ABSTRACT

The men and women are "real", they are who they are said to be, ennobled by no art or artifice; but the postures they take are attitudes imposed upon them not by a Stanislavsky, but by the script which has been agreed upon by a magazine staff working on a story line, or by a group of people with a message about technical change, man's exploitation of man or—for these are equally documentaries—the invigorating effect of the free enterprise system. The possibility of a genuine break-through from the documentary to the actual is there and may—no one is quite sure yet—again be betrayed. Successful fiction like Death of a Salesman, The Caine Mutiny, The Blackboard Jungle or The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit reflect the middle world of the documentary, and myth replaces character.