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Text and Performance Quarterly

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Personal narrative, dialogism, and the

performance of “truth” in complaints
of a dutiful daughter
Teresa Bergman
Published online: 18 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Teresa Bergman (2004) Personal narrative, dialogism, and the performance of
“truth” in complaints of a dutiful daughter , Text and Performance Quarterly, 24:1, 20-37, DOI:
10.1080/1046293042000239410

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 Text and Performance Quarterly
Vol. 24, No. 1, January 2004, pp. 20–37

Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and

the Performance of “Truth” in
Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter
Teresa Bergman
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This paper examines the documentary film Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter in order
to trace out the representations and performances that connote “truth” and
“knowledge.” Drawing on Michel Foucault’s observations concerning the social construc-
tion of knowledge, documentary film theory, and performance theory, I show how the
use of personal narrative and naturalism in this documentary film can be interpreted as
working at cross-purposes with its politically progressive intent. I argue that these
performance elements work rhetorically to naturalize existing power relationships, in
spite of the film’s goal of destabilizing identity and madness.

Keywords: Documentary; Personal Narrative; Naturalistic Performance; Dialogism;

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter

Documentary film in the twenty-first century occupies an unusual niche in mediated

visual representation. Even though recent documentrists and digital technology have
made us aware of the limits of “truth” in filmic representations,1 documentaries still
retain elements that rely on our historical perception that the camera does not lie.
Moreover, contemporary documentary film has come to rely on a fairly standard set
of filmic rhetorical devices that are instantly recognizable by audiences and have
engendered a genre of mockumentaries.2 Concomitantly, documentaries are enjoy-

Teresa Bergman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Design at California State
University, Chico. This essay is derived from her dissertation, “Fashionably Objective: When the Politics of
Epistemology Encounter Progressive Political Documentary Film Representation,” University of California,
Davis, 2001 (Carole Blair, Director). Earlier versions were presented at the 1999 NCA Conference, 2002 WSCA
Conference, and the 2002 ICA Conference. In addition to Michael Bowman and her anonymous TPQ
reviewers, she would like to thank the following people for their suggestions and insights on previous versions:
Carole Blair, William B. Worthen, David Van Leer, Jay Mechling, and Lynn Hershman-Leeson. Correspon-
dence to: Teresa Bergman, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Communication and Education, Department
of Communication Design, California State University, Chico, CA 95929-0504, USA. Tel: 530-898-6650; Email:
tgbergman@csuchico.edu.

ISSN 1046–2937 (print)/ISSN 1479-5760 (online)  2004 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/1046293042000239410
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 21
ing the benefits of increased distribution in the expanding cable universe. Despite
greater exposure to documentaries and increased awareness of their filmic construc-
tion, even the most progressive documentary films often engage in hegemonic
representation. The project of this paper is to examine the ways in which the
contemporary documentary film represents and performs “truth” and “knowledge”
and to question the socially normative qualities in such representations. In what
follows, I examine the documentary film Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter and
discuss the ways in which the documentary filmic elements can work at cross-pur-
poses to this film’s progressive ideological aim. I argue that Complaints of a Dutiful
Daughter is a documentary film that appears to offer “alternate possibilities for
identity positions outside those authenticated by conventional performance and
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representation” (Carlson 183). Examination of documentary film performance can

be particularly informative because the study of performance is “precisely the site in
which concealed or dissimulated conventions might be investigated” (Diamond 5).
The importance of this analysis for communication scholars is to disturb those
elements and performances in documentary that read as “knowledge” or “truth” and
examine the circumstances that engender these claims and their consequent natural-
izing implications. Specifically, I analyze how the use of personal narrative, dialo-
gism, and the illusion of naturalism function as performances of “truth” and
“knowledge” in this documentary film.

Critical Methodology
This study is primarily an ideological examination of the representation of “truth”
and “knowledge” and their role in identity formation and the treatment of madness
in Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter. I rely on Michel Foucault’s definition of
knowledge as socially constructed to examine the contemporary packaging and
contours of what is read as “knowledge” in documentary films and its ideological
implications.3 The claim that the modern subject has an “obligation of searching for
the truth and telling the truth” locates the relevance of this study in identifying the
power of those filmic elements that connote “truth” (Rabinow 7). It is this notion
of a truth imperative that drives knowledge production and offers a path into
examining the social forces that construct those cultural artifacts so noted for their
“truth” value and their normative influence. Documentary film is one such artifact
due to “the ideological power of the realist image in claiming to be trustworthy”
(Winston Lies 37). With this lens, documentary film can be seen as a cultural
production whose ideological power rests in its being perceived as representing
truth.
Documentary film uses a variety of rhetorical elements to produce its truth effects.
Bill Nichols has identified five representational modes documentary films use to
make their arguments: expository, observational, interactive, reflexive, and
performative.4 Nichols’ analysis offers paths into discussing documentaries in terms
of their topic choice, camera placement, camera shot, audio, narrator, and
editing decisions. While he places all documentaries into one of his categories,
 22 T. Bergman
Nichols concedes that there is inherent slippage in his assignations. He concludes
with cautionary observations regarding the ultimate impossibility of genre catego-
rization for documentaries: “The documentary form poses distinct problems,
such as reflexive operations may decompose the dominant notions of subject,
person, icon and character” (Representing Reality 262). One reason for documen-
tary’s resistance to classification is that historically documentaries “encompassed the
use of images of the real world for the purposes of personal expression” (Winston
Lies 20). Documentary film’s history of incorporating personal expression within a
medium that has claims to visual objectivity contributes to its slippery categoriza-
tion.
The complicated representation of historical events and their truth claims “are
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often entangled, conflictual, and co-constitutive. In the contest of postmodernity, the

