If we search out the nexus of social commentary, cultural critique, and the crisis of

representation, it is there that we will find the mockumentary. One part humor, two parts
transgression, the many forms and variations of the mockumentary genre hold a mirror up to our
flaws, poke fun at our assumptions, and refuse to let us look away from our most cherished
notions about reality, the "truth," and the taken-for-granteds of everyday life, laying bare the
audacities, frailties, and well-guarded fantasies that bring them into being. Mockumentaries play
with our inner worlds, as well as our social lives, at times, gently, at others, drawing blood. They
make no apologies, they take no prisoners, and they laugh at our discomfort in the process.
Ranging from parody, to hoax, to active critique of documentary aesthetics, each with multiple
nuances, the mockumentary genre holds that discomfort as central to its mission--for it is
through that discomfort that we, as both audience and subject, reflect on our norms, values,
ideologies, and ways of being. Mockumentary's cinematic roots run deeper in Western culture
than in the cinematic traditions of other nations, with British and American traditions being the
most prolific, but recent additions to the genre have originated in Germany, Russia, Sweden,
and Iran. While ties can certainly be made to early theatrical social commentary, and other
forms of transgressive performance, such as the parodies of class and gender found in
turn-of-the-century burlesque, the contemporary mockumentary form is most often traced back
to a three-minute April Fool's Day hoax, "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest," aired on the BBC's
current affairs program, Panorama, in 1957. Broadcaster Richard Dimbleby reported that, due to
a mild winter and the eradication of the spaghetti weevil, Switzerland was experiencing a
bumper crop of spaghetti. The spot, which featured mock-documentary footage of the annual
Harvest Festival, elicited hundreds of calls, seeking to verify the story's authenticity, and obtain
instructions for cultivating spaghetti trees in England.
In the fifty-two years that have passed since "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" aired, the
mockumentary genre has exploded, training its lens on historical figures and discoveries
(Forgotten Silver, 1995; Forbidden Quest, 1993), icons of popular culture (Drop Dead
Gorgeous, 1999; Elvis Meets Nixon, 1997), nationalism and inter-cultural relations (Talking to
Americans, 2001; F**kland, 2000), religion (Enlightenment Guaranteed, 1999; The Proper Care
and Feeding of an American Messiah, 2006), race and ethnicity (The History of White People in
America, 1985; Born in the Wrong Body, 1995), the horrors of death (Cannibal Holocaust, 1980;
Faces of Death, 1978), and the horrors of suburbia (G-Sale, 2003; Human Remains 2000),
along with numerous send-ups of the culture industries, from television to music (This is Spinal
Tap, 1984; CNNNN: Chaser Non-Stop News Network, 2002-2003). While a number of these
films have mocked their way into first-run theaters and the hearts of mainstream audiences, as
the mischievous brainchildren of notable filmmakers, such as Christopher Guest, Woody Allen,
and Rob Reiner, others have been relegated to art house theaters, direct-to-video releases,
internet-only sales, and new media formats, such as YouTube. As a body of moving image
literature, they speak volumes about the traditions and trappings of the human condition.
Likewise, as a body of moving image literature, they have only recently begun to receive
scholarly attention. (see Roscoe and Hight, 2001; Rhodes and Springer, 2006; Juhasz and
Lerner, 2006).
A key issue in the analysis of the mockumentary is, first and foremost, what qualifies? Are there
degrees of mocking, and how do we understand them? Do different styles (parody, with its
focus on humor, derived from the contrast between the rational and the irrational; hoax, which
reflexively sets up a fictive documentary text as a means of commentary; and active
documentary critique, with its open confrontation of documentary aesthetics) function differently
or require different contexts in order to function? In what ways are the moving image texts
created by those various styles received differently by audiences? When a fiction film contains
actual documentary footage imported to its narrative, how is its mockumentary status assessed?
