until a single soliton survives

 In-between Pseudo-Realities: A Fictitious Conversation between Trinh T. Min-Ha and Jean-Luc Godard

It’s widely acknowledged that the U.S. reality show has little interest in truth or facts: it is apt in turning image of the real and traditions of documentary into a narcotic commodity to imbibe. The lucrative specimen from this line of products, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, operates on the impetus where reality, fiction and voyeurism feed on each other.

Below are sections of a conversation between Trinh T. Minh-Ha and Jean-Luc Godard on directing The Kardashians Movie, a documentary on the making of the pseudo-documentary TV show. Taking on an extreme subject, the directors gauge the reality show itself as a subject of reflexive documentary while critiquing each other’s proposed approaches.

Trinh: As many reckon the Kardashians’ success as a tragic fall of public decency and the end of privacy in the digital age, I for one am not at all interested in their staged lives as a subject. These women are no different than any other businessman or woman who knows exactly what the consumer needs, except the product they sell is their own images as TV personalities; they are at once the producer and the consensual commercial good. Their production of these images has, therefore, a complex relationship with factual reality. One cannot simply reduce their TV life to “fakeness”. For the very act of selling their image is, in fact, part of their reality. That relationship, as well as that between the spectator and the actor, creates symbiosis in between reality and fiction.

It is certainly worth noticing that in the making of reality shows, the techniques and doctrines of conventional documentary are utilized as a means of familiarization—however absurd the setting is—so the audience can more easily identify with the characters and be absorbed into the plot. This is Hollywood’s original program—what reality shows are selling is no different than any fantasy drama product. And I believe that, in an exaggerated sense, it mirrors certain problems of documentary filming itself.

It has long been a concern among filmmakers that, even serious documentaries that work with the most rigorous of facts still face problems in regard to what constitutes as “the objective truth”. There is no such thing as documentary—whether the term designates a category of material, a genre, an approach, or a set of techniques (“The Totalizing Quest of Meaning,” 90). And this is why the Kardashian Show—not the Kardashians—makes an intriguing and difficult subject because the show is an extreme example of how an expected diction of documentary is manipulated into pure entertaining. With that in mind, I would like to introduce my own voice as narration as I edit the footages of staged interviews, of the actors themselves and of the TV crew. I do not wish to speak for the documentary subject—which is essentially an industry that I am not and hopefully will never be part of—but rather speak nearby it and acknowledge the power of my cinematic gaze to (mis)represent, directly to the audience, for inevitably, my own critique on the U.S. TV industry will affect the film. This would be, in short, reflexive documentary. I am curious as to how you would approach the same subject, Mr. Godard?

Godard: You and I share distrust in documentary as a medium to convey reality. I have myself used what is traditionally viewed as documentary device in fiction works,by challenging the convention that the sheer form of interviews provides an access to truth because it gives an opportunity for the interviewee to, as it were, speak reality—this is a narrative assumption the audience is conditioned to make, and it needs to be broken. I recall some of the other documentary elements I have employed: my own voice-over narration, having the actors to break the fourth wall constantly by asking them spontaneous on-set questions through earphones… I have also noticed similar strategies in your films such as Surname Viet Given Name Nam, where you inform the viewer that the interviews are pre-staged in numerous ways. I admire your attempt at acknowledging the power of filmic gaze in both Reassemblage and Surame. However, what we face now is an entirely different sociopolitical context. Earlier you have regarded products like this TV show as a caricature of documentary, which I agree, but I must disagree with your attempt to detach your narrative from the subject when you are indeed making a documentary instead of only using documentary elements for fictional purpose. Because we are not filming a third world country: this is the U.S. entertainment business; the subject is a privileged system of both consumers and sellers of flat-out poison. The narration on power of cinematic gaze and the lack of objective truth in documentary is only acknowledged but not further actively utilized in this particular context.