slippage between the real and fiction, between invention and recovery, is marked”
(Sturken 43). I argue that the slippage between invention and recovery is where
documentary film resides. In other words, this is where the denotative choices
regarding representation of historical events receive their cultural imprints. The
importance of this recognition lies not only in the fact that there is an interpretative
element in the recording and representation of any historical event, but more to the
point of this paper, Sturken’s insights point to the importance of recognizing the
form of truth and knowledge in historical representations. This observation is
particularly instructive as the contemporary documentary film frame is so well
recognized that it can be used for a variety of ideological purposes.5 Additionally, as
Winston points out, “Film-makers are more powerful than their audiences and,
normally, more powerful than those who participate in their documentaries” (Lies
86). When the cultural pressure for “truth” encounters the instantly recognizable
contemporary documentary film form, questions regarding the form’s imprint on its
content need to be addressed. Currently, there is considerable cultural capital in
producing and perceiving “authenticity” in cultural texts, and this paper provides a
critical lens for recognizing those specific elements of representation in contempor-
ary documentary films that connote truth and knowledge and examines their impact
on historical actuality. I use this lens to examine Deborah Hoffman’s film, Com-
plaints of a Dutiful Daughter, and how the documentary filmic choices of personal
narrative, dialogism and the illusion of naturalism work to contradict the film’s
progressive messages.

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter is an Oscar-nominated documentary film pro-
duced, directed, and written by Deborah Hoffmann. The film explores Hoffmann’s
relationship with her mother during the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The film’s
enduring popularity is evidenced by its distributor’s claim that it is the most rented
film of their collection.6 On first glance, accounting for the film’s eager consumption
appears self-evident, for the topic itself is timely and extremely emotional. It is also
a topic not much addressed in public discourse; care for ailing parents speaks to our
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 23
collective fears regarding parental duty and obligation. Sensitive to these emotions,
Hoffmann’s film investigates this taboo topic gently, with humor and hope. Her
approach opens the door and invites the audience to address its fears without guilt
or shame.
Hoffmann’s representation of herself in her film, and the film’s apparent challenge
to the traditional understanding and treatment of those afflicted with Alzheimer’s
disease, are the two main reasons why I chose this film for a case study. This film
offers a rare representation of family and familial relations that appears to destabilize
heteronormativity and conventional definitions of madness (Alzheimer’s disease).7 I
find that Hoffmann’s presence in the film is the most significant element in attaining
these transgressive goals. From the film’s opening moments, Hoffmann makes it
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clear that this is a personal narrative, an autobiographical film. The addition of the
autobiographical voice to the documentary film adds an interesting layer to the
complexity of representing historic actuality because, “The urge to read autobio-
graphical documentary film as exclusively referential is powerful since two putatively
understood referential traditions (autobiography and nonfiction film) are conjoined”
(Lane 24). Some of documentary film’s referential power can be further accounted
for with historian Anne Troester’s insights into the personal narrative’s role in the
historical documentary film: “The difficulties can be summarized quickly now:
historical events are almost impossible to access… . What remains of history is what
personally affects the present individual” (306). Troester’s observation suggests that
historical events are nearly impossible to access without representing a contemporary
personal equivalent, and that an audience’s reading of historical documentaries for
historical facts is subsumed to a text’s personal accessibility. Richard Sennett
observes a similar construct in US culture at large where “[i]ntimate feeling is an
all-purpose standard of reality” (8). David MacDougall observes that in the West the
documentary and ethnographic film tradition values an “explicitness of speech,
expression of personal emotion and opinion and the public resolution of conflict”
(93). In short, if a documentary in the US represents a personal affective event with
a resolution from a particular historical time and place that is accessible to a
contemporary audience, then that representation is construed as historically accu-
rate.
The goal of engaging the audience via personal narrative can be extremely effective
and it is one that has several implications. Hoffmann’s decision to make this a
personal narrative film can also be seen as reflexive move insofar as “reflexive texts
are self-conscious not only about form and style … but also about strategy, struc-
ture, conventions, expectations, and effects” (Nichols Representing Reality 57).
Hoffmann’s reflexivity is subtle and gains momentum throughout the film. Later in
this paper, I argue that one of Hoffmann’s reflexive strategies is to persuade the
audience that she acts appropriately in dealing with her mother. Throughout the
film, Hoffmann anticipates audience response to her mother’s illness and answers
these expectations. The convention of a personal narrative can “normalize, naturalize
and moralize” (Langellier 130), and teasing out the particular ideologies inscribed in
this reflexive personal narrative contributes to understanding this film’s effectiveness.
 24 T. Bergman
Illusion of Naturalism
Within this personal narrative format, Deborah Hoffmann’s performance is marked
by naturalism’s influence. Hoffmann went to extraordinary lengths to achieve the
performance of “naturalness” during the filming. Nathan Stucky observes that
“natural performance is fundamentally neither an appearance of reality nor a mere
imitation” (171), and Hoffmann was aware that her performance needed to meet
this requirement of appearing authentic and unscripted. Hoffmann did write the
majority of the lines that she speaks to the camera, and initially she felt her
performance did not meet a standard of “authenticity” or spontaneity. She asked
fellow filmmaker Allie Light to help by posing questions off-camera in order to catch
Hoffmann “off guard” (Personal Interview). After many unsuccessful takes, Hoff-
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mann remembers that Light “totally unglued me and got me able to do it again”
(Personal Communication). The “ungluing” is what Hoffmann knew she needed in
order to give a performance that would be perceived as genuine or authentic in her
documentary.8 Cultural critic Ang notes that, “The more genuine a character appears
to be, the more he or she is valued” (33). Additionally, one claim of a natural
performance is “that how people interact is inseparable from who they are” (Stucky
170). Hoffmann’s successful natural performance is the key ingredient in creating
her engagement with the audience.
Hoffmann’s narration also functions as a personal interview in the film. The
documentary interview component is a culturally agreed upon form in which the
audience, filmmakers and the interviewees all participate. The guiding assumption in
this agreement is that the audience will read the interviewee as revealing thoughts,
feelings, and observations that perhaps they have never revealed before or are, at the
very least, honest. All the participants in the filmic triangle (filmmaker, interviewee,
audience) partake in a frame whose performance reflects the contemporary under-
standing of what truth should look like and sound like in a documentary interview.
The documentary interviewee’s style of performance is one that closely resembles
theatrical naturalism. The history of this performance style can be traced to the
ascent of the scientific narrative influence in theatre. The advent of the naturalistic
style of performance was concurrent with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’
conception of a “scientific” representational style. The development of a
classificatory or “scientific” knowledge had a remarkable impact on the arts and
theatre.9 Playwright/author Emile Zola called for theatrical productions that pro-
duced a “scientific” representation: “We are an age of method, of experimental
science; our primary need is for precise analysis” (361). Zola concluded that precise
analysis was possible in theatre but only through naturalistic performance. Worthen
writes on theatrical naturalism’s connotation as a “mise-en-scene [that] appropriates
the authority of ‘science’ by assigning a ‘scientific’ transparency of its own instru-
ments” (Modern Drama 16). Worthen’s use of “scientific” echoes Zola’s understand-
ing of theatrical naturalism as one that embodies a Cartesian epistemology where
this style of theatrical performance is understood as absent of any interpretative
qualities. This view of naturalism as a value free performative style is visible in
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 25
documentary film’s use of the personal interview.10 Hoffmann’s performance of
naturalism is not a reflexive move to create a “reality effect” but rather to create a
person and not a character (Stucky 177). Her efforts to perform spontaneity reveal
her understanding of what a contemporary audience expects to see as an authentic
performance in documentary film.

