Jeff Holley

ENGL 342

Prof. Richard Simpson

November 10, 2020

Week Twelve

In documentary films like Tongues United (1990), gay black men are presented as stereotypically oppressed among white gay men because they are "sexualized by being viewed as hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine," leading to the reality of such an "infinite authentic situation." 

The documentary film Sink or Swim (1990) takes on a different approach to narration. The "girl" who is the daughter born in 1953, has a younger sister and brother whose father-daughter relationship has many nuclear typical family issues. The narration is in the third person, oddly but sets the stage of how the film portrays this relationship from the girl's childhood to adulthood and how the girl's father summarizes his understanding of the hierarchy that caused so much trauma in the lives of the family. This film, for me, contradicts the bland, stereotypical public awareness of the word "documentary" the facetiously describes "the art of talking a great deal during a film, with a commentary imposed from the outside, to say nothing and show nothing" Louis Marcorelles, (Minh-ha, 95). In reality, these are "powerful living stories, infinite authentic situations. There are no retakes. [where] The stage is thus no more no less than life itself" (Minh-ha, 94). 

            It's essential to come to some realization that through the absence of imposed meaning or the denial of such, that documentary film is in itself an avenue that "creates a space in which meaning remains fascinated by what escapes and exceeds" reality and truth (Minh-ha, 105).

~Jeff