Week 4: Nanook of the North as a Source of Inquiry

The job of documentary filmmaking to depict reality, or at the very least truth, is paramount to the form’s credibility. This is true of any documentary, but the responsibility is increased exponentially in the case of films made for children or intended to be seen by children. The child takes the things they view in a more literal manner than adults, and as such they expect to trust what they see implicitly. This makes it very easy for a documentarian to manipulate the events and images when dealing with such an impressionable audience. This ethical question applies directly to Robert Flaherty’s 1922 Nanook of the North, which blended documentary and fictionalization in a then-unprecedented way. The film is easily understood and digestible for inquisitive young audiences, which makes its status as a document of truth worth exploring.

The Disney True-Life Adventure footage we watched from White Wilderness is grossly irresponsible in its depictions of nature. To create an urban legend in the form of the lemming incident is an affront to the documentary form, and takes advantage of its audience – in doing so creating an entire generation of baby boomers who believe that animals commit mass suicide.

Nanook of the North has a less flagrant dilemma, though. It is now widely known that Flaherty staged many events in the film, even going so far as to invent Nanook’s family wholesale from a group of people in the same village. However, the difference between Nanook and White Wilderness is that where Disney invented a new truth, Flaherty dramatized true events, whether or not they were appropriate to the period. For example, the incident with Nanook seemingly observing a white man’s gramophone for the first time is inconsistent with the 1920s setting, it reflects some truth of the indigenous experience. Roger Ebert said of Nanook, particularly the walrus hunt which was staged: “it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints that some of the sequences were staged. If you stage a walrus hunt, it still involves hunting a walrus, and the walrus hasn't seen the script. What shines through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit.”

The authenticity of the presented truth transcends any literal reality, and I don't think anyone should feel an ethical conflict in showing Nanook to a child. In fact, there is something unique about the near-century old footage that I think further allows a kid to inquire about what's being presented on screen. Compared to a modern ethnographic or nature documentary, there's an abstraction to the images that forces more contemplation and mental stretching. For children raised on tablets, black and white images are alien, which requires them to not only take in the information they're seeing but also to use imagination to fill in the gaps. There is a value to withholding some information from a young viewer – it makes for an involved viewing experience that does not lecture the viewer but rather fuels their sense of inquiry by giving them rudimentary tools to expand their understanding of the world.

Week 4: The Hobbit as an Adventure Story

The Hobbit declares itself as an adventure novel before the book even begins – the subtitle, There and Back Again, is an announcement of as much. Tolkien’s story follows the Cambellian archetypes, or rather correlates to them, to a great extent. Bilbo Baggins is a reclusive homebody who is visited by a sage who compels Bilbo to set out on a journey that will change him in an irreversible way. For the purposes of the adventure story, the details of Bilbo’s journey are not nearly as important as their mere existence, and that they are happening to this particular hobbit.

On a more macro, theoretical level, the Cambellian hero journey is a myth about children, or at least characters who are categorizable as such. The reluctant hero reflects the fear of setting forth that all children and even adolescents face, because the sort of journey described by Campbell does not involve taking action in one’s own world but rather leaving it entirely. The familiar world is surrogate for the home, and the hero is easily transposed with the child. A childhood is an opportunity to explore “safe” surroundings in a “safe” manner, and the adventure story breaks down that safety to reveal a world of dangers and mysteries.

In all of Tolkien’s Middle Earth works, the Shire stands in for a Garden, an idyllic hideaway from the danger outside. The Garden of Eden is our entire species’s childhood story, and we still identify lush landscapes with the safety of youth. We've had class discussions about this idea, particularly as we've looked at stories that involve escaping our confining structures. Even the picture book we looked at for Inquiry portrayed settings that children would recognize as pastoral landscapes, with farm animals and small towns. These are the safe environments that children respond to, and as such it's no coincidence that Tolkien describes the Shire as a similarly bucolic place.

The adventure story becomes something entirely different when the hero returns to find their home changed. An adventure operates on a child’s level because the safety of home is preserved even though the protagonist is changed – they return with knowledge and boons that can help their home. Bilbo’s journey does exactly this; once he returns from the quest to Erebor, he settles back into Bag End and becomes an example of oddity to the rest of the Shire. The Shire remains the same, but Bilbo grows up for the better.

Compare this to the ending of The Lord of the Rings. When Frodo returns to the Shire after destroying the One Ring, he finds the countryside destroyed and replaced by industrial factories. He and his companions must retake their home and rebuild it themselves. This small change in ending greatly impacts the larger novel’s ability to function as a children’s book. The fear of your home being destroyed while you are gone is terrifying to a small person, whereas they can appropriately engage with their own development not affecting the safety of their home.

Ultimately, The Hobbit deals in a lot of tropes found in children's adventure stories. Bilbo’s unconsciousness during the Battle of the Five Armies is an important distinction fro. Battles in Tolkien’s other works – the chaos simply isn't relevant to Bilbo’s journey of leaving home and returning. The subtitle really gives the gist away; this is a child's story about gaining the courage to leave, discover something, and return to the safety of home having changed.