What is the web-based or interactive documentary? Ideally, it is a format that presents a multiplicity of information (as opposed to a master narrative) and engages the viewer as an active, thinking discoverer of knowledge rather than a passive recipient of a singular Truth. However, as Lev Manovich points out, this interactivity is little more than a “myth” (70) as this term is “simply … stating the most basic fact about computers” (70)—that human users interface in real-time with objects represented on the screen. In other words, there is nothing new under the sun in admitting that the platform of data delivery is dramatically different from traditional film, but there is considerable work to be done in rethinking modes of reception under the “interactivity” model.

A case in point is the interactive documentary Prison Valley. The project is a French-funded documentary on Cañon City, Colorado: a town that is distinguished economically, politically, and socially by the for-profit “Supermax” prison to which it is home. In Prison Valley, the viewer’s self-presentation to the film-world and to other viewers is enabled by logging in. However, it must be noted that the presentation is not that of an actual self or an actual body; rather, it is a highly mediated venture in which an avatar of the self is called upon, thereby addressing not the viewer’s eye and ear so much as the encoded simulation of the viewer’s eye and ear. The viewer—or, better, the user—is forced to leave their body behind (save for her clicking finger!) in order to truly engage with the work.

            Logging in to Prison Valley does not merely beget a disembodied entry into a virtual community. Operating more as a statist project than the traditional cinematic apparatus, Prison Valley uses the user login to initiate a kind of passport, one that the user must obtain in order to follow the full story represented by Prison Valley. Without this project of self-transformation or even self-negation, access to much of the film’s data—what Prison Valley refers to as “certain functionalities”—is denied. And while this step could be regarded as merely an instance of the project’s interactivity, logging in to Prison Valley functions more as a tracking device that locates the user’s position along the narrative thread relative to other users and presumably to the filmmakers themselves. Here, spectatorship—marked by now by the floating finger—is very dramatically linked to citizenship. And while the voyeuristic, floating eye model of old is definitely not an ideal viewing position, the surveilled finger mobilized by Prison Valley seems an even less desirable form of cinematic subjectivity.

            In addition to the obligatory submission to invisible surveillance, there is a troubling link that the Prison Valleyproject advocates between membership and the consumption of knowledge. Prison Valley uses the mantle of this interactivity to cloak its requirement of willful submission, effectively—and without irony—figuring the spectator as herself a prisoner who is compelled to choose between invisibility and information.

            After the login page, the user proceeds to “home base”—a 360° image of a motel room with links to the discussion forum and a “Notebook” and “Clues” that one has assembled as she presumably mimics the role of a fact-finding journalist. There is also a message recorded on the virtual phone that gently instructs the user to go the movie theater. Also of note, in this room are the “Clues” which are links to “extras,” usually non-filmic portfolios on topics of ancillary interest while two of these items are of exceptional interest.

            One is the transcript of an email interview with Douglas Micco, an inmate at the Supermax. This transcript represents the only moment when an inmate’s words are presented to the user. If the relegation of Micco’s story to the extras portion of the project can be justified (marginally) by its appearance as an extended letter and therefore unfitting for a predominantly motion-picture enterprise, the project’s attitude toward Micco’s self-articulation testifies to its willful disinterest in the prisoners’ (as opposed to the prison creators’) welfare. Part of the preface to Micco’s interview reads, “To be honest, we have no idea whether he’s guilty or innocent. We just wanted to talk to him about his life, his daily routine, about jail and the prison industry.” To be sure, Micco’s reply—guarded and censored as it must be—does not do much to inspire any critical reflection upon prison life. “My life in prison is wonderful!” Micco writes. “I live life to the fullest!” Jarringly, this statement is followed immediately by his explanation of his “Maximum-Closed Custody Security” status: “The Conditions: I'm limited in movement. I can't work out at Industries. When I go to outside medical appointments, I am separated from other inmates, I'm not allowed any contact with other inmates. I'm shackled down and bolted through the floor so I can't move around on the transport bus. The guards bring out their shotguns and I get escorted to Doctor's Office. This is the only time where I feel like I'm in a prison movie.” Now, of course, Micco is in a prison movie of sorts, and his description of the limited movement entailed by that status eerily describes that of Prison Valley’s viewer who has no ability to pose her own questions to Micco, to challenge Prison Valley’s dismissal of him, nor to discover, of her own accord, other voices. Within the domain of Prison Valley, the user’s movement and her acquisition of knowledge are restricted, too.

The interactive documentary does not, in fact, necessarily herald a liberatory, anti-authoritarian mode of documentary film presentation. To the contrary, this relatively new format also bears in its virtual DNA the potential to mobilize the discourse of liberation—its codes and its signs—toward restrictive, authoritarian ends. We cannot count on the technological platform to do the work for us. Rather, we must be vigilant and retain a critical stance with respect to the liberatory possibilities of web-based documentaries. The interface itself does not guarantee a space for an active viewer any more than it guarantees the displacement of master narratives. We still need to think—and to work—actively on empowering our relationship to the screen, regardless of whether that screen is made of canvas, concrete, or glass.

Works Cited

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002.

Films

Prison Valley. 2010. Dirs. David Dufresne and Philippe Brault. http://prisonvalley.arte.tv