series progresses it adds elements that reframe earlier sequences and adds nuance to the critique of the ethical implications of the series and its construction of authenticity, moving into direct deconstructive territory. In mimicry of documentary style it primarily operates in the Interactive or Investigative modes. This is a clear departure from Making a Murderer – unlike the latter series, American Vandal does make use of a narrator and features its filmmakers within the frame of the narrative. This makes its commentary on True Crime more general to the genre as a whole, as television True Crime is often associated with the investigative mode as its primary form. It also makes use of an element of mockumentary discussed last chapter – by placing its filmmaker-characters within the context of the story it has a more direct representation of the authorial voice which can be addressed. American Vandal uses the avenging narrative of True Crime, previously outlined by Sorrento. Like Making a Murderer, it follows an investigation into the guilt of a subject that has already been judged, and has doubts about the official story presented. Through its mocking frame of the filmmaker-avenger it questions the narrative role of the avenger and the impact this narrative can have, as will be discussed in a later section. To fully understand the methods through which American Vandal uses mockumentary to critique True Crime, it is useful to first look at how it approaches the question of authenticity in documentary on the whole.

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4.2. American Vandal and Authentic Representation American Vandal uses its high-school setting in a number of ways to build a critique of True Crime documentary. As discussed previously its subversion of the genre is largely expressed through the conflict between style and content; dramatic true crime presentation versus low-level high-school vandalism. This constant framing of impactful and powerful editing against the banality of school drama allows the series to express its critiques in a complicated manner while keeping an outwardly simple comedic tone. For example, a consistent effect that American Vandal uses is the aesthetic recreation of archival footage – evidence used by the characters which is presented in the text as footage recorded on phones, laptops and so on. Here it is evidently reflective of the media situation of a contemporary American high-school – cameras are everywhere. Dylan regularly uploads prank videos to YouTube and with his friendship group he engages in a lot of amateur filming. These videos are used frequently across the narrative to aid the investigation. In addition to Dylan’s footage, a number of other characters contribute faux-archival footage used in the documentary – video is taken from a number of online platforms. Chapman discusses how archival footage is used to provide legitimacy to a documentary (109) and we have previously discussed the authentic quality of archival footage in chapter one (12). Within the text of American Vandal this footage often provides alternate perspectives on unfolding events and provides Peter and Sam with information they otherwise would not have access to. It is combined with recordings from Facebook accounts and various different screen-capped text messages or online chat messages to produce a collage of evidence for the characters to sift through and make sense of. This archive is also presented as misleading – some videos are on a loop and cut off before crucial context, some posts to social media are ambiguously worded and refer to events the characters are not yet aware of, and some footage that should act as evidence exonerating Dylan of the vandalism cannot be corroborated. The way this footage is used draws on established documentary conventions of this material as seen in Making a Murderer, which draws generously from archival media involving its principle players. In some ways this is a metatextual parallel to Making a Murderer

46 Griffiths (11312513) as a large amount of the footage that appeared archival aesthetically in the series was filmed by the filmmakers, and here in American Vandal it is entirely created for the series. Discussed in more detail in chapter one, archival footage is often presented as compelling and authentic evidence with regards to the central questions that True Crime aims to resolve, and in combination with the aesthetics of social media discussed by Creeber, have an aesthetic of intimate realism (597). American Vandal uses its high-school construction of archival footage to develop a critique of that footage’s application in True Crime documentary. Since evidence from this collected material makes an incomplete collage, the protagonists often have to try and complete the image themselves. The critique presented is rooted in the limitations of archival footage and how it can lead to wild conjecture on the part of filmmakers. This exposes a limitation to reconstruction; as Biressi says of footage as evidence: “any ‘event’ is accessible only via the form of its retrospective construction. Even visual recordings […] offer filmic constructions of shocking events whose interpretation is open to dispute” (17). In other instances the incomplete nature of the footage or recorded messages are crucial evidence as they are reframed – for example photo updates from Dylan’s girlfriend McKenzie when placed in juxtaposition with footage from her home media, which changes the context wildly. Here the nature of archival footage’s authentic texture is questioned – it is as prone to reframing and manipulative editing as any other form of footage and as evidence it is no guaranteed testament.

