Monday, July 22, 2019
Trends in consumption patterns Essay Example for Free
Trends in consumption patterns Essay Although no single definition of economics will ever satisfy the demands of all analysts or even of all interested parties, attempts to succinctly define economics as a science, or even as a part of nature have persisted for centuries. A good, but certainly not exhaustive, definition of economics is that it comprises the study of how human beings allocate scarce resources to produce various commodities and how those commodities are distributed for consumption among the people in society with the added provision that the essence of economics lies in the fact that resources are scarce, or at least limited, and that not all human needs and desires can be met. (Economics, 2004)            This latter observation forms a central part of all economic theories and in some cases can be regarded as the central premise for the study of economics altogether. The fact of scarce resources has its counterpart in the availability (or unavailability) of currencies, and also in the desirability of specific resources among specific consumers. The general terminology associated with such considerations is known as the law of supply and demand. From this central idea springs most of what has comprised and still comprises economic theory and practice.            The law of supply and demand is at once simple to comprehend and perilously difficult to thoroughly understand. In its simplest sense, the law of supply and demand refers to the reality that resources, goods, or commodities which are in high-demand and short supply will command higher prices than resources, goods, or commodities which are abundant but in low demand by consumers. A readily comprehensible case-in-point would be the example of a rare book, or first edition publication. Such an antiquity may be of value, but its pricing and market value will depend utterly upon demand and availability (supply): The law of supply and demand will determine the value of a first edition, in other words, by how many collectors are interested in obtaining a copy, compared with the number of copies available. Even if a book is in scarce supply, it will have little value if it is not wanted by collectors and equally, a book which has a print run of several thousand copies can still be worth a great deal if there are more collectors requiring a copy than there are copies available. (Law of Supply and, 2005, p. 13)            Such simple models grant an elementary understanding of the law of supply and demand; however, the true implications of the seemingly simple paradigm are many and the nuances of what influences trends in supply and demand is much more difficult to predict and quantify than the basic attributes of the theory itself. In some ways, entire markets are basically an extension of the law of supply and demand; a concrete representation of it in action, what is called a market is simply a label for an intersection of supply and demand correspondences, from which equilibrium allocations may be deduced but whether or not equilibrium allocations may be determined by scientific study remains ambiguous given the very real influence of psychological factors which impact demand among consumers and are perilously difficult to gauge or predict. (Loasby, 1999, p. 107)            On the supply side of the equation, it is possible to pinpoint certain trends and tendencies which lead to imbalance. The law of supply indicates that production should not exceed demand, nonetheless, Economic imbalance caused by overproduction or shortages is a recurring leading cause of business cycle downturns and despite the fact that under most economic theories, this situation should not occurthe pricing system is supposed to create an environment in which supply and demand always match at the market price the ambiguity of consumer demand proves much more difficult to anticipate to gauge with precision. (Schaefer, 1995, p. 17)            One reason for this difficulty on the supply side is that fact that When the economy is at full capacity, certain industries become carried away with the prospects of unlimited growth as they expand production capacity to meet rising demand which,in turn, often leads to overcapacity. Because most business operations tend always to experience fluctuating sales and cost pressures, they concentrate on immediate business problems-not realizing the severity of the overcapacity. (Schaefer, 1995, p. 17)            The same principle holds true for currency itself: when overcpacity is reached in forms of currency, inflation is the result: an increase in the amount of circulating currency beyond the needs of trade; an oversupply of currency is created, and, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, the value of money decreases. Deflation is brought about by the opposite condition and yet despite the working, theoretical paradigm, a balance in supply and demand is usually fleeting. Modern economics admits a new form inflation: government borrowing, the increase in the money supply, and a diminished supply of consumer goods which can increase demand relative to supply and force rising prices. (Inflation, 2004)            On the demand side, ambiguities and uncertainties flourish. The law of demand dictates that demand for a product or good or commodity plus its relative availability will create the price. However, since consumer demand is a fickle and unpredictable force shaped by myriad factors, it is often difficult to spot or predict trends which will yield a good balance between supply and demand.            An example of just how subject to vagaries and random events is the notion of consumer demand, is the notion of the umbrella company looking to sell umbrellas Contingencies open up a very wide field. Rain on May 15, 2006 certainly matters, but so does rain on May 14, since this is likely to bring forward some purchases, and therefore to affect both supply and demand on May 15 which is hardly a mathematical paradigm susceptible to logical scrutiny, much less production quotas. (Loasby, 1999, p. 110)            It becomes incumbent upon the observer to regard the demand side of the supply and demand paradigm as somewhat beholden to psychological vagaries the laws of value and exchange as dependent on the (psychological) law of diminishing returns of satisfaction as the presumed basis of the entire theoretical study of consumption. In this sense, the universal catallactic law of supply and demand involves a (psychological) linkage with the realm of consumption (Zafirovski, 2003, p. 19).            As such it is often useful to regard consumer trends as psychologically driven and to avoid using the market specification as a framework for investigating demand, and instead considering the variety of intentions among potential purchasers in order to specify the market correctly. (Loasby, 1999, p. 110) Another factor which contributes to consumer demand is personal disposable income and this aspect of economics is influenced by many things: The amount of personal disposable income that consumers have available to spend in retail outlets is influenced by a number of general economic factors including: †¢ unemployment levels; †¢ regional employment patterns; †¢ interest rate levels; †¢ inflation levels; †¢ earnings levels. (Varley Gillooley, 2001, p. 61) With such a wide range of considerations, it is no surprise that the intricacies of supply and demand have not bee reduced to formulaic consistency de spite centuries of analysis.                                                           References Inflation. (2004). In The Columbia Encyclopedia (6th ed.). New York: Columbia University     Press. Law of Supply and Demand Determines Value of First Editions. (2005, January 8). Western     Mail (Cardiff, Wales), p. 13. Poindexter, J. T. (1993). Labor and Economic Trends: Effect on U.S. Workforce. Review of     Business, 15(1), 34+. Schaefer, H. G. (1995). International Economic Trend Analysis. Westport, CT: Quorum Books. Varley, R., Gillooley, D. (2001). Retail Product Management: Buying and Merchandising.    London: Routledge. Zafirovski, M. (2003). Market and Society: Two Theoretical Frameworks. Westport, CT:          Praeger.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Students Choice Of Stem Fields Education Essay
Students Choice Of Stem Fields Education Essay Abstract- In this paper we study the interest of students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from grade 9 to 12 in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Surveys were distributed to students who chose STEM tracks and students who chose non STEM tracks in public and private schools, as well as universities, across the country. The data collected revealed a number of reasons that make students like, or dislike, scientific majors. These reasons include the presence or absence of capable teachers, the influence of role models and the choice of the teaching language. The results presented in the paper also focus on differences between public and private institutions, male and female students, as well as nationals and non-nationals. We also compare our findings to similar research done in the USA. We show that several factors remain valid in both countries whereas others are specific to each of them. This paper also provides suggestions on the way to overcome the challeng es in STEM field. Although this paper is based on data collected in United Arabs Emirates, the solutions can be applied to any other region of the world. Keywords STEM; Students survey; Engineering; UAE; Self efficacy; Role models; Peers; Parents, K-12. Introduction Many countries are currently attempting to improve their school systems, making the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) more important. This is seen as the key educational ingredient that will ensure innovations in future [1-6]. The suggested trend for 21st century national economies is to reach the penultimate label of being innovation based or knowledge based [1, 2]. According to the much heralded and respected The Global Competitiveness Report from the World Economic Forum, an innovation-driven state of any economy is the most sophisticated level to which it matures [1-3]. An innovation-driven economy is judged based on the sophistication of business and its ability to nurture technological creations [1-4]. The scientific survey points to the fact that in order for economies to be innovative, they must possess an advanced education system. Without this, innovation will be unobtainable [1-4]. In a concerted effort to diversify and strengthen its rising oil-based economy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has taken upon itself to revamp its whole education system, especially in instruction of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [4, 7]. The United Arabs Emirites is not a leading contributor in science and technology developments in the Middle East [7, 8]. Though there has been debate over the nature, scale, and to a degree the existence of this problem, most experts seem in agreement that the problem is real and increasing with time [9, 10]. In UAE, the lowering trend of STEM interested students attaining degrees will negatively affect the workforce available for industry [4, 8]. Therefore, UAEs educational system must provide highly skilled STEM workers in order to reach its 2030 Vision of becoming a self-sustaining and innovative economy [4]. Although STEM subjects may be taught with the utmost vigor and high aspirations, this does not guarantee that the studen ts will major in STEM fields and become innovative and productive members of STEM professions [5, 6]. There are many barriers or switch-off factors that affect students choices of studies for further education and/or future careers. This paper consists a starting point for an ongoing research into modeling the interest of UAEs students in the STEM, as done in [5] with regards to the USA education system. The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we discuss previous results in literature related to the topic. In Section 3, we introduce the research methods adopted for the sake of collecting the required data. In Section 4, we analyze the results and compare our findings to existing ones. In section 5, we provide the results and the conclusions arrived at from the study In section 6, we provide various suggestions on solving the existing problems. In section 7, we provide the limitations of the study. In section 8, we conclude with several remarks and an outlook for upcoming research projects. