If you were a nature documentarian and you were filming a lion’s hunt, would you intervene and save a gazelle from being eaten? Probably not, but if you were making a documentary about poor children in the Red Light district of Calcutta, you’d probably want to help the kids out, maybe even film yourself doing good deeds in order to show just how much of a saint you are. Obviously there’s a big difference in the ethical obligation to human beings versus animals, but there has also always been a debate with documentary regarding just how much interaction and intervention is okay. Should a filmmaker remain completely detached from his or her subject? Should the line be drawn at life or death situations, or is it fine to become involved with the filmed people? If direct-cinema kings Albert and David Maysles can interact so much with the Beales of Grey Gardens, even potentially becoming romantically involved, then nobody should question a documentarian’s desire to be an angel with a handicam. Right?
Let’s pretend that the penguin in today’s clip is not just a crafty bird with the good fortune of having a whale watching vessel with which to elude his predators. Let us instead think of him as a representation of the documentary subject. Already, just by being there for the penguin to jump aboard, the boat is an example of the “observer effect” (and related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle) In such circumstances it is impossible to adequately document the reality of this subject’s choices, since the documenter has become inadvertently involved and added an otherwise unavailable possibility. Now, because of the unintended intervention, the documenters have two choices: they can save this penguin’s life by keeping him in the boat, though this upsets the truth and nature of the film; they can throw the penguin back into the water, though this would still be a directly active participation, and besides it then could actually implicate the documenter/observer in the murder of this subject — even if the peguin’s death was already guaranteed prior to this environmental disturbance.
So, what should happen to the penguin?
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