Lucidno
There is nothing to discuss about the mainstream media, which is to a large extent dependent on media monopolies, on the multinational or national holdings that these media monopolies work for, and on the governments that act as their security force. These mainstream machines of deception ceaselessly generate lies by sometimes remaining silent, ignoring what is going on, and at times by not telling everything via adopting techniques that are similar to the ones adopted by National Geographic as Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins demonstrate in their impressive work titled Reading National Geographic in a very effective, clear, and verifiable manner. Since these problematic products are produced by significant cameramen and very competent directors, they do their job very well. It is possible to think of these extremely delicious documentaries (if we are to call them documentaries), which give pleasure when consumed, as a piece of baklava. Baklava is also incredibly delicious and also highly harmful for one’s health. Its essence is sugar and very thin dough. Apart from the pistachios, its every ingredient is harmful. These documentaries are similar to baklava in that respect and the mainstream media is also engaged in such endeavors. They provide attractive and consumable things for our gaze. As people who are engaged in and acquainted with these efforts to a certain extent, we have a relatively critical approach; however, the majority of people, who actually matter, just look at them and believe in them. And they form a worldview through the sediment of these images.
When we encounter something that seems reasonable in the mainstream media, we should be cautious. When this mainstream media, for example ZDF, shows a very well prepared documentary regarding the abuses of right in Turkey and the journalists in prison, we should be thinking about the following: ZDF does this because the German government charged all the money regarding the purchase of tanks to Turkey or Turkey gave the tank tender to Italy. If the second situation is the reality, then you won’t see any documentary against Turkey in any of the RAI channels, at least for a while. In this context, it is possible to say the following: ‘In case the documentary we watch contain a part of the truth, then the reason as to why it is shown does not matter for the viewer. What matters is to show the truth.’ It is due to the fact that only a flow that shows consistency in time and space can create a meaningful impact that is capable of forming cultural memory not the single structures that are atomized and based on fragments. If this were the case, then Coca-Cola would only create an advertisement once in a decade. However, Coca-Cola doesn’t do so and keeps exposing us to its images, logos, and jingles by employing the same sentence anytime anywhere without ever stopping. Just like Good Year, Merkel, Sarkozy, Burger King, Shell, and BP does. For this reason, the singular importance and power of a genuine documentary that is shown at times that are in accordance with the flow of the political realities that I have just mentioned is unfortunately limited. Repetition is importance in the formation of cultural memory.
I make this lengthy introduction on the basis of a reason that I consider to be not superficial. However, as in all of the other things that I wrote at different times, I have to take down the walls of the documentary genre, and it is the mainstream media that is the weakest link and the easiest of the targets in this demolition process. In terms of documentaries, mainstream media is like a castle made of paper. Since the funds provided by the EU or by different institutions, museums, individuals, festivals in Europe, Canada, and the US is not the focus of this essay, I won’t address these issues for the time being. This essay will focus on the kind of ideology that the documentaries, one of the last places that we try to find refuge in, screened at independent festivals and are considered to be genuine ones include and the kind of worldview they present.
In brief, what I defend can be summarized as follows. Between the years 1945 and 1998, the US made 1032 nuclear tests, France 210, Great Britain 45, and Russia 751. These were all called ‘nuclear tests.’ It can be understood that this was presented as quite an innocuous act and was reduced into a simple sentence. Just like the sentence that the EU formed in recent months, which reads ‘In accordance with the agreement that has been reached with the Libya government, the refugees that come from Africa and attempt to go to Europe via Sicily and Calabria will be hosted in Libya and their situation will be assessed there.’ Can you imagine? You throw a huge nuclear bomb into the ocean (not just a tiny dynamite) and you do this for almost fifty years and for hundreds of times. And this is just the number of the bombs that the US is responsible for. Russia did the same. If it had been only the Russians who had done that, then there would have been many documentaries on this subject in the Western media and among independent documentary filmmakers. Under the dictatorship of a mentally unstable individual, North Korea has recently made a few of those nuclear tests and look at the commotion it has caused. The US made more than a thousand tests like this. There are many documentaries about the poor Greek or Turkish fishermen who fish by using dynamite but there is almost nothing about these nuclear tests. Critical images regarding the fishing vessels of the US, the EU, and China are quite limited apart from the ones Sea Shepherd has.