4.3. Tautological Investigation Early in the series, there is a scene that speaks to the critical trajectory, touching on wider narrative implications and serious critique of True Crime that gets unpacked more explicitly later in the series. When interviewing an unpopular schoolmate, he suggests to Peter and his fellow film-maker Sam that he had a sexual encounter with a considerably more popular girl while spending a week at a local summer camp. Peter and Sam immediately drop their ongoing investigation into the vandalism to focus on this supposed encounter – with another friend they travel out to the camp and invest time in verifying the claim and go as far as to creating a CGI “reenactment” of the supposed encounter to try and better understand its veracity.

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This sequence is incredibly interesting and makes up the backbone of the second episode of the series; it presents a large number of components of the broader critique of the series. For example the comic aspect here is immediately present, and as discussed through use of documentary aesthetics it becomes critical. The scenario effectively presents Peter and Sam as biased. They don’t like this schoolmate, and he is unpopular with most of the rest of the school, which becomes a large part of their argument against his claims. This is a major critique leveled against True Crime. Within the scene, the filmmakers present evidence to fit their bias. In the sequence, Peter and Sam are investigating this sexual encounter specifically because they are starting from the premise that it did not happen. The end result of their investigation is also the starting point, they imply a conclusion straight away. This critique is often aimed at True Crime documentary. Serial and Making a Murderer are both associated with it; there is an implied answer in the premise of the series. By asking “did he do it?” regarding either series’ subject, both imply the answer is that he didn’t, as was discussed in the previous case study. This innocence isn’t necessarily the conclusion either series comes to but it does shape their approach to the investigation. Furthermore in American Vandal the final evidence that draws Peter and Sam’s conclusion regarding the hand-job is tautological; this girl can’t have fooled around with their unpopular schoolmate because she admitted to an encounter with another unpopular student. The pecking order of the high-school is the evidence. This scenario also clearly works along gendered lines – the idea that sex sells, a parallel to the often sexual nature of acts True Crime depicts. In the final episode, Peter is even confronted by the girl involved in the rumour who angrily tells him the entire sequence “didn’t prove anything, it had nothing to do with Dylan” and that she felt humiliated (Episode 8). The scenario is a side-track that bears no real relevance to their continued investigation, and its inclusion while presented comically suggests a very problematic scenario, and suggests a similar tendency in True Crime documentary. This critique is also developed aesthetically. Peter’s narration alongside the sound-mixing and editing, as well as the CGI reenactment, infuse the scenario with a dramatic, suspenseful atmosphere. While this is played for comedy it speaks to problems within the aesthetics at play. All of these elements are found in True Crime documentary – the music, the CGI and so on are all well-established

48 Griffiths (11312513) tools at the disposal of documentary television – the timelines used in American Vandal have a striking resemblance to those used in Making a Murderer, making it direct commentary. By focusing the editing and aesthetics on an innocuous and largely pointless investigation (tantamount to video bullying) the narrative forcing of these techniques is made apparent. There is no suggestion that Peter and Sam have misrepresented their schoolmate by lying or omitting facts, but they have misrepresented him and his relevance to their investigation through framing. This is an attack on the avenging narrative elements of True Crime as they are developed through aesthetic decisions. There is a suggestion that documentary avengers can vilify interview subjects through their representation, or even expose subjects to representation that is unwarranted to serve short-term interests of drama or serving the narrative thrust of documentary.

4.4. Critical Shift – From Implicit to Explicit Critique in American Vandal The midpoint of the series is where this critique moves from implied to explicit within the text. The same narrative tools are used but directly commented on by the characters. Peter deduces that he and Sam are logically on the suspect list for students who could have committed the vandalism and argues that they must cross-examine one another to eliminate themselves from the list. Sam uses his examination to mock Peter openly and present a series of jokes at his expense, none of which are relevant to the case. Peter is incredibly frustrated by this and demands Sam use “due diligence” while working on the investigation, and that they must act objectively even towards one another. Then he builds his case against Sam. Peter’s case is an intense and serious examination of Sam’s character and potential motives, making public his flaws and vulnerabilites. Peter presents these candidly and ties them into the timeline of the crime, as well as assessing Sam’s access, arguing he had motive. This intense examination of Sam leaves him both uncomfortable and angry. He doesn’t want Peter to use it because it adds nothing to the project while laying bear a lot of personal things. They get into an argument and Sam lashes out, walking out of the project. This is an important turning point in the series. Up until this point, none of the critique of Peter’s method has been explicit. This is the moment that the film-makers themselves begin to have a

