Our class, WR 150: “Global Documentary,” examines how Western filmmakers represent foreign cultures and how international filmmakers represent their country’s social and historical moments. Students analyze a range of modern documentaries, including the controversial Born into Brothels (2004), the instant classic The Act of Killing (2013), and the genre-bending satire that inspired Hannah Pangrcic’s prize-winning essay—Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006).
I always give students open essay prompts: ask and answer a question about any of our films. For Paper 3, I encouraged students to pose a question that felt especially urgent to them. My hope was that students—motivated not only intellectually, but also emotionally—would experiment more with style and tone this time. To prepare, we read the essay “Fascinating Fascism,” Susan Sontag’s seminal attack on Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker reputed to be Hitler’s favorite. Inspired, students set their goals for Paper 3: to be hostile but not hysterical; to strike a balance between emotion and evidence.
For Hannah, the guidelines were liberating. Already a confident writer, she designed a research project with the kind of expansive argument that only someone well-versed in the scholarship can make. By drafting a topnotch prospectus, she came upon the topic and shape of her argument early in the process, using the questionable ethics of Borat to position all documentaries as art largely free of ethical constraints. While revising her draft (which she wrote in daily, two-page increments), she focused on deepening her analysis and presenting her positions more precisely. Hannah threw herself into this superb essay, and I have no doubt that even Sontag would call it a “Grrrrrrrreat success!”
— MARISA MILANESE
WR 150: Global Documentary