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Recently, there has been existence of initiatives and publications related to the overall understanding and the experiences of minority particularly doctoral students. The University of Arizona researched the considerations that students take as they decide to apply to a course in a graduate school [11]. The sample population of the research comprised of students who applied in Arizona and the responses varied out by gender and race (Minority versus White). The top aspects for all applicants in the doctorate program included department reputation, correspondence between student interests and degree program, research conducted by an individual faculty associate, whether there is accreditation of the program, departments receptiveness to questions, overall school reputation, and other external forces. For the minority, on the other hand, aspects such as recommendations from faculty to other institutions, printed resources from the department, and propinquity to the home of the students were highly vital than they were for the overall population. For minority and women, the reaction of a program to the question posed by the applicant also played a highly crucial role. Therefore, the appropriate recruitment of underrepresented teams demands different training and techniques that what is crucial for the majority set [11]. The University of Maryland has published their judgments about victorious programs to create a diverse doctoral student institution on the organization [12]. Some of the programs include Professoriate (AGEP) and Maryland Alliance for Graduate Education. These programs are modeled around comparable successful programs for graduates at other institutions. From these programs, the researchers found some components to be particularly imperative in sustaining minor students before and after graduating. These components include: preparation of graduate learning (application support and GRE); graduate admission (changing the admission strategies); graduate program selection (factors to take in consideration); peer support (with a student who has advanced in the students disciplines and also through interdisciplinary circumstances); summer bridge programs (bonding of students and academic preparation assessment); faculty role models and mentors( from the students research advisor and from ot her department); stable and adequate staff support, professional development and financial support (support needed for the student to pursue in his desired discipline); and exposure to the occupation (funding to yield successful minority graduates to campus for a long or short period, funding towards travelling to professional conferences). It is significant to note that these components focus more on altering the doctoral programs in the university, other than of forcing the students to change [12]. In addition to the research done by these universities, some non-academic institutions have put focus on issues relating to students joining universities. The Woodrow Wilson Foundation produced a report in 2005 on minorities in doctoral programs [14] and doctoral programs in general [13]. The Foundation established four vital factors that institutions have put in use for improving doctoral education [13]. These are: new practices (the means at which they can make aspects of doctorial training be developmental); new paradigms (what promotes or discourages truly exploratory scholarship?); new partnerships (improved relationship between the sectors that employ doctorate recipients and academia); and new people (the doctorate should ensure that all people in the population feel incorporated and their researches are socially applicable). Putting these issues into consideration, the Foundation concludes that the doctoral experience will advance for all students despite their gender and rac e. Underlying the four factors are four principles studied in the report and that has practical application in the institutions. These principles include: Universities should possess a centralized and strong graduate school with imperative power and budge; the graduates should be seen in a vacuum with little or no concern for how the research is affected by or affects the society; students form different backgrounds should be included in these programs; and there should be regular assess of doctoral programs using rational rewards, objectives and consequences. While some institutions follow these principles, others do not follow them. Therefore, through the analyzed report, the Foundation anticipates causing change in the operations and mentality of these institutions so that they can alter the reality of education. Also, the Foundation recommends the use of seven principles to improve the experiences and recruitment of minority doctorate students: research, communication, intellectual support, professionalizing experiences, vertical integration, leadership, and mixture of race and gender [14]. It is crucial for programs to communicate efficiently so that they have a position to share best practices and resources. Additionally, students should conduct research in order to analyze how programs work and what to add so that they can perform better than before. Vertical integrations analyzes how k-12, undergraduate, and graduate programs should work together to ensure that students engage often and early with them. The Foundation recommends that, in intellectual support, the doctorate should be socially responsive ad should also improve the picture of the programs so that they can become attractive to a large audience. The issue of professionalizing experiences and monitoring consists of issues rela ted to the relations between a student and his or her advisors, as well as issues on finance that might push a student away form the chances to interact with his or her professional colleagues. Race and gender principal describes how graduates should try to take in consideration race as well as the requirement in admission, programs, and financial help, other than concentrating on the need as several programs do in order to evade negative views of confirmatory action. Finally, leadership principle focuses on the government and its agencies so that they can provide better oversight and assistance on the use of national funds. Leadership principle imperative for it ensures that there is right usage of funds on the desired programs and people. Whilst some of these principles are close to those suggested by the Foundation, some of them are specifically focusing to the minority experience [14]. The Council for Graduates Schools lately founded the Ph.D. Completion project to scrutinize issues relates to time to degree and retention of students in doctoral programs [15]. This program has corporate funding from Ford and Pfizer. Students in various degree programs from a group of universities were set as a sample population. Then there was the distribution of surveys to get an improved understanding of the experiences of students who graduates and who leave their studies without graduating. From the original research for the project, the satisfying practices that they put across were the utilization of the mentoring, program environment, research processes, mode, and procedures, and financial support. These practices support the points put across by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Finally, a private-public partnership referred to as Building Engineering and Science Talent (BEST) has an analysis of the practices that work well to maintain the underrepresented students in STEM fields [16]. These experimental practices include targeted recruitment, institutional leadership, peer support, personal attention, engaged faculty, bridging to the next point, enriched research experience, and personal evaluation and continuous program [16]. Science education among the United States residents lags extremely behind than that of other developed nations. Implicit notion of this statement is that the quality of science literacy in USA elementary and high schools is not as precise compared to European and Asian countries. Students, specifically those of ethnic and racial descents, have little perceptive of science terms such as DNA and photosynthesis, or even the straightforward fact the earth rotates around the sun. Reasonably, an understanding of a scientific idea is lacking among the entire population but particularly among low income and minority students [17]. Aggravating the circumstance is unawareness on the part of science educators of the slight misconceptions that these students bring to the classroom which make it complex for them to theoretically grab scientific resources. Consequently, the number of competent students to learn science, engineering and mathematics after secondary school graduation is remarkably ne gligible. There is the use of aforementioned best observations and practices to inform the questions used in this research. As discussed earlier in the Introduction section, this study seeks to better understand the experiences of STEM and non STEM graduates and the factors that facilitate their decisions to move along pathways leading towards professoriate. It also focuses on the underrepresented students in the STEM fields and clearly brings out the factors that make students pursue or not to pursue in STEM fields. In order to tackle this to completion, there is the distribution of surveys whose responses will conclude the findings of the study. RELATED WORK Various studies exist with different suggestions about the reasons why students choose to study or not to study STEM fields. These studies point out several reasons why students pursue or do not pursue with STEM fields after completion of their secondary education. There exist some cognitive factors that affect students choice of majors. Firstly, their attitudes and beliefs towards STEM disciplines play a crucial role on this. Emotional, psychological, behavioral and physiological propensities which reveal an individuals perceptions and responses to, interaction with his immediate background define cognitive dispositional features. Earlier studies found that there is relationship between two cognitive aspects in the completion and enrolment of unnecessary (or college preparatory) mathematics and science courses- students self efficacy concerning science and mathematics topics and their interests in both [18]. More studies [19] show that all ethnic groups possess similar aspirations a nd positive fields for STEM occupations. On the other hand, as minority students continue with their academic disciplines, their interest in mathematics and science related topics decrease as their achievement in these classes weakens. Self efficacy is another cognitive factor that affects the choice of students major. Empirical researches show that students have a high possibility to sign up for science courses if they maintain high ranks of self efficacy in the science area [18]. The possibility of choosing science or engineering courses enhances with students awareness that they possess mathematics background or a solid science and in the certainty that they have the capability to perform best in those disciplines. Self efficacy is the strongest forecaster in the consideration of STEM disciplines as a career choice. Reference [19] validates the motivation and significance of self efficacy in foretelling performance in science and mathematics. Minority students possess lower self efficacy in mathematics and science than the other students. Minority students in STEM fields have complication when it comes to perceiving themselves as scientists, even after expressing their interest in STEM careers [20]. One of the most commonly cited rationales for inspiring students to enjoy STEM subjects is good teaching that involves capable teachers [5, 6, 21-24]. The teachers capability can be defined as his/her role and personality in the approach to delivering the academic curriculum [21-24]. The learning environment, or the relationship between the learner and teacher, dictates the outlook of the potential STEM and non STEM interested students. For example, educators who are aware that memorization of content may not be the best method of assessment for learners and diverse methods of pedagogy should be taken into account to reach multiple intelligences tend to produce students who may be more successful [6, 21-24]. According to reference [25], anxiety of mathematics and science has its origins in teaching and in teachers of science and mathematics. Explaining this, they argue that students do not have anxiety before attending school hence, they relate this to the teaching method and the not ion that science and mathematics is somewhat dreaded from the first years learning of a child. Adults and teachers may emphasize that science related fields are hard, whereas they indicate that the skills attained from the field are vital for future accomplishment. If unqualified teachers are forced to teach science related courses, they project signals to students hence scaring students to pursue or complete theses majors [25]. Frequently, students encounters with STEM can force them to feel incompetent especially when presented by educators who do not like STEM. Some teachers may not possess the preparedness to deal with psychological fear of STEM, nor do they have preparedness to handle the defense strategies and mechanisms their students utilize to defend themselves from appearing to fail in STEM. Prior academic preparation often affects the students choice of fields to major. In most cases, student decides that a major in the STEM is not he would like to pursue. The uncertainty to stay enrolled in a STEM field is probably influenced by the students attending mathematic training prior to registering in an institution and his academic aptitude. More exclusively, student achievement in the structure of a grade point and math SAT performance is in association with the persistence of students in STEM majors [26]. Students who earn high math SAT score do not only perform high ranks of participating in mathematics and science clubs but also enrolled in more advanced courses and were more engaged in math and science activities in secondary school. Students with prior academic preparation in STEM have more chances to pursue in majors of STEM disciplines. Studies also show that lack of enough science and mathematical training at the secondary and elementary level has a negative effect on the students interesting secondary mathematics as well as academic preparation, science coursework and in majoring in STEM fields [18, 27]. In conjunction to the aforesaid prevalence of tracking of minority students into the lower class science and mathematics disciplines, it seems that the quality of the academic readiness many minority students receive has a negative impact from the differences among school funding, teachers quality, and money spent on instructional programs. Minority students in most cases get taught by teachers who do not major in that field or even inexperienced teachers who pursue the fields. Minorities have more possibility of receiving funding discriminations in the K-12 education compared to other students [28]. This is because the systems used for funding do not give equal amounts every student exposing minority students to risk of acquiring less funding. Hence, these students have a greater exposure to high quality, challenging mathematics instructions , further daunting their interest in science or mathematics [28]. Commitment of the student to STEM major also has a role in determining whether the student may pursue the major or not. The emphasis on the students involvement to a particular major one enrolled, as in STEM), is as crucial as developing an early interest in STEM disciplines in K-12. A tough involvement to a STEM degree is a persuasive predictor of student perseverance [26]. Minorities who express deep satisfaction with science and engineering as their field of study (or committed to STEM careers) have high possibility of persisting in STEM disciplines. Amazingly, though, researcher points that serving as a leader or role model on campus discouraged students commitment to STEM. The student who put more emphasis on leadership or services is more likely to turn to non STEM majors. One could contemplate that effort and time that is essential to succeed in mathematics and science related field is very challenging leaving less time for students social incorporation on college. Involvement in such areas like political groups, student government or athletic support teams pulls students away from their laboratory and study time [29]. Misperception of STEM disciplines also has an extreme effect on the students decision on the major to pursue. Minority students utilize various criteria when defining an effective curricular program [30]. Non minority student scrutinize general coursework as college or academic preparatory courses and start to develop occupational and educational as untimely as eighth score and start making occupational pronouncement like engaging in extracurricular activities and college-prep courses. However, minorities perceive overall coursework as separate from extracurricular activities taken at one time during secondary school [30]. Another commonly cited reason why students are turned off by STEM subjects is the obsession to receive high marks [31]. Due to the relative difficulty of receiving high grades in STEM classes in comparison to other subjects, students are often discouraged from taking STEM subjects. As a result, students emphasis on achieving high grades outweighs their interest in taking subjects related to Science and Mathematics. Consequently, they abandon their interest in STEM majors [32]. In addition, many studies provide insight into the switch-off factors, showing that they might come from the influence exerted by the parents, students peer groups within and outside school, role models and the media. Researchers in [33] suggest that families play a critical role in the career choice of their children. The educational background, occupations and aspirations of the parents are important factors, introducing the concepts of cultural and social capital to this process [34-36]. Encouragement from the parent is one of the strongest forces that facilitate the students early education aspirations. It is not surprising if a student whose parent studied and worked in STEM field decides to choose STEM discipline as his major. This happens because those parents help to instill the belief that STEM careers are successful and applicable in peoples lives. Though in [37] the researchers found no impact on female students from exclusively the level of education of their parents, the y did find a vital impact of parental encouragement and support. It is clear that children have a high possibility of choosing gender-atypical courses if their parents have slight education. It is crucial to note that gender stereotyping can result as an influence from parents. In [21, 38, 39] it has been shown that students are influenced by their peers who often stress the uncool aspects of STEM thus preserving negative stereotyping. Reference [38] found that peer achievement positively affects students achievement in academic. For instance, a peer attitude towards mathematics increases, so does an individuals attitude towards mathematics. At an early stage of development, parents sustain their place as the premier social power for their kids, but as the children grow, their peers take the influential role [39]. Deviant peers may expose the deviance behavior from one person to another in the peer group. This brings up the proposal of curriculum tracking: putting students in levels or classes based on their achievement or ability level, or particularly not doing so, turns out to be an appealing topic when scrutinized through the angle of influential peer support. If peers attend the same classes, they have a higher possibility of meeting than if they never shares classes. Added to the overall secondary school spectrum is homophonous character of social networks, a widely accepted phenomenon that measures the tendency of the English proverb that says that birds of the same feather flocks together. For all students, social life in secondary schools and universities becomes an entire world of challenges and issues [39]. The role of role model is clear when it comes to influencing a students choice on the career to major. The idea of role models partly cover that of peers, although a role model can be any other individual who puts inspiration to the student while a peer is a person with similar age with the student or with similar stand in the course of life. Role models in the life of a student can be teachers, parents, peers, people in same the neighborhood, or other kin. Just as with the capability of grouping in classes, some students selection of role models is advantageous while not in others. In addition, just like many others factors in life, socio-economic status often determine the opportunities and choices of role models. Role models possess the power to influence children choices of future careers, education, overall behavior, and can condemn or support gender biased judgments, which becomes particularly significant for adolescent girls. As reference [40] explains that, starting from fema le teachers to female professionals to mothers or other female relatives employed in STEM fields, they offer a tangible image of what is achievable for adolescent girls in their lives. Family support highly influenced the effect that the enrichment agenda had on female students. Perceptions and characterization of STEM in the media also play a significant role in the acceptance and rejection of STEM. In [36, 41] the media is accused of igniting and perpetuating negative stereotypes about STEM. There is a stigmatization of its degree of difficulty and a reinforcement of the perception that STEM is only for the academic elite. Nevertheless, considerable portions of youth are positively influenced by the media [42, 43]. Another often cited reason for losing interest in the STEM is the absence of technology based instruction in classrooms. Often, students report that they choose other majors simply because of the meager quality of instruction they get at the college level. However, a positive contentment of a students academic program is one of the foremost factor in attainment of degree for both major and non minor students. Research proves that as minority students identify their STEM fields as pleasant, they are likely to persist in studying those courses ignoring their complexity [44]. Researchers in [44] insist that the lack of modern technological infrastructure in the classrooms retards the growth of STEM-interested students. Active learning and positive use of technology to enhance professional developments, e.g. using online resources/mentors, computer-assisted instruction, service-learning, can help transform traditional, lectured-based pedagogy into well-received, interesting STEM classes [45-49]. A rescheduled consequence of the students interest and commitment in his field is that it helps the faculty in teaching classes and unlocks opportunities for students to carry out research independently or in conjunction with the faculty [45]. In response, these experiences serve to enhance the students fulfillment with their faculty members, majors and their general academic understanding. Among the majors in biology science, the presence of a student centered faculty is in question relating to the general fulfillment of student with the faculty and curriculum. Enhancement of satisfaction with faculty happens to follow various factors as, for instance, the anticipation that regardless of the major which the students choose. Among physical fields of system, the presence of a strong faculty research only helps to discourage students to pursue the major and to have dissatisfaction with their study program. While some researchers theorized that the finding is probably the outc ome of the principal utilization of teaching educators among research faculty, a more satisfactory assumption is that the major of attention paid to scientific investigation and findings is not what the students waited for in class [47]. Financial support also plays a huge role in determining whether a student will pursue in STEM major or in non STEM major. Basically, STEM disciplines take a longer period of time to complete than other non STEM fields. Therefore, intervention of financial aid has to be present to encourage the student to pursue in these disciplines. As such, the significance of financial aid on keeping students enrolled and interested in STEM careers or majors is clear. Adequate financial support is one of the main factors related to the perseverance of minority students in STEM disciplines [48]. The type of institution that a student attends is also of great significance when it comes to making a decision to pursue STEM disciplines . Students who attend community colleges are more probably not to major in STEM disciplines. From the research, it is evident that student who enroll in four year institutions are more likely to complete their STEM studies that those who attend community colleges [48]. Furthermore, researcher in [50] points to the role that gender and stereotypes play into the retention of women in STEM college programs. Researchers in [51-53] also point to the lack of women in STEM college programs due to negative stereotypes about women in STEM careers , e.g. STEM is a mens only field and women cant think analytically. Existence of negative stereotype in the society saddens students personal assessment skills, impacts his or her performance, and discourages the development made by them. Stereotypes impact students career aspirations and decisions, directing them away from degrees and careers in STEM disciplines. This can suggest that adjusting negative stereotypes about women in the STEM field by increasing the confidence of young women about their involvement in STEM may increase numbers of women successfully studying and working in STEM disciplines [50-55].  Following the lack of in-depth field research about the factors that cause UAE students to choose STEM and non STEM fields, this paper considers the starting point of a research project that aims to determine which barriers emerge as the most prominent for United Arab Emirates students, between grades 9 and 12, being switched off STEM and pursuing further education or careers in the field. research Methods The methods of research for this project consisted of the following procedures meted out to both public and private schools. Since the United Arab Emirates is a socio-cultural collage of people originating from different nationalities, these surveys were sent to both institutional sectors, especially since the majority of expatriates attend private schools. Although differences and similarities arising among public/private schools, male/female, and Emirati/non-Emirati were compared and contrasted, the overall goal of the research, as reflected in the questionnaires, was to investigate what motivates students to pursue a STEM related education. Students from a representative sample pool answered a questionnaire that consisted of twenty-five questions. These questions are separated into six major categories. These categories are: Usefulness and value of STEM for students. Effective motivation of students for STEM majors. Students views on STEM related careers and salaries. External influences on students to pursue a STEM related major. Language in which STEM