49 Griffiths (11312513) visible impact on the events going on around them. In Roscoe and Hight’s analysis of the film Man Bites Dog, they discuss the film’s efforts to deconstruct the supposed objectivity of the neutral camera and begin to involve the camera crew in events. This attacks the idea that they couldn’t have an impact on events, as the film crew moves “from ‘objective recorders’ to active participants” (173). The shift in American Vandal is more subtle. Peter and Sam are shown to have always had an impact on the subjects they’re filming, and by revealing the emotional impact Peter’s cross-examination has on Sam, it reframes previous representations of subjects as problematic and damaging. This also leads to critique on authentic construction in True Crime – in his pursuit of a comprehensive and authentic representation of the case Peter often ends up hurting others by including footage such as the above to be properly comprehensive in his representation. American Vandal draws a connection between what representation means for the film and what it means for the subjects – there is an inherent limitation on what information can be included, and as Winston has observed, a “warts ‘n’ all” representation can often lead into inherently negative depictions as the drive to be authentic puts an undue focus on the “warts” (144). It is worth acknowledging that some element of an impact is a desirable quality in True Crime documentary. For instance, as mentioned in the case study for Making a Murderer, Brendan Dassey’s conviction was overturned shortly after the series was released – this is both a positive impact of the series and good publicity for the filmmakers. American Vandal itself does have Dylan cleared of his involvement in the graffiti due to Peter and Sam’s investigation. His re-admittance to the school is however placed in a subdued and dark context in the episode in which it occurs. In watch the documentary at a party with his peers Dylan learns what people think of him to an uncomfortable degree. Peter is also singled out and dressed down by another character for his disregard of personal boundaries throughout the project. American Vandal argues that positive results of an investigation like this are heavily dependent on the means to get them – and questions the motives of the filmmakers, as their desire for truth is coupled with their desire for a dramatic story, and casting themselves as avengers can come at the expense of their subjects. Their impact from this point onward continues to expand; one of the teachers at the school – Steven Krazanski – ends up losing his job due to comments he provided Peter and Sam. In addition the

50 Griffiths (11312513) relationships of their various subjects untangle and lead to falling outs and anger directed at Peter and Sam. To push this further an episode reveals that Peter has been uploading the episodes to the internet throughout the process, and that they’ve gone viral. This leads to a number of characters commenting on events as fans analysing content and the various characters of the show are treated in-text as just that; characters. Their relationships are judged, their motives questioned, theories arise as to the identity of the perpetrator of the vandalism. While a lot of the critique of the series is delivered through formal and aesthetic aspects, it also uses its narrative to build a case against documentary. Here is where it is most explicitly critical of series like Making a Murderer and Serial specifically – both are series with viral qualities and both have had audience commentary and reactions intersect with not only their documentary narrative but the lives of their subjects. As was discussed in detail in Chapter 2 there has been all manner of fan reaction on Avery’s trial up to and including death threats sent to the prosecutor (22). Mirroring a petition sent to the White House as a response to Making a Murder (Legaspi, 2016), in episode 5 of American Vandal, there is a “fan campaign” to save Dylan from conviction. There is an acknowledgment of the complexity and danger of True Crime documentaries and their impact on the figures they represent, and how the work they produce can impact and drive fans to act. Ultimately the fan campaign and media attention achieve one thing – the continued filming of the documentary. Peter is suspended from school as a result of earlier actions taken during filming and this increased attention allows him to both return to class and return to interviewing staff and students. While Peter and the documentary are presented sympathetically, there is still a clear suggestion that True Crime documentary has a self-serving or self-perpetuating quality to it. Beyond the reduction of subjects to characters in a drama, actions of fans can have a recursive quality, both previously mentioned series have faced accusations of sensationalising their subjects and there is a question of how far their work goes towards helping their subjects, and how much it turns in on itself and encourages the viewer to watch more episodes. Another way that the narrative critiques True Crime documentary is through an attack on the supposed authority of documentary. This critique begins from the premise of the series and is continued through in narrative exploration. Peter presents the series as authoritative; he apes the