Naturalism’s Audience
Another of naturalism’s effects in documentary film can be found in its situating of
the audience. Within the epistemology of naturalism, the audience is placed in the
Cartesian role of observer. Worthen describes how naturalism constructs an
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“ideological neutrality” with “the construction of the spectator as a disinterested,

‘objective observer’ ” (16), and that this constructed neutrality “is sustained by a
politics of visibility” (Personal Interview). In this particular case, Erving Goffman’s
observation that “bystanders who merely look are deeply involved, too,” delineates
naturalism’s positioning of the audience (38).
The performance of naturalism then privileges a kind of voyeurism by providing
a distance between the audience and the filmically observed, and its politics of
observation suggest their participation is the means to obtain “knowledge.” The
audience experiences a vicarious pleasure in viewing another’s representation with
none of the risk of interaction as well as none of the apparent work in the
production of knowledge. As Roscoe and Hight observe: “Documentary attempts to
create a position for the audience in which we are encouraged to take up unprob-
lematically the truth claims offered to us” (23). Even with this attempt to position
the audience as passive observers, I would argue that the audience does play a role
in the film’s representation of knowledge. When writing on this element of docu-
mentary’s rhetorical effectiveness, Nichols states that the “argument is what we make
of the documentary’s representations of the evidence it presents” (qtd. in Winston
Claiming the Real 253). Winston extends Nichols’ observation of the audience’s
crucial role by arguing that the audience participates as much as the filmmaker in
defining the documentary’s purchase on “truth.” Winston argues that “grounding
the documentary idea in reception rather than in representation is exactly the way
to preserve its validity. It allows for the audience to make the truth claim for the
documentary rather than the documentary implicitly making the claim for itself”
(Claiming the Real 253). Although Winston’s insight would appear to shift the
burden of representation, there are social and cultural dynamics in which each
member of the filmic triangle participates that ultimately work to avoid entering a
circular argument on the origins of truth claims in documentary representation. The
extension of truth claims to the audience challenges the observation that the
documentary film makes its own truth claims, but clearly both the filmmakers and
audience derive their notions of truth claims in some measure from their historicity.
Due to the social construction of documentary truth claims, James C. Faris insists
that “a political critique must be brought” to documentaries (178). While I examine
some of the political implications of Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter later in this
 26 T. Bergman
paper, I first analyze how truth claims are embedded in the narration, Hoffmann’s
performance and the audience’s role in their production.

