The Cinematic Society and The Reflexive Interview

(Norman Denzin. (2003). In J.F. Cubrium & J.A. Holstein (eds.), Postmodernism Interviewing (pp. 141-155). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage)

In writing "we inhabit a secondhand world" (p. 141)where we experience only representations of the world, Denzin names the contemporary society postmodern cinematic society--"the society that knows itself through the reflective gaze of the cinematic apparatus". The birth of cinematic surveillance in the early 20th century, he explains, made the society exceptionally prone to listening and looking, and this tendency brought about interview society as a consequence of the advent of cinematic realism such as color and sound as well as the emergence of journalistic reporting in mid 1920s. He observes expansions of the use of interview in all sectors of social life and studies such that "the interview society has turned the confessional mode of discourse into a public form of entertainment" and "a public commodity".

He categorizes into four formats the machinery of interview that the interview society takes: objectively neutral format, entertainment and investigative format, collaborative or active format and reflective interview format. By reflexive interview format he means careful interpretation of hidden meanings by paying attention to details and deconstructing the interview itself.

In reviewing "technological apparatus that produce truthful statement" from M. Trinh (1991, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. NY: Routledge; p.39), he agrees with Trinh on the influences of documentary interview style on the culture of cinematic society: that is, a filmmaker-as-interivewer sculpts the illusion that viewers watch unmediated reality by using the apparatus and this became predominant cinematic practice in American culture, in particular TV commercials and news. Echoing Trinh's emphasis on reflexive reading, Denzin reminds us that reality is socially constructed and writes, "Filmmaking and documentary interviewing thus become methods of "framing" reality".