51 Griffiths (11312513) style and technique of documentary filmmakers to give the series a legitimate element. This authority and henceforth the authority documentary aesthetics give a project are immediately undermined by Peter’s character; he’s a high-schooler, and a relatively unpopular one. Literally in the text at the start of the narrative, he has no authority. He’s clearly earnest but the series doesn’t flinch away from showing when he is unprofessional (he refers to himself as a “documentarian” (episode 4)), or when he exhibits other flaws that harm the series, as discussed above with his cross-examination of Sam. The textual amateur nature of Peter combined with the professional construction of the show’s aesthetic provides a subversion of the authority that documentary is supposed to have, the narrator is not all-knowing and while the case is presented as if Peter has a reasonable grasp of events his account is affected by this lack of authority – the viewer isn’t encouraged to distrust him but rather not take him too seriously. By subverting the authority of the filmmaker, American Vandal questions what right filmmakers have to engage in this avenging investigative action, and their reliability as witnesses and judges of the events depicted. They command an authority they have not necessarily earned, and use it to present a perspective on a crime and convince the audience of their interpretation of events while convincing the audience of their conclusions regarding guilty and innocent parties. Furthermore Peter’s amateur status is a meta-textual critique of the aesthetics True Crime documentary uses – the impressive and dramatic editing styles can be recreated by a high- schooler. This challenges the mandate True Crime has to an authentic depiction of reality, as its techniques and aesthetics are this easy to ape and replicate.

4.5. Interviewed Subjects and Authority The series makes extensive use of talking head-style interviews. Interviews are conducted with the majority of named characters within the show; central figure Dylan is frequently interviewed, and as discussed previously is based on facets of Making a Murderer’s Steven Avery that the show-runners found interesting. Repeated interviews with him form an exploration of his personality and provide a regularly reframing of the likelihood of his involvement in the vandalism, also making a thematic connection to Serial. Other interview subjects range from potential witnesses to “experts” to bystanders with some relationship to the events unfolding. These interviews are regularly treated to

52 Griffiths (11312513) the series’ theme of unintended consequences: as discussed previously Mr. Krazinski loses his job due to remarks he makes on camera. In this way, American Vandal critiques the True Crime documentary’s relationship with interviewed subjects. Krazinski was not told his comments would be published online – this works in relation with Brian Winston’s discussion on “Informed Consent” in documentary (143). The subject here consented to being filmed because he was not aware of the context in which his comments were being used, nor their impact on him. There is an accusation that True Crime documentary can mislead its subjects into placing themselves in dangerous situations (146). Furthermore the majority of interviews continue the undermining of documentary authority the series engages in. As was previously outlined in chapter 1, interviews can be typically roughly understood as a divide between experts and the public; experts to provide authoritative exposition on events and the public to give an emotional impression of the represented world (Chapman, 105). The majority of interview subjects confirm Peter’s lack of authority – he is not well respected and while characters are happy to be interviewed, many don’t take it seriously. The majority of teachers interviewed often spend more time guiding the conversation than Peter does and in cases will refuse to talk about specific aspects of high-school drama. The students interviewed on the other hand often discuss drama but these interviews are treated by the series as gossip that Peter (and the other students) consider compelling evidence to be investigated; following the ethos of juxtaposition the series uses. In this way interview subjects are often unknowledgeable or using conjecture, or refusing to comply with the documentary. In this way American Vandal collapses the typical privileges of interviews that Chapman outlines – regardless of if the experts or the public are favoured, neither is ultimately satisfactory. This undermines the total authority of documentary and it’s claim to authentic representation. It’s not a question of how reliable witnesses are - many are in fact doubted and cross- examined in the series – but of how the form of True Crime can be an authoritative representation of none of its participants really comply with it. Furthermore it confronts the ethical imbalance of power between interviewers and subjects, as subjects here directly confront Peter about his representation of them. Dylan as an interview subject is treated with complexity. While as a character he clearly has no respect for Peter or Sam, and while he is generally immature on screen, the series devotes much time