At the outset, mockumentaries may be thought of comprising a range, or continuum, of hybrid
fictional texts that borrow from documentary modes to achieve their own ends. While scholarly
examination sometimes differentiates strongly between "parody" and "fake"(often framed as the
distinction between "mockumentary" and "fake documentary") within the genre, there are a
number of common elements employed in their analysis. Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight (2001)
emphasize appropriation, mimicry, confusion, and subversion of documentary modes as key
determinants of a film's status as a mockumentary (1). Gary Rhodes and John Parris Springer
(2006) expand these evaluative criteria to include elements of parody, pastiche, and
self-referential irony (5). All of these criteria are useful in constructing a fluid,
contextually-dependent framework for considering mockumentary films, and within that
framework lies a key, much-agreed point: the mockumentary owes its lifeblood to the
documentary form which it references.
Like other film genres, however, the hand of each filmmaker tends to use these elements to
focus the lens of narrative commentary a bit differently. While, as John Kenneth Muir (2004)
points out, many mockumentaries, such as Larry Charles' controversial Borat: Cultural
Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), employ elements
such as satire, irony, and parody to create embarrassment and suffering for their characters,
Christopher Guest, the filmmaker behind the mockumentary trilogy Best in Show (2000), Waiting
for Guffman (1996), and A Mighty Wind (2003), combines his parody with an element of naivete,
in order to produce what critic David Denby has called "affectionate satire." Guest insists that no
one in his films is ever "mocked"--in the hostile, disparaging sense--"I call it comedy that's done
in a documentary style" (Muir 4). In the hands of filmmaker Christopher Hansen, that sort of
gentle comic affection, while still very much present, develops teeth and a somewhat sharper
"bite," in its treatment of blue-collar, self-proclaimed "local, regional messiah," Brian, in The
Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah (2006).
As Jesse Lerner points out in his introduction to F Is for Phony (2006), though, complications
remain, complications not focused on the nature of mocking, but on the active use of
non-fiction--perceived "truth"--in the service of fiction, and on "the varieties of fictional narratives
that incorporate documentary tropes … the host of strategies practiced in the murky borderlands
of documentary, fiction, and fake" (19).Cinematic history is brimming over with films that
variously fake, duplicate, and blend fiction and non-fiction images and tropes, and challenge tidy
the creation of tidy categories and definitions. Hybrid films since the silent era have created
admixtures of fiction and non-fiction footage--newsreels pieced together, representative, but
inauthentic documentary footage added for narrative support, newsreel footage added to fiction
films to heighten impact that blurs genre boundaries. The 1939 film Hitler: Beast of Berlin, for
example, dovetailed newsreel footage of Nazi troops parading through the streets of Berlin, with
cut-away shots of scripted onlookers, in support of the film's narrative. Far from parody or satire,
with no subversion or irony intended, hybrid techniques such as this create "fakes" that
challenge and complicate our notion of the "truth," yet may be seen as lacking criteria of
intentionality necessary for inclusion in the range of fictional texts considered mockumentary.
Still, that intentionality--whether parody, hoax, pastiche, or active critique--relies on the status of
the documentary, and on its audience's familiarity with documentary codes, formats, and
objective authority, in order to do its social and cultural work. In order for the "truth" to be
subverted, parodied, or otherwise taken out to play, audiences must first believe that a format
exists for reliably delivering that truth. While audiences of films, television, and new media are
increasingly aware that documentary truth is "relative" truth--authenticity that begs
interrogation--that truth still functions to lend a degree of ontological stability to audiences'
beliefs, experiences, and identities (Reid-Pharr 2006 130-140). Mockumentaries, then, in
degrees corresponding to their style, reach out and pull the cushion of certainty out from under
audiences as they sit.
This special issue of Post Script spotlights the parody, cultural critique, and interrogation of
"truth" found in mockumentaries, fakes, and docufictions, as they demonstrate just how tenuous
and problematic our collective understandings of our social worlds can be. An international
group of scholars explore and theorize the workings of mockumentaries, as well as the
strategies and motivations of the writers and filmmakers who brought them into being, in order
to better understand the larger social and cultural truths artfully woven into their deception.
Individually, each of these essays looks at a given instance of mockumentary parody and
subversion, examining, in depth, the ways in which each calls into question our assumptions,
pleasures, beliefs, and even our very senses. Taken together, this collection of essays on films
and television programming from Canada, the United States, Spain, Australia, New Zealand,
Denmark, and the United Kingdom, illustrates common threads running across cultures and
eras, as individuals, social groups, and entire nations negotiate identities, cope with social
tensions, acknowledge fears, make peace with ideologies, and attempt to answer sweeping
existential questions about the nature of social life and the human condition.