Analysis of JFK (1991) and Thin Blue Line
Analysis of JFK (1991) and Thin Blue Line Both films, for example, pore over minutae that may or may not be significant (umbrellas opening in JFK, a dropped thickshake in The Thin Blue Line) to draw the viewer ever more deeply into the world of the crime scene. Yet neither film stops at a simple recitation of facts: both look at the States role in events and suggest an explanation for the alleged cover up. In JFK, this is Stones highly controversial suggestion that the CIA and the military-industrial complex had a vested interest in seeing President Kennedy dead because he was shortly to scale down Americas involvement in Vietnam. In The Thin Blue Line, two related theories are suggested for the official insistence on trying Randall Adams: firstly, that David Harris account had the advantage of providing the police with an eye-witness, while if Harris was himself the murderer, no reliable witness existed; and secondly, that Harris could not be tried as an adult, thus robbing the District Attorney of the much-sought death sentence for the murder of a policeman. These theories are communicated through devices commonly associated with fictional narratives, such as a highly evocative musical score (Phillip Glass music for The Thin Blue Line invokes a melancholy sense of helplessness, while John Williams score for JFK has a more urgent tone, suggestive of furtive conspiracies and forces careening out of control). And both counterpoint different modes of filmmaking as they do so, contrasting invented material filmed in a classical Hollywood style with documentary or faux-documentary footage. The similarity in effect of the two films fast-paced juxtaposition of styles is striking, and suggests Stones approach may have been influenced by Morris work. Yet while both films have an over-riding concern with the filmmaker uncovering facts, that might be called the outer narrative, each constructs a contrasting relationship between the narrative and documentary elements within the text. In JFK, Stone uses an interior narrative of Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) investigating the case. While Garrison is essentially a surrogate for the filmmaker, so that the film cannot be considered as the story of Jim Garrison,3 this narrative is provided moments that function simply as character drama with little or no relationship to the larger argument (such as Garrisons arguments and reconciliation with his wife, or a Norman Rockwell moment4 with his children). This, then, is an example of classical Hollywood-style fictional filmmaking. This is then ruptured by the moments of documentary and faux-documentary that expand on Stones argument as it is being expressed by Garrison. This includes what we might call genuine documentary material: the Zapruder film of the assassination and archival photographs (such as of Kennedys autopsy, or the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding the rifle). It also includes a large number of re-enactments, which are very often presented in a simulated documentary style (grainy or black and white film stock, hand-held cameras). This faux-documentary material is often juxtaposed with the genuine documentary material in a manner that blends the two together (the Zapruder footage is matched by staged footage using similar film stock, and the autopsy photographs are intercut with shots of a wax dummy of Kennedy). The Thin Blue Line shares the same outer narrative (filmmaker investigating), but the inner narrative (the story of Randall Adams) is not constructed in a classical Hollywood style. Instead, it is told through one of the standard modes of documentary filmmaking identified by Bill Nichols5: direct address by participants in an interview format (with the interviewer removed through editing). As with Stones film, this inner narrative is supported by evidence, but again the mode of presentation is reversed: the principal method used to support the witnesses testimony is through reconstructions of the crime scene that, while stylized and fragmented, are constructed as a miniature classically constructed narrative. This nesting of different modes might be tabulated as follows: My point, however, is that the films differ in mode, but use mirror-image forms of the same structure. JFK is primarily a fictional film, which employs a documentary style when re-enacting speculated events. The Thin Blue Line is primarily a documentary, but employs a style borrowed from fictional films in its re-enactments. If the two films share so much in common, and slide so fluidly from documentary to fictional modes so quickly, does this suggest the difference in the two forms might be largely cosmetic? Fiction can be used to express truths about the real world, and the documentary is can be used in ways that obscure the truth or construct falsehoods. If the fundamental difference between fiction and non-fiction is taken as the link to the real, and it is shown that documentaries and fictions share similar relationships to the real, then the two forms start to look more alike: not the same, exactly, but similar. JFK and The Thin Blue Line, by this way of thinking, are then only superficially different types of movies. They share the same structure and the fiction versus documentary dichotomy is more like a difference in genre than a fundamental distinction. This is not to invest the superficial crossover of techniques between the two forms with a significance it does not posses. Documentaries are not fictions just because The Blair Witch Project (1999) does such a good job of pretending to be a real document, or even because Rats in the Ranks (1996) works so well as a narrative. Rather, the downplaying of the documentary / fiction division is based upon a deep-seated cynicism about claims to truth in documentary. That there is such reluctance to accept truth at face value in documentary should not be surprising. Early or classic film studies was based largely on arguments about the relationships between film and reality. While this debate is too detailed to fully explore, it is important to touch upon briefly because much writing upon documentary echoes the arguments of these early writers. The direct link to reality might be seen as a defining feature of the documentary, but it was also seen in the first half of the century as one of the defining features of the film medium itself. The cinema appeared to be an even more perfect method for mechanically reproducing reality than the still photographs that preceded it. This added urgency to arguments of aesthetics that centred on whether the role of the artist was to attempt to recreate the real world, or rather to interpret or even transcend the real.6 These arguments were therefore central to classic film theory and resolved into two broad strands of argument that echo the aesthetic positions described. Thus writers such as Siegfried Kraceur and Andre Bazin had approaches that emphasised films role as a mirror to the real. Of more interest to the current discussion, however, are early anti-realists such as Rudolf Arnheim. In his Film as Art, his defence for cinemas status as serious artistic medium (rather than a mechanical process) is built a round a series of explanations of the way in which film differs from the real.7 Three dimensional surfaces are projected on a plane surface. Perception of depth is lost. In the black and white cinema with reference to which Arnheim formulated his thesis, colour is eliminated. Lighting distorts. Editing interrupts the flow of time and creates artistic possibilities through the use of montage. Non-visual stimulus is absent (or, after the coming of sound, limited), and even the visual world is limited by the edge of the screen. This catalogue of distortions is, for Arnheim, the very basis for the creation of aesthetic systems by which films can signify meanings. After establishing the above points, he sets about demonstrating how each of these limitations in depicting the real is used as a method of artistic expression8. Subsequent film theory moved beyond Arnheims formulations, but has tended to take them as a given in the sense that few would still argue that the central project of film is limited to the reproduction or reflection of reality. Given that such formulations are at the foundation of later film theory, it should not be surprising that they were echoed when subsequent theorists turned their minds to issues regarding documentary, and particularly its relation to the real. Noà «l Carroll attributes much of this writing to a backlash against premature claims by proponents of direct cinema that their method of cinema provided unmitigated access to the real.9 These documentarists attempted to avoid the filmmakers intervention and interpretation, reacting to the overt imposition of a viewpoint present in traditional Griersonian forms of documentary. However, as Carroll puts it, [d]irect cinema opened a can of worms and then got eaten by them.10 It was quickly argued that direct cinema was every bit as interpretive as Griersonian documentaries. For the distortions of reality that were identified by Arnheim are equally present in documentary cinema, but with different implications. Instead of being the unambiguously positive means to artistic expression, every limitation of the medium is instead a problematic point of mediation by the filmmaker. The limitations of the film frame, for example, force choices upon even the most non-interventionist direct cinema filmmaker. And with every choice the filmmaker is placing the film at a greater distance from reality. Carroll quotes Eric Barnouw making this point: To be sure, some documentarists claim to be objective a term that seems to renounce an interpretive role. The claim may be strategic, but it is surely meaningless. The documentarist, like any communicator in any medium, makes endless choices. He [sic] selects topics, people, vistas, angles, lens, juxtapositions, sounds, words. Each selection is an expression of his point of view, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not. Even behind the first step, selection of a topic, there is a motive It is in selecting and arranging his findings that he expresses himself; these choices are, in effect, comments. And whether he adopts the stance of observer, or chronicler or whatever, he cannot escape his subjectivity. He presents his version of the world.11 Such an argument certainly seems to cast doubt over the potential for objectivity in documentary cinema. Carried to an extreme, it is the presentation of a version of the world rather than the world itself that can be seen as rendering documentary a form of fiction. Either way, the prospects for documentary truth in such a model seem grim indeed. It should be noted that Carroll puts little faith in such an approach to documentary, and his counter-argument will be returned to. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that more recently, Carroll has drawn the distinction between what he calls the selectivity argument (recited above) and more global postmodern scepticism of claims to truth.12 The latter is based not in the assumptions of classical film studies, but rather the wider discussions about the way any human discourse imposes meaning and structure on real events. For example, historical accounts impose a narrative structure onto events to make them intelligible, and a distinction must be drawn between the real events (which actually occurred) and the account (which lacks an independent historical existence): The states of affairs and events the historian alludes to do have a basis in historical reality, and the historians claims about those states of affairs and events can be literally true or false. But the narratives in which those states of affairs and events figure are inventions, constructions, indeed, fictions. The narrative structure in the historical recounting is not true or false; it is fictional.13 This point of such an observation may seem a little obscure. If the narrative structure imposed in a historical account is considered independently of the statements of historical fact that it is used to explain, then of course it must be considered fictional. If, however, a documentary text is considered in its entirety, then it is open to questioning about the validity of the historians factual claims (including analysis as to whether the narrative structure is an accurate or fair way of interpreting the real events) in a way that fiction is not. Certainly the argument is here being posed by Carroll (albeit following Michael Renov and Hayden White) as a prelude to arguing that it is unsupportable14. However, Carroll also refers to an alternative model for looking at the link between non-fiction and fiction, mounted by Bill Nichols in his book Representing Reality, which is more subtle and worth dealing with directly. Nichols, unlike the other theorists alluded to by Carroll, does not argue that documentaries must be considered fiction. He recognises that the existence of an external, real-world referent is an important distinction that cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. The world of a fiction film is a unique, imaginary domain, but the world of documentary is different: Instead of a world, we are offered access to the world.15 This claim to representation of the real means that documentaries are not simply narratives: they are also argumentative, if only in the sense that they make claims (even if only implicitly) about what is true. They are therefore a fiction (un)like any other.16 However, Nichols remains troubled by these claims to truth. While the documentary is distinguished from fiction by its links to the real, this representation is rendered problematic by the apparent impossibility of rendering truth objectively. Documentaries, while not fiction, share with fiction those very qualities that thoroughly compromise any rigorous objectivity, if they dont make it impossible Objectivity has been under no less siege than realism, and for many of the same reasons. It, too, is a way of representing the world that denies its own processes of construction and their formative effect. Any given standard for objectivity will have embedded political assumptions In documentary, these assumptions might include belief in the self-evident nature of facts, in rhetorical persuasion as a necessary and appropriate part of representation, and in the capacity of the documentary text to affect its audience through its implicit or explicit claim of This is so, isnt it?17 Nichols argument is reminiscent of those strands of theoretical thought that view ideology as an inescapable and all pervasive force. Documentaries do make claims about the truth that are open to evaluation, but unfortunately, according to Nichols, our institutional mechanisms for assessing such claims are themselves suspect. If such an approach is accepted, evaluation of the arguments made by Oliver Stone and Errol Morris might be highly problematic. Carroll, however, is not willing to concede that any of these arguments establish either that non-fiction is a form of fiction, or that objectivity is impossible. Firstly, he argues that the cinema does not posses any unique tendency towards bias compared to other media. The same arguments about selectivity that Barnouw raises with respect to film are equally applicable to other media and fields of enquiry.18 The particular causes of distortion may be different, but any historian for example may select, manipulate, interpret or emphasise aspects of their material just as a documentary maker can. Thus if non-fiction film is said to be subjective due to its selectivity, so must any field of human enquiry, such as history and science. In the earlier of the two articles I have discussed (written in 1983), Carroll is confident that such a wide-ranging scepticism would not be seriously proposed.19 As we have seen, by 1996 that was exactly the argument Carroll was responding to. Nevertheless, in 1983 his defence against the selectivity argument is based upon the notion of objectivity. In any given field of argument, at any given time, there are patterns of reasoning, standards for observation, and methods for assessing evidence which are used for getting to the truth.20 A piece of research is considered objective insofar as it abides by these norms. Likewise, non-fiction films may be assessed against similar codes, and will be considered biased or subjective if they fail to meet them. That selectivity may make bias possible, or even likely, does not preclude the possibility of a film according with established standards of objectivity. The obvious differences between the real world and the filmed presentation prevent film from substituting for lived experience, but they do not prevent documentaries from being objective. This central assumption of this argument that there are standards of objectivity that can be used to judge the truth is exactly the assumption that we have seen Bill Nichols question. Carroll, however, disputes all of Nichols contentions that are cited above. Firstly, he does not accept that objectivity demands that a film call attention to its processes of construction. After all, the fact that a non-fiction film is constructed is understood by any audience and does not need to be spelt out. Self-reflexive analyses of the filmmaking process or the authors own subjectivity might be a feature of many recent documentaries, but for Carrol this is an artistic device, rather than a necessary benchmark for objectivity. Nor does he accept that any standard for objectivity has embedded political assumptions, even accepting Nichols very broad definitions (outlined above) of what constitutes a political assumption. A belief in the self-evident nature of facts, for example, might be a political assumption when the facts being presented are politically charged falsehoods. Yet the acceptance that some claims of self-evident truth are suspect does not mean that there can be no self-evident facts. With regards to rhetorical persuasion, he argues that films can either eschew such devices altogether (he cites nature documentaries as an example),21 or employ rhetorical structures in the service of objective discourse. Similarly, he regards the implicit claim that this is so, isnt it as present in virtually any assertion and hence neither a political assumption nor a barrier to objectivity. Carrolls approach to these arguments about the prospects for truth or objectivity in documentary is often to return to examples where the truth claimed by the documentary seems clear and uncontentious (as with his common use of nature documentaries as discussion points). The linking thread of the arguments he presents is that the theorists he criticises have mistaken the difficulty in presenting objective truth for an impossibility, often by focussing on exactly the texts where the truth is most problematic.22 It is worth returning to The Thin Blue Line and JFK at this point, since these films both explore events that are subject to considerable conjecture. Neither could be accused of assuming the truth about these events is self-evident (quite the opposite), yet both nevertheless ultimately make vital factual claims. As noted already, these claims question state-sanctioned verdicts, and both films led to a public discussion that forced official re-examination of the cases: The Thin Blue Line forced the retrial of Randall Adams, while JFK contributed to the passing of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which appointed an Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) to re-examine unreleased information about the assassination.23 More than a decade later, with Randall Adams freed from jail, it seems fair to say that Morris case has been widely accepted as true. Oliver Stone, too, has been partially vindicated by subsequent re-examination of the case, with records released by the AARB that support some of his allegations (such as tampering with records of Kennedys autopsy).24 Yet, despite such small victories, and acceptance by many filmgoers of Stones theory of the assassination, JFK remains subject to fierce scholarly criticism of both its methods and conclusions that stands in contrast to the reception of The Thin Blue Line. Linda Williams, in her discussion of the two films, dismisses JFK as paranoid fiction,25 and the widespread condemnation of Stones film by both popular and academic press is well documented.26 Clearly this has much to do with the nature of the case Stone discusses. The Kennedy assassination, for obvious reasons, is a much more familiar event and one that had been the subject of considerably more public discussion than the Randall Adams prosecution. Furthermore, while The Thin Blue Line avoids underlining the political implications of its own conclusions, JFK is explicitly critical of the government and media, calling the assassination a coup detat and coming very close to suggesting former president Lyndon Johnson was involved.27 However, the difference in the reception of the two films cannot be explained simply through reference to the argument each presents. Within the very similar structures outlined at the start of this essay, there are also crucial differences that also explain much of the negative response to Stones film compared to Morris. In his consideration of JFK, Robert Rosenstone notes that there are considerable constraints over the depiction of historical events on the screen.28 In particular, he sees the need to invent detail and compress events to shape a narrative as a limitation that must be negotiated by any historical film. While he is referring to narrative features such as JFK, his argument is equally applicable to the summaries of and suppositions regarding events in The Thin Blue Line. This argument has clear overtones of the discussions of documentaries distortions of truth through selectivity that have already been cited. Like Carroll, Rosenstone argues that when a historical filmmaker such as Stone invents or compresses events, he or she is exercising the same type of discretion that the author of any written history must.29 Such inventions can be considered true (at least to a point) in the sense that they can be verified, documented, or reasonably argued. The problem, notes Rosenstone, is that the verification must occur outside the world of the film. When Stone argues in JFK that President Kennedy was about to withdraw troops from Vietnam, the information is justified by reference to a real memorandum (National Security Action Memo 263), but a fictitious character makes the reference. Assuming no foreknowledge of the case, the audience has no way while watching the film of even knowing that the memorandum really existed, let alone being sure that it supports the conclusion Stone draws. If Stones conclusion is to be examined, the audience must go beyond viewing and read the relevant documents (or scholarly discussion of them) for themselves. If they do so, they will, as Rosenstone states, be undertaking the same kind of critique and review that a work of written history is subjected to. This process of measuring a film against standards of objectivity is exactly that which Carroll highlights as the means of linking non-fiction films to the truth. Stone has actively sought to enter into such debates, mounting extensive defences of the historical accuracy of JFK and his other works.30 That JFK was so controversial was perhaps partly due to the fact that audiences do not necessarily judge films within such evaluative frameworks: unlike the target audience for written history, they may assume that what they see is true and not enter into the debates as to the films veracity. Even assuming an engaged, sceptical audience, however, it is also the case that Stones film does not make the separation of truth from fiction a straightforward task. I have already suggested that the film possesses three layers of exposition: an outer narrative (Stones case), an inner narrative (Garrisons