53 Griffiths (11312513) to unpicking his personality and filling him with pathos. The series even ends his arc tragically as he falls into the stereotyping to which he has been subjected and takes a criminal act of revenge against the teacher who falsely accused him at the beginning of the series. This examination of him is presented in a mixture of form; while Dylan is blasé, relaxed and immature in his talking head interviews, Peter’s confrontations with him and other examinations of his character are all medium shots or present him in perspective with other characters. The camera shots in which he is the only subject are presented as a facade, as he deceives the audience about his his actual feelings on subjects. The critical positioning here is subtle – Dylan only loses his facade when he is not directly addressing the camera. His biggest moments of weakness are shown when he’s not even aware that he is being filmed. This is most notable in a scene in the final episode where he watches back earlier episodes of the series and sees himself, and what others think of him, unaware that Peter is filming him watch it. This hearkens to the observational mode of documentary – the film-maker as an impartial witness at a remove from the characters and the actions (Nichols, 39). This is commentary on how narrative needs impact documentary, as well as the ambiguous ethics of authentic depiction. Dylan’s moment of emotional vulnerability builds towards a narrative purpose within the story of the documentary, a piece towards a larger statement about Dylan and impact events have had on him. This “real” moment is narrative artifice. Dylan’s unrehearsed moment is no less artificial than the front he puts on during interviews and the camera’s presence itself may not bias the characters but does enforce narrative structure, it biases what is filmed towards being narratively relevant. As the filmmaker builds towards a thesis the lived experiences committed to film become elements of narrative, divorced from their roots in reality. This reveals a very deep critique of authenticity as a documentary construct; the emotional truths of the footage are undercut and impeded by the narrative structure to which they must conform. It has also been added to the narrative likely without Dylan’s consent – towards the end of the series Peter is frequently chastised for not asking permission of his filmed subjects, or including hurtful footage of them that they were unaware were going to be part of the project.

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These candidly filmed moments persist in a couple of other areas to explicitly convey critiques of Peter’s project. Beyond the argument he has with Sam, Peter is also confronted by a subject whose texts he used and Sam is subject to a dressing-down from a friend on camera as well. The framing of these scenes is entirely serious – grievances are treated as genuine. The series uses these filmed moments to provide its thesis statement on True Crime as a work of investigation – the practices of the form are intrusive with often unintended consequences for its subjects, and the narrative needs push authentic constructions towards cliché at the expense of the presented content.

4.6. “It didn’t prove anything, it had nothing to do with Dylan” Narrative patterns in documentary are of particular interest to American Vandal. Partially this is a simple effect of contemporary documentary – there is by necessity a thesis statement and an arc to the documentary as the thesis argument is built, explored and concluded. American Vandal however goes beyond that to explore the weaknesses of the narrative structure. Most notable the series makes heavy use of archetypes, particularly archetypes of True Crime documentary and high-school drama. The use of True Crime documentary tropes is an inherent critique. The narrative patterns that emerge in True Crime are presented as staid. That these things can be highlighted and mocked is an indication of their prevalence. True Crime is presented as following narrative cliché, limiting the scope of subjects that are represented and the presentation of crime within American society. It also argues that adherence to these patterns can be both intrusive and damaging for subjects. As a response to the current zeitgeist of prestige True Crime documentaries, American Vandal makes a clear argument for a critical questioning of the ethics of representation and the necessity of the well-worn narrative and aesthetic conventions of the sub-genre. Following its primary targets of Serial and Making a Murderer, the series ends on an ambiguous and dark note. The real identity of the graffiti vandal is hinted at but cannot be confirmed. Dylan will not get into college as he deals with real, inescapable criminal charges. This is similar to both series in that it does not end with its subject cleared as an innocent man, nor does it manage to answer the question of the perpetrator of the central crime. Ultimately the work of the documentary is a failure, and in the case of American Vandal, all that leaves is the humiliation of its subjects and the damage elements of the documentary process

55 Griffiths (11312513) have done. It argues that sometimes the pursuit of truth, no matter how faithfully captured, is not enough.

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Conclusion If authenticity is to be considered an aesthetic aspect as much as a negotiated construct, then its implications in a narrative medium are inescapable. As American Vandal illustrates in great detail, this aspect of narrative authenticity is at great risk of cliché and repeated patterns at the expense of the content. It clearly and articulately makes an argument that recent transformations in True Crime documentary, through their overt interest in narrative drama and the aesthetic affect of authenticity, are running into easy cliché, and ethical breaches. Furthermore Nichols’ conception of representative reality, particularly his use of modes, is an excellent framework for identifying this authentic construction and the interaction between documentary and mockumentary – as he observes, modes are often built as responses to previous documentary ethos, and as is made clear in study of mockumentary, the form participates in this response. It develops a critical perspective of the failings of documentary that are increasingly responded to by documentary as it changes. It is uncertain from this research if mockumentary has a direct causal impact on generic mutations within documentary, but it is clear that as documentary undergoes transformation, mockumentary is a device which can accurately and thoroughly diagnose the limitations of the genre, often in ways that self-reflection is unable to manage. While it was not a primary focus of this thesis some of the issues with the ethical use of authentic representation are clear from the analysis – for example True Crime’s troubling focus on the sexual victimisation of women, seen in Making a Murderer and parodied then critiqued in American Vandal. Indeed these narrative patterns, while committing to an authentic truth in their representation, can be exclusionary of a greater societal context. For example, it has been remarked that the humiliation and mistreatment Steven Avery has experienced is treated here as exceptional, while it is all too common for many non-white American citizens (Schulz, 2016). Further study could be done into the question of how authentic framing and narrative patterns intersect with news selection and other methods of presenting exclusionary truth. While there are certainly reflective elements of documentary that respond to this, it is clear from the case studies that the limitations of the medium