The issue opens with Sandra Cain's interviews with Frank Gallagher and Tom Wilson in "As
Real As It Gets: They Shoot Movies, Don't They? …the Making of Mirage, setting the stage for
our considerations of cinematic truth, lies (variations on the truth?), and exploitation. Gallagher,
as director and writer, along with Wilson, his co-writer and the film's star, perpetrated one of
contemporary film's great hoaxes when, in a style reminiscent of early cinematic exploiteers,
they promoted their fictive story of a despondent filmmaker's suicide as a documentary,
complete with counterfeit press clippings, turning yet another potential studio rejection into
Hollywood's most talked-about title. When confronted, Gallagher and Wilson countered that they
had never claimed that the film was real: "'It's as real as it gets,' that's what I said … Isn't this
what Hollywood is all about?" Isn't it, indeed … The Making of Mirage raises numerous
questions that will be revisited, in various shapes and forms, throughout the issue: Are there
rubrics to which the dreams and nightmares manufactured by filmmakers must adhere? Norms
of cinematic fiction that may not be violated without sanction? Contracts too sacred, values and
ideals too closely held, to be sullied by hoax or parody? These questions, among others will
animate the essays that follow.
The first group of essays in this issue takes documentary film's privileged claims to truth as their
main focus. In "The Naked Stare: Stripping with The Idiots," Emma Van der Vliet, discusses the
many ways in which Lars Von Trier's Dogme film Idioterne (The Idiots) lays bare (sometimes,
quite literally) the process and product of filmmaking, in the name of truth-seeking. With more
than a casual resemblance to reality television, the film is based on a group of willing captives
who allow themselves to be subjected to constant surveillance by film cameras, as they attempt
to get in touch with their inner "idiot" by "spassing" or acting mentally disabled. Van der Vliet
explores the many ways in which the filmmakers throw the issue of "authenticity" in Direct
Cinema into relief, through the film's many layers of transgression of social and cinematic
norms. Sharon Zuber's article on "David Holzman's Diary: A Critique of Direct Cinema"
continues this interrogation of the Direct Cinema enterprise, through the film's video-diary
portrayal of a day in the life of a young filmmaker. Holzman, hoping to make good on Jean-Luc
Godard's promise that film yields unflinching truth, creates the diary as a truth-seeking tool, and
the resulting film not only mocks the documentary form, but exposes the contradictions in Direct
Cinema, and the ease with which the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction can be blurred.
This cinematic (auto) biographical methodology takes a sharp turn in Lindsay Coleman's "The
Magician: A Day in the Life of a Hitman." Following in the path of the 1992 mockumentary Man
Bites Dog, The Magician follows a hitman about his daily business, with the documentary
filmmaker becoming a willing accomplice. Coleman explores the ways in which The Magician
stretches the rigors of vérité, as the filmmaker becomes collaborator, furthering the acts of
violence that fuel his film.
While mockumentaries typically offer social critique clothed in satire, this is not always the case.
In "From Trailer Trash to Trailer Park Boys," Dean DeFino examines the ways in which one of
the most popular programs in the history of Canadian television is written against the
mockumentary genre's usual commentary about values and ideals, economics, social class, and
the human condition. Unlike other popular series involving socio-economics and marginalization
brought about by class and caste, such as Sanford and Son, or My Name is Earl, Trailer Park
Boys shuns commentary as anything but a statement of fact--ordinary people, leading raggedly
ordinary lives--doing the best they can with the cards they have been dealt.