Dialogism
Bakhtin’s literary theory of dialogic engagement offers a useful methodology for
reading Hoffmann’s performance. Bakhtin looks to the text’s discourse to find the
author’s point of view, and I find this approach particularly useful in understanding
the ideological messages in Hoffmann’s narration. For Bakhtin, instances of dis-
course occur when, “Every utterance in this sense has its author, whom we hear in
the very utterance as its creator … we hear in it a unified creative will, a definite
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position” (Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics 184). Bakhtin argues for the importance
of relying on discourse to detect the author’s ideology because, “Unmediated, direct
fully signifying discourse is directed toward its referential object and constitutes the
ultimate semantic authority within the limits of a given text” (Problems 189).
Although the discourse is mediated through the film’s montage, Hoffmann exerts a
great effort to create her discourse through her narration. Additionally, her illusion
of naturalism contributes to reading her narration as discourse. Bakhtinian dialogic
theory can also reveal larger cultural concerns because the discourse not only
includes the author’s point of view, but the words also contain “logical and
semantically referential relationships” (Problems 184). When analyzing a text’s
discourse, the challenge is to find those moments that reveal the author’s point of
view and referential relationship.
The advantage of applying this theory to this personal narrative documentary film
is that Hoffmann clearly places her film’s audience as her primary referential
relationship. This is accomplished near the beginning of the film where she speaks
directly to the audience. As members of the audience, we are positioned to perceive
that the author is aware of our presence. This dialogic relationship is established near
the beginning of the film when Hoffmann marks her referential relationship with the
audience by using self-disclosure. Hoffmann alerts the audience that her film is of a
very private nature and may not be what the audience expects, and in the film’s
opening scene we see what amounts to our worst fears about Alzheimer’s disease
enacted. The scene begins in a close-up on an elderly, white haired woman. Deborah
Hoffmann speaks off-camera:
Deborah: Which one were you closer to, your mother or your father?
Elderly Woman: I think I was closer to my mother.
Deborah: Yeah, that usually happens.
Elderly Woman: Were you close to your parents?
Deborah: I was closer to my mother. Do you know who my mother was?
[The Elderly Woman shakes her head “no.”] You.
Elderly Woman: I was your mother?
Deborah: (laughing) Yes.
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 27
The film stays in close-up on Hoffmann’s confused mother who doesn’t recognize
her own daughter. Placement of this shot at the opening assumes that the audience
will have the same reaction as Hoffmann when her mother asks, “I was your
Mother?” Hoffmann’s strategic off-camera dialogue in this scene can be described as
discourse “with a sideward glance,” where the author’s “own speech is determined
to a significant degree by his peculiar awareness of another’s words, and by his
means for reacting to them” (Problems 196).
In the next scene, Hoffmann immediately addresses the shock and sadness she
assumes the audience would feel after viewing the first scene. She speaks directly to
the camera (the audience) about her reaction to having her worst fears realized. Her
speech works as a dialogic engagement, for she speaks directly to the audience and
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addresses our projected emotional response:

All along the way there were certain milestones, the first time that she said to me,
“Exactly how are we related” or the first time she asked “if I had any siblings”, “if I
had ever been to New York”, “where was I born” or “if I had ever met Banish,” my
father. There was the first time she asked “if we had gone to elementary school
together” and little by little, you know, you adjust to what shocks you.

This prominent use of self-disclosure works rhetorically to signal not only the
audience as the primary referential relationship; it also enlists our trust in the
filmmaker and in her representation of the historical events about to unfold.
Hoffmann’s self-disclosure and her naturalistic performance accomplish several
goals dialogically. First, they establish her as a believable and trustworthy narrator by
invoking the contemporary cultural perception that “[w]hat makes an action good
(that is, authentic) is the character of those who engage in it, not the action itself”
(Sennett 11). In addition to establishing this trusting relationship with the audience
and marking them as the film’s primary referential relationship, this early speech also
reveals Hoffmann’s awareness of her audience as one that sits in judgment of what
they are about to see. Bakhtin observes that the anticipation of another’s judgment
is incorporated into discourse. He describes this intense awareness and reaction to
another’s thoughts in a dialogic model where “[a]n element of response and
anticipation penetrates deeply inside intensely dialogic discourse” (Problems 196–7).
Hoffmann’s opening narration also foregrounds her emotional response to her
mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. In this scene, we see that Hoffmann is not devastated
when her mother asks if they are related. In fact, her speech conveys a certain
distance from the pain, and also a sense of humor that makes this journey not only
accessible but also inviting for the audience. Once the audience accepts this
invitation, it can examine the content contained within this dialogic engagement
with Hoffmann. In other words, viewers can detect what kinds of concerns and
judgments Hoffmann anticipates from the audience and look to her narration as well
as the visual images for clues to her point of view or ideology.
One of the first intimations of Hoffmann’s perspective occurs in an opening shot
of her mother speaking while Hoffmann combs her mother’s hair. We do not see a
 28 T. Bergman
woman out of control; to the contrary, we see a well cared for, soft spoken,
good-humored woman who just does not remember her daughter or many other
past events of her life. This seemingly contradictory view of her mother works to
represent her as Hoffmann sees her, which is quite charitably. Another choice a
documentary filmmaker could have made at this point would have been to introduce
a medical doctor to attest to the latest research on Alzheimer’s disease and describe
where Hoffmann’s mother falls on some scale of senility or disability. However,
Hoffmann chooses to use her own point of view as the voice of authority for
assessing her mother’s health. Roscoe and Hight observe that a reflexive documen-
tary gives “a far greater role to the audience, expecting them to be able to arrive at
their own conclusions about any given issue, and to be able to determine for
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themselves what is ‘true’ ” (36). This reflexive move establishes Hoffmann’s dialogic
engagement by placing the audience in a similar position as Hoffmann in judging
her mother’s health. We as audience members, via Hoffmann, now evaluate her
mother’s condition; and, we as audience members also evaluate Hoffmann’s hand-
ling of her mother.
Another feature of Hoffmann’s engagement with the audience is her sense of
humor and apparent ease in handling her mother’s declining mental health. Visually,
Hoffmann incorporates humor into the film’s structure by making the unusual
choice of inserting vidoegraphics to describe the stages of her mother’s mental
decline. The method she uses to describe each stage is remarkable in that she uses
a graphic sign perched on a comically drawn Romanesque pillar to announce the
onset of each obsession as the Alzheimer’s worsens: “The dentist period, hearing aid
period, Lorne Doone cookie period, podiatrist period, tickets period, social security
check period, and banana period.” These videographics serve on one level as a
narrative device (i.e., summary) where each graphic moves the audience quickly
through a new stage of memory impairment. Additionally, these videographics reveal
another element of Hoffmann’s emotional position in the film. She conveys her
perception of her mother’s illness as just another in a series of indistinguishable
obsessions. As the stages of memory loss increase with frequency, Hoffmann chooses
not to discuss each new stage in detail. Instead, she rapidly flashes through the
graphics, denoting an onslaught of new stages. Hoffmann uses the graphics, instead
of a (her) talking head, to convey her own emotional experience. These graphics
then become the visual analogue that is dizzying, confusing, overwhelming, and
entertaining—a graphic shorthand for Hoffmann’s emotional response.
These graphics call attention to the interpretive role of the documentrist. Perform-
ance theorist Richard Schechner describes the ways in which we recall historical
events as “not being what happened but what is encoded and transmitted”
(“Collective Reflexivity” 43). Schechner’s emphasis on the current performance
highlights the importance of examining the encoding and transmission of historical
events. Hoffmann’s use of representational graphics for her mother’s decline encodes
a fairly unique experience with Alzheimer’s and one not usually associated with the
discovery of or discourse about the disease.
Although vidoegraphics are generally not used in contemporary independent
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 29
11
documentaries, Hoffmann’s graphics become a visual analogue of her multi-layered
response to her mother’s debilitation. As an audience we begin to see the patterns,
repetitions and ultimate futility in trying to understand each new stage in her
mother’s decline. The graphics bolster the dialogic engagement between filmmaker
and audience by providing the audience with a relatively easy and painless way of
experiencing the day-to-day challenges of her mother’s decline. The use of graphics
to depict her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease lets the viewer experience the same type
of emotional distance and humor that Hoffmann herself went through during this
decline. It is as if Hoffmann anticipates our discomfort and incorporates our
reactions into her portrayal of her mother’s mental state at this time. If anything, the
audience becomes even more firmly attached to Hoffmann as narrator and to her
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viewpoint in this section. Bakhtin notes that, “Everything that is truly great must
include an element of laughter… . Laughter lifts the barrier and clears the path”
(Speech Genres 135). With laughter, Hoffmann is able to overcome certain barriers
that she assumes an audience may have regarding Alzheimer’s disease. What
becomes clear is that she is trying to create a new definition of Alzheimer’s disease.
At this point we also begin to see that Hoffmann’s representation contains instances
of conflicting ideological messages.

