I actually like slipping from soapumentary to soupumentary, and
I think that the English connotations of "soup" include the
"mish-mash" inherent in the Norwegian version.  Where I think
that I disagree with my good friend Bjorn is his notion that
things only "appear" to be different.  It's not so much that
one offers truth and the other doesn't, but that the ontological
status the audience attributes to the action, events, object,
and subjects is different.  Documentaries, it seems to me,
depend upon a belief in the actual existence of the subject
as a person representing himself/herself, not someone else.
To the degree that an audience or person shares this belief,
which is quite different from a temporary suspension of
disbelief, a documentary is perceived and experienced
differently from a work of narrative or dramatic fiction.  I
think that phenomenologists are better able to separate
documentary from other genres on the basis of audience
perceptions of ontological states than structuralists,
post-structuralists, and semiologists who focus upon