Reality Killed The Documentary Star

I caught this post from producer Lee Schneider regarding the decline of long form documentary and rise of what he calls “hybrid” entertainment.

The “hybrid” that Mr. Schneider is referring to already has a name: Infotainment.

There is virtually no appetite for feature length documentaries anymore, no matter how deep they delve into important subject matter. Pure information is no longer marketable, so information has been packaged into entertainment products and propaganda.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The resurgence in feature docs a few years ago was fueled by Michael Moore, the master of feature length infotainment. Moore’s narrative style and the high concept techniques of reality TV have completely rewritten the aesthetic rules of documentary entertainment.

You want to start a dialogue about obesity in America? Package it as a first person attack on the world’s largest fast food chain (Supersize Me.) Or better yet package it as a contest series where people compete to lose weight (The Biggest Loser.)

You want college kids to pay attention to political news? Package it as ironic satire, with John Stewart or Stephan Colbert in the anchor chair.

The entire entertainment industry has been whittled down to the packaging of marketable elements into a consumer friendly form. I don’t mean this to sound entirely derogatory. Sometimes the packaging is well executed, and the information delivery is effective. The Food Network and Discovery Channel are pretty good at this. But the need for consumer friendly packaging makes it tough to go deep into more sensitive subject matter, which in turn puts more emphasis on the lighter fare that fills the cable networks.

For those few consumers who want more information and less packaging, there’s always Errol Morris, but he’s the last of a dying breed.