Saturday, June 10, 2006
At the intersection of law and art
When do artist have the duty to intervene? Outside of the art world, in most areas, there is no duty intervene, no good samaritan law...no matter how much we don't like it it is legal to watch someone get murdered and not do anything about it (okay there are exceptions but law always has exceptions).
Recently Diane Sawyer has drawn a lot of heat for a segmet aired on Primetime. She was following merging families (step families with issues). When the segmet finally aired there was footage of a father physically abusing his daughter. I actually tried to watch the segment when it first aired and I changed the channel because of how the father was wailing on the daughter. Neither Diane nor her crew reported the abuse nor did they intervene. Many people are saying that she profited / exploited the abuse situation for her own good.
In Diane's defense for a documentary you are supposed to document and use your footage to teach others. However, in my opinion, people are not gazelle's. Sure with nature footage you don't intervene when the lion eats the gazelle, but they're animals. In this situation we are dealing with a child. At the risk of losing great footage I think Diane should've called DCF and should not have aired the footage.
Which brings me around to the adults. When John first told me about this article I thought that maybe the director was profiting. This documentary is about the Golden Gate Suicides. Over the course of the year a crew filmed the bridge and caught suicides on film. From what I have read it seems that the director was rather responsible -- initially I was afraid he may have incited the suicides.
The question I have is this--If you are a documentary film maker and you are filming situations with people--when do you or SHOULD you have a duty to intervene in the lives of your subjects?
When do artist have the duty to intervene? Outside of the art world, in most areas, there is no duty intervene, no good samaritan law...no matter how much we don't like it it is legal to watch someone get murdered and not do anything about it (okay there are exceptions but law always has exceptions).
Recently Diane Sawyer has drawn a lot of heat for a segmet aired on Primetime. She was following merging families (step families with issues). When the segmet finally aired there was footage of a father physically abusing his daughter. I actually tried to watch the segment when it first aired and I changed the channel because of how the father was wailing on the daughter. Neither Diane nor her crew reported the abuse nor did they intervene. Many people are saying that she profited / exploited the abuse situation for her own good.
In Diane's defense for a documentary you are supposed to document and use your footage to teach others. However, in my opinion, people are not gazelle's. Sure with nature footage you don't intervene when the lion eats the gazelle, but they're animals. In this situation we are dealing with a child. At the risk of losing great footage I think Diane should've called DCF and should not have aired the footage.
Which brings me around to the adults. When John first told me about this article I thought that maybe the director was profiting. This documentary is about the Golden Gate Suicides. Over the course of the year a crew filmed the bridge and caught suicides on film. From what I have read it seems that the director was rather responsible -- initially I was afraid he may have incited the suicides.
The question I have is this--If you are a documentary film maker and you are filming situations with people--when do you or SHOULD you have a duty to intervene in the lives of your subjects?
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