Can Documentaries Change The World?
My latest video essay for Netflix asks — and answers — a long-debated question.
Many times in my adult life — as a film student, a filmmaker, an activist, and as a nerd about all things media — I have asked the question: can documentaries change the world? The urgency of this question has increased, for me, with the ubiquity of on-demand entertainment and the 24-hour news cycle. Today film, TV, and streaming services give us on-demand access to all kinds of fictional and factual entertainment — not least the documentary format, which has been gloriously rebooted this century.
But does this increased exposure — whether chosen by or foisted upon us — to the news we’re accessing via Twitter or more traditional, theatrical documentary films, actually lead to concrete change regarding the issues they illuminate?
This is the question I answered in my latest video essay, published by Netflix UK last week.
Power and Documentary
The ‘power’ of documentaries seems pretty obvious. Less than a year after Making a Murderer Season 1 was released, a federal judge said Brendan Dassey’s confession was ‘unlawful’ and ordered his release from prison. A month after Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich aired, Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested by the FBI. And in the weeks after the world watched The Social Dilemma, CNBC reported waves of users deleting their social accounts as Google, Twitter, and Facebook’s CEOs were grilled by the US Senate.
But how clearly are these events linked?
We’ve long known film’s power as a tool of influence. Government propaganda films curated information throughout the 20th century, promoting a mindset or unifying purpose for a population, while modern celebrities and companies harness video on social media and literally call it ‘influencer’ content. Of course, even documentaries are often designed with a purpose in mind, or at the very least an outline of the story that the producer — who may also be the subject — wants to tell.
The 21st Century Doc ‘Reboot’
Documentaries used to be a fairly niche type of film, but that changed in 2002 when Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine broke box office records, and his next film, Fahrenheit 9/11, became the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Moore’s mainstream success paved the way for documentaries to sit comfortably alongside fiction, and today, stories about injustice or scandal usually capture the most clicks.
Those stories don’t have to be polished. Raw, real-life footage shot on shaky handheld cameras, CCTV, or mobile phones can step under the ‘documentary’ umbrella — and spread like wildfire. In her 1999 essay, Political Mimesis, film theorist Jane Gaines highlighted the horror that followed video footage of LAPD officers brutally beating Rodney King in 1991, and asked: was it this footage that ‘made’ people riot, or would their long-existing anger, frustration, and desperation at systemic racism have boiled over regardless? Nowadays, viral footage that spreads through social media can make or break people’s careers and fuels social justice movements…But how many theatrically released feature documentaries have directly changed the world?
Case Study: ‘The Thin Blue Line’
An early example you could cite happened in 1988. Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line detailed inconsistencies in the murder trial of Randall Adams, a man on death row in Texas. The film ends with a taped confession by one of the prosecution’s key witnesses, David Ray Harris, who implicated himself and said he lied about Adams’ involvement. The documentary drew the public’s gaze to Adams’ case, and news outlets cited Morris’ film as “helping to lead to the dismissal” of Adams’ conviction a year later.
But one of the clearest cases of a documentary sparking world-changing events is more recent, and even gave us a name for the phenomenon: ‘The Blackfish Effect’.
Case Study: ‘Blackfish’
2013’s Blackfish revealed that a number of orca trainers at SeaWorld and other water parks had been killed by the animals while training. The filmmakers made a strong, emotionally impactful argument: that the fatalities were a result of the whales’ declining mental state in captivity. A prolonged period of campaigning both on and offline followed the film’s release, which targeted celebrities and SeaWorld’s partners and raised widespread public awareness, with a number of significant results.
Southwest Airlines ended a 25-year partnership with Seaworld. Congressmen inked new animal welfare legislation, citing the film as an influence. By 2015, SeaWorld’s profits had fallen by 84% and their stock price by 60%. And when SeaWorld attempted to hide this from their shareholders, they were charged with fraud and fined $5m.
But the biggest bombshell came three years later: in 2016, SeaWorld announced they would end their orca breeding programme. In a press release, they conceded: “Society is changing, and we’re changing with it.”
Director Gabriella Cowperthwaite noted this was neither expected, nor usual: “Coming from the world of documentary, you’re not always sure people will even see your film voluntarily […] So the fact that the film has not only been well received but is also managing to do some work in the world is extraordinary.”
But The Blackfish Effect is wearing off. Four years after they announced they would stop breeding orcas, SeaWorld continues to hold animals in captivity and have them perform with trainers, and their profits are once again inching higher.
Cause or Effect?
Maintaining this kind of progress requires work and vigilance — and we should also be vigilant not to put too much weight on ‘adjacent events’; change will often come about independently, due to the same rising tide that led the film to be made in the first place.
Brendan Dassey’s lawyers had been working on his appeal since well beforeMaking a Murderer. His conviction was later upheld and he remains in prison. Ghislaine Maxwell was being investigated by the FBI before the Epstein documentary began production, after being sued by one of Epstein’s victims back in 2015. The Social Dilemma prompted many people to delete their social media, but it also caused people to flock to their accounts to discuss the film.
Documentaries are fantastic for developing a human story and explaining a complex web behind injustice or sensational events. The most successful will bring clarity to the mechanisms behind something we may already be aware of, such as the racism embedded in America’s prison system (13th), the 2008 financial crash (Inside Job), or the way that those whose bodies are different have had to fight for equal recognition on an international stage (Rising Pheonix).
Some documentaries might even suggest a route for an alternative future. But just because we make ever-more documentaries with ever-higher production values, screaming ever-more urgent messages, does not mean that more will get done.
Context Collapse
Jenny Odell, a critic of Big Tech, notes that today’s unending proliferation of content, documentary or otherwise, can prevent us from being effective. This is ‘context collapse’ — if we constantly see protest footage alongside recipes and pictures of our cousin’s newborn, we are unable to filter and contextualise the information enough to care, let alone act. Neither social nor traditional media can single-handedly carry the ability to inspire lasting change.
The very point that The Social Dilemma makes is that we can’t live our lives within a passive entertainment bubble and expect to be effective. It’s a bit like asking ‘can protests change the world’? Well, yes! But not alone. As well as awareness, legislation, due process, community and political organising are all vital if we want to make a difference.
Documentaries exist alongside and within current social movements and global conversations. As Jane Gaines said: “Such imagery will have no resonance without politics”. No one event leads to change, without sustained action, led by diverse, committed collectives of people.