New Definitions
One of the film’s most progressive representations occurs in Hoffmann’s redefinition
of Alzheimer’s disease. Scholars and filmmakers alike recognize the importance of
revisiting and challenging cultural definitions of disease and illness.12 Marita Sturken
observes that the metaphors used by science and media to describe AIDS and HIV
have had a significant impact culturally, politically and in terms of policy making.13
Dianne Chisholm cites the political necessity of engaging in a public redefinition on
the effects of AIDS in order to affect positive social change by adopting a “queer
strategy of documentary deterritorialization: ‘To turn our private grief for the loss of
friends, family, lovers and strangers into something public would serve as another
powerful dismantling tool’ ” (99). Using documentary film to incite public debate to
redefine a chosen topic is a powerful political move. Nichols describes this type of
concern in reflexive documentaries where the “[r]eflexivity grounds itself in the
materiality of representation, but turns, or returns, the viewer beyond the text, to
those material practices that inform the body politic” (Representing Reality 67).
David Van Leer notes the importance of making public those issues that have been
previously relegated to the private sphere: “Public announcement challenges society’s
standards of normative behavior (and in some cultures its legal codes)” (The
Queening of America 125). Hoffmann’s personal narrative performance “implies the
transgressive desire of agency and action” (Langellier 129).
It is in this apparent ideological vein that Deborah Hoffmann tries to create a new
definition of Alzheimer’s disease. To begin this process, she utters her own precon-
ceived ideas of Alzheimer’s that include stories where she “heard the grimmest and
most depressing things about people lying in fetal positions, unable to talk or feed
 30 T. Bergman
themselves.” The familiar words that Hoffmann uses to describe Alzheimer’s disease
work on several levels. Not only does this discourse reveal her own fears of the
disease, but their recitation addresses those fears that the audience may hold as well.
The inappropriateness of these stereotypical negative images of Alzheimer’s disease
also works again to secure our dialogic engagement to Hoffmann in that we as
audience members see that her mother is not lying in a fetal position and is not
unable to feed herself or talk. The question then becomes: What is Alzheimer’s
disease according to Hoffmann?
Hoffmann reveals that her mother’s Alzheimer’s is having the unforeseen effect of
changing Hoffman’s perceptions of her own identity. That is, Hoffmann needs a new
definition of Alzheimer’s in order to reconstruct her own personal identity as well
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as that of her mother. Hoffmann feels the loss of her identity when she realizes that
in every conversation with her mother, she finds herself being eliminated from her
mother’s dialogue: “What I always knew of her life … which was me, my brother
and my father and the fifty-plus years she lived in New York, that mostly disap-
peared … which was a little hard for me to take.” The implications of this elision
completely shake Hoffmann’s sense of herself because she uses her mother’s dialogue
as part of her identity construction.14
Hoffmann’s new definition of Alzheimer’s disease moves from observations of
physical decrepitude to placing it within the notions of identity construction. Her
own sense of identity via her mother’s dialogue thus becomes the underpinnings of
her new definition of Alzheimer’s disease. Hoffmann decides that her first move in
salvaging her own identity involves changing the role that she has been performing
with her mother up until this point. She had been insisting on the “truth and reality”
in every conversation:

It finally dawned on me. I have to be out of my mind. What does it matter? … If she
was really convinced that we were in the sorority together or elementary school
together, at a certain point I realized, why not? It was a liberating moment… . We were
in the moment and the moment was we were two old friends trying to reminisce and
the contents didn’t matter. It was the feeling.

