Self-formation and hidden aggression: ethical issues in self-therapy documentaries

Bai Do ORCID: 0009-0007-7735-720X Postgraduate student, Department of History of Western European and Russian Culture, St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Leningrad region, Saint Petersburg, Mendeleevskaya line, 5 baiduorabota@163.com Other publications by this author

The concept of a documentary about self-therapy was put forward by Paul Arthur in 2007 ^[1]. Studying personal non-fiction films, which have gained popularity in the United States since the late 1980s, Paul Arthur noticed a significant increase, starting in 2000, in the number of films dealing with the topic of psychological trauma in the families of directors. Unlike Michael Renov, who viewed the subjective features of autobiographical documentaries in a positive light ^{[2; 3]}, Paul Arthur focuses on studying the ethics of such films. He agrees with Colin Young's statement that documenting and publishing one's own family conflicts is an act of revenge against parents, which is akin to a form of "on-screen murder"^[4]. He also agrees with Jan Lewis, who describes the film "Sherman's March" as a useless "two-hour exercise in self-help"^[5]. In addition, Paul Arthur argues that filming serves as a kind of spiritual compensation for directors, since the methodologies used in making films cannot contribute to emotional healing ^[1]. Arthur's research focuses on documentary authenticity, ethics and methodological issues, which receive significant attention in the theory and practice of documentary cinema. However, these topics are only mentioned in most discussions about documentaries about self-therapy.

The emergence of documentaries about self-therapy in China coincided with the growth of independent documentary films at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries ^{[6; 7; 8; 9]}. During this period, the distribution and screening mechanisms were still imperfect, as a result of which such niche films were underground and did not have specific designations, such as: private documentaries, autobiographical documentaries or documentaries about self-therapy. Chinese documentaries tend to focus on social issues ^[10], therefore, despite the fact that some directors filmed their families around 2015, they either hid family ties with the characters or adhered to the traditional narrative perspective of an outsider. In these films, directors, as a rule, do not position themselves as the main figure of the story: even if they appear in front of the camera, they present the family story from a directorial position, and not as a personal experience.

However, in 2016, at the 53rd Taipei Film Festival, the documentary "Small Talk" was presented - a deeply personal story by director Huang Hui—chen about her relationship with her lesbian mother Ah nu. At this festival, the film won the Golden Horse Award, and in 2017 at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, the Teddy Award for Best Documentary and gained huge popularity in China, which further increased the popularity of private and family documentaries.

By creating this film, the director fulfills his long—standing desire to bridge the gap between himself and his mother. Revealing his own past, Juan openly portrays his mother's indifference and his longing for maternal affection. Huang's characters develop in a complex way. So, she herself appears not only as a sympathetic daughter who has been deprived of maternal love for a long time, but also as a courageous self-liberator and savior of her mother. Moreover, she assumes the roles of narrator and analyst throughout the narrative. Juan conducts many interviews with his mother in an attempt to establish a dialogue. Thanks to her persistent efforts, Ah-nu eventually opens up emotionally: in the film's final interview, she not only confronts her lesbian identity, but also takes responsibility for the sexual abuse of Huang in childhood committed by her father. It should be emphasized that the mother hardly speaks in the last interview — the director uses her body language as a metaphor for an apology. Comparing the scene at the table at the beginning of the film, where the mother does not stay to have lunch with Juan, but goes to meet her friends, and their lunch together at the end, the author creates a natural ending of the film — a hint of reconciliation between mother and daughter. "Small Talk" not only vividly depicts Huang's steadfast pursuit of maternal love, but also inspires viewers with romantic expectations of camera functions and the shooting process. It is believed that a movie camera and self-exposure have a therapeutic effect and help solve psychological problems.

