Grey Gardens and the Problem of Objectivity
Notes on the Ethics of Observational Documentary
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Abstract
This article turns to the Maysles brothers’ 1975 film Grey Gardens to problematize the philosophical assumptions at work in debates about objectivity and direct cinema. With a suitable picture of documentary objectivity we can avoid endorsing the claim that no film can be objective or the corollary that only documentaries that reflexively acknowledge the biases of their makers can succeed aesthetically or ethically. Against critics who have attacked Grey Gardens for its problematic claims to objectivity as well as theorists defending it for how it undermines objectivity, I argue that the film's objective treatment of its subjects is part of its aesthetic and ethical achievement. In the context of observational documentary, being objective does not mean taking a purely dispassionate stance toward one's subjects, but treating them without prejudice or moralism and letting them reveal themselves.
Contributor Notes
Mathew Abbott is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Federation University Australia. Drawing on modern European and ordinary language philosophy, his research is concerned with intersections of value theory. He is the author of The Figure of This World: Agamben and the Question of Political Ontology and Abbas Kiarostami and Film-Philosophy, both of which were published with Edinburgh University Press. He is editor of Michael Fried and Philosophy: Modernism, Intention, and Theatricality, which was published with Routledge in February 2018. Email: m.abbott@federation.edu.au