This definition of Alzheimer’s disease calls for the abandoning of individual history
and accuracy in return for a feeling. Hoffmann no longer has to think of her mother
as physically debilitated or even in terms of emotional evacuation. With a personal
historical abdication and a commitment to live in the moment, Hoffmann is able to
feel emotionally close to her mother again.
This new definition of Alzheimer’s has several implications, and they become
apparent in a subsequent scene illustrating what Hoffmann finds to be a benefit of
this new definition. The benefit is her mother’s acceptance of her lesbianism: “The
disease brought Mom to basics and she was no longer homophobic. Frances was a
friend that made her daughter happy.” This moment could be read as liminal in that
both daughter and mother leave their previous identities behind in order to
transcend their past relationship (that included homophobia) into a newly defined
relationship. There are limits to this interpretation, however, insofar as Deborah
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 31
Hoffmann has a choice in the matter while her mother does not. Her mother’s
declining mental health prevents her from even recognizing Deborah Hoffmann as
her daughter, much less choosing a new form of a relationship. Deborah Hoffmann
can choose to abandon her previously defined identity with her mother in order to
salvage a form of intimacy with her, but her mother cannot. In terms of reformulat-
ing identities, Judith Butler observes:
That identifications shift does not necessarily mean that one identification is repudi-
ated for another… . This will not be a simple matter of “sympathy” with another’s
position, since sympathy involves a substitution of oneself for another that may well
be a colonization of the other’s position as one’s own. (118–19)
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I would argue that Deborah Hoffmann’s decision is an important sacrifice and

perhaps a strategic sacrifice.15 It is also a decision that resonates throughout the rest
of the film.
The importance of this moment is also marked structurally in the film as
Hoffman’s partner, Frances (who is also the camerawoman), gives the camera to
Mrs. Hoffmann. The audience sees the camera being handed over, and then sees the
mother’s filmic point of view for the first time. The screen fills with the smiling faces
of Deborah and Frances with their arms around each other. This graphic depiction
highlights Hoffmann’s desire for the audience to see Frances and herself through her
mother’s eyes; Frances’ handing off the camera makes the audience literally see Mrs.
Hoffmann’s acceptance. This is one of the few hand-held camera shots in the entire
film, and it is doubly resonant because of its reliance on cinema verite’s influence in
coding the “un-lit synch hand-held shot as the essence of documentary” (Winston
Lies 23).

The Camera
The epistemological role of the camera is one worth noting for its relevance to this
scene. From its inception, the camera’s use and relevance have been complicated,
and acknowledging the nature of this technology is one key to interpreting its
engagement with its creators as well as with its audience. John Tagg maintains that
during the second half of the nineteenth century, “The emergence and official
recognition of instrumental photography was caught up with more general and
dispersed transformations in society and in ways of thinking about it, representing
it, and seeking to act on it” (5). Tagg describes the initial use of photography as
absolutely dependent on the goal of the practitioner: “What we begin to see is the
emergence of a modern photographic economy in which the so-called medium of
photography has no meaning outside its historical specification” (63). With the
emergence of documentary moving images at the turn of the century, audiences
brought to theatres an understanding that what they were seeing was “no trick”
(Barnouw 11). Additionally, scientists at the time “felt a compelling need to
document some phenomenon or action” (Barnouw 3), and they turned to film to
meet this demand. Even with the recognition of photographic manipulation (which
 32 T. Bergman
began as early as the Boer War), documentary film has not entirely lost its original
attributions regarding its ability to represent truth and verisimilitude.
Among contemporary audiences’ regard for photographic representation of actu-
ality, I would argue that the inherent power relationship is still in place regarding
documentarists’ power in providing meaning and truth in their images. An element
of photography’s normative role in determining meaning is its limitations in
capturing the enormity and complexity of an historical event. From the first
photographic images of the Holocaust (Zelizer 1) to the destruction of the World
Trade Center, critics note the impulse of photography to reduce historically complex
occurrences to simplistic graphic reproductions lacking historical context.
In Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, the normative impact of documentary
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photography can be found in the scene when the camera is handed to Hoffmann’s
mother. What the audience sees is a scene showing Hoffmann’s reconnection with
her mother; however, this reconnection comes at a price. Hoffmann eliminates her
sexuality and accepts her mother’s definition of Frances not as her daughter’s lesbian
lover but as her daughter’s friend. This move to reinstantiate the family at the
expense of her lesbianism has cultural and political tradeoffs. If one element of
Hoffmann’s film is to destabilize the public definition of Alzheimer’s in favor of a
more enlightened understanding of the disease, the question then becomes: at what
price? Hoffmann appears to be redefining Alzheimer’s disease in such a manner that
lets her maintain a familial relationship, but at the expense of her sexual identity.
With this choice, not only does Hoffmann take a new turn in her film, we as the
audience begin to sense some misgivings she may have about this decision.

