{"id":15,"date":"2025-10-13T21:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T21:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/?p=15"},"modified":"2025-10-13T21:06:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T21:06:07","slug":"social-action-or-social-embarrassment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"Social Action or Social Embarrassment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At 31 minutes and 45 seconds into her documentary film \u201cStranger with a Camera,\u201d filmmaker Elizabeth Barrett asks the audience, \u201cCan filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people we portray?\u201d She then goes on to establish a complex relationship between what she deems \u201csocial embarrassment\u201d and \u201csocial action,\u201d proposing the idea that social action can easily cause embarrassment for those that filmmakers are intending to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus, an ethical tension is created by Barrett. This tension is one in which a filmmaker has both the desire to help a particular group of people, while having the moral responsibility to not disparage those they aim to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"463\" src=\"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-16\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image.png 840w, https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image-300x165.png 300w, https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/image-768x423.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 840px) 100vw, 840px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Courtesy: Stranger with a Camera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is a particularly striking moment, as this issue is twofold. This tension applies firstly to the primary subject of her documentary, the relationship between filmmaker Hugh O\u2019Connor and the Kentucky residents who he documented, but secondly to the relationship between Barrett herself and the issue that she is documenting. Both of these filmmakers are essentially covering the same people, the rural Kentucky residents, and thus both face the same ethical tension. However, it appears that Barrett is the only filmmaker of the two to outright acknowledge this tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This tension between embarrassment and action is somewhat addressed by Robert Coles in his text \u201cDoing Documentary Work,\u201d in which he ruminates the ethical questions that are created by documentary work. Coles specifically asks, \u201c&#8230;what kind of moral and psychological accountability should we demand of ourselves, we who lay claim to social idealism or to a documentary tradition that will somehow (we hope) work toward a social good\u2026?\u201d(p. 74) These questions mirror those posed by Barrett, who asserts that it is up to the documentarian to be mindful of how documentarians portray their subjects, particularly in relation to how they portray those in poverty. A documentarian should address these questions by striving for a closer relationship with those they are portraying. By better understanding how their subjects want to be portrayed, in the case of those struggling as a result of these social issues, documentarians can take a more ethical approach in response to these tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By posing these questions, Barrett is engaging in a sort of self-scrutiny regarding her own location. Is it possible that, by covering this topic, she is doomed to repeat the same mistakes made by her predecessors? Perhaps by retreading the same ground regarding the rural residents of Kentucky, she is also risking the social embarrassment she sought to address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 31 minutes and 45 seconds into her documentary film \u201cStranger with a Camera,\u201d filmmaker Elizabeth Barrett asks the audience, \u201cCan filmmakers show poverty without shaming the people we portray?\u201d She then goes on to establish a complex relationship between what she deems \u201csocial embarrassment\u201d and \u201csocial action,\u201d proposing the idea that social action can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dvisioli.bergbuilds.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}