Functionality of Cinema as a Medium on Form and Concept in Mockumentary Films

This study concentrates on the form of mockumentary and its relation to its content; focusing on its ability to represent the reality, in order to describe and analyze Mockumentary. In this study, the effect of the medium of cinema, is analyzed on mockumentary films through analyzing four successful mockumentaries, which all had achieved a considerable rating in IMDb and Metacritic. First, mockumentary is introduced and its features are described. Its relation to documentary cinema and fiction cinema is mentioned, their common features are considered and the potential and capacities of this genre are presented. Mockumentary as the name implies, has a very close correlation with documentary. In the first glance, mockumentary seems a copy which tries to get to the place of the reliable non-lying documentary, and waits until the documentary is made and then copies it, but in this research, it is emphasized that there are different philosophical perspectives about the Real and reality and its relation to the Truth, especially in contemporary philosophy. These discussions, challenge the authenticity and factuality of the mockumentary and documentary. According to Alisia Lebow, mockumentary might be the correct or more real form of documentary but through analyzing the theory of Alain Badiou in “Being and Event” we obtain the key concepts in his theory, which combines Set-Theory in mathematics and ontology. He suggests a kind of Meta-ontology based on Set-Theory. According to his definition of the Truth and the Real, and based on this duality (Truth/Real), a fair point for judging mockumentary can be found. Considering the relations and dualities between the key concepts in his ontology, a way of analyzing Mockumentary Cinema in recent years is offered; four successful samples in this genre have been analyzed, and meanwhile, some criteria for evaluating mockumentary films are achieved through them. A descriptive-analytic method is used to develop the argument. Initially, the definitions and presumptions about documentary are considered in order to clarify the different interpretations of this field, and then the different features in the form of mockumentary are studied. In Badiou’s words, Cinema of Mockumentary presents a void, which is an area for event to take place, which is made between documentary and fiction cinema. It is a void representing a lack of form. Mockumentary tries to fill this void by a new combination of fiction and reality. Mockumentary locates itself between documentary and fiction, and with the utilization of the techniques from both of them, makes a rearrangement in the boundaries of the documentary and fiction cinema. This new combination shows a new structure since it brings new dualities with the key concepts which mainly form the fiction cinema and the documentary. It suggests ways for finding better techniques in Documentary Cinema. The correlation between Documentary and Mockumentary, and their mutual influence on each other, results in the enrichment of both. In the present study, a variety of techniques and formal features in mockumentaries are identified through the analysis of four successful case studies.