Confession
The balance of Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter can be seen as a confession
complete with detailed explanations for the choices Hoffmann makes regarding
institutionalized care for her mother. In fact, the final third of Hoffmann’s film can
be read as a move to represent more mainstream interpretations of sexuality, family
and madness. This pressure towards conformity does not go unnoticed in indepen-
dent filmmaking. Documentary filmmaker Camille Billops describes one potential
pitfall for personal narrative documentrists is that of showing your “dirty laundry”
(qtd. in hooks 148). She explains that those who are subject to this type of criticism
are those populations that do not receive widespread and balanced film or literature
representation of their lives. Billops’ insight into the sensitivity an underrepresented
filmmaker may experience appears appropriate in Hoffmann’s case given the over-
whelming lack of lesbian representation in mainstream media. I have argued that
Hoffmann’s narration reflects an intense awareness of her audience and what she
perceives to be our responses and judgments of her actions. If Hoffmann views her
mother’s Alzheimer’s as personal dirty laundry, then ensuring the audience’s under-
standing, acceptance, and forgiveness for her actions is imperative. One of Hoff-
mann’s means for attaining these goals is through the rhetoric of confession.
One implication of confessional rhetoric is that the audience becomes a cultural
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 33
tribunal with the power to forgive transgressions. As contemporary audience mem-
bers, this positioning is not an unusual move or even out of the ordinary as we have
easy access to many confessional performances. Foucault notes that “Western man
has become a confessing animal” (History of Sexuality 59). Mimi White points to the
popularity of confessional television programming, including “daytime soaps, re-
ligious broadcasting, game shows, prime time series, advice shows, shop-at-home
television,” and that this type of programming can “construct new therapeutic
relations” (qtd. in Renov 82). Implicit in a therapeutic relationship based on
confession is the assumption that the one receiving the confession can act in such
a manner as to exonerate the confessor.
If the personal narrative now includes confession, we as the audience must look
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for what we are being asked to excuse or forgive. Hoffmann’s overwhelming desire
to reinscribe a familial relationship is the reason we are offered to excuse and forgive
her for eliding her sexual orientation. What is striking about this moment in the film
is that it also could be read as transgressive in that the film challenges the traditional
definition of Alzheimer’s that condemns those afflicted to a living death and to be
forever emotionally out of reach from their family members. Hoffmann does
successfully create a relationship with her mother that is loving and fulfilling. This
moment within the cinematic text strives to shift the traditional construction of
Alzheimer’s disease, but this potential shift or rupture in our cultural definition of
the disease is embedded within a traditional, heteronormative family structure.
Hoffmann’s confessional narrative also includes her decision to place her mother
in a nursing home. She states that this is not an easy or desired choice, but one that
she needs the audience to understand and accept. Hoffmann describes the facility as
one that “allowed people to have their dementia however they were going to have
it.” Hoffmann is aware of the popular negative perceptions of nursing homes as
squalid and uncaring choices of last resort where loved ones feel abandoned, and she
addresses this perception immediately. Just after moving her mother into a nursing
home, Hoffmann describes her mother as throwing her arms out and shouting, “Oh,
the joy of me.” She has not seen this level of happiness in her mother in quite some
time and states: “Once you accept the parameters, my mother has Alzheimer’s
disease, if you can accept that, it can still be a very joyful life.” If a dialogic
engagement is still intact at this point in the film, that is, if we as an audience can
accept Hoffmann’s choices, then the film achieves its goal of transforming
Alzheimer’s sufferer as object into a subject (cf., Bakhtin Speech Genres 145). The
result of confessional narrative with dialogic engagement is that the audience may
come to share and accept the reasons Hoffmann gives for committing her mother to
a nursing home.
Hoffmann’s new definition of Alzheimer’s disease comes under pressure with her
mother’s confinement. This move reinscribes the traditional treatment of madness:
“From the middle of the seventeenth century, madness was linked
with … confinement, and with the act which designated confinement as its natural
abode” (Foucault Madness and Civilization 39). Hoffmann lays out a painstaking
argument for the necessity of her mother’s confinement. She assures herself and the
 34 T. Bergman
audience that her mother’s physical safety will be ensured, that she will be in the
hands of caregivers who evidence an understanding of Alzheimer’s disease that is
similar to Hoffmann’s, and that her mother appears genuinely happy in the home.
The question then is whether we as an audience can accept this explanation even
though this confinement and removal from the general public are the traditional
treatments of madness.
As if anticipating the impossibility of reconciling these positions, Hoffmann offers
additional possibilities for identity construction presented with the onset of
Alzheimer’s disease:

She was the ultimate of living in the moment. The ultimate enlightened person … I’m
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very attached to my memory … it does tell me who I am, but it’s clear to me you can
still be somebody without it. You still have definition without a past.