What about the destructive, consumerist mentality of the ideology of exploitation and capitalism? The steaks are the size of a frisbee in US. Japan has destroyed the Mediterranean for the sake of supplying sushi. As 20-25 Mediterranean countries, we haven’t been able to do that for the last two hundred years even though we have tried very had but Japan has finally wiped out the Bluefin tuna from so far away. There is still an incredible consumption of oil, coal, and wood in the US. And the daily power consumption of New York City alone is almost equal to the daily power consumption of the entire African continent. A century later after Robert Flaherty, the nature is still destroyed in the same places around Yukon River. And documentaries are made about the destruction of the nature in the hands of white men with their huge machines. These are not critical documentaries. These films tell the story of how the brave and strong white men were able to extract gold, the story of their labor and sweat. The documentary of Robert Flaherty is much more important and ethical in many aspects than these stories about Alaska and gold that we see in the mainstream media.
Sweden gives out the Nobel Prizes but it is also one of the countries selling the highest number of anti-person mines in the world. Netherlands is an important center where hybrid seeds and the pill-shaped drugs that have recently become very popular are produced, and the biggest corporations of the milk industry are located at. The rainforests in South America are constantly turned into fields so as to feed this horrible milk river in the form of cow fodder made of corn and soy. However, we still see documentaries about Peru, the leaves of coco plant, and cocaine on the television and in the festivals. We see child soldiers and female circumcision. We generally see those child soldiers in two African countries that are in war with each other or we seen them as the victims or the killers in a civil war. But when it comes to the young Guatemalan, Honduran, and Mexican individuals that are hired by the US to make them fight and die in Syria and Iraq, there is not much to be seen on the television. The documentaries keep showing the Third World countries with regards to erosion, women’s rights, child brides, organ trade, bribery, sea pollution, and their houses with no roofs, floor covering, and tap water, their horrible schools, their neighbourhoods that are literally garbage sites, and their towns that are lacking in hygiene, education, and sufficient nutrition. There are many images of those shantytowns that are located at the polluted big cities of Africa, Asia, and small island states. A pig and a chicken in the midst of garbage and sewage. This is what we see. And the fact that this geography has been sacrificed and exploited for the sake of the Western countries’ comfort, prosperity, and hygiene in the past and is still ruthlessly exploited in the present time does not remain in our minds as the summary of the many films that we watch in an independent film festival. We either have pity or anger depending on the situation towards those underdeveloped creatures who are miserable, dirty, smashed to pieces because of a bomb, standing on the edge of or in the midst of a civil war, who are sick, who don’t have roads, energy, sufficient protein in their bodies, and no know-how to do things properly.
By continuously showing us images depicting the wrecked orphaned children who have no future, no shoes, and cities whose politics, bureaucracy, and air are polluted and crippled, and the destroyed nature, the Western countries actually say us something without ever showing a baby, an adult, a window, a street, a bicycle, or anything from Helsinki or Zurich. They say that this is how this place is. These ignorant and pitiable people, these people rolling in the dirt and not even separating their garbage, these people breathing mercury from batteries and removing parts of a vehicle, these young people from China, Honduras, Morocco, and Turkey… But we have democracy, hygiene, and Human Rights here in the West, in Germany, in Canada. Our streets are spotlessly clean. Our wine and our cheese are produced properly and our olive oil is produced by small families who eat their dinners under huge threes together with the members of three generation. That is how the tomato paste is also produced. Everything is fine. But actually nothing is fine.
What the documentary filmmaker from the West consciously or unconsciously says correspond to this: We are different, civilized, developed, and we are moving forward. What is missing in this statement is the revelation that it is the exploitative capitalist order that has left the East behind. And this is of great importance.
Without going into particulars we can ask the following question: Could it be said that even the independent documentary film festivals, which offer an honest and significant platform that cannot be compared with mainstream media outlets, and the distinguished works of the independent filmmakers attending these festivals, even the most independent and neutral of these works lead to an illusion in the end? Do they focus too much on a certain geography and present time with their cameras that are turned towards the exhausted and wrecked geographies? Do these documentaries prefer consciously or unconsciously not telling everything about the processes that took place in the recent past and began a few centuries ago due to the actions of a few countries (such as Italy, France, USA, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, Netherlands, Spain, and Australia)? After watching the documentaries screened at these festivals, if what remains in our minds is the burnt and destroyed towns and countries whose crops are bad, and the ignorant, generally unhealthy, yellow-black people who live in these countries and their undernourished, barefoot children, and the white doctors, lawyers, documentary filmmakers from Western countries who try to defend their rights, then there must be a problem to be resolved or there is clearly a missing link.
When we leave these festivals, we also need to remember the following information regarding the exhausted geographies that we have seen, the refugees, and the mass deaths:
