Introduction

Few situations could be as awkward as the demand to “just be yourself” on camera, and to proceed with your activities as if the camera were not present. Documentary’s Awkward Turn presents an analysis of awkward moments in documentary film and other reality-based media formats. Awkward moments may be staged intentionally in the service of a film-maker’s perspective or argument, as in the work of documentarians like Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore—usually with the goal of shaming one of the film’s (political, ideological) “villains.” I analyze this by-now familiar strategy of staging awkward moments for rhetorical effect. But the book’s greater concern is to make visible the ways in which awkwardness connects and subtends a range of transformative textual strategies, political and ethical problematics, and modalities of spectatorship in documentary film and media from the 1970s to the present. Even as the concept of awkwardness illuminates documentary film of this period, documentary helps us to critically define awkwardness itself. Awkwardness is created by unexpected shifts and ruptures in representational systems, moments when differing perceptions and investments among filmmakers, social actors, and spectators are forced into view. These moments foreground conflicting expectations about the documentary’s meaning and purpose, and may alter the rhetorical, ideological, and affective framework of the film itself.