Reconstructing Social Reality: The Rhetorical Approach of Documentary Films to Social Problems in Uncut Playing with Life

Abstract

The constant innovations in media technology are creating both positive and negative impacts in human lives. The documentary film, which has been highly appraised because of its affinity with human lives as a mirror of social realities, has been affected by these technological innovations, leading to creation of documentary variants like mockumentary and docu-soap. These documentary variants which are usually seriously mediated, however, have caused documentary theorists to query the very basis of the documentary film which is its fidelity or truthful recording and presentation of realities. This query, therefore, has led to questions such as; how true is the documentary film's recording of human social realities? With the mediation of the director who must interpret the realities from his own point-of-view, how much of these realities are altered in the final analysis? With the new hybrids, is the documentary film still an effective tool of social change? This paper relied structuration theory of Giddens which saw social relations as a function and/or operation of structure. Therefore, the paper examined the structural attributes of the documentary as encoded in Uncut Playing With Life (2000) produced by Communicating for Change to address the issue of female genital mutilations in some parts of Nigeria. It employed the historical analytical method to evaluate the rhetorical and/or dialectical approach of the documentary to human social realities so as to determine its effectiveness as a tool of change.

The paper argued that though the documentary variants have indeed expanded their focuses beyond the scope of human realities, the mainstream documentary film, despite its reconstruction of reality and structural mediation, still gravitates towards truth as much as possible. The documentary, it posited, remains an effective tool of social change.