Online Response #3 – The Expository Mode and Narrative Structure

In its very nature, cinema has the uncanny ability to capture life as it is.  Though the picture it leaves us with might be disturbing, cinema, and most especially documentary, has the capacity to help the audience see things anew throughout the eyes of an artist or activist.  

In a narrative documentary like Born into Brothels, the audience/spectator is taken into the belly of the beast of the issue; because honestly, you can’t look away from children who are suffering or in danger.  The moving and stationary pictures, captured in the film by both the filmmaker and the children ,highlight their plight, while the voice over brings meaning to the messages. 

 A documentary like Born Into Brothels functions within the realm of narrative storytelling. It first proposes a problem and then works to resolve the problem.  Nichols discusses this problem/solution structure in his writing on pages 85-86.  He elaborates on narrative storytelling, stating that: "narrative welcomes suspense or delay where complications can mount and anticipation grow.”  (132)  The opening sequence of Born into Brothels certainly caches the audience attention.  Almost

exposé-like, the audience feels as though they are being led into forbidden territory, where the camera and the audience alike are not allowed.  Further, the film personifies the elements of argument and refutation in the characters (or social actors) of the photographer/filmmaker, the unyielding family members of some of the children, and the government constraints respectively.  While she presents that the only way to free the children from a repetitive life of sex and crime is an education at the boarding school, it seems there are a mountain of obstacles stuck in the way, preventing her from resolving the issue.

Nichols notes that the expository mode “addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that propose a perspective or advance an argument.” (pg. 167)   The voice over commentary gives an “informing logic” accompanied by demonstrative visual images.  Amid the myriad of visual images repeated in Born into Brothels, it is interesting and perplexing to me that I continue to go back to the little girl, scrubbing out a pot on the floor with what looks like a newspaper.  While these images are powerful in themselves, peppered throughout the film are clarification of facts, a human and intimate look at each child (effectively “adding flesh to fact”), personalizing their individual narrative, and a clear summation of each of their stories up to this point. 

Even now, nearly a week later, this film has caused a successful emotional response in me as a viewer. I’m still angry about the aunt who wouldn’t let her niece go to school.  I have told my students, my roommates, even my parents about the film. Perhaps it is that we were so effectively persuaded to side with the most dominate voice we heard, that of Zana Briski, that her voice established (more so than in a fiction film) an air of authenticity; a truth, that couldn’t be ignored.