Reality TV articles #1 & # 2

Reality shows about weddings and the birth of babies are very popular in American society. The reason for this is mainly because many women would love the chance to relive those special moments in their lives and seeing other women go through it allows women to pretend as if it was them. Women also like to see if they outdo other women when it comes to their wedding. Other shows like Wife Swap or Nanny 911 reintroduce the traditional motherly roles to women who may have lost sight of it. These shows, however, display American society in a bad light. They show that the American family has many issues. Nanny 911 makes American parents look like a joke when it comes to raising their children. Although these shows are very entertaining to people in our society, we need to really consider how these reality shows make us look to other countries.

Sherman's March

Sherman’s March is a reflexive journey documentary because it is a physical, spiritual and emotional journey that the filmmaker goes on. The filmmakers objective was suppose to be all about Sherman’s march which was an event that took place in the south when a general from the Union army marched across the south and terrorized and burned down everything in his path. Most in the North considered Sherman a savior; however those in the South considered him a terror. The documentary starts out with the filmmaker telling the audience his life story and his recent mishaps that have occurred. From the beginning, the film was never about Sherman’s March it was always about the filmmaker and his search for a southern girl to fall in love with him. Although it had nothing to do with the actual Sherman’s march, in a way it resembled it because just like General Sherman, the filmmaker is on a masculine conquest for something. The film is very unprofessional in its filming and the fact that the filmmaker included himself in most of the footage. The documentary is mostly observational and it does not contain much narration, except for some narration from the filmmaker. This documentary was very strange, however it kept my attention because I was always wondering when he was going to start talking about the real Sherman’s March.

London

London was directed by Patrick Keiller and is considered a reflexive journey documentary. Along with a journey documentary, it is also a “mockumentary” because it mocks a travelogue and destroys the traditional idea of a documentary. A travelogue is made to encourage people to come visit the place being filmed, but in the case of London, it is showing all the horrible parts of London and displaying the city in a bad light. This documentary has no archival footage that I saw, but uses quite a bit of extra-didatic sounds. The film is narrator entirely by an unknown man who seems to know quite a bit about Robinson, who we also never see. Many times, the images shown do not match up with what the narrator is talking about. The film talks a lot about politics and also focuses on the bombings that were taking place in London at the time, due to the Irish Republican Army. The film also shows footage of men and women sleeping on the streets in London. This documentary seems to be criticizing London and depicted it as an ugly place to live.

Rick Burns

Rick Burns is a writer, director and producer of historical documentaries. It was very obvious we came up on stage his passion for making documentary films by the beautiful words he used to explain his work and just how excited he was to be up there showing his newest film. I really enjoyed his new documentary about the whaling industry and the whaling ship that capsized. His documentaries are full of life and are always keeping the audience entertained. From what I saw from the documentary Mr. Burns showed us, it appears to me that he uses a lot of archival footage and also uses the “voice of God” narration. His documentary also seems to be scripted, some scenes even looked like they might have been acted out which added to the entertainment. I really liked his documentary and thought it was a very intriguing and unique subject matter he chose for the film. Rick Burns is a very talented and humorous individual and am glad I was given the opportunity to meet him.

7-Up

Seven up was released in 1964 and was directed by Michael Apted. It is a journey documentary because it follows a subject or in this case subjects and films them over time. This documentary is about a bunch of seven year old children who vary in gender, social class and even in race. Michael Apted films these children when they were seven years of age, then in another film when they were fourteen years of age, the next film they were twenty-one years of age and so on. This documentary uses narration and is mainly composed of interviews with the children and it uses observational filming. Along with being a journey documentary, it is also considered a social documentary because it deals with social class in society.

The documentary is basically just interviews with the children. They talk about school, what they do when they get home, what they want to do when they grow up, etcetera. The lower class children talk about nonsense and act more so their age. However, the children from the wealthy class talk about the future education they are going to receive, they talk about how they read the paper and know about the stock market, and one girl even talks about how when she has children she is going to have a nanny for them. It is very interesting to see how social class divides them all.