Lipkin, Steven N.; Paget, Derek; Roscoe, Jane. “Docudrama and Mock-Documentary: Defining Terms, Proposing Canons” in Rhodes, Gary Don; and Springer, John Parris (Eds). Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co, 2006. 11-26.

For documentary theorist Bill Nichols, for example, docudrama exists in an “essential fictional domain.” Logically, this should be true for mock-documentary too, for this form has no documentary content whatsoever, and yet Nichols accommodates mock-documentary within the mode of “reflexive documentary.” 11

Critical opinion has tended to divide docudrama production output into “high” and “low concept” examples. The former, treating subjects most commentators accept as “serious,” are sometimes controversial at the level of “fidelity” to an idealized historical truth. The “low concept” docudrama, a sub-genre of the “TV Movie of the Week,” is often perceived as “tabloid,” but it can be just as controversial as its more prestigious sibling. In contrast, the mock-documentary existed until quite recently at the margins of culture in “art-house” cinema. Today it flourishes in both television and cinema. Its move from “high culture” to “low culture” has brought with it both greater acceptance and greater suspicion. 13

Mock-documentary’s functions are more clearly intertextual [than docudrama’s] and more directly subversive:

they appropriate documentary aesthetics to create a fictional world thereby severing the direct relationship between the image and the referent;

they take as their object of parody both documentary as a screen form, documentary practitioners, and cultural, social and political icons;

they seek to develop a relationship with a knowing audience who through being in on the joke can appreciate both the humor and the inherent critical reflexivity of the form.

Finally, docudrama and mock-documentary share a common function. They have provoked and continue to provoke:

questions about form—specifically, about the permissibility, usefulness and even danger of mixing the functions of documentary and drama. 14

The resultant film usually follows a cinematic narrative structure and employs the standard naturalist/realist performance techniques of screen drama.

Mock-documentary is entirely fictional yet, unlike most docudrama, appropriates the look of documentary much more closely. Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight argue that mock-documentary’s “genealogy” can be described as operating through “three degrees” of distance from “documentary proper”: through parody, critique and deconstruction. The parody mock-documentary is comparatively muted in its critique of the documentary project. Documentary aesthetics are appropriated mostly for stylistic reasons and to emphasize the humor. In examples such as The Rutles (1978) or This Is Spinal Tap! (1984) documentary’s “classic objective argument” is used as a prop against which the absurdity of the parody is contrasted. Often nostalgic, the parody frequently comments on easy targets—particularly cultural icons whose currency is exhausted and ripe for mocking. Documentary, like history, could be said to be returning as farce. In contrast, critique mock-documentaries engage more critically in the form’s inherent reflexivity towards factual discourse, and raise questions about both the documentary form and wider factual media practices. Films/programs such as Bob Roberts (1992) or the 1997 series première episode of ER also developed the / satirical possibilities of the form. In the former example a critique was made of modern political processes and a parallel satirical swipe was taken at the factual media (as was the case with the ER episode—see below). But it is the deconstruction mock-documentary that brings to the fore an explicit critique of documentary form. Texts such as David Holzman’s Diary (1967) and Man Bites Dog (1992) demonstrated a rather hostile appropriation of documentary codes and conventions and utilized them in order to undermine and deconstruct the very foundations of the documentary project. Humor is often underplayed in favor of representations that seek to create “ethical unease” that will lead to critique. This latter quality is very much part of the post-documentary cultural moment. 16-17

Mock-documentary talks to a “knowing” audience even more directly than the docudrama. It is assumed that audiences will be able to distinguish between fact and fiction in media representation and thereby participate in the inherent playfulness of form. What marks the mock-documentary out from the “hoax” or “fake” is this contract set up between producer and audience. It requires the audience to watch as if at a documentary presentation, but in the full knowledge of an actual fictional status. Audiences have to be in on the joke to be able to access and participate first in the humor, then in the cultural and political critique on offer. 17

Mock-documentary did not emerge as a distinct form until the 1960s. 22

Docudrama asserts that what it re-presents occurred much like what we see unfold on the screen; mock-documentary asserts that what it presents is much like what we conventionally see in documentary. 23

If the docudrama is something of a staple product for film and television, in recent years there has been something of an explosion in television mock-documentary production (especially in the UK). There has certainly been a growth in audience appetite for a sophisticated form that has exploited the current success of “Reality TV.” The UK’s The Office notably attracted good-sized audiences and critical acclaim. A series such as this was a site for social and cultural commentary. As Frederic Jameson amongst other has noted, the actual intent of parody is critical comment, although in many examples the critical edge is muted or left implicit. What is absolutely central is the relationship set up between the audience and the text. The audience must be a “knowing” audience that recognizes the object of the parody to be able to access the critiques on offer. 24

A similar critique was on offer in the BBC’s series The Office (2001-3—a hit when shown on PBS). It provided an examination of work-place politics and psychology, but more importantly a commentary on the “docu-soap.” This form’s obsession with the mundane and banal was satirized, as was the process through which ordinary people are turned into TV stars by performing themselves. Creator Ricky Gervais played the lead character, David Brent, and performed this role of docu-soap star so well it was by turns hilarious and painful to watch. A mixture of cruel satire and playful parody, The Office was a fine example of the mock-documentary disrupting normal and serious communication to ask its audience to question both the form and content of television documentary formats. 25