The Archive Effect by Baron Jaimie

Author:Baron, Jaimie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-135-07708-2
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

FIGURE 3.3 Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003).

In terms of its archive effect, appropriated confessional video footage may intensify the intentional disparity produced through the appropriation of home mode documents. In his discussion of “video confessions,” Renov has shown that, although amateurs shooting on film certainly have recorded intensely private moments, those using video have a greater propensity to do so because, in addition to being a cheap, accessible, synchronous-sound medium, video is also a medium through which a person can more easily record him or herself alone. Hence, many people have used the video camera to record their most intimate moments while alone.25 If home mode documents seem to be addressed to a limited audience, confessional videos seem to be addressed to the videographer him or herself – or to no one at all. While I do not wish to collapse the difference between home mode documents and video confessions, I would argue that, in terms of their archive effect as they are recontextualized into appropriation films, they produce a similar experience of intentional disparity. In both cases, we feel we are watching something we were not “supposed” to see. With video confessions, however, this sense is multiplied.26

I would suggest that this sense of “misuse” and betrayal is part and parcel of the intentional disparity produced by the appropriation of home mode footage, intended only for private reception but ultimately distributed as part of a public film. If it were not for Jarecki, it is likely that no one but the Friedmans would ever have watched their video footage. While David’s attempt to cope with trauma rationalizes (at least to some extent) the shooting of these perverse videos, there is something fundamentally disturbing about his and his family’s willingness to allow Jarecki to use this footage in a public documentary. In addition to the question of why the Friedmans shot such painful video material, the finished documentary thus raises the question of why the Friedmans would share these documents with the world.

At the same time, however, the confessional footage and the footage of the Friedmans screaming at one another is, in fact, the most compelling of all the appropriated documents in the documentary. This footage feels “real” precisely because it seems so clearly intended for private viewing – not for us to see – but has been repurposed into this public text. We as viewers of Jarecki’s documentary become belated voyeurs whom the family never anticipated when David was shooting the videos. Indeed, the film allows/forces us to participate in a transgression of a private space through its incorporation of private documents in a public text.

Building on the spatial notion of the home, “trespassing” offers us an appropriate metaphor for the act of entering and appropriating a private space uninvited – or at least a private space into which we possibly should not have been invited. Of course, when an innocent recording of a birthday party or a happy family snapshot is reused in a new film, watching it does not necessarily incur a feeling of ethical transgression.

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