ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of visual media in the development of an ethically oriented reflexivity. Reflexivity is an important concept in documentary film theory, as it is in analyses of modern society. The characteristics of film language are well described by Anders Johansen. Film mediation techniques have created a new foundation for assessing what is authentic. The point is that authenticity as a cultural feature of modern society is problematic, but authenticity as a moral ideal should be recognized. Taylor emphasises how modern individualism has an expressive aspect of artistic creativity in discovering and defining ourselves as unique persons. Taylor's reflections on ethics are founded in the communitarian school in political science. In visual mass media publicity vacillates between individual morality and power strategies in politics. In the theory of the ethics of closeness it is, however, important that the sight of a face is not sufficient for the innate moral ability to be acknowledged.
