Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality

The first major study of mock-documentary - one of a number of screen forms that play with the assumed boundaries between 'fact' and 'fiction'. Examines mock-documentary through the specific relationship which the form has with documentary. Part of a wider discussion of the increasingly fragile association between factual codes and conventions and the discourses which underpin the documentary genre. Includes detailed discussions of a number of key mock-documentary texts, ranging from Woody Allen's Zelig, Peter Greenaway's The Falls, and the Beatles spoof The Rutles through to such classic examples as Bob Roberts, This is Spinal Tap and Man Bites Dog. Opens out this relatively new media form and by doing so throws light on the status of the documentary itself.