The Ethics of Documentary Film

In terms of ethics in the film industry, the area where most ethical issues arise is in the genre of documentary filmmaking. The point of a documentary is to capture reality; real people in real situations. The line between real and fake in a documentary is sometimes a blurry one.

Documentaries can come under fire for their ethics, or lack thereof, in numerous ways. A subject could end up being portrayed in a way that embarrasses or humiliates him or her. They could be misrepresented. Some aspects of certain events could be fabricated for the sake of a little extra drama or excitement. Some facts may end up not being verified. There are times when filmmakers fall into the trap of entertainment.

However, there are many companies, such as PBS, Discovery, and National Geographic, among others, who often ask the filmmakers they hire to observe certain standards when it comes to ethics.  They often follow codes of ethics that were written for journalists, because that is essentially what they are.

One prime example of an unethical documentary is the 1922 silent documentary, Nanook of the North by Robert J. Flaherty. The film captures the life and struggles of an Inuit man named Nanook and his family, living in the Arctic. While it has been considered a ground-breaker for the documentary genre, it has had its share of controversy surrounding it.

Promotional image of Nanook of the North (1922).

First of all, Nanook was not actually named Nanook. His real name was Allakariallak and the woman portrayed as his wife was not his actual wife, but a common-law wife along with another woman. During hunting scenes, Nanook was encouraged to hunt in a more primitive manner, when he usually used a gun. Flaherty also exaggerated his portrayal of the Inuit people he filmed in order to give them a more primitive feel, making it seem as if their lives were in more danger than they actually were.

Another controversy involved the staging of two scenes, one of which involves Nanook hunting a walrus, which the Inuit people no longer did, though Flaherty chose to do it anyway in order to give the film a dramatic event. The other staged scene involved Nanook visiting a trading post and being shown a gramophone by a white man. The man allows Nanook to hold and inspect the record and Nanook then bites it. Flaherty meant for it to serve as comic relief, though Nanook knew what a gramophone was. Flaherty defended his film, saying that a filmmaker must sometimes distort some aspects of his or her film in order to catch its “true spirit.”

A version of a documentarian’s code of ethics states that a documentary should “document the subject in a way consistent with actual events. The final product should be a representation of the truth.”

While I do believe that Flaherty was not entirely ethical in how he portrayed the subjects in this film, there is some accuracy to the events in it. The Inuit people may not have been hunting walrus with spears or wearing the clothing of their ancestors at that time, but at one point in history, they did. I do accept that Flaherty wanted to capture the Inuit people in the way they were before exposure to European civilization and culture, but at the same time he made those people, who were aware of certain things about our culture in 1922 and turned them into something of a cliché.

While it seems like Flaherty was at least being honest with the people he filmed about the kinds of things he was going to have them do and wear in the film, I think he should have captured them as they were in 1922, not as they were decades before. Portraying a man as a cliché of his culture for entertainment is unethical, though I am not sure of the ethical standards that existed in 1922 because the documentary was  a very new genre at the time.