The Order Of Representation: An Alternative History Of Documentary Films From A Perspective Of Media Change

Since the late years of 19 th century,with its indexical automatics of “copying the reality”,modern audiovisual media burdened mankinds' expectation of well dealing with the others,the self and the life shared together,which is typically performed as audiovisual documentary,often represented by documentary films.However,following the trace of film art history,the mainstream classical documentary film history tends to describe the changes of form and style of documentary films simply as cultural creatures,which leads to most of audiovisual documentary studies as objectified analysis of texts,discourses and interpretations,leaving the change of media technics no more than parts of historical context or instrumental method.This description restrains the contemporary explanatory power and theoretical significance of documentary film history,as well as shadowing the importance of audiovisual documentary studys to the media study.As a result,departing from a constructive view of media change and based on classical descriptions of documentary film history,this research retells the history with perspectives of transform pattern and its process of modern audiovisual media by combining theoretical resources,text analysis and discourse analysis,to explain how the real world significance of audiovisual documentary had changed at the level of changes of modern audiovisual media technics and the amount of reproduction.During the opposing movements of separating/objectifying and integrating/organizing of modern audiovisual media,the media representation to the reality itself,typically performed as audiovisual documentary,had been forming its“order”which profoundly influences the way mankind approaches and expresses the reality,thus building to the modern society.The order of representation had experienced different tendences along with the augmentation and intensity of media representation: from the order of “spectacle” during late years of 19 th century and first decade of 20 th century as early stage of film technics and industry,to that of “festival”during 1930s-1950 s as an organizational maturing development of film and broadcast section,then to that of”reflectivity”during 1960s-1970 s as the rise of television and other electronic media,the expansion of audiovisual representations goes all the way to a dominating top of “construction”of reality in the late decade of 20 th century.When it merge to a contemporary media environment of digital media and internet technology in the 21 st century,the representation of audiovisual media has inseparably penetrated into the expression and perception of mankind as an order of “routine”.Along with this change throughout 20 th century,the mode of documentary practice build up from “individual reproduction” that brought “spectacle”,to“organizational reproduction” that gathered “festival”,then to “institutional reproduction”that concentrated on “reflectivity”,and to “social reproduction”that enabled “construction”,leads to an extremity of richness and surplus,all the way back to a contemporary “individual reproduction”for a brand new “routine”.By reveling this trace,one could have an insight of audiovisual documentary as creature of certain media environment as well as main force of forming the order of media representation:it is exactly the embodiment of an interactive construction of technics and human praxis,appearing its character differently through the constant evolving development of modern media power;at the same time,the order of media representation promotes and frames audiovisual practices specifically.Through this restructuration of documentary film history in the view of media change,it is permitted to re-recognize audiovisual documentary's contemporary significance of “savoir-faire”as a symbiotic evolvement of human and media,thus not only correspond previous studies of modern society and media,but also continuously bring hope for promotive possibilities of those studies and an existence of savoir-faire among the ubiquity of highly mediated world prospect.