Week 9 Screening 2

                           

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope. 2011. Murgan Spurlock.

Comic-Con is a documentary that follows several personal narratives as they prepare for and then attend the American national comic book convention. Because it primarily follows personal narratives the documentary primarily consists of interviews, and these interviews are used to progress the films narrative. An interview is a type of reconstruction, a condensing of information. In Comic-Con they are set up to interweave with the documentary and they all riff on a subject or a theme. The ‘geeks’ interviewed are comic con attendees and all seem to have an overdeveloped capacity to believe in a world of fantasy, unlike in the case of Marwencol which was created with the express purpose of cathersis, the world of comics were created by someone else. They escape into a shared world of fantasy.

Escapism is a recurrent theme throughout the film, computer games “make you feel as if your in another world”, and interviewees refer to how comfortable they feel at comic con as opposed to the rest of the year when they are in the real world. The producers shyed away from exploring this theme in any real depth; the connection between the escapist aspect of comic con and the individuals incompatiblility to social norms is only touched upon. Instead the film takes a lighter more populist tone and this tone is reflected in the visual integration of the comics template into the narrative of the film.

The lions share of the work for this film was done in the pre production stage, the researchers found several potential individuals for narrative strands that were all going to comic con and interwove these narratives with each other and reinforced them with interviews. The fact that the interviews all hit certain points indicates that they were guided and as mentioned, constructed. These interviews give the documentary a very specific focus while giving the events onscreen another layer of meaning. The film is edited in such a way as to give events a specific context by having it narrated by interviewees, the meaning of the footage is consequently altered.

With regards the interviews some of the behavior of the participants convey the impression of reconstruction, as if characters took direction from someone behind the camera. this is most evident when an event is required for the narrative to progress. Likewise many of the conversations in front of the camera feel staged, as if in order to fulfil the necessary pieces of the narrative. All considered Comic-Con is an interesting an entertaining slice of American culture, is does not dwell on any larger questions raised but getting to the truth was never its aim.