story), and evidence (presented as documentary material and re-enactments). The inner narrative story of Jim Garrison (which is likely to be understood by most audiences as at least partially fictional and not taken as literally true) is often weaved seamlessly in with the evidence (more likely to be seen as Stones presentation of true material). Garrison, for example, meets the mysterious Mr X (Donald Sutherland) in Washington, who outlines a hypothesis about who killed Kennedy and why. This calls forth a series of re-enactments of high level discussions between officials that are weaved into Mr Xs account. The narrative is calling forth evidence, but the difficulty with this sequence is in separating what material is a fictional narrative device, what is speculated, and what is documented truth. For example, are we to accept that Garrison really did meet an anonymous official who told him this information, and take that as evidence that Stones case is true? Or are we to take this as simply part of the inner narrative, a method of presenting evidence? As mentioned, Mr X talks in detail of a real memorandum in order to put Stones case that Kennedy wished to withdraw from Vietnam. An audience might correctly surmise that the existence of such a memo (putting aside its meaning) is a documented fact. However, this quickly leads into discussions of the reaction to this memo within high levels of the government, and the point at which history slides into speculation in this sequence is by no means readily apparent. The re-enactment portions of the sequence are presented in a stylised style using black and white photography, but this does not flag them as conjectural, since Stone switches between film stocks throughout the film without drawing such distinctions. (Elsewhere in the film, for example, the Zapruder film of the assassination, is alternated with simulated footage shot in the same style.) The effect of these aesthetic decisions by Stone is to confuse the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction in a way that makes application of objective standards for assessing truth difficult. The audience can only infer which sections of the film are intended to be read as non-fiction and subject to such examination. Written in October 2001 for the Melbourne University subject Ethnographic and Documentary Cinema. Notes 1. This is the concluding sentence of Eric Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, (Oxford University Press, New York Oxford, 1993, 2nd Revised Edition), p. 349. 2. The list of similarities between the two films that follows draws partly on Linda Williams, Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History and The Thin Blue Line in Barry Keith Grant Jeanette Sloniowski (eds), Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Wayne State UP, Detroit, 1998), p 381. 3. The films Garrison, for example, has access to information the real Garrison did not, in order to allow Stone to communicate it to audiences. For example, In the movie we attributed to Garrison the information about Shaws background but in real life Jim did not have access to that information at that time. (Oliver Stone audio commentary, JFK DVD, Region 4 Special Edition Directors Cut release, Warner Brothers, 1 hour 28 mins approx.) 4. This phrase is Stones own: JFK audio commentary, op. cit., 2 hours 10 mins approx. While these scenes are also used to communicate information about the larger case, this is an example of narrative efficiency, and does not contradict my point that they do contain aspects (such as the melodromatic touch of Garrisons children asking Dont you love us any more?) which function simply as domestic drama, with no relation to the case against Clay Shaw. 5. Nichols has revisited and slightly reformulated these modes over time, but they can be summarised as expository (ie voice-of-God documentaries that use direct address to tell the audience a truth), observational (cinema verite style films that aim to observe events without participating), interactive (interview based films that allows for direct address by participants, while allowing for filmmakers interaction through questioning), reflexive (films that draw attention to the documentarys own methods), and performative (stressing an individual, subjective position, while downplaying objective or referential aspects). See Bill Nichols: The Voice of Documentary, Film Quarterly 36, no 3 (Spring 1983); Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (1991, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis), Chapter 2; and (for the perfomative mode) Performing Documentary, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (c. 1994, Indiana UP, Bloomington), pp 92-106. 6. This point and the subsequent discussion of classical film theory draw on the discussions in the anthologies Gerald Mast et al. (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 3-7, and Antony Easthorpe, Contemporary Film Theory (Longman, London New York, 1993), pp. 2-5. 7. Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Faber Faber, London, 1958), esp. pp. 17-37. 8. Ibid., p. 37-114. 9. Noà «l Carroll, From Real to Reel: Entangled in Nonfiction film, in Noà «l Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 224-252. (Originally published in Philosophic Exchange in 1983, and will be cited in future as Carroll (1996/1983) to distinguish it from his piece in Post-Theory cited below). Reference to direct cinema is p. 225. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 226. Carroll is quoting from the first edition of Barnouws Documentary, citing p. 287-288 of that edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1974). The nearest equivalent to this quote I can find in the third edition (op. cit.) is at p. 344. 12. Noà «l Carroll, Nonfiction films and Postmodernist Skepticism in Noà «l Carrol David Bordwell (eds.), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996), pp. 283-306. 13. Ibid., p. 288. Emphasis is Carrolls. 14. Carroll is frequently belligerent about the texts he discusses but is particularly so about Renovs Theorizing Documentary, describing it as a state of the art compendium of received thinking about the documentary film, and dismissing Renovs argument as a red herring. Ibid., p. 285 291. 15. Both quotes Nichols, 1991, op. cit., p. 109. Emphasis is Nichols. 16. This is the title of the second part of Nichols book. How helpful this argumentative nature is as a distinction between fiction and documentary (and how unlike any other form of fiction documentary can be said to be) is debatable given that fiction can be every bit as argumentative as documentary (as JFK demonstrates). 17. Ibid., p. 195. 18. Carroll (1996/1983), op. cit., p. 226. 19. Carroll: I mention this because I do not think that commentators who conclude that the nonfiction film is subjective intend their remarks as a mere gloss on the notion that everything is subjective. But that, I fear, is the untoward implication of their attack. Ibid., p. 226. 20. Ibid., p. 230. See also Carroll, 1996, op. cit. pp. 283-285. 21. Carroll, 1996, p. 294. 22. See, for example, Ibid., p. 293, regarding film scholars focus on art-documentary. 23. Michael L. Kurtz, Oliver Stone, JFK, and History, in Robert Brent Toplin (ed), Oliver Analysis of JFK (1991) and Thin Blue Line Analysis of JFK (1991) and Thin Blue Line Both films, for example, pore over minutae that may or may not be significant (umbrellas opening in JFK, a dropped thickshake in The Thin Blue Line) to draw the viewer ever more deeply into the world of the crime scene. Yet neither film stops at a simple recitation of facts: both look at the States role in events and suggest an explanation for the alleged cover up. In JFK, this is Stones highly controversial suggestion that the CIA and the military-industrial complex had a vested interest in seeing President Kennedy dead because he was shortly to scale down Americas involvement in Vietnam. In The Thin Blue Line, two related theories are suggested for the official insistence on trying Randall Adams: firstly, that David Harris account had the advantage of providing the police with an eye-witness, while if Harris was himself the murderer, no reliable witness existed; and secondly, that Harris could not be tried as an adult, thus robbing the District Attorney of the much-sought death sentence for the murder of a policeman. These theories are communicated through devices commonly associated with fictional narratives, such as a highly evocative musical score (Phillip Glass music for The Thin Blue Line invokes a melancholy sense of helplessness, while John Williams score for JFK has a more urgent tone, suggestive of furtive conspiracies and forces careening out of control). And both counterpoint different modes of filmmaking as they do so, contrasting invented material filmed in a classical Hollywood style with documentary or faux-documentary footage. The similarity in effect of the two films fast-paced juxtaposition of styles is striking, and suggests Stones approach may have been influenced by Morris work. Yet while both films have an over-riding concern with the filmmaker uncovering facts, that might be called the outer narrative, each constructs a contrasting relationship between the narrative and documentary elements within the text. In JFK, Stone uses an interior narrative of Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) investigating the case. While Garrison is essentially a surrogate for the filmmaker, so that the film cannot be considered as the story of Jim Garrison,3 this narrative is provided moments that function simply as character drama with little or no relationship to the larger argument (such as Garrisons arguments and reconciliation with his wife, or a Norman Rockwell moment4 with his children). This, then, is an example of classical Hollywood-style fictional filmmaking. This is then ruptured by the moments of documentary and faux-documentary that expand on Stones argument as it is being expressed by Garrison. This includes what we might call genuine documentary material: the Zapruder film of the assassination and archival photographs (such as of Kennedys autopsy, or the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding the rifle). It also includes a large number of re-enactments, which are very often presented in a simulated documentary style (grainy or black and white film stock, hand-held cameras). This faux-documentary material is often juxtaposed with the genuine documentary material in a manner that blends the two together (the Zapruder footage is matched by staged footage using similar film stock, and the autopsy photographs are intercut with shots of a wax dummy of Kennedy). The Thin Blue Line shares the same outer narrative (filmmaker investigating), but the inner narrative (the story of Randall Adams) is not constructed in a classical Hollywood style. Instead, it is told through one of the standard modes of documentary filmmaking identified by Bill Nichols5: direct address by participants in an interview format (with the interviewer removed through editing). As with Stones film, this inner narrative is supported by evidence, but again the mode of presentation is reversed: the principal method used to support the witnesses testimony is through reconstructions of the crime scene that, while stylized and fragmented, are constructed as a miniature classically constructed narrative. This nesting of different modes might be tabulated as follows: My point, however, is that the films differ in mode, but use mirror-image forms of the same structure. JFK is primarily a fictional film, which employs a documentary style when re-enacting speculated events. The Thin Blue Line is primarily a documentary, but employs a style borrowed from fictional films in its re-enactments. If the two films share so much in common, and slide so fluidly from documentary to fictional modes so quickly, does this suggest the difference in the two forms might be largely cosmetic? Fiction can be used to express truths about the real world, and the documentary is can be used in ways that obscure the truth or construct falsehoods. If the fundamental difference between fiction and non-fiction is taken as the link to the real, and it is shown that documentaries and fictions share similar relationships to the real, then the two forms start to look more alike: not the same, exactly, but similar. JFK and The Thin Blue Line, by this way of thinking, are then only superficially different types of movies. They share the same structure and the fiction versus documentary dichotomy is more like a difference in genre than a fundamental distinction. This is not to invest the superficial crossover of techniques between the two forms with a significance it does not posses. Documentaries are not fictions just because The Blair Witch Project (1999) does such a good job of pretending