Docudrama
In film, radio and television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction.
Contrary to docufiction, which basically is documentary, filmed in real time, “reality” in docudrama is filmed at a time ulterior to the events it portrays. It is based on narrative and fiction. Docudrama producers sometimes use as location for a realistic setting (fiction) a natural stage — see stage (theater) —, the place itself where the dramatised events are supposed to have occurred: it may mean a false documentary or journalistic narrative, like the 1938 radio drama The War of the Worlds by Orson Welles.
Characteristics
Docudramas tend to demonstrate some or most of the following characteristics:
- Focus on the facts of the event, as they are known;
- Use of literary and narrative techniques to flesh out the bare facts of an event in history to tell a story;
- Some degree of license may be taken with minor historical facts for the sake of enhancing the drama.
A good docudrama does not abuse dramatic license, and avoids overt commentary and explicit assertion of the creator's own point of view or beliefs.
Docudramas are distinct from historical fiction, in which the historical setting is a mere backdrop for a plot involving fictional characters.
History
The impulse to incorporate historical material into literary texts has been an intermittent feature of literature in the west since its earliest days. Aristotle's theory of art is based on the use of putatively historical events and characters. Especially after the development of modern mass-produced literature, there have been genres that relied on history or then-current events for material. English Renaissance drama, for example, developed sub-genres specifically devoted to dramatizing recent murders and notorious cases of witchcraft.
However, docudrama as a separate category belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. After World War II, Louis de Rochemont, creator of The March of Time, became a producer at 20th Century Fox. There he brought the newsreel aesthetic to films, producing a series of movies based upon real events using a realistic style that became known as semidocumentary. These films (The House on 92nd Street, Boomerang, 13 Rue Madeleine) were widely imitated, and the style soon became used even for completely fictional stories such as The Naked City. Perhaps the most significant of the semidocumentary films was He Walked by Night, based upon the serial killer Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker. Jack Webb had a supporting role in the movie and struck up a friendship with the LAPD consultant, Sergeant Marty Wynn. The film and his relationship with Wynn inspired Webb to create what became one of the most famous docudramas in history – Dragnet.
The influence of New Journalism tended to create a license for authors to treat with literary techniques material that might in an earlier age have been approached in a purely journalistic way. Both Truman Capote and Norman Mailer were influenced by this movement, and Capote's In Cold Blood is arguably the most famous example of the genre.
Sources and Bibliography
- Docudrama: the real (his)tory by Çiçek Coşkun (Middle East Technical University, Department of Sociology)
- Paget, Derek (1998; 2nd ed. May 2011). No other way to tell it: Dramadoc/docudrama on television, Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4533-2; ISBN 978-0-7190-8446-1.
- Rosenthal, Alan (1999). Why docudrama? Fact-fiction on film and TV, South Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2187-2.
- Paget, Derek (1998). No Other Way to Tell It. Dramadoc/docudrama on television. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4533-2.
- Rosenthal, Alan (199). Why Docudrama? : Fact-Fiction on Film and TV. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2186-5.
- Lipkin, Steven N., ed. (2002). Real Emotional Logic. Film and Television Docudrama As Persuasive Practice. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2409-5.
- Rhodes, Gary Don; Springer, John Parris (eds.) (2006). Docufictions: Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking, McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-2184-8.
- Roscoe, Jane; Hight, Craig (2001). Faking it: Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality, Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5641-3.
Docudramas
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Historic evolution
Radio
- The March of Time (1931–1945)
Films
- The March of Time (1935–1951)
- A Night to Remember (1958)
- The Gallant Hours (1960)
- Culloden (1964)
- The War Game (1965)
- Cathy Come Home (Drama documentary) (1966)
- Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
- The Missiles of October (1974)
- Pumping Iron (1977)
- Paranormal Activity (2010)
- King (TV miniseries) (1978) [1]
- Death of a Princess (1980)
- The Elephant Man (1980)
- Threads (1984)
- Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks (1985)
- Seacoal (1985)
- Life Story (1987)
- Goodfellas(1990)
- Dien bien Phu (1992)
- Baraka (1992)
- Schindler's List (1993)
- Ed Wood (1994)
- Nixon (1995)
- Hillsborough (1996)
- Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
- The Insider (1999)
- Erin Brockovich (2000)
- Thirteen Days (2000)
- The Pianist (2002)
- Bloody Sunday (2002)
- The Laramie Project (2002)
- Catch Me If You Can (2002)
- The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)
- Touching the Void (2003)
- The Last Dragon (2004)
- End Day (2005)
- Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
- Supervolcano (Drama documentary) (2005)
- Bobby (2006)
- Hollywoodland (2006)
- Krakatoa: The Last Days (2006)
- The 9/11 Commission Report (2006)
- The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
- United 93 (film) (2006)
- Rescue Dawn (2007)
- Breach (2007)
- Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
- A Mighty Heart (2007)
- Zodiac (2008)
- Che (2008)
- The Beckoning Silence (Made for TV) (2008)
- John Adams (TV miniseries) (2008)
- The Lena Baker Story (2008)
- The Informant! (2009)
- Public Enemies (2009)
- The King's Speech (2010)
- The Fighter (2010)
- The Social Network (2010)
- 127 Hours (2010)
- Fair Game (2010)
Television series
- Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
- Heroes and Villains
- Egypt (TV series)
- House of Saddam
- Space Race
See also
- Docufiction
- Dramality
- Ethnofiction
- Mockumentary
- Fly on the wall
- Factual television
- Reality television
- Peter Watkins, a pioneer of docudrama
References
Further reading
- Hellmann, John (1981). Fables of Fact: The New Journalism as New Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Kazin, Alfred (1973). Bright Book of Life: American Hot Dogs and Storytellers from Hemingway to Mailer. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.
- Lukacs, Georg (1983). The Historical Novel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
- Siegle, Robert (1984). "Capote's Hand-Carved Coffins and the Nonfiction Novel." Contemporary Literature 25 (1984): 437-451.
- Stavreva, Kirilka (2000). "Fighting Words: Witch-speak in Late Elizabethan Docu-fiction." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 309-338.
- White, Hayden (1985). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
External links
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