Thesis Irma - Essay: Sculpting a persona

A story is real-life with the boring parts left out. (quoted in Cron, 2012)

This quote from the American novelist Elmore Leonard, reminds us that storytelling is a skill, and that one should be very aware of making a good selection if one does not want to bore an audience. The skilful storyteller must always consider what information is most relevant and how one can present this in a seductive way to keep the attention of the audience. In creating a biographical documentary, for example, the film director decides which moments are relevant to show the audience. It is their subjective adaptation of a period in someone's life. One could say that a documentary filmmaker usually plays a fair game, as it is often clear when the camera is running. But still, there are many arguments between filmmakers and their subjects. Usually, a subject is being followed for several years, but the story has to be told in about 90 minutes. The selection process of the footage often leads to an argument. Everybody that is involved in the film process has their own agenda. So who's agenda is the audience watching? Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is famous for her film CITIZENFOUR (2014) on Edward Snowden's revelations, has worked six years on her documentary Risk (2016) based on Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. In an interview with The Guardian in June 2017, Poitras tells how her interest began with her fascination with the ideology of WikiLeaks:

I thought WikiLeaks was doing the hard journalism that hadn’t been done for a long time post 9/11. The mainstream media had abdicated responsibility to ask hard questions of what was going on in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was crucial and brave journalism. I was also interested in the global impact it was having. So I was very optimistic about the project (Hattenstone, 2017).

In her film, we follow Julian Assange and his staff. Occasionally Poitras shares her feelings using a voiceover while reading notes from her project journal.

This is not the film I thought I was making, I thought I could ignore the contradictions. I thought they were not part of the story, I was wrong, they are becoming the story (Poitras, 2016).

As a filmmaker, it was surprising to me how the people behaved while it was clear that the camera was rolling. One could even say that Julian Assange was very conscious of the camera, which makes him seem egocentric. This narcissistic attitude comes across specifically while he is having his hair cut by four members of his staff. He is clearly enjoying the attention, looking shamelessly in the mirror. But most revealing is the scene showing a conversation with Helena Kennedy QC, a member of Assange's legal team. She is advising him on how to deal with the allegations of sexual assault that were made by two women in Sweden. Assange calls it a 'radical feminist conspiracy' and dismisses the complainants as lesbians. Kennedy tells him it is not helpful to talk like this. No, not publicly he says while being filmed. It is one of the scenes that led to Poitras and Assange's falling out. The film premiered at Cannes in 2016, and Assange was not happy about the story Poitras focused on; there were several scenes he wanted edited out of the film. His lawyer Melinda Taylor explains during an interview at RT UK News (2017) that they thought the content was selectively edited and taken out of context. Their impression was that Wikileaks should have been the star of the documentary, and they accuse Poitras of editing in such a way that one might think Assange is Wikileaks and there is no one else. I believe this is not true. Poitras followed several of Assange's colleagues, such as cyber-security expert Jacob Appelbaum, who was also accused of sexual harassment by several women. Although this has nothing to do with the operations of Wikileaks, one could say that it is relevant that the key members of this company with an ethical mission statement could be involved with illegal activities. After the first screening, Poitras took the film and re-edited it. A year later the film was even tougher on Assange. Although she feels very bad about the situation, Poitras does feel the need to tell the honest story (Hattenstone, 2017).There are several honest stories that she could have made with the footage she collected during these six years. She felt the need to share this personal side with the audience. Some argue this story has no connection with the goals of WikiLeaks, therefore, Julian Assange has the right to feel betrayed (Vishnevetsky, 2017). I believe he was naive, especially with his knowledge of media, to let Poitras film him on all these personal occasions. Nevertheless, his objection to her story goes against his own philosophy of the freedom a journalist should have. Perhaps he does not see how his personal attitude is a relevant part of how Wikileaks operates, but he also considers the story to be out of context. What he disputes however, remains unclear in his statements. I imagine it could be the order of the fragments, the external sound effects, or maybe he was surprised by the voiceover that reveals Poitras's feelings during the recording period. If we look, for example, at a scene depicting a conversation with Helena Kennedy QC, there are obvious cuts. The problem of a documentary filmmaker is that they usually have one camera, which makes it difficult to film how people interact. After Assange's comment about the 'radical feminist conspiracy', we see a close up of Kennedy looking shocked filmed from the other side of the room. If Poitras was filming by herself, it would simply not be possible to film this reaction, therefore it must have been edited from another time. This is just one of the many examples of how a filmmaker can shape a situation in the process of editing. One could say the audience should be aware of the agenda and must decide for themselves if they trust the journalist. Regardless, Assange gave Poitras permission to create a story. But what if one never gave permission to be part of someone's story?