to be a real document, or even because Rats in the Ranks (1996) works so well as a narrative. Rather, the downplaying of the documentary / fiction division is based upon a deep-seated cynicism about claims to truth in documentary. That there is such reluctance to accept truth at face value in documentary should not be surprising. Early or classic film studies was based largely on arguments about the relationships between film and reality. While this debate is too detailed to fully explore, it is important to touch upon briefly because much writing upon documentary echoes the arguments of these early writers. The direct link to reality might be seen as a defining feature of the documentary, but it was also seen in the first half of the century as one of the defining features of the film medium itself. The cinema appeared to be an even more perfect method for mechanically reproducing reality than the still photographs that preceded it. This added urgency to arguments of aesthetics that centred on whether the role of the artist was to attempt to recreate the real world, or rather to interpret or even transcend the real.6 These arguments were therefore central to classic film theory and resolved into two broad strands of argument that echo the aesthetic positions described. Thus writers such as Siegfried Kraceur and Andre Bazin had approaches that emphasised films role as a mirror to the real. Of more interest to the current discussion, however, are early anti-realists such as Rudolf Arnheim. In his Film as Art, his defence for cinemas status as serious artistic medium (rather than a mechanical process) is built a round a series of explanations of the way in which film differs from the real.7 Three dimensional surfaces are projected on a plane surface. Perception of depth is lost. In the black and white cinema with reference to which Arnheim formulated his thesis, colour is eliminated. Lighting distorts. Editing interrupts the flow of time and creates artistic possibilities through the use of montage. Non-visual stimulus is absent (or, after the coming of sound, limited), and even the visual world is limited by the edge of the screen. This catalogue of distortions is, for Arnheim, the very basis for the creation of aesthetic systems by which films can signify meanings. After establishing the above points, he sets about demonstrating how each of these limitations in depicting the real is used as a method of artistic expression8. Subsequent film theory moved beyond Arnheims formulations, but has tended to take them as a given in the sense that few would still argue that the central project of film is limited to the reproduction or reflection of reality. Given that such formulations are at the foundation of later film theory, it should not be surprising that they were echoed when subsequent theorists turned their minds to issues regarding documentary, and particularly its relation to the real. Noà «l Carroll attributes much of this writing to a backlash against premature claims by proponents of direct cinema that their method of cinema provided unmitigated access to the real.9 These documentarists attempted to avoid the filmmakers intervention and interpretation, reacting to the overt imposition of a viewpoint present in traditional Griersonian forms of documentary. However, as Carroll puts it, [d]irect cinema opened a can of worms and then got eaten by them.10 It was quickly argued that direct cinema was every bit as interpretive as Griersonian documentaries. For the distortions of reality that were identified by Arnheim are equally present in documentary cinema, but with different implications. Instead of being the unambiguously positive means to artistic expression, every limitation of the medium is instead a problematic point of mediation by the filmmaker. The limitations of the film frame, for example, force choices upon even the most non-interventionist direct cinema filmmaker. And with every choice the filmmaker is placing the film at a greater distance from reality. Carroll quotes Eric Barnouw making this point: To be sure, some documentarists claim to be objective a term that seems to renounce an interpretive role. The claim may be strategic, but it is surely meaningless. The documentarist, like any communicator in any medium, makes endless choices. He [sic] selects topics, people, vistas, angles, lens, juxtapositions, sounds, words. Each selection is an expression of his point of view, whether he is aware of it or not, whether he acknowledges it or not. Even behind the first step, selection of a topic, there is a motive It is in selecting and arranging his findings that he expresses himself; these choices are, in effect, comments. And whether he adopts the stance of observer, or chronicler or whatever, he cannot escape his subjectivity. He presents his version of the world.11 Such an argument certainly seems to cast doubt over the potential for objectivity in documentary cinema. Carried to an extreme, it is the presentation of a version of the world rather than the world itself that can be seen as rendering documentary a form of fiction. Either way, the prospects for documentary truth in such a model seem grim indeed. It should be noted that Carroll puts little faith in such an approach to documentary, and his counter-argument will be returned to. Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that more recently, Carroll has drawn the distinction between what he calls the selectivity argument (recited above) and more global postmodern scepticism of claims to truth.12 The latter is based not in the assumptions of classical film studies, but rather the wider discussions about the way any human discourse imposes meaning and structure on real events. For example, historical accounts impose a narrative structure onto events to make them intelligible, and a distinction must be drawn between the real events (which actually occurred) and the account (which lacks an independent historical existence): The states of affairs and events the historian alludes to do have a basis in historical reality, and the historians claims about those states of affairs and events can be literally true or false. But the narratives in which those states of affairs and events figure are inventions, constructions, indeed, fictions. The narrative structure in the historical recounting is not true or false; it is fictional.13 This point of such an observation may seem a little obscure. If the narrative structure imposed in a historical account is considered independently of the statements of historical fact that it is used to explain, then of course it must be considered fictional. If, however, a documentary text is considered in its entirety, then it is open to questioning about the validity of the historians factual claims (including analysis as to whether the narrative structure is an accurate or fair way of interpreting the real events) in a way that fiction is not. Certainly the argument is here being posed by Carroll (albeit following Michael Renov and Hayden White) as a prelude to arguing that it is unsupportable14. However, Carroll also refers to an alternative model for looking at the link between non-fiction and fiction, mounted by Bill Nichols in his book Representing Reality, which is more subtle and worth dealing with directly. Nichols, unlike the other theorists alluded to by Carroll, does not argue that documentaries must be considered fiction. He recognises that the existence of an external, real-world referent is an important distinction that cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. The world of a fiction film is a unique, imaginary domain, but the world of documentary is different: Instead of a world, we are offered access to the world.15 This claim to representation of the real means that documentaries are not simply narratives: they are also argumentative, if only in the sense that they make claims (even if only implicitly) about what is true. They are therefore a fiction (un)like any other.16 However, Nichols remains troubled by these claims to truth. While the documentary is distinguished from fiction by its links to the real, this representation is rendered problematic by the apparent impossibility of rendering truth objectively. Documentaries, while not fiction, share with fiction those very qualities that thoroughly compromise any rigorous objectivity, if they dont make it impossible Objectivity has been under no less siege than realism, and for many of the same reasons. It, too, is a way of representing the world that denies its own processes of construction and their formative effect. Any given standard for objectivity will have embedded political assumptions In documentary, these assumptions might include belief in the self-evident nature of facts, in rhetorical persuasion as a necessary and appropriate part of representation, and in the capacity of the documentary text to affect its audience through its implicit or explicit claim of This is so, isnt it?17 Nichols argument is reminiscent of those strands of theoretical thought that view ideology as an inescapable and all pervasive force. Documentaries do make claims about the truth that are open to evaluation, but unfortunately, according to Nichols, our institutional mechanisms for assessing such claims are themselves suspect. If such an approach is accepted, evaluation of the arguments made by Oliver Stone and Errol Morris might be highly problematic. Carroll, however, is not willing to concede that any of these arguments establish either that non-fiction is a form of fiction, or that objectivity is impossible. Firstly, he argues that the cinema does not posses any unique tendency towards bias compared to other media. The same arguments about selectivity that Barnouw raises with respect to film are equally applicable to other media and fields of enquiry.18 The particular causes of distortion may be different, but any historian for example may select, manipulate, interpret or emphasise aspects of their material just as a documentary maker can. Thus if non-fiction film is said to be subjective due to its selectivity, so must any field of human enquiry, such as history and science. In the earlier of the two articles I have discussed (written in 1983), Carroll is confident that such a wide-ranging scepticism would not be seriously proposed.19 As we have seen, by 1996 that was exactly the argument Carroll was responding to. Nevertheless, in 1983 his defence against the selectivity argument is based upon the notion of objectivity. In any given field of argument, at any given time, there are patterns of reasoning, standards for observation, and methods for assessing evidence which are used for getting to the truth.20 A piece of research is considered objective insofar as it abides by these norms. Likewise, non-fiction films may be assessed against similar codes, and will be considered biased or subjective if they fail to meet them. That selectivity may make bias possible, or even likely, does not preclude the possibility of a film according with established standards of objectivity. The obvious differences between the real world and the filmed presentation prevent film from substituting for lived experience, but they do not prevent documentaries from being objective. This central assumption of this argument that there are standards of objectivity that can be used to judge the truth is exactly the assumption that we have seen Bill Nichols question. Carroll, however, disputes all of Nichols contentions that are cited above. Firstly, he does not accept that objectivity demands that a film call attention to its processes of construction. After all, the fact that a non-fiction film is constructed is understood by any audience and does not need to be spelt out. Self-reflexive analyses of the filmmaking process or the authors own subjectivity might be a feature of many recent documentaries, but for Carrol this is an artistic device, rather than a necessary benchmark for objectivity. Nor does he accept that any standard for objectivity has embedded political assumptions, even accepting Nichols very broad definitions (outlined above) of what constitutes a political assumption. A belief in the self-evident nature of facts, for example, might be a political assumption when the facts being presented are politically charged falsehoods. Yet the acceptance that some claims of self-evident truth are suspect does not mean that there can be no self-evident facts. With regards to rhetorical persuasion, he argues that films can either eschew such devices altogether (he cites nature documentaries as an example),21 or employ rhetorical structures in the service of objective discourse. Similarly, he regards the implicit claim that this is so, isnt it as present in virtually any assertion and hence neither a political assumption nor a barrier to objectivity. Carrolls approach to these