Authorship in Documentaries

This semester I've been making a documentary about the wards at a youth detention facility up on Baldy. The initial idea was to assess the arts programs provided at the camps, specifically a program Pitzer organizes where the wards make music videos with their own beats and raps. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm honestly never happier than when I'm up at those camps. It just inspires this indescribable admiration when you talk to a kid five years younger than you who has been through so much more, and shown so much more strength than you can imagine, and still looks at you like an equal as if your life hasn't been a joke compared to his.

I found it pretty impossible to make an unbiased documentary. From my Pitzer independent study professor's pressure to make something she can use as propaganda for funding (not a bad cause) to the wards wanting to give me the answers they think I want, the objectivity was doomed from the start. I don't know if anyone directly involved believes this program benefits the wards. It helps the college students like me, no doubt, I'd say my life is roughly a billion times richer because of the kids I met at the camps. But when I ask them if they're going to take what they've learned in the program into the future they give me a half-assed "Yeah, of course" but can't expand. They don't have the equipment to make videos, and most don't have the skill to get signed as rap artists. So are we just getting their hopes up for something that won't pan out in the future for our own self-fulfillment? I don't know if the "agency" or inspiration or motivation Jose got from making a video lasted after he got released from the camps and his mom didn't show up to give him a ride home, or after Martin's grandmother died the day after he was released. I don't know. They're dealing with such bigger issues.

I was recently given 12 mandatory hours of community service for something arguably worse than what most of these boys have done (grafitti, theft, evasion of police, etc.) (not worse with any sort of good or dangerous connotations, just stupider basically). These are guys who can barely read who are taken out of high school because they got caught doing what most high schoolers all over the US do. My point is that mandatory community service is a great idea. In my opinion people who say it's an oxymoron are looking for an excuse - you have to learn to read before you can read for pleasure, and the same holds for most activities. In our culture volunteerism isn't a natural thing, it takes effort to figure out where you're needed and where you'll fit. If I hadn't taken a class at Pitzer that got me out to these camps I would have no idea how much I like working in a detention center.

But I digress. My original point was that authorship is a squirmy thing in a documentary. It's impossible to be unbiased when dealing with 20 unique perspectives, and editing out 90% of the footage. If the documentary is going to have any cohesion, it has to be the perspective of the producer. I don't know why people get all up in arms about Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation...I'd say it's worse if you watch a documentary where individual perspective is concealed, and are manipulated into thinking you have an unbiased perspective on the issue.