Documentaries, ethics and graphic imagery

I started watching The Staircase last night. It's from 2004 so I don't know what your feelings on the statute of limitations on spoilers are but I kind of have to talk about it for the purposes of the thread. Ye're warned now!

Anyways, in the first episode, which is all I've seen so far, there are several very graphic shots of a dead body. Both autopsy pictures and, fairly early on in the episode, police video footage of the body at the scene of death. Covered in blood, sitting in more blood, and with what appears to be a badly broken leg.

I ended up having to rewind and re-watch the two or three minutes after that footage because I was so shook I didn't absorb any of it, my immediate reaction was "there is no need to show that". It read to me like cheap voyeurism for the sake of shock value, and a failure of duty of care both to the viewer and subjects of the documentary – though I should emphasise that this particular documentary does seem to be made with the cooperation of the family of the deceased.

I'm still processing it, and I'm trying to critically analyse my own reaction. I'm thinking of other documentaries I've seen and how I've felt about the choices those filmmakers made about graphic imagery. Films like Farenheit 9/11 or Peter Davies’ Hearts and Minds, for example, contain much more graphic footage; however the victims don’t have the clear identity this woman had, they’re nameless and numerous, and the films both have valid (if polemical) broader social aims rather than being examinations of a unique case. I remember finding both those films upsetting, and particularly in the case of Farenheit 9/11 thinking it was tastelessly done, but I don’t recall having such an extreme reaction. The Act of Killing features the recounting and performing of reprehensible and remorseless violence, but it always has that degree of separation from the actual act; it still manages to be one of the most distressing documentaries even drawing the line at that point.


I also thought of Herzog’s Grizzly Man, in which he includes footage of himself listening to a sound recording of the subject’s death by bear attack. He urges the owner of the recording to never listen it (and if memory serves correctly) furthermore to destroy it, and obviously it’s not heard by the viewer. This, I felt, was a pretty good engagement with the issue. It acknowledges the power of this kind of material, and our innate morbid curiousity about it, while also emphasising that often that curiousity is best left unsatisfied, both for our own peace of mind and for ethical reasons.

So, what do ye think? Can graphic imagery of violence or dead bodies ever be justified in documentaries? What are the criteria for justifying it? What is the balance between a documentarian’s duty of care towards on the one hand the viewer, society, and the art of cinema; and on the other hand the subjects of the documentary – does it for example matter if the subject is personally known to them and filming has involved establishing a relationship?