Final Observations
Ultimately, we are not given the opportunity to decide whether Hoffmann’s under-
standing and treatment of her mother is a progressive political statement or a
reinstantiation of hegemonic practices. I find the film frustrating for this very reason.
Hoffmann’s film is a combination of progressive messages performed within a
dialogic personal narrative that produces mixed ideological results. As audience
members, we are offered what appears to be a new definition of Alzheimer’s and
identity construction but within the context of eliminating a lesbian sexual identity
and the eventual confinement of her mother that reinforces both the diagnosis of
Alzheimer’s as “madness” and the subsequent incarceration of those who are defined
as “mad.”
Another potential interpretation is that Hoffmann achieves a “postmodern double
operation” that allows viewers to decide for themselves which of the film’s messages
dominates (Carlson 173). That is, its transgressive messages may not be occluded
behind the dominant cultural narratives if the audience can obtain a critical position
of Hoffmann’s filmic representation. As an audience, we can evaluate Hoffmann’s
sacrifices; however, I would argue that this powerful film leaves little room in this
area. Hoffmann’s deft use of personal narrative, dialogic engagement, and her
illusion of a naturalistic performance positions me as an audience member to feel as
if I have no alternative but to agree with her choices. Is a progressive definition of
Alzheimer’s disease possible? Can under-represented populations use the personal
narrative in documentary film for exclusively progressive ends? At this time, I cannot
answer these questions, but it is clear that the performance of personal narrative in
documentary film is one of “taking context as seriously as it does text, which takes
the social relations of power as seriously as it does individual reflexivity” (Langellier
128). What this film does offer is a personal statement of self-sacrifice that enabled
Hoffmann to have a new form of intimacy with her mother despite the onset of
Alzheimer’s disease. The message is ideologically mixed, and it is one that deserves
critical attention because the performance of personal narratives in documentary
 Personal Narrative, Dialogism, and “Truth” 35
film can be incredibly persuasive. It is that persuasiveness and its performance that
requires critical engagement in order to highlight its normalizing effects as well as its
instances of progressive representation.

Notes
[1] Errol Morris’ Thin Blue Line is a stellar example of how documentaries incorporate a
complex variety of filmic devices to challenge truth claims.
[2] Some examples of mockumentaries include Best in Show; Waiting for Guffman; This is Spinal
Tap; Drop Dead Gorgeous; and Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-
Murdering Mom. For a critical analysis of the mockumentary, see Roscoe and Hight.
[3] “The fundamental codes of a culture—those governing its language, its schemas of percep-
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tion … establish for every man, from the very first, the empirical orders with which he will
be dealing and within which he will be at home. At the other extremity of thought, there are
the scientific theories or the philosophical interpretations which explain why order exists in
general” (Foucault Order of Things xx).
[4] “The expository mode … addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that advance an
argument about the historical world… . This is the mode closest to the classic expository
essay or report… . The observational mode stresses the nonintervention of the filmmaker.
Such films cede ‘control’ over the elements that occur in front of the camera more than any
other mode… . Interactive documentary stresses images of testimony or verbal exchange and
images of demonstration (images that demonstrate the validity, or possibly, the doubtfulness,
of what witnesses state)… . The reflexive mode addresses the question of how we talk about
the historical world” (Representing Reality 33–57). “The performative mode stresses subjec-
tive aspects of a classically objective discourse” (Introduction to Documentary 138).
[5] When writing on the anti-Castro film, Improper Conduct, critic B. Ruby Rich observes that
“the documentary form that arose out of a progressive impulse, and has long been linked to
progressive movements, has in 1984 shown itself equally suited to fascist needs … the
elements of seventies political documentaries are now revealed to constitute the essential
shape of fascist cinema: ahistoricity, the valorization of the individual, and the acceptance of
testimony as truth” (312–13).
[6] This claim was made in a personal communication with a representative of Women Make
Movies, Inc., in 1998.
[7] I refer to Foucault’s definition of madness in terms of its role in rationalizing confinement
(Madness and Civilization 16).
[8] Schechner challenges this notion and claims that, “There is no such thing as unperformed
or naturally occurring real life” for a performer (Performance Studies 186). In Hoffmann’s
case, she knew what unperformed should look like (i.e., naturalism) and was able to perform
it for the camera even though she is not a trained actor.
[9] “The scientific approach revolved around the classifying, ordering and producing tables of
simple elements” (Foucault The Order of Things 74).
[10] Konstantin Stanislavsky’s theories on acting pervade the naturalistic performance. Schmitt
describes his unequivocal stance on the actor’s job in the theatre of naturalism and that the
actor’s performance “must seem spontaneous” (102).
[11] Although graphics are used in documentary credits and titles, I would argue that their
general absence within the films is mostly due to the lingering influence of cinema verite; see,
e.g., Mamber. Recently, more documentrists are incorporating videographics due to their
increasing affordability; see, e.g., Caldwell.
[12] A useful comparison is in the representation of AIDS in the documentary Common Threads:
Stories From the Quilt by Robert Epstein and Bill Coutourie, which tries to redefine those
populations susceptible to AIDS. The film interviews people of various races, ethnicities,
 36 T. Bergman
classes, and genders who suffer from AIDS; through this diversity of interviewees, the film
constructs a new definition of AIDS where AIDS is not and has never been a disease that only
afflicts a gay male population.
[13] In particular, she argues that the metaphors describing AIDS and HIV have had grim effects
on its treatment and federal funding.
[14] Bakhtin recognizes this phenomenon of relying on another’s viewpoint for self-knowledge;
he observes that dialogue does serve as a source of identity formation: “Dialogue here is not
the threshold to action; it is the action itself. It is not a means for revealing, for bringing to
the surface the already ready-made character of a person; no, in dialogue a person not only
shows himself outwardly, but he becomes for the first time that which he is—and, we repeat,
not only for others but for himself as well. To be means to communicate dialogically as well”
(Problems 252).
[15] One reason that her decision is strategic is that Hoffmann decides to accept her mother’s
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redefinition of her lesbian relationship in terms of intimacy instead of in terms of sexuality.

Intimacy is not a substitution for sexuality, and Hoffmann accepts this redefinition in order
to have a connection with her mother.

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