Writers who create fiction based on real life events and people are connected in the genre of "Roman à clef", a French term meaning "Novel with a key". The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. Dutch novelist and philosopher Connie Palmen often works within this genre, and a famous example is her book Lucifer (2008). The story is based on the life of the well known composer Peter Schat and his wife Marina Schapers, who died in a mysterious way by falling off a cliff whilst in the company of her husband. The composer was never convicted of murdering his wife, and for a lot of people, this event always remained a mystery. Although Palmen changed the names, it was clear that the novel was based on this case (as she also explains in the last chapter). She did a lot of research by interviewing many people who knew Schat, but although she intended to create this story for many years, she never spoke to Schat herself. He died four years before her book was published in 2009. It was never Palmen's intention to write a true story; she wanted to create literature that found a balance between fact and fiction. Most critics at the time did not pick up her intention to link her story with the novel of Joost van den Vondel which carries the same title Lucifer (1977). In this story, the character Lucifer becomes very bitter because he has been cast out of heaven. In a similar way, Palmen's character Lucas Loos, (which is based on Peter Schat), is ejected by his friends from their gentleman's club. He changes into a cynical character, gets infected with HIV and dies of AIDS while being careless about infecting other people on his way. In real life, Peter Schat did not get depressed by the rejection of his friends and died of cancer. Palmen's novel raised a lot of questions and anger. Was an artist allowed to just use someone's identity to create a work of art? Was this gossip or literature? Palmen claims it is her creative licence and asserts that playing with facts and fiction has always been an important element of her work (Palmen, 2007). Legally she is right, although a lot of the people she interviewed during her research felt betrayed (Sanders, 2007). As an artist, I frequently apply stories from real life in my work. I use my own experience but also interesting stories based on other people. By using a real person in a narrative, I create a character for my story, which means this person is not in total control anymore of this persona; I am. This gives me a subjective playing field to influence the audience. Should I keep a moral compass in using someone's identity in my work? What are the limitations in the creative field? In the theatre play, The Shape of Things (2003) written by Neil LaBute, the female character Evelyn is an art student at an American University. For her graduation piece, she decides to date a simple-minded boy named Adam with the goal of transforming him. In her final lecture, she presents this work to the audience and confronts Adam with her secret project. She proudly explains how Adam was her human sculpture on which she worked over the previous eighteen weeks. Without force and using only manipulation skills, she turned him from a plain, overweight boy into an attractive stud while she documented every step of her creation. After the weight loss, the nose job and the fashionable clothing people started to treat Adam differently; they showed more interest in his appearance, but also his thoughts. Evelyn noticed how his confidence increased and how other women started to notice him. Adam could not resist cheating on her with his best friend's fiancée. Nevertheless, he was willing to give those friends up when Evelyn asked him to. Evelyn was the love of his life and he wanted to marry her, but of course it turned out she had different intentions: My systematic makeover, or ‘sculpting,’ if you will, of my two very pliable materials of choice: the human flesh and the human will. (LaBute, 2011). This is a fictional story which raises moral questions. How far is an artist allowed to go using other people for the sake of an art project? And how far can they demand to have the creative freedom to create a story? Conceptual Artist Jonas Staal, who was a researcher at the PhD Arts program of the University of Leiden on the subject of Propaganda Art in the 21st Century, created an art project called: The Geert Wilders Works (2005-2008). In this project, he used the identity of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who sued him for feeling threatened with death. Staal anonymously created twenty-one roadside monuments one often sees on the side of the road when someone has died. The monuments included portrait pictures of Geer Wilders, candles, teddy bears, and flowers. They were placed throughout Rotterdam and The Hague. Wilders compared this performance to a bullet letter, but the artist disagreed, claiming that there is only one way to explain a bullet letter, but his work of art has multiple layers, including death, but also importance of the ritual and the worshipping of an idol. Therefore the meaning of his project goes beyond the feelings of the individual Wilders. Staal claims he uses Wilders as a symbol of all that has occurred since the rise of the Dutch populist movement. It was his goal to stimulate discussion on this subject, and he thinks it is a shame that artists often avoid the political field. Therefore, he wanted to take a risk and present his work publicly. He felt that if he had been represented by a museum, the impact would be diminished. Staal was arrested and accused of threatening a member of parliament with death. This resulted in two lawsuits and lasted over three years. The artist considers this as part of this particular creative process. In the end, the judge concurred that he had the right to express his artistic creativity in this manner (Staal, 2008). Does this outcome from the court mean that an artist has the right to use someone's identity for the sake of his art? Richard Prince is another artist who pushes the legal limits of artistic appropriation. In 2014, he presented an installation called New Portraits at the Gagosian Gallery. He presented numerous Instagram photos from other people and added his own Instagram style comments below them. The pictures, which include topless images of models, artists and celebrities, are being sold for $100,000. Prince argues that his work is transformative and therefore asserts its use as fair (Parkinson, 2015). It raised the classic discussion 'Is it art?'. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in The New Yorker 'Of course it’s art, though by a well-worn Warholian formula: the subjective objectified and the ephemeral iconized, in forms that appear to insult but actually conserve conventions of fine art.' (Schjeldahl, 2014). What Prince is doing with New Portraits, essentially, is testing the limits of copyright law, often with success; so far he has won his court cases. It seems that artists have the right to use (and abuse) the identity of other people to communicate their world view. It can be painful for those who are involved, but it is considered to be beneficial to raise discussion within society.