Where Truth Lies
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FALLON FILM & MEDIA STUDIES | POLITICS This boldly original book traces the evolution of documentary film and photography | as they migrated onto digital platforms during the first decades of the twenty-first HERE TRUTH LIES century. Kris Fallon examines the emergence of several key media forms—social net- W working and crowdsourcing, video games and virtual environments, big data and data where visualization—and demonstrates the formative influence of political conflict and the documentary film tradition on their evolution and cultural integration. Focusing on par- ticular moments of political rupture, Fallon argues that ideological rifts inspired the adoption and adaptation of newly available technologies to encourage social mobi- 9/11 after Media Documentary and Culture Digital lization and political action, a function performed for much of the previous century by independent documentary film. Positioning documentary film and digital media side by side in the political sphere, Fallon asserts that “truth” now lies in a new set truth of media forms and discursive practices that implicitly shape the documentation of everything from widespread cultural spectacles like wars and presidential elections to more invisible or isolated phenomena like the Abu Ghraib torture scandal or the “fake news” debates of 2016. “Looking at a unique and intriguing set of ‘hybrid media,’ Fallon convincingly makes a claim about a change in the form of new media, one linking politics, aesthetics, and lies technology.” ALEXANDRA JUHASZ, Brooklyn College, CUNY “Where Truth Lies does the difficult and much-needed work of unpacking how the KRIS FALLON documentary impulse is shifting in the digital age, both through the profound influ- ence of digital aesthetics and computational thinking and through the ways traditional documentary is infusing digital expression.” JENNIFER MALKOWSKI, author of Dying in Full Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary KRIS FALLON is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. AN AHMANDSON FOUNDATION BOOK IN THE HUMANITIES UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS www.ucpress.edu | www.luminosoa.org Digital Culture and A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Documentary Media Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Cover illustration: The7Dew/iStock after 9/11 Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of California—Davis. Learn more at the TOME website, available at: openmonographs.org. Where Truth Lies The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Endowment Fund in Humanities. Where Truth Lies Digital Culture and Documentary Media after 9/11 Kris Fallon UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advanc- ing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by Kristopher Fallon This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Fallon, K. Where Truth Lies: Digital Culture and Documentary Media after 9/11. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1525/luminos.80 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fallon, Kris, 1976– author. Title: Where truth lies : digital culture and documentary media after 9/11 / Kris Fallon. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019018762 (print) | ISBN 9780520300934 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520972117 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Digital media—Political aspects—United States— 21st century. | Documentary mass media—United States—21st century. | Mass media—Objectivity—United States—21st century. | Online social networks—Political aspects—21st century. Classification: LCC P95.82.U6 F35 2019 (print) | LCC P95.82.U6 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/10973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018762 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980041 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Alisa, Keaton, and Harper, whose love is the truest truth I know Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Preface xv 1. Seeing in the Dark 1 2. “We See What We Want to Believe”: Archival Logic and Database Aesthetics in the War Films of Errol Morris 18 3. Networked Audiences: MoveOn.org and Brave New Films 51 4. “States of Exception”: The Paradox of Virtual Documentary Representation 86 5. Technology, Transparency, and the Digital Presidency 114 6. Post-Truth Politics: Conspiracy Media and the Specter of “Fake News” 156 Notes 181 Index 217 Illustrations 2.1. A soldier scans the horizon in The Fog of War 24 2.2. “Overeager” sonar men 28 2.3. The domino theory in action 28 2.4. The observed and the observer in The Fog of War 29 2.5. The “number cruncher” becomes the bomber 31 2.6. Graphic superimpositions of the percentage of devastation caused by the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II 33 2.7. The database of images rendered in different aesthetic configurations 46 3.1. Robert Greenwald’s “Un” Trilogy 53 3.2. MoveOn’s remake of the “Daisy” ad 60 3.3. The MoveOn home page circa January 2004 61 3.4. The FoxAttacks home page circa October 2007 71 3.5. Elinor from Host an Event! 75 4.1. The Gone Gitmo space in Second Life 90 4.2. America’s Army everywhere: public version and the arcade game 103 4.3. The “Medic Training” section in America’s Army, version 2.5 106 5.1. The initial recovery.gov home page 131 5.2. Recovery.gov circa 2011 132 5.3. Data visualization in The River and on recovery.gov 135 5.4. Edward Tufte’s “Lights-On Map” 137 5.5. Interactive IED visualization tool on The Guardian’s website 152 Acknowledgments Like many books, this one may have a single author’s name on the cover but owes its existence to many others. While the final form of the book took shape over the last two years, the questions that it seeks to address have been with me in one form or another across many years, countless conversations, and four institutions. My thinking on documentary aesthetics and the capacity of moving-image media and digital technology to explore the world has been indelibly shaped by many of the wonderful teachers and mentors with whom I have been fortunate enough to work over the years, including Marina Goldovskaya, Katherine Hayles, Jeffrey Decker, Randy Rutsky, Aaron Kerner, Jenny Lau, Kaja Silverman, Anton Kaes, Hubert Dreyfus, and David Bates. Particular thanks go to the dissertation committee on whom many of these ideas were first foisted: Kristen Whissel, Jeffrey Skoller, Ken Goldberg, Martin Jay, and the fearless chair of that committee, Linda Williams, who set a model for critical thinking and scholarly mentorship that I find myself striving to emulate every day with my own students. Like the field itself, my work on documentary in particular has been shaped immeasurably by Bill Nichols, whose books, seminars, office hours, and ultimate generosity as an adviser and scholar have been fundamental in my own intellectual path. I am further grateful for the friendship and intellectual challenge posed by many of my colleagues in the wider field whose influence on this particular project has been both intangible and yet instrumental: Alenda Chang, Chris Goetz, Amanda Phillips, Brooke Belisle, Doug Cunningham, Jaimey Baron, Selmin Kara, Jen Schradie, Kris Paulsen, Tung-Hui Hu, Allison Fish, Alessandro Delfanti, Laura Horak, Erika Balsom, and Paige Sarlin. Damon Young’s semioccasional refrain “What’s happening with the book?” along with his example of tireless, xi xii Acknowledgments good-natured productivity provided an important source of accountability. Ilona Hongisto’s advice on framing the final chapter was invaluable, as was herfriendship throughout the entire process. Particular thanks go to both Ben Stork and Kevin McDonald, who through countless conversations and tireless revisions provided detailed feedback on virtually every part of the manuscript. Good friends don’t always make good readers, but in Ben and Kevin I was lucky enough to find both. Various parts of the text found their first iteration on panels at conferences in- cluding SCMS, Visible Evidence, and others, and I am particularly grateful for the input of fellow copanelists, chairs, and attendees whose chance remarks, questions, and critiques on these occasions have strengthened