In 2022, Wu Wenguang and Gu Xue, Chinese independent documentary filmmakers, established the Mother Film Festival ^[11] and the Family Lens master class ^[12] for amateur directors. These two events witnessed a surge in the interest of young filmmakers in exploring the topic of self-therapy with their cameras. It is noteworthy that the film "Small Talk" has been repeatedly mentioned by the organizers and aspiring directors as a source of inspiration for documenting their own traumas. As Paul Arthur suggested in his research on self-therapy documentaries, this growing success is likely to generate many imitations^[1].

In this paper, the film "Small Talk" was chosen as the object of research. On the one hand, the film is a full-length and has been widely distributed. By observing the comments left by viewers while watching the film on the Bilibili website, we can intuitively understand the rhetorical effect and ideological background of the film. On the other hand, Huang Huizhen gave a large number of interviews after the release of the film and in recent years. These diachronic materials allow researchers to go beyond the author's constructed film text as such and discover the truth about Huang's own unconscious activity and filming, as well as about trauma beyond the control of her discourse.

In a sense, "Small Talk" deviates from the topic of self-therapy or introspection of the director, since a significant part of the film is devoted to the treatment of Huang's mother. It is worth noting that Huang herself does not have the fundamental skills of an analyst in terms of treatment methods. In addition, therapy should not be based solely on a need recognized by the mother ^[13]. However, Huang's role as a savior gives legitimacy to the public disclosure of Ah Nu's private life. The role of the savior consists of two parts. First, Juan uses the image of the savior and the analyst to dominate the narrative of the film. The documentary camera, as well as the media camera, has a certain charm. As soon as cases of violence become known, the public expects the camera to take responsibility for helping victims achieve justice and scrupulously exposing such heinous incidents. However, little attention is paid to whether the victim wants to relive these events, whether she will be able to withstand potential secondary psychological trauma. Therefore, when Juan wants to talk about his mother's homosexual identity and his experience of domestic violence, viewers feel that the camera becomes a symbol of justice for the vulnerable. And the mother's unwillingness to talk "about such nonsense" becomes a symbol of her weakness for the audience. Secondly, when, during an interview with the mother's siblings and two nieces, they are asked if they knew that Ah nu was a lesbian, Juan skillfully accelerates the pace of editing this fragment to emphasize their state of discomfort at the moment. It seems that the mother's homosexual identity is viewed as a family secret that is difficult to discuss openly. Thus, the approach of the camera lens to the uncle's face, when he is questioned about the lesbian identity of Ah-nu, hints that he is feigning ignorance and avoiding recognition of his sister's true identity. Unlike other relatives, Huang became the only supporter and savior of her mother, capable of understanding her mother's deep sense of isolation.

In addition to masking the illegality of the forced disclosure of the mother's personal life by assuming the roles of analyst and savior, Huang's aggression manifests itself in other aspects.

First, it is the use of a monologue technique. Monologue is a generally recognized characteristic of personal documentaries ^{[2; 14; 15]}. — it is not only a means of self-discovery for the director, but also the main narrative voice throughout the story. Interestingly, however, the structure and form of monologues in personal documentaries are no different from the traditional documentary storytelling technique. Both use storytelling instead of a more realistic approach — showing, which is a more authentic method of visual storytelling ^[16]. Therefore, in traditional documentaries, more attention is paid to the screening, which is more directly indexed and corresponds to the original truth of the event ^{[17; 18; 19]}. But the monologues of the directors are considered as a subjective feature of the aesthetic form of documentaries about self-therapy and private documentaries and are encouraged. The monologue imperceptibly gives the director an undeniable advantage, without leaving the mother the right to speak for herself, since throughout the film the voice is actually under the control of the director. In fact, the directors of these types of films use them as evidence and testimony, trying to put the audience in the position of a judge defending justice on their behalf. According to Paul Arthur, "the director assumes that the audience is a sympathetic witness."^[1] The mother, obviously, does not have the opportunity to collect evidence in her favor and formulate her own thoughts. Rather, it serves as an object that the director can dispose of within the framework of the shooting field created by him, an object in a passive state, deprived of the right to operate with symbols.

