Title: Trauma and Triumph: Documenting Middle Eastern Gender and Sexual Minorities in Film and Television
Abstract: Bill Nichols, in Representing Reality (1991), tells us: Fiction harbours echoes of dreams and daydreams, sharing structures of fantasy with them, whereas documentary mimics the canons of expository argument, the making of the case, and the call to public rather than private response …. If movies (fiction) "reflect" our culture, and if this mirror image is the fundamental, determining definition of cinema, then documentaries, too, must pass through this "defile" of a reflection. (p. 4) As Nichols observes, there are dual characteristics of documentary. It can be conceptualized as a discourse that represents reality, and it can also be seen to be a clearly mediated form, with editing, scriptwriting and narration shaping the raw, "real" footage that we see in the documentary medium. Nonetheless, in terms of audience response, documentary becomes an example of reality rather than negotiation with reality. While fictional representations of sexual and, to some extent, gender minorities has increased quantitatively and qualitatively in recent years, the debates surrounding the positive or negative attributes of such representation have often centred on charges of a lack of realism. Within such a context, documentary representations of culturally marginalized identity positions can hold some power by providing a sense of authenticity, of real queers with real stories to tell.KeywordsMiddle EastMiddle EasternAsylum SeekerArab WorldWorld Trade CentreThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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