ABSTRACT
A mockumentary is popularly understood to be a fictional audio-visual text, such as a feature film or television program, which looks and sounds like a documentary. The term 'mockumentary' itself was first widely used to describe the fake rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and is often assumed by commentators to refer only to similarly parodic or satiric material. Mockumentary has been employed as an innovative approach to storytelling across a wide range of media, including popular cinema, television genres, and any number of experimental forms of media production that pursue a more critical agenda toward representations of reality. The widespread application of mockumentary as a storytelling style across a range of genres and media forms, including blockbuster feature film production and primetime televisual programming, also suggests that it has less potential to be subversive, diluting its essentially reflexive stance toward documentary and related forms.
