Along the Subjectivity

(...After showing her the technical

computer simulation of the sinking process of Titanic)

″Thank you for that fine forensic analysis.

Of course, the experience of it was... somewhat different.″

- From Titanic, Old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Character)

People do not come into being who they are all of a sudden. They do not become a mother, a lawyer, an intellectual, good, bad, funny, serious, sensible etc. in a glimpse. The subjectivity of the individual standing in front of us is fed with past, reflects a process full of changes and alterations which is peculiar to the one. Besides, this subjectivity does not stay permanent, as time passes it goes on being exposed to change and alteration by the lived experiences which also differs from individual to individual. Subjectivity is the traces of different experiences and perceptions. As how one’s finger-print is unique to the one, subjectivity is as much as peculiar to the one. Subjectivity does not contrast with the thought that there may be similar ideas and experiences, alike attitudes and views between people, what it emphasizes is there might be similarities, resemblances but they do not/cannot be same one-to-one. As individual filters are always active, same facts cause different experiences and memories for different individuals through their peculiar filters which are also subjected to change and alteration in time.

In order to exemplify, people in movie theatres watch the same movie, same scenes at the same time. It is possible to talk about some kind of a common perception. However, some scenes may become more meaningful for some people (due to one’s lived experiences and subjectivity), a few years later one may remember some scenes which the other does not. On the other hand, experience of watching the movie in that theatre is also a subjective experience. It may be the first movie that one watches with his girlfriend, the other may have heard good news before watching the movie, one may have hard times in his life, one may come with her father, the other may come with friends from university...

Bill Nichols examines documentary and the effects of such a subjectivity on it. He says there are some specific approaches and styles in documentary such as reenactment, representing past in the present as an imaginary with the sources of the present like body, thoughts, mediums etc. by the aim to represent the thing, the fact that is not available here and now. Besides, there is the use of spoken testimony of social actors, people who witnessed and may tell what they know about historical events, when used parallel with historical footage which creates the coherent effect that the power of the image is strengthened with the spoken testimony as it determines its meaning.

Nichols offers that in that process the aforementioned subjectivity does not stop, it acts. Particular may only some extent serve for the general, one cannot be the voice of the collective due to the fact that as one tells, the ″I″ talks. In the testimonials of the witnesses who are filmed, in the way filmmakers conduct the process of collecting information and construction there is always subjectivity.

Therefore Nichols suggests to see documentary as handling the actual events in a creative manner:

″Traditionally, the word documentary has suggested fullnes and completion, knowledge and fact, explanations of the social world and its motivating mechanisms. More recently, though, documentary has come to suggest incompleteness and uncertainty, recollection and impression, images of personal worlds and their subjective construction.″