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Documentaries are Shitty

by:Pox

2011/08/19

Have you ever seen a good documentary? You're probably thinking "Why, yes, I've seen lots of interesting ones!". First of all, stop lying. Second, "interesting"? Don't you mean ENTERTAINING? Of course you do. Documentaries aren't made primarily to inform you, they're made to entertain you. That means the quality of the information is usually incredibly shitty, the quantity is kept to a minimum and the whole thing is hammed up with false premises and questions.

Did you ever notice a ton of documentaries have sentences like "A discovery that could change XXXX FOREVER!" , "But what they found, no one could explain!" or "No one was ready for what they found!". If what you're watching has any of those sentences, congratulations, you're watching a steaming dump. The other kind of documentary, the non-sensationalistic, responsible version is usually STREEEEEEEEEEEETCHEEEEEEEEEEEED OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTT for the duration of its 30-40 minutes and is ALWAYS built on a narrative structure. They're always, always trying to tell a story like they can trick you into learning something if you think you're watching "Congo" instead of "The Peasants of Congo and their Shitty Plight.".

Woohooo

And you can usually tell they have no interest in actual reporting of facts in 99% of cases where their subjects is something even remotely controversial like pollution, global warming, political corruption, factory farming and so on. They always start with a premise that they try to shove down your throat without ever presenting the other side. They're not so much documentaries as propaganda. Where they should base their research in scientific journals and invite competent scientists in their domain, they usually invite random non-related experts ( I'm sorry, you're a doctor of anthropology, not a geologist, go away) who talks about nonsense or find the one doctor who disagrees with all the others. That's so god damn dishonest and irresponsible. Let's never forget that the people who make documentaries are usually FILM MAKERS, not journalists or scientists. Not that journalists are usually good at reporting facts anyway.

In most cases, documentaries are written for ADD sufferers. There's about one new fact every 10 minutes and it's then subsequently repeated every 5 minutes so you don't forget it. And of course they waste 10 minutes during the intro and the conclusion of the show to re-state their premise and then drop a stupid shit-bomb like "No one knows what the future may hold for the poor people of Yemen!". I swear they're all written by high school students. They just mix-in the worse of two worlds: not enough entertainment to be good but too little information to be instructive.

I just watched some Discovery Channel bullshit about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle and my ears almost fell off at the stupidity that was being shoved into them. Their main expert on the show was some crank who wrote a book about how totally real and mysterious the triangle is.

Shit

Then they proceeded to talk about how possible explanations for the mysterious disappearances ( yes so weird that ships can sink in stormy tropical waters ) include time vortexes and Atlantis. Are you kidding me? Now some potato-crunching half-wit is going to watch this thinking he's being informed. Hey, DISCOVERY CHANNEL, right? They have standards.

If you must know, there is no Bermuda Triangle mystery. You could form a triangle with any point of any sea / ocean on the planet and come up with countless stories of mysterious wrecks and disappearances. The more you know

In conclusion, the only good documentaries are ones about sharks. And they're not really documentaries so much as violence porn because they contain about 2 facts for every 20 minutes of steel cage biting.

And I'm ok with that.