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(including the simple fact of the difficulty of representation) lead to a very prescriptivist interpretation of modes of representation and the necessary components of documentary film-making. What has also become clear is the emotional affect that the aesthetic component of authenticity contains. Returning to the briefly mentioned intimacy of early television and low-quality screen footage, it is clear that beyond indexical links to historical reality and a claim to quality, authenticity is an excellent means to generate a sympathetic emotional response from an audience. As was briefly observed by Roscoe and Hight, found footage in horror cinema is not simply a gimmick; it presents a means of immediately developing pathos between the filmed subjects and the audience. More than simply convincing of the truth of the story, authenticity contains a persuasive power with a strong emotional pull. This audience relationship with True Crime is further developed by how the persuasive qualities of authenticity play with the uncertainties of the sub-genre, and the ramifications of that have been seriously criticised by mockumentary. As has been explored, the discursive puzzles of doubt in True Crime both enhance the audience experience of the drama of the case and can lead to direct audience interaction with the participants of the documentary. Beyond this, the games of doubt created by the genre nevertheless present persuasive arguments as to certain conclusions, the narrative patterns of the sub-genre emerge and the selected evidence creates a narrative. Often the investigation that audience members participate in as part of the chain of investigations is directed carefully by the producers of the documentary towards particular paths. Certainly further research on this investigative mechanism and how it interacts with True Crime and documentary as a whole is warranted. These inter-playing concepts of authenticity as persuasive and the discursive puzzles of truth games that True Crime and other forms of documentary use are perhaps the most interesting elements of this thesis. There is a seeming paradox in the two concepts pairing together, and a clear tension in their pairing. This is clearly critiqued in American Vandal as the more Peter desires to resolve the puzzle and get to the ‘truth’ of his investigation, the more biases are enforced until as a final act, Dylan Maxwell defies Peter’s presentation of his innocence by drastically re-performing the crime for which he was supposedly guilty. What this tension makes especially clear is that a faithful

58 Griffiths (11312513) construction of the authentic is not a mandate to the story, nor is it necessarily a comprehensively accurate one. Documentary remains limited as ever in its ability to comprehensively represent truth. There is certainly potential for further research in many areas explored in this thesis. For example the question of parody could be deepened by a broader scope than mockumentary. Recently there has been an increased appearance in comedy podcasts dedicated to crime – Martinis and Murder (2017) and My Favourite Murder to name examples. These “comedy murder podcasts” also contain reflexive qualities on the True Crime sub-genre and suggest a transformation based in farce, very clearly focusing on the transgressive sensationalism of the sub-genre and presenting it as a point of comedy (Hess, 2018). The satirical quality of these podcasts alongside mockumentary has interesting implications, and could be explored in a similar context to how satirical news has been increasingly considered to possess a particular persuasive authority on a similar level to regular news broadcasts. Furthermore there are other narrative qualities of True Crime that warrant investigation. Ray Surrette mentions in his work for example, that factual media depictions of crime often break it down into “episodic” or “thematic” formats that contextualise crimes in different ways, the episodic often taking the individual case of a criminal act divorced of its social context (183). How these formats interact with both the explored avenging narrative of True Crime and in fact the binge-lead nature of modern streaming documentary television could lead to some useful insights into the transformations of the sub-genre. While this thesis has kept a narrow focus on the intersection between narrative and authenticity, the subject could be greatly expanded and the subjects explored remain a useful method to study how we build a storied sense of the authentic, how we use it and how we critically reflect upon it.

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