Hacker News Reader

What do you think of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room[0]? It's one of my favorite documentaries. I've watched it about a dozen times probably. Dirty Money[1] shares a creator (Alex Gibney) [2] with Smartest Guys, and I also really like that.

Over the weekend I watched American Factory[3]. It may be my new favorite. I don't know if I will watch it as much as Smartest Guys, just because of the storytelling in that.

I like these because they clearly represent different viewpoints. Most documentaries feel like propaganda, and these don't feel that way to me.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_th...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Money_(2018_TV_series)

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Gibney

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Factory

I watched American Factory last week and was pleasantly surprised with how unopinionated it was.

It didn't have a narrator, which pleasantly surprised me, but was it unopinionated?

IMO I don't know.

Almost all docos are at face value garbage, David Attenborough for instance never turns the camera around to the human rubbish or half a town behind them and never shows the true brutality of animals. When you get to docos on humans things really fall apart.

American Factory pushes the divide between Chinese and Americans, but humour and brashness gets lost translation, not sure it existed as much as it implied.

What was interesting was American Unions which was eye opening how illegal behaviour in most of the West was so normalised.

But to be honest the biggest morsel was the 3 broken microwaves in the break room. WTF. One, understandable, but to get to three means a systematic break down in the supply chain looking after your workers.

I vouched for your comment. It doesn't seem to be excessively strident or controversial.

3 broken microwaves to me indicates either a strict cost control approach, or potentially sabotage. Worker sabotage is sometimes mentioned, but rarely pursued.

There is certainly opinion whenever you choose to point a camera at something instead of something else, but I think in this instance the choice of no narration left the viewer with a bit more space to make their own interpretation than many documentaries do, which was refreshing.

Did you know the girl from 'Great Hack's mother was an Enron employee that left before the fall?

I've noticed this a lot too lately, and the more I thought about it, the more I find Netflix to be the main culprit here. They fund these "documentaries" which are beautifully done and paint a wonderful narrative, but are ultimately empty of any meaningful analysis or content. Don't think they are doing this on purpose though, it's more likely just a side-effect of their content dump. PBS, BBC, and NatGeo documentaries are still interesting and relevant, imo.

This one started with the producers lawsuit against FB in the UK for his profile. Netflix probably picked it up later in the process.

I've entirely cut out documentaries out of my intellectual diet, because they've got too much access to manipulative techniques to engage emotions independent of the actual value of the content.

Non-documentaries can do it to, like books or magazine articles, but nowhere near as strongly. Non-documentary video content can do it too, but usually without such a strong veneer of factuality. (Counterexample: An evening news program, which are probably even worse than documentaries, but are at least more limited in scope.)

I might make an exception in the future for something with no effective political or scientific content, but that's about it. Most documentaries are just more dangerous than can be justified.

Good point, which I wholeheartedly agree of. I personally take documentaries as leads to certain things which I may or may not want to explore more deeply later.

Unfortunately director has to keep the audience entertained, which is much more important for production than actual factuality.

As a joke I want to make a documentary on Mister Rogers quoting everything he says out of context and using all the documentary cliches to make everything look Orwellian.

"But who is this man, and what is this much-vaunted 'magic kingdom' he peddles to children?"

As funny as this is, the idea of Mr. Rogers being #metoo'd is sad.

Pretty sure the abuse is what happens to the victims, not the perpetrators.

(Not any sort of implication about whoever Mr Rogers is [I'm not an American], but man the phrasing of this sentence stuck at me.)

Fred McFeely Rogers (March 20, 1928 – February 27, 2003) was an American television personality, musician, puppeteer, writer, producer, and Presbyterian minister.

His work in children's television has been widely lauded, and he received over 40 honorary degrees and several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002 and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 1997. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1999. Rogers influenced many writers and producers of children's television shows, and served as a source of comfort during tragic events, even decades after his death.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Rogers

For a long time, I didn't know he was a minister. I think most people probably didn't know. He's an example of a sincere Christian who "prayed in his closet" and walked the walk. He poured his values into his life's work.

I've never heard of any scandal attached to his name.

This reminded me of 'Out of Context Joffrey Baratheon'[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUePZZDLPrE

Fundamentally a documentary is trying to sell a narrative using documentary cinematic style.

Now sometimes this is mostly benign or even "good." Such as detailing an event in a in-depth matter-of-fact style. Works such as the early Planet Earth series are simply trying to capture and show the wonder of life around the planet! And maybe hopefully encourage you to try and protect them as a secondary upshot. As time has gone on, they've produced works are that much more blatant with their "save the environment" messaging.

However, most of the most popular ones have a significant editorial bias. Heck, one of the first landmark pieces, Nanook of the North, was almost completely fabricated! Often quite easy to spot as well. Some are very up front about their bias, such as Michael Moore's work. Some less so, such as the editorial narrative in features like Forks over Knives or Blackfish. And some it's quite subtle. The recent Making of a Murderer comes to mind where certain facts weren't presented and it's framed in a very sympathetic light towards the defendants. Sure they have a lot of true facts within them. And often you learn quite a bit! But they are often presented in a particular fashion or certain points are talked up while others are ignored or not presented.

It's an unfortunate thing, but even the most innocuous of documentaries have some small bias. And it's up to the user to try and understand how much is narrative editorializing and how much is "truth." It's all part of making the documentary feel more true and tap into our need for a strong narrative arc via romanticizing the story we see unfold.

for a documentary to succeed commercially as entertainment, it's not necessary for the audience to actually learn. They just have to feel like they learned something.

It would seem then that documentaries might be an effective form of propaganda for those with the resources to produce them and a public perception to change.

There is no "wrong". Theses are big,complicated subjects with a lot of nuance, and any attempt at telling the story will include bias and subjectivity. This is true of everything you read or watch.

Maybe the documentaries on educationally focused services like Magellan TV or Curiosity Stream are of a higher standard than what you get on Netflix. I see advertisements for them but have not checked into them yet.

I find it's very hard to watch anything Netflix-related without a grain of salt.