If we hope to portray true events on the big screen sensitively, we need to follow a model of filmmaking that does no harm to those whose stories we tell, writes Dr Davinia Thornley
The planned film adaptation of the Christchurch mosque shootings has demonstrated the volatile impact of true events on people’s lives.
How do we ethically tell stories about events that are often still fresh in our memories and may involve living people?
In late June 2019, I presented my model on this very topic at the Screen Studies conference in Glasgow, in the hope it would positively influence future true event adaptation projects. Then the Covid-19 lockdowns halted everything.
I knew the Christchurch terror attacks would lead to a multitude of media representations: some sanctioned, some not. Through that process of re-presentation, people’s lives would be harmed again, a second time.
It really is as simple as that: true event adaptation deals with damage and responsible media has to create a connection with those who have been hurt.
This means taking into account any backstory: who is doing the adapting and why; what are the constraints affecting this process; how are audiences affected by such adaptations?
In the case of audiences for proposed features such as They Are Us, some may be people involved in the event - and even if not them directly, then their loved ones. Therefore it’s essential to acknowledge their input and their perspectives on what will be made.
It seems the producers have - after the fact - listened to the community’s calls for appropriate representation, but I wonder why they couldn’t look to the models we already have here in Aotearoa before they began.
Traditionally, adaptation theorists come from a 'page-bound' novel-to-film model, which often requires ignoring people involved in the event altogether in order to arrive at their conclusions.
Think of Titanic the movie, versus the sinking of the Titanic as a true event.
True events often disrupt this process: whether via being at the event itself, through primary sources, or people’s oral histories.
You cannot use the same lens to think about true event adaptation as has been used in the past by conventional adaptations, simply because true events are not trapped on the page.
Instead, we need to foreground the 'true event' in true event adaptation.
These types of productions also require a collaborative mindset: both at the production level and also at the critical level.
Adaptation theory seems mired in a textually-dependent model (perhaps because of its history in the English/literature disciplines) and this cannot account for the community input that will be inevitable around any true event.
There is also the question of how we represent the unrepresentable.
Because true events often deal with difficult topics, this leads to the apparent necessity of “always knowing”.
This impulse can be problematic when dealing with material of this kind. Some of the most cherished caveats of the daily news and indeed, social media (the push towards never-ending knowledge and short timeframes; the objectivity ‘panacea’; “if it bleeds, it leads,” etc) run aground in the face of unimaginably horrific or life-changing events.
Further, both channels have been accused by many groups, but particularly indigenous people, of being coldly calculating and methodical about issues, events and - oftentimes - even people (who become “subjects”).
There is much truth to such calls and in this current period of global unrest it is appropriate for academics and media-makers to recognise their debt to others and, indeed, to the world itself through their research and work. So, I suggest this simple model:
First, do no harm.
This is not to suggest that media-making should shy away from hard questions or thorough cross-referencing and fact-checking. It is to make the claim, however, that we need to be asking more subtle questions about the methods we employ, the positions we take in relation to our 'subjects', and the 'why' of what we are doing.
As just a couple of local examples, Robert Sarkies’ film adaptation of the 1990 Aramoana shooting, Out of the Blue, or RNZ’s Widows of Shuhada, both chose to put their communities first.
Sarkies underwent over two years of intensive pre-production research before he even began filming his production while RNZ provides an episode that allows listeners to meet the members of the production team, many of whom are intimately involved with the affected Christchurch community.
True events force this kind of examination through their very reality, their real life-ness.
Secondly, try to help.
Academics and media-makers, in adaptation studies and more widely, need to ask themselves if their work performs service in some way. It was my belief in the importance of a critically engaged scholarship that led to my push to have audiences accept a filmed version of the Aramoana shootings because the film is in the service of the community, rather than the shooter.
It seems the production company on They Are Us were working from similar principles, but they failed to make that apparent early enough in the process.
We can only know true event adaptations by what they mean. Work in this area calls for recognition of the always ongoing-ness of true events, the people involved in them, and also the complicity of our own research on those events.
If true events must be made to mean something in order for understanding to occur, let’s be very careful to ask ourselves how we are creating those meanings.
We must remember, people’s lives are marked by our decisions.
