Table Of ContentDocumentary’s Awkward Turn
Despite the prominence of “awkwardness” as cultural buzzword and
descriptor of a subgenre of contemporary fi lm and television comedy, it
has yet to be adequately theorized in academic fi lm and media studies.
Documentary’s Awkward Turn contributes a new critical paradigm to the
fi eld by presenting an analysis of awkward moments in documentary fi lm
and other reality-based media formats. It examines diffi cult and disrupted
encounters between social actors on the screen, between fi lmmaker and sub-
ject, and between fi lm and spectator. These encounters are, of course, often
interconnected. Awkward moments occur when an established mode of rep-
resentation or reception is unexpectedly challenged, stalled, or altered: when
an interviewee suddenly confronts the interviewer, when a subject who had
been comfortable on camera begins to feel trapped in the frame, when a fi lm
perceived as a documentary turns out to be a parodic mockumentary. This
book makes visible the ways in which awkwardness connects and subtends
a range of transformative textual strategies, political and ethical problemat-
ics, and modalities of spectatorship in documentary fi lm and media from the
1970s to the present.
“This book brilliantly analyzes the formal techniques, affective qualities,
and ethical implications of the comedic turn in documentary fi lm and reality
television that was instigated by the work of Christopher Guest and Michael
Moore and has culminated in prank fi lms and reaction videos. Jason Middle-
ton presents a sophisticated and readable rumination on a serious subject,
drawing upon theoretical discourses of comedy, spectatorship, and shame
to argue that intentional and unintentional awkward moments defi ne the
temporal and emotional lacunae of the post-Fordist workplace depicted in
The Offi ce; destabilize documentary authority itself in fi lms by Sacha Baron
Cohen and the Yes Men; and promote ethical detachment in de-realized
images proffered by reaction videos.”—M aria Pramaggiore, North Carolina
State University, USA
“While there have been many studies that theorize the idea of the specta-
tor with relation to class, race, and/or gender, ‘awkward’ humor has never
really been examined with such a precise focus as it in this book. It will make
a unique and lasting contribution to spectatorship studies, and moves well
beyond work already done in the fi eld, in a style that is refreshingly free
of jargon, and written in a direct, accessible manner.”— Wheeler Winston
Dixon, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA
“This book offers a brilliant plumb-line that cuts through, and links,
unanticipated bodies of contemporary nonfi ction media to the affective,
ethical, political and funny claims they make about the world and for their
audiences. Looking to a diverse and complex body of programming, includ-
ing mockumentary, reality TV, social media, and television, Jason Middleton
uses the most contemporary of tropes—Awk-ward—to reveal how and why
we are forced to, or enjoy, looking away. The disrupted encounters he focuses
upon, which induce shame, contempt, implication or insulation, tell us much
about our contemporary spectatorial delight in a documentary unknowing
that occurs through broken encounters fuelled by misrecognition, deception,
displeasure, or the absence of an ethical response.”— Alexandra Juhasz,
Pitzer College, USA
Jason Middleton is assistant professor in the English Department and the
Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, and director of the Pro-
gram in Film and Media Studies, at the University of Rochester, USA. He is
coeditor of the book M edium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cell-
phones (2007).
Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies
27 Violence, Visual Culture, and 36 Queer Representation, Visibility,
the Black Male Body and Race in American Film and
Cassandra Jackson Television
Melanie E.S. Kohnen
28 Cognitive Poetics and Cultural
Memory 37 Artificial Culture
Russian Literary Mnemonics Identity, Technology, and Bodies
Mikhail Gronas Tama Leaver
29 Landscapes of Holocaust 38 Global Perspectives on Tarzan
Postmemory From King of the Jungle to
Brett Ashley Kaplan International Icon
Edited by Annette Wannamaker
30 Emotion, Genre, and Justice
and Michelle Ann Abate
in Film and Television
E. Deidre Pribram 39 Studying Mobile Media
Cultural Technologies,
31 Audiobooks, Literature, and
Mobile Communication,
Sound Studies
and the iPhone
Matthew Rubery
Edited by Larissa Hjorth,
32 The Adaptation Industry Jean Burgess, and Ingrid
The Cultural Economy of Literary Richardson
Adaptation
40 Sport Beyond Television
Simone Murray
The Internet, Digital Media
33 Branding Post-Communist and the Rise of Networked
Nations Media Sport
Marketizing National Identities in Brett Hutchins and David Rowe
the “New” Europe
41 Cultural Technologies
Edited by Nadia Kaneva
The Shaping of Culture in
34 Science Fiction Film, Television, Media and Society
and Adaptation Edited by Göran Bolin
Across the Screens
42 Violence and the Pornographic
Edited by J. P. Telotte and
Imaginary
Gerald Duchovnay
The Politics of Sex, Gender,
35 Art Platforms and Cultural and Aggression in Hardcore
Production on the Internet Pornography
Olga Goriunova Natalie Purcell
43 Ambiguities of Activism 53 Beauty, Violence, Representation
Alter-Globalism and the Edited by Lisa A. Dickson and
Imperatives of Speed Maryna Romanets
Ingrid M. Hoofd
54 Public Media Management for
44 Generation X Goes Global the Twenty-First Century
Mapping a Youth Culture in Creativity, Innovation, and
Motion Interaction
Christine Henseler Edited by Michał Głowacki and
Lizzie Jackson
45 Forensic Science in
Contemporary American
55 Transnational Horror Across
Popular Culture
Visual Media
Gender, Crime, and Science
Fragmented Bodies
Lindsay Steenberg
Edited by Dana Och and
46 Moral Panics, Social Fears, Kirsten Strayer
and the Media
56 International Perspectives on
Historical Perspectives
Chicana/o Studies
Edited by Siân Nicholas and
“This World is My Place”
Tom O’Malley
Edited by Catherine Leen and
47 De-convergence in Global Niamh Thornton
Media Industries
57 Comics and the Senses
Dal Yong Jin
A Multisensory Approach to
48 Performing Memory in Art Comics and Graphic Novels
and Popular Culture Ian Hague
Edited by Liedeke Plate and
Anneke Smelik 58 Popular Culture in Africa
The Episteme of the Everyday
49 Reading Beyond the Book
Edited by Stephanie Newell and
The Social Practices of
Onookome Okome
Contemporary Literary Culture
Danielle Fuller and DeNel 59 Transgender Experience
Rehberg Sedo Place, Ethnicity, and Visibility
Edited by Chantal Zabus and
50 A Social History of
David Coad
Contemporary Democratic
Media 60 Radio’s Digital Dilemma
Jesse Drew Broadcasting in the Twenty-First
Century
51 Digital Media Sport
John Nathan Anderson
Technology, Power and Culture
in the Network Society
61 Documentary’s Awkward Turn
Edited by Brett Hutchins and
Cringe Comedy and Media
David Rowe
Spectatorship
Jason Middleton
52 Barthes’ Mythologies Today
Readings of Contemporary Culture
Edited by Pete Bennett and
Julian McDougall
Documentary’s Awkward Turn
Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship
Jason Middleton
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Jason Middleton to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Middleton, Jason, 1971–
Documentary’s awkward turn : cringe comedy and media spectatorship /
by Jason Middleton.
pages cm. — (Routledge research in cultural and media studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Documentary films—History and criticism. 2. Documentary
television programs—History and criticism. 3. Social interaction in
motion pictures. 4. Social interaction on television. I. Title.
PN1995.9.D6M46 2013
070.1ʹ8—dc23
2013032570
ISBN: 978-0-415-72107-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-86360-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
For Eden and Marek
and
for Cy Rawls (1975–2008)
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Contents
List of Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Awkward Moments 1
1 Awkward Aesthetics: Michael Moore and Christopher Guest 23
2 Awkwardly Reflected: Mirroring Anticelebrity in
the Portrait Film 52
3 Awkward Satire: Comedies of Deception 83
4 Awkward Extremes: Reaction Videos and the “Reactive Gaze” 109
5 Awkward Moments, Endless Days: Feeling Time in The Office 140
Conclusion: Post-Awkward? 171
Bibliography 175
Index 183
