Mockumentary

Weeks ago, my blog partner and I did a presentation on Mockumentaries, now I bring you the blog post!

We chose Mockumentary because of the wonderful humor and satire that surrounds the television shows and movies that belong to the genre. Both of us have seen several films characterized as Mockumentary and are avid viewers of The Office. This genre is so appealing because it is accessible and for the most part everyday. Viewers can easily connect to the themes, or at least find a connection to one of the characters. This results in humor that is wonderfully personal. Who hasn't had a nutter-bar co-worker like Dwight, or wondered about the lives of dog-show folk?

Mockumentary is defined by dictionary.com as "A film or television program that is shot like a documentary but is fictitious and usually satirical".

Christopher Guest, the undisputed king of the genre actually doesn't subscribe to the label, "I am interested in the notion that people can become so obsessed by their world that they lose sense and awareness of how they appear to other people. They're so earnest about it.”

Regardless of the name, the genre spans themes from the everyday mundane (The Office, Waiting For Guffman) to the wonderfully eccentric (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind). It features characters who know they are on camera and often use this knowledge to add to humor by communicating directly to the audience, confessional-style.

The themes largely revolve around the inherent humor in seemingly everyday lives. There are no bad guys, or undue amounts of violence, rather the genre analyzes what makes us what we are-how seriously we take ourselves and the boring things we do in a light that makes them a little less boring and a little more funny.

Some of the value assumptions we discovered:

Life is funny.
Humor can be created anywhere out of anything.
People, for all of their weirdness, can learn to live together.
Eccentricity is mocked and celebrated.

Ultimately, this genre is extremely accessible-check it out for yourself: