Abstract
Documentary theorist John Corner's suggestion that we might be moving into a post-documentary period echoes concerns raised earlier by Brian Winston that the documentary is facing some type of crisis. This paper argues that this is only the case if one ignores a broader notion of media hybridity that takes into account directions offered by new technologies and aesthetic regimes. This paper proposes that, rather than signalling an unravelling of documentary's purpose, emerging forms of factuality point towards more localised forms of communication that have been effaced in ‘discourse of sobriety’ with their distrust of the popular. Using examples from reality TV (Big Brother) and a simulation computer game (The Sims), I suggest that these multi-platform ‘gamedocs' relate to older and often ignored histories of representing the real. These histories connect to the lineage of George Méliès' actuality projects and the scientific and morality loops found in the mutoscope and entertainment diorama. Aspects of play and actuality remerge in the contemporary forms of Big Brother and The Sims which trade on documentary's cultural cache as the site of the real whilst simultaneously adopting a self-conscious, sometimes critical relationship to the authentic seeming. In so doing, they construct a type of docobricolage in which narrative and representation become subservient to navigable geography, mastery of the game environment and the pleasures of gameplay itself.
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