ABSTRACT
Documentary film and television has inspired several levels of cultural attention and respect over its history. Generally, documentaries have enjoyed cultural cachet imbued with airs of moral seriousness, social relevance, and brave truth-telling. The 2008 global financial crisis elicited significant attempts to understand and illustrate associated economic and political issues by many types of documentary producers. This chapter examines four documentaries to sketch the range of methods used to describe the American roots of the global crisis, and the cultural hierarchies in which the filmmakers positioned their work. Their placement and activity within these hierarchies can help to elucidate the shape of the discursive field that has been organized around issues of the economy, political power, and inequality in contemporary America. The chapter also examines how they function in the current epistemological struggles in American and global media and politics.