Secondly, aggression stems from the violent nature of the filming process. Juan's mother did not agree to shoot until she invited a film crew, installed cameras and lights, and stated that even if the mother did not agree this time, then she, Juan, would still have to pay. So, her mother agreed to the shoot. In fact, Huang's shooting has no legal legitimacy due to the lack of Ah-nu's consent, thereby representing a coercive nature. Huang's aggression towards her mother is evident not only during the screening of the film, but also during the filming process. As soon as Huang stated on camera, in front of the film crew, who became her first viewers, that her mother had facilitated her father's sexual harassment, she had already insulted her mother. Paul Arthur calls this behavior "murder on screen." As Huang put it during her first attempt at filming in reality, there were some moods that she could only express through filming. The directors of self-therapeutic documentaries not only publicly expose their psychological trauma, but also use the camera to shed light on the guilt of their parents, forcing them to apologize. By harnessing technological advantages and controlling discourse, filmmakers use filming as a method of attack. In films, they masterfully broadcast their resentment towards their parents to the audience, thereby instilling in the audience a sense of parental guilt, while maintaining their position as a victim.

The distortion of the mother's image is the third aspect of aggression. The question regarding the veracity of Huang's accusation against her mother in the final dialogue of the film is not whether Huang was sexually abused by her father or not, but whether her mother knew about this abuse and facilitated it, as Huang claims. That's what Juan wants to argue with his mother about. However, a convincing first-person narrative hides an important fact: the statements of Huang and her mother contradict each other. Considering Juan's accusations from a legal point of view, it should be noted that judges cannot directly attribute credibility to the testimony provided by the plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses. In addition, the judge, as a person administering justice, must use logical reasoning and reasonable reasoning to make a comprehensive factual conclusion based on the evidence presented by both the plaintiff and the defendant. In the last interview, only the testimonies of Huang and her mother were presented, and almost the entire conversation is filled with Huang's one-sided statements and evidence. The testimony of the two individuals is inconclusive, and there is no satisfactory supporting evidence of the veracity of either party's statements. Thus, the contradictory testimony of the two individuals can only indicate that the authenticity of Huang's accusation remains uncertain ^[20]. Thus, the audience's assessment of the mother, as shown by the director, is unlikely to be impartial. Since the film's discourse is controlled exclusively by Huang, and her mother is forced to participate in the filming, the latter remains in a state of aphasia throughout the conversation.

In the field of documentaries or feature films based on real stories, it sometimes happens that the main characters from real life notice a discrepancy between their image by the director and their own real self, which leads to adverse consequences, for example, filing a lawsuit against the director or producer. However, when shooting in a family space where relationships are bonded by blood ties, there were no cases where parents accused the director, that is, their child, of having their reputation tarnished, although some expressed concern about this. The positive aspect of self-therapeutic documentary practice conducted by young filmmakers or amateur filmmakers should be recognized, since they assert themselves through the skill and use of film technologies. This allows society to comprehend psychological trauma from a genuine, internal point of view, thereby stimulating public attention to the topic of the parental family.

In conclusion, it is worth emphasizing that this study does not deny the presence of psychological trauma or its significant negative emotional impact on directors in childhood. The work notes that trauma, including emotional experiences, also affects the cognitive foundations of personality. Therefore, the real patient who should be treated by the director of documentaries about self—therapy is himself. And the real effective therapy is not to get parents to apologize to the camera or reveal their stories in order to win the sympathy of the audience, but to use the nature of filmmaking in order to look at themselves from the outside. In clinical practice, treatment usually involves a long course, and its continuity serves as one of the main guarantees for achieving profound therapeutic results. And directors usually finish a film about self-therapy in a very short time. Instead of using the camera as a tool for introspection, they attack their parents, abusing the advantage that the camera gives them in terms of discourse. Avoiding violence as a victim cannot be a true substitute for rebirth. It is only when directors take responsibility for themselves that their filming becomes truly daring.