This mockumentary homage to the ordinary is re-purposed in service of national identity in "The
Aussie Battler Personified: Why Everyone Loves Kenny." Here, Henk Huijser offers an in-depth
reading of the ways in which the mockumentary style provides the perfect venue for advancing
the cherished cultural myth of the white Australian working class male--the Aussie battler--as the
fundamental class/gender basis of Australian national identity. Huijser examines how, as the
overdetermined "everyman," Kenny's character engenders strong audience identification, and
positions viewers as members of an imagined community that reinforces cultural myths and
national identity. Lisa Bode also takes on the issue of Australian national identity, in
"Performance, Race, Mock-Documentary and the Australian National Imaginary in The
Nominees." Better known in Australia as We Can Be Heroes, the six-part television
mock-documentary was created as a parody of corporate and government advertising designed
to maintain and appeal to Australian nationalism, in the face of the increasing influence of
globalization. Bode explores the mockumentary's relationship with racialized "others" in
Australian national identity, both in terms of the ethics of representation and the place of
non-white immigrants and indigenous people in popular national ideologies. The focus on
national identity is carried forward by Alberto García's "Mirrors That Lie: The Reflection of
Reality in Andalucía, un siglo de fascinación." Garcia's work examines the ways in which the
seven chapters of Andalucía combine real and fictional elements in order to simulate
documentary truth, as renown filmmaker Basilio Martin Patino scatters clues to the truth, in
order to awaken audiences to his "beautifully adorned lie." Garcia explores the artifacts of
falsity, and the ways in which they simultaneously work to deceive and to communicate
commentary on the "truth" within an existing body of local knowledge.
In a variation on the issue's analytical theme, Jeff Menne and Nicole Seymour employ a mode
of analysis that situates Michael Haneke's non-mockumentary fictional film, Caché, firmly within
the mockumentary tradition, in order to explore the film's critique of representation, and to
demonstrate the occurrence of mockumentary-style critique in other forms of fictional narratives.
In their analysis of the ways in which Caché uses the appearance of mysterious surveillance
videotapes to increasingly unsettle a bourgeois French couple, Menne and Seymour argue that
Caché's narrative use of these videotapes allow the film to function as a mockumentary,
subverting seemingly objective documents within the narrative.
Taking aim at the culture of televised media, Kevin Taylor Anderson looks at the relationship
between mockumentary and reality television in "Series 7 as Patriarchal Fable: Gamesmanship
in Elimination-Based Reality TV." Anderson's analysis examines the ways in which the film's
parody offers commentary on the current fascination with reality television, as well as
spotlighting the cultural values embodied in elimination-based programming--encouragement of
competition, complacency toward violence, privileging of individualism, and reinforcement of
gender inequalities--while also providing critique of the voyeuristic and cathartic functions of the
reality television genre. The mockumentary interrogation of cherished cultural values and norms
continues in the final essay, Wojciech Malecki's "Borat, or Pessimism. On the Paradoxes of
Multiculturalism and the Ethnics of Laughter," with its subtle play on Voltaire's Candide, ou
l'Optimisme (1759), focuses on the character of Borat as an avatar of cultural critique in the
Enlightenment tradition - the latest in a long lineage of characters dating back to Usbek in
Montesquieu's Persian Letters (1721)--used to highlight cherished elements of collective life that
are arbitrary and irrational and in so doing, impart universal reason and rationality. Malecki
explores the ways in which Borat's character functions to create tensions in our dominant
ideologies--between rationalistic optimism and pessimistic disbelief--and mediate those tensions
through laughter.
This special issue concludes with an annotated filmography of selected mockumentaries. The
list, while not intended to be comprehensive, offers an extensive array of various mockumentary
forms--fakes, docu-fictions, mock-documentaries, and fiction-newsreel hybrids--selected from a
wide range of nations and perspectives. From the earliest examples (The Swiss Spaghetti
Harvest, 1957) to the most recent additions (All You Need is Brains, 2009), the filmography
provides an overview of cinematic work in the genre. Included in this list are well-known first-run
film parodies, such as Christopher Guest's A Mighty Wind, and Best in Show; Woody Allen's
Zelig, and The Sweet and Lowdown; and of course, Rob Reiner's classic, This is Spinal Tap, but
also extends its reach well beyond, to include numerous lesser-known films, from Russia's first
mockumentary, First on the Moon (2005), to the Argentinean F**kland (2000). While not citing
single-episode mocks found in continuing series (such as those found in M*A*S*H, ER, and
others), television programming is also found in this gathering of mockumentary offerings, such
as the Canadian parody, Talking to Americans (2001). Additionally, the list includes internet
short-film mockumentaries, like The Old Negro Space Program (2003), further demonstrating
the depth and breadth of this under-examined genre.