arguments about the prospects for truth or objectivity in documentary is often to return to examples where the truth claimed by the documentary seems clear and uncontentious (as with his common use of nature documentaries as discussion points). The linking thread of the arguments he presents is that the theorists he criticises have mistaken the difficulty in presenting objective truth for an impossibility, often by focussing on exactly the texts where the truth is most problematic.22 It is worth returning to The Thin Blue Line and JFK at this point, since these films both explore events that are subject to considerable conjecture. Neither could be accused of assuming the truth about these events is self-evident (quite the opposite), yet both nevertheless ultimately make vital factual claims. As noted already, these claims question state-sanctioned verdicts, and both films led to a public discussion that forced official re-examination of the cases: The Thin Blue Line forced the retrial of Randall Adams, while JFK contributed to the passing of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which appointed an Assassination Records Review Board (AARB) to re-examine unreleased information about the assassination.23 More than a decade later, with Randall Adams freed from jail, it seems fair to say that Morris case has been widely accepted as true. Oliver Stone, too, has been partially vindicated by subsequent re-examination of the case, with records released by the AARB that support some of his allegations (such as tampering with records of Kennedys autopsy).24 Yet, despite such small victories, and acceptance by many filmgoers of Stones theory of the assassination, JFK remains subject to fierce scholarly criticism of both its methods and conclusions that stands in contrast to the reception of The Thin Blue Line. Linda Williams, in her discussion of the two films, dismisses JFK as paranoid fiction,25 and the widespread condemnation of Stones film by both popular and academic press is well documented.26 Clearly this has much to do with the nature of the case Stone discusses. The Kennedy assassination, for obvious reasons, is a much more familiar event and one that had been the subject of considerably more public discussion than the Randall Adams prosecution. Furthermore, while The Thin Blue Line avoids underlining the political implications of its own conclusions, JFK is explicitly critical of the government and media, calling the assassination a coup detat and coming very close to suggesting former president Lyndon Johnson was involved.27 However, the difference in the reception of the two films cannot be explained simply through reference to the argument each presents. Within the very similar structures outlined at the start of this essay, there are also crucial differences that also explain much of the negative response to Stones film compared to Morris. In his consideration of JFK, Robert Rosenstone notes that there are considerable constraints over the depiction of historical events on the screen.28 In particular, he sees the need to invent detail and compress events to shape a narrative as a limitation that must be negotiated by any historical film. While he is referring to narrative features such as JFK, his argument is equally applicable to the summaries of and suppositions regarding events in The Thin Blue Line. This argument has clear overtones of the discussions of documentaries distortions of truth through selectivity that have already been cited. Like Carroll, Rosenstone argues that when a historical filmmaker such as Stone invents or compresses events, he or she is exercising the same type of discretion that the author of any written history must.29 Such inventions can be considered true (at least to a point) in the sense that they can be verified, documented, or reasonably argued. The problem, notes Rosenstone, is that the verification must occur outside the world of the film. When Stone argues in JFK that President Kennedy was about to withdraw troops from Vietnam, the information is justified by reference to a real memorandum (National Security Action Memo 263), but a fictitious character makes the reference. Assuming no foreknowledge of the case, the audience has no way while watching the film of even knowing that the memorandum really existed, let alone being sure that it supports the conclusion Stone draws. If Stones conclusion is to be examined, the audience must go beyond viewing and read the relevant documents (or scholarly discussion of them) for themselves. If they do so, they will, as Rosenstone states, be undertaking the same kind of critique and review that a work of written history is subjected to. This process of measuring a film against standards of objectivity is exactly that which Carroll highlights as the means of linking non-fiction films to the truth. Stone has actively sought to enter into such debates, mounting extensive defences of the historical accuracy of JFK and his other works.30 That JFK was so controversial was perhaps partly due to the fact that audiences do not necessarily judge films within such evaluative frameworks: unlike the target audience for written history, they may assume that what they see is true and not enter into the debates as to the films veracity. Even assuming an engaged, sceptical audience, however, it is also the case that Stones film does not make the separation of truth from fiction a straightforward task. I have already suggested that the film possesses three layers of exposition: an outer narrative (Stones case), an inner narrative (Garrisons story), and evidence (presented as documentary material and re-enactments). The inner narrative story of Jim Garrison (which is likely to be understood by most audiences as at least partially fictional and not taken as literally true) is often weaved seamlessly in with the evidence (more likely to be seen as Stones presentation of true material). Garrison, for example, meets the mysterious Mr X (Donald Sutherland) in Washington, who outlines a hypothesis about who killed Kennedy and why. This calls forth a series of re-enactments of high level discussions between officials that are weaved into Mr Xs account. The narrative is calling forth evidence, but the difficulty with this sequence is in separating what material is a fictional narrative device, what is speculated, and what is documented truth. For example, are we to accept that Garrison really did meet an anonymous official who told him this information, and take that as evidence that Stones case is true? Or are we to take this as simply part of the inner narrative, a method of presenting evidence? As mentioned, Mr X talks in detail of a real memorandum in order to put Stones case that Kennedy wished to withdraw from Vietnam. An audience might correctly surmise that the existence of such a memo (putting aside its meaning) is a documented fact. However, this quickly leads into discussions of the reaction to this memo within high levels of the government, and the point at which history slides into speculation in this sequence is by no means readily apparent. The re-enactment portions of the sequence are presented in a stylised style using black and white photography, but this does not flag them as conjectural, since Stone switches between film stocks throughout the film without drawing such distinctions. (Elsewhere in the film, for example, the Zapruder film of the assassination, is alternated with simulated footage shot in the same style.) The effect of these aesthetic decisions by Stone is to confuse the boundaries between non-fiction and fiction in a way that makes application of objective standards for assessing truth difficult. The audience can only infer which sections of the film are intended to be read as non-fiction and subject to such examination. Written in October 2001 for the Melbourne University subject Ethnographic and Documentary Cinema. Notes 1. This is the concluding sentence of Eric Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, (Oxford University Press, New York Oxford, 1993, 2nd Revised Edition), p. 349. 2. The list of similarities between the two films that follows draws partly on Linda Williams, Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History and The Thin Blue Line in Barry Keith Grant Jeanette Sloniowski (eds), Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Wayne State UP, Detroit, 1998), p 381. 3. The films Garrison, for example, has access to information the real Garrison did not, in order to allow Stone to communicate it to audiences. For example, In the movie we attributed to Garrison the information about Shaws background but in real life Jim did not have access to that information at that time. (Oliver Stone audio commentary, JFK DVD, Region 4 Special Edition Directors Cut release, Warner Brothers, 1 hour 28 mins approx.) 4. This phrase is Stones own: JFK audio commentary, op. cit., 2 hours 10 mins approx. While these scenes are also used to communicate information about the larger case, this is an example of narrative efficiency, and does not contradict my point that they do contain aspects (such as the melodromatic touch of Garrisons children asking Dont you love us any more?) which function simply as domestic drama, with no relation to the case against Clay Shaw. 5. Nichols has revisited and slightly reformulated these modes over time, but they can be summarised as expository (ie voice-of-God documentaries that use direct address to tell the audience a truth), observational (cinema verite style films that aim to observe events without participating), interactive (interview based films that allows for direct address by participants, while allowing for filmmakers interaction through questioning), reflexive (films that draw attention to the documentarys own methods), and performative (stressing an individual, subjective position, while downplaying objective or referential aspects). See Bill Nichols: The Voice of Documentary, Film Quarterly 36, no 3 (Spring 1983); Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (1991, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis), Chapter 2; and (for the perfomative mode) Performing Documentary, Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (c. 1994, Indiana UP, Bloomington), pp 92-106. 6. This point and the subsequent discussion of classical film theory draw on the discussions in the anthologies Gerald Mast et al. (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 3-7, and Antony Easthorpe, Contemporary Film Theory (Longman, London New York, 1993), pp. 2-5. 7. Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Faber Faber, London, 1958), esp. pp. 17-37. 8. Ibid., p. 37-114. 9. Noà «l Carroll, From Real to Reel: Entangled in Nonfiction film, in Noà «l Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 224-252. (Originally published in Philosophic Exchange in 1983, and will be cited in future as Carroll (1996/1983) to distinguish it from his piece in Post-Theory cited below). Reference to direct cinema is p. 225. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 226. Carroll is quoting from the first edition of Barnouws Documentary, citing p. 287-288 of that edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1974). The nearest equivalent to this quote I can find in the third edition (op. cit.) is at p. 344. 12. Noà «l Carroll, Nonfiction films and Postmodernist Skepticism in Noà «l Carrol David Bordwell (eds.), Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1996), pp. 283-306. 13. Ibid., p. 288. Emphasis is Carrolls. 14. Carroll is frequently belligerent about the texts he discusses but is particularly so about Renovs Theorizing Documentary, describing it as a state of the art compendium of received thinking about the documentary film, and dismissing Renovs argument as a red herring. Ibid., p. 285 291. 15. Both quotes Nichols, 1991, op. cit., p. 109. Emphasis is Nichols. 16. This is the title of the second part of Nichols book. How helpful this argumentative nature is as a distinction between fiction and documentary (and how unlike any other form of fiction documentary can be said to be) is debatable given that fiction can be every bit as argumentative as documentary (as JFK demonstrates). 17. Ibid., p. 195. 18. Carroll (1996/1983), op. cit., p. 226. 19. Carroll: I mention this because I do not think that commentators who conclude that the nonfiction film is subjective intend their remarks as a mere gloss on the notion that everything is subjective. But that, I fear, is the untoward implication of their attack. Ibid., p. 226. 20. Ibid., p. 230. See also Carroll, 1996, op. cit. pp. 283-285. 21. Carroll, 1996, p. 294. 22. See, for example, Ibid., p. 293, regarding film scholars focus on art-documentary. 23. Michael L. Kurtz, Oliver Stone, JFK, and History, in Robert Brent Toplin (ed), Oliver
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