There are, of course, lots of people interested in the ethics of documentary
representation. But it seems that not too many of them are in film and TV
studies. I myself discuss the ethics of filmmaking quite extensively in the
classroom, but it isn't an issue that I am likely to take up in my own
scholarly work (partly because I'm not researching documentary, though I do
enjoy teaching it).
But my underlying point is this: the reigning conceptual frameworks in
film/tv studies don't make ethics a very central issue.
Perhaps I'm missing something, though. Is "politics" (which is pretty
central to film/tv studies) just our way of addressing ethics? Or is there
a different set of issues involved in ethics, issues that the field doesn't
particularly want to take up?
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James Peterson
University of Notre Dame [log in to unmask]