Jay Ruby asks for suggestions of "mixed genre" documentaries of the 30's
and 40's, presumably to demonstrate to the post/mod lit critters that
what goes around comes around.
 
Joris Iven's POWER AND THE LAND uses a classical narrative structure
that seems very much like a shooting script, in which non-actors attempt
to act "themselves". The narration by Stephen Vincent Benet goes from a
relatively spare Robert Frost-ish set comments about the rigors of rural
life without electricity to an epiphany of blank verse in the populist
literary mode (described by one of my students as like Carl Sandburg on
methamphetamines) when the rural electricity cooperative is successful
and the typical farmer's typical house and typical barn are wired up.
The film is available from several sources. I think that our print came
from the National Archives.
 
Henry Breitrose
Dept. of Communication
Stanford
([log in to unmask])
 
 
(N.B.: Jay Ruby--send along your email address so we can continue this
discussion without boring innocent people and worse, cluttering their disks.)