Kleinhans, Chuck. “Pornography and Documentary: Narrating the Alibi.” In Sconce, Jeffrey (Ed.). Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. 96-120.

The defense of this forbidden content is the documentary form itself: documentary’s “gravity,” the “discourse of sobriety,” provides the excuse that allows the naughty content to appear in the public sphere with little controversy. 97

My interest here is to move beyond these well-marked points and extend recent work. What happens when documentaries move beyond their usual sober realism directed at significant social matters to more bizarre, eccentric, and “low” subject matter? 97

In the case of the work considered here, there is also a strong sense that the “sleazy” work is crass, that it is not sincere but is adopting whatever ethical and moral stance it has simply to exploit its subject. A classical example can be found in the scenes of slave trading in Mondo Freudo (1966) and Mondo Bizarro (1966). These fake documentaries purport to show the auctioning of (mostly) women in Mexico and Lebanon. The scenes are patently staged (“Lebanon” is a well-known Los Angeles—area location, Bronson Canyon). The “slaves” are disrobed, to display female breasts, but genitals are obscured with scratch-on censor bars, thus implying that the female pubic area (viewed in a distant telephoto image) is more shocking than trading in humans. 99

Mondo Freudo and Mondo Bizzaro follow after Mondo Cane, an internationally successful sensationalist documentary phenomenon from 1962. Cheaply made rip-offs, they belong economically and industrially to the exploitation film market. The exploitation film has roots in the fairground show, the circus sideshow, and the traveling carnival. The carnival pitchman’s basic plan is this: (1) gather / a crowd; (2) promise them something sensational; (3) get their money; and (4) fool them and get away. At its worst-intentioned, in the classic con job, the “mark” is left at the end so confused, embarrassed, humiliated, or compromised that he does not go to the police or authorities to complain (and this is relatively easy when the content is sexual). But there is also a much milder version of exploitation, closer to P.T. Barnum’s celebrated “humbug” effect. Barnum observed and exploited the fact that if the deception was done in a fairly jovial, over-the-top manner, marks would gladly pay to observe the fraudulent and leave amused rather than outraged. 99-100

The classic off-screen narrator is often called the Voice of God, since the audience hears his pronouncements without seeing the embodied speaker. Usually this is a male voice with deep tones, sure phrasing, and an “educated” accent, which in the United States often means a hint of British intonation or a voice that seems trained for stage delivery. 103

Having grown up with this convention, it is easy to see why a younger generation of documentary filmmakers, especially in the 1960s, were eager to move away from this kind of authoritative (even authoritarian) voice. They chose to work instead in classic Direct Cinema style, employing a narrational style that seemed to eschew such external authority. This often involved placing the narrator on screen, either on location as an on-the-spot investigator or as a relay for eyewitness accounts. In this respect, the narrator becomes a more embodied character, a teller of the tale who, though perhaps unreliable, allowed the audience to better gauge his veracity. 103

What exactly does this comic voice of God add to this cinematic parade of (near) nudity? Echoing Barnum’s “humbug effect,” the narrator’s voice and persona is that of a carnival pitchman with a touch of (usually jovial) condescension. I will call this narrative device “reverse disavowal”: I know this is fake, but I still want to see it. The audience knows it is seeing not some actuality but an event staged for the camera—which is the basic technique of most U.S. newsreels in celebrity and staged-publicity events. But the audience doesn’t necessarily resent this kind of deception, since the film and its narrator are also giving it something else: a pretext for indulging its voyeurism while also leaving room for an ironic response. 106

We agree and accept the contract because it gives us the gratification of naughty transgression in the mocking guise of epistephilic discovery. 106

The pleasure, then, is not in knowing or learning, but in sincerely appreciating the spectacle even as we ironically revel in the lowbrow tackiness / of the presentation—imagining an absent viewer who would actually fall prey to the narrator’s absurd claims. Much like current fascination with supermarket tabloids that promise new and lurid exposés, Mondo viewers, both then and now, enjoy a “smarty-pants” pleasure that presumes a naïve viewer who probably never existed. 107-108

As these examples of 1960s documentary exploitation demonstrate, the putative authority and discernable earnestness of a narrator (on- or off-screen) is often unable to withstand the crisis presented b y the trashy, suspect, and incongruous images of exploitation cinema. While it would be easy to dismiss these films (and their narrators) as examples of pure, naïve camp, the strategies deployed by these stylistically diverse films suggest a more complex relationship between filmmaker, subject, and audience. I argued earlier that sleaze is marked in a way that reveals the maker’s cynical nature; therefore it is a matter of nuance and interpretation, most often cued by form. In its documentary form, perceiving sleaze depends on both the narrator’s relationship to the material and the audience’s perception of the filmmaker’s relationship to the narrator. It contrasts with naïve camp, which is often inept but sincere (with the gap between intention and ability providing the irony and humor). 114