I would rather rely on the power of film image as ideologies in itself. And since we already have a group of actors as subjects, why not use that and exaggerate the absurdity that is already their daily life? If, say, the current episodes of this TV show operate on the illusion of reality, then I would like to push that illusion until it is distorted into a visual anarchy. I will give you an example. Evidently, it has become a cosmetic trend these recent years for women to “contour” their faces—by putting darker shades in the hollows of one’s cheeks and highlighter above the cheekbones, nose and forehead, this is done so that the face appears slender in front of cameras and in real life. I was informed—by a make-up artist for my last film—that women all over the world, of all ethnicities, are doing this now; and that Ms. Kim Kardashian all but single-handedly created this trend. And there I stood, watching the makeup artist turn an actress’s face into something else in front of my very eyes. Like all filmmakers, I was trained to consider what things appear in front of a camera, but it seems that we have reached a point where people literally fake dimensions of their visages on a daily basis and take photos alone in bathrooms. It is increasingly hard to tell who is the audience. I can already imagine contouring as a visual metaphor in this film. Extreme close-ups of cosmetic application. Through tipped or inverted angles as if the cell phone is accidentally left behind. All is still scripted, but unlike the way reality shows are scripted to mock reality, my editing of these footages would be stripped of a linear narrative or any normative cinema conventions. Ultimately, the audience should acknowledge they are voyeurs peeking into an elaborative scam.

Trinh: There are two things I would like to discuss. First, the image you have just painted is in vivid, conscious violation of Hollywood codes, and I understand it is used to defamiliarize and destabilize the viewer’s senses in order to break them out of the illusion. I have used similar techniques myself and frankly, I would not be surprised if our films came out looking or even sounding somewhat alike. Secondly, while we share a belief in the power of defamiliarization, I am afraid we use similar devices to achieve fundamentally different purposes. Mine is to first dissolve the establishment of totalistic meaning, while yours is ultimately to promote the ideologies you believe in by battling the ones you do not.

My narration is not aimed to detach itself from the subject. It is quite the opposite in this case. I will explain why. It is utterly important to consider that, underneath all the apparent Kardashian Vulgarity, there is a set of self-correcting powers entertainment like this is equipped with. People, including this reality show’s most avid watchers, already know it is utterly addictive, amnesiac junk, but detoxification is not easy.

Therefore, despite the attempt in détournement, you would still miss what you might consider the sociopolitical imperatives—what truly fuels the success of shows like this. Which is that the real power of its blatant vulgarity lies not in gimmicks such as employing documentary or quasi-documentary elements, but in its automatic assimilation of any possible criticism thrown at its way. It is by the same impetus that, a critical, anti-paradigm cinematic work always risks becoming the new “norms” that are consumed as aesthetics in the course of time—is a danger that many Western filmmakers have to face. Where is the limit of the truth you are advocating? Because on the “opposite side” is the near comic evil brilliance of mass entertainment: the awareness of its own toxicity, plus the ability of making “inside jokes” about said toxicity in harmless ways so we, the voyeur, feel much less guilty, lonely, disgusting and more comfortable with consuming larger doses of it.

That is very intricate self-reflexivity at work—almost a photo-negative of what my narration will try to address. In other words, our subject fuels on people’s obsession and their distain. It is precisely through the layer of irony that it shields itself from any real damage. And this is what I would like to include in my narration. That the Kardashian Film is staged not just the way a normal intelligent person would imagine it is staged, but also in the sense that it knows it is meticulously designed to be an invitation for the viewer to see through the layers of manipulation and vulgarity.

Any contemporary audience can discern satire, but in the mean time, they are all-too familiar with the concept to the extent that our attempts—be that your hyperbole or this very reflexive narration—might not serve as much stimulation as we would like them to, and any cynicism or critique it might invoke will probably become a teleological end in itself. Still, it is a risk worth taking, or at least a message worth acknowledging, and that is what I would like the audience to know.