couchprojects

Basic Training. 1971. USA. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. Image courtesy of Zipporah Films

Today I went to MoMA to see Frederick Wiseman’s “Basic Training.” The film is a 90 minute edit from about 90 hours of footage shot during summer training at Fort Knox at the height of the Vietnam War.

Wiseman was present to answer questions. The biggest secret revealed – how did he get access to the Army and permission to shoot the film? Answer: He asked.

An eager student sitting in the back asked Wiseman what he thought about reality shows. Wiseman responded that he watched one once for a couple of minutes. The question was dismissed. (Clearly Wiseman didn’t get the update from the New Yorker review of the MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” by Nancy Franklin this week.)

Witnessing the intimacy of the scenes and situations he captures in Fort Knox,  you can not help but think about how reality is manipulated in all documentation. It made me wonder how difficult it must be for Wiseman to capture the same courtesy and starkness in scenes from his recent work considering his new “non-actors”  have been exposed to years of reality television. I feel that if “Basic Training” were made today, the privates would be more inclined to act out in front of the camera (in 1970 they seem a bit camera shy).

The documentation of non-actors or “real” people came up in a later question when Wiseman was asked how he was able to capture the personal conversations without the subjects being distracted by the film camera. His response was that people like being photographed and it is true that they act differently in front of he camera. For him, this is an aspect that he desires, because often people think they are acting the way you want them to. But in the end, they are acting in a way that is more revealing about their ideas of themselves and what other people think they should be. His example was a cop he was filming in St. Louis who strangled a prostitute for 30 seconds to “teach her a lesson” about pushing a cop down two flights of stairs (which she had done moments earlier to evade arrest). In Wiseman’s view, the officer was doing this to appear tough, because he then explained that the legal penalties for prostitution in St. Louis  were rather light – $50 fine. Rather than being on better behavior the way the “Basic Training” sergeants appear (little cursing, little yelling), the cops were on worse behavior so as to appear powerful and in control.

In reference to this point and all of the questions directed at his seamless editing, it is a shame, yet understandable, that Wiseman did not humor the questioner by citing the similarities his work shares with reality television. In Reality TV the subjects think they are real, in Wiseman’s films, the over-educated MoMA film audience and PBS watcher think the films are real.

“Basic Training” plays again at MoMA on January 30.