The Truth about Documentaries

Jackie Vlahos

4/3/16

Documentaries have had an influence on society since filmmaking was born. It is widely agreed that a documentary film is nonfiction, and its purpose is to maintain a historical record, though others argue that a documentary is a dramatized factual film and that there is room for artistic choice. So which is it? Are docuseries bound by the truth, or are things fudged here and there per the director’s choice? How does this affect the viewers and their interpretation of an event? Personally, I watch docuseries for a better understanding of what happened, but I don’t base my opinion solely on the series, I do plenty of research as well. Some documentaries are better at sticking to the truth, but it seems as though documentaries that are focusing on a crime, have a hard time staying unbiased.

 For many people, there are different versions of the truth, and docuseries can never capture all of them, nor do they always try to. Though controversial docuseries are nothing knew, there has been a striking amount of controversy over documentaries that have come out recently due to the way information has been handled and presented. If you Google the term, you’ll find lists of them. The specific docuseries that I will be focusing on is “Making a Murderer,” which focuses on the conviction of Wisconsin man, Steven Avery and his sixteen-year-old nephew, Brendan Dassey. “No documentary in recent memory has courted more attention, acclaim, derision and controversy than Netflix’s 10-part series, Making a Murderer” (Smith, 2016).

This series casts some strong doubt as to whether Avery and his nephew are guilty of the murder they are accused of and convicted for. This doubt has caused some serious backlash for the directors, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. Nancy Grace, a rightwing news anchor, accused the two directors of leaving out key evidence that proves Avery and his nephew are guilty. To which Ricciardi responded with, “this is a documentary- we are documentary filmmakers, we’re not prosecutors, we’re not defense attorneys, we do not set out to convict or exonerate anyone.” I agree with that, they are not a part of the justice system and it is not their duty to prove one way or the other, but as a documentary filmmaker, I would think that they would want to stick to the truth of the events, especially given that Ricciardi claims they are “set out to examine the criminal justice system and how it’s functioning today.” They were interested in “finding out how someone who had been wrongly imprisoned, could find himself back in the system.” If they wanted to examine that, they should have stuck to exactly what happened to land Avery back in jail, and that would include examining all of the information presented at the trial that led to the verdict.

Due to the way Ricciardi and Demos presented their information in this docuseries, the public has responded with “near-universal outrage about the verdicts” (Schulz, 2016). It seems as though these directors had a different agenda than they announced. Penny Beernsten, a crime victim who wrongfully identified Avery has her assaulter, told Shultz why she declined to participate in this docuseries. “It was very clear from the outset that they believed Steve was innocent, I didn’t feel they were journalists seeking the truth. I felt like they had a foregone conclusion and were looking for a forum in which to express it.” This is all well and fine, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but personally, I do not think a documentary was the way to express these opinions. To me, when I hear the term “documentary” I think of something that will be truthfully following the events that led up to a specific moment in time and not leaving out important things just to convey a specific opinion. I don’t think a documentary should attempt to influence the public’s opinion in one way or another.

So what was the point of “Making a Murderer?” Was it to shed light on the flaws of the justice system? Prove Steven Avery’s innocence? Guilt? We may never know the true agenda for Ricciardi and Demos, but “Making A Murderer” resulted in a petition to President Obama demanding that “Steven Avery should be exonerated at once by pardon” (Schulz, 2016), and was signed by four hundred thousand people. In my opinion, documentaries should make people think and question the events of history. “Why did this happen,” seems like a decent question to ask when recalling on events of the past. Viewers should not jump to conclusions based solely on what they see in documentaries. In writing this blog, I have come to my own conclusion that documentaries are not bound by the truth. There is no question that the public has always been intrigued by crime, hence the hit television series such as NCIS, CSI, and Law and Order. None of those shows are based on any one specific event in history, but a combination of anything and everything that has happened or could happen. Sure, there may be coincidental likenesses to events that have taken place, but it is fiction through and through created by the writers of the series. The directors and producers do not make up the events involved in their documentaries. These are real events involving real people. You cannot watch these and jump to a conclusion so quickly. We may never know if Steven Avery is guilty or not, but we do know that the victims and their families suffered very real pain, and that is not something a petition can or will change.

If Avery was truly framed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, then that needs to be investigated by experienced members of the justice department. It is not Ricciardi or Demos’ job to prove this in their documentary. If their intentions were to bring light to this situation, they certainly did that, but I think they could have done it in a better way while sticking to more of the truth and not leaving parts of it.

Works Cited

Grant, Barry Keith, and Jeannette Sloniowski. Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1998. Print.

Schulz, Kathryn. "Dead Certainty." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.

Smith, Nigel M. "Making a Murderer Directors Defend Series: 'Of Course We Left out Evidence'" The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 17 Jan. 2016. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.