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Cynthia J. Miller, editor Too Boldfor the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2012
In 1957, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest," which depicted the success that farmers in Switzerland were having that year in cultivating spaghetti. Designed as an April Fools' Day joke, this fake documentary was greeted with curiosity by some viewers who were ignorant about how spaghetti was actually made and with anger by those who resented the elaborate hoax. Although "The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest" was not the first "mockumentary," the uproar the film caused among BBC viewers highlighted the emotional power, both positive and negative, that this burgeoning genre possessed. In a new collection of essays, Too Bold for the Box Office: The Mockumentary from Big Screen to Small.\ film scholars, historians, and filmmakers spotlight the history and scope of the mockumentary, examining the ways in which films in this genre subvert the traditional documentary form, critique our social and cultural traditions, and challenge our accepted histories. Together, these essays, which present an impressive range of international perspectives, help to demarcate the boundaries of the mockumentary, distinguishing the form from simple parody, and to detail the widespread use of its style in movies and television. A quick glance at the extended filmography at the end of the book, which lists both well-known and obscure television shows and films in the genre, attests to the popularity, particularly in the United States and Europe, of the mockumentary today.
Film scholars will be impressed by the breadth of perspectives in this collection, which offer new ways of thinking about the scope of the mockumentary genre. Essays by Eve Allegra Raimon, Cynthia Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper, and Robert Weiner look...