Keeping It Real

by Sunny Bergman
First Run / Icarus Films, Brooklyn NY, 2004
VHS/DVD, 51 mins., col.
Sales, $348; rental, $75
Distributor’s website: http://www.frif.com.

Reviewed by Artur Golczewski
Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa

artur.goczewski@uni.edu

This is a documentary film that proposes to investigate an aspect of postmodern culture that we are well-acquainted with through so-called "reality" programming on television, phenomena that could be said to be "popularized" (and hence also "popular") quests to show reality in ways that are more "truthful" or "authentic" than the mundane joys of daily life. By way of a series of interviews with individuals and/or businesses that promote intense encounters with "real life" as a manufactured commodity, this film tries to shed some light on the symptoms of a very odd "identity crisis——which is a crisis of values as well——that is an increasing problem in Western societies.

The question of which human experiences are "authentic" is fraught with complications, and, of course, a larger and even more troublesome problem is the challenge of knowing for certain what, if anything, is "real." This film (in large part because of its subject) requires unusual patience to watch, in exchange for which the viewer gains from the film’s poignancy, its candor, and the targeted and intelligent way that it looks at a cultural anomaly in a way that is purposely trendy.

Oddly, as the film proceeds in its attempt to be an exposé of the phoniness of media versus the authenticity of "real" human experience, or the pretentiousness of Western kitsch versus the more genuine cultural artifacts of third-world societies, it does so in a manner that is so theatrical that one wonders if the film itself (unwittingly or not) is no less artificial than the phony stuff that it condemns.

The film’s attitude is somewhat indebted to philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in the sense that it favors the virtues of searching for ones "true self" (which, of course, has great appeal in Western societies), and to regard that as a genuine need that is inherent in each individual. One cannot help but sense from this a certain nostalgia for the simpler, "more natural" or hippie-like life of the 1960s (which the film suggests as a model), in which each person relies for guidance on his or her own instincts in struggling to determine what is true and genuine, and thus may be less often deceived or misguided by the mass media into living (or re-living) the reality of someone else.

The debate about which aspects of one’s self are "natural" or genuine (as in the age-old discussion about whether or not each of us is born with an "innocent eye"), and the extent to which we each are shaped by mass media and other social influences, has been a central issue in critical writings on culture since at least the 1980s. To some extent, this film belongs within that tradition of study–but the pesky and unresolved question remains of how seriously it should be taken. In the end, does it clarify any of these questions, much less provide us with answers? Or does it succeed primarily (as we are forever complaining about television documentaries) by duplicitous "info-tainment"?

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Volume 20 Number 3, Spring 2005.)