A hybrid documentary genre : Animated documentary and the analysis of Waltz with Bashir ( 2008 ) movie

The word documentary has been described as an advice in “Oxford English Dictionary” in the late 1800s. Document is a main source of information for lawyers. And in cinema, basic film forms are defined with their own properties. The common sense is to seperate documentary from fiction, experimental from main current and animation from the live action films. While these definitions were being made, it has been considered that which expression methods were used. The film genre which is called documentary has been defined in many different ways. In this study, animated documentary genre which is a form of hybrid documentary has been concerned with Baudrillard’s theory. In this context, Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bassir (2008) has been analyzed with genre criticism method.


Introduction
History of animated documentary 1 is old as much as history of traditional documentary.However, in any period, animated documentaries have not been reached the popularity of traditional documentaries.Yet, the historical issues and the representation of movies which were produced in the past have made that genre become popular again.Animated documentaries of today have effected audience with their visionary power.Actually these movies are simulacra (appearance that wants to be perceived as reality) which benefits from imagination (Baudrillard 2010, p.1).
These movies present an ideal world to viewers where everything is seamless.
Animated documentaries have made progress from the most fantastic or mythic one to ideological one.If these movies get analyzed, it can be seen that cinema, technically, came close to absolute reality and became an ideological model, gradually.Nowadays, animated documentary has the ability to simulate itself.And it can reproduce the classics of its own.Insomuch that, it makes them turn into seamless ones.However this can blunt its originality.This can make it turn into an ideological medium (Giddens 2010, p.46-50).In this study, the documentary Waltz with Bassir 2 (Ari Folman, 2008) which is one of the popular examples of animated documentaries is analyzed and hybrid 3 structures that have been developed in the field of documentary are revealed.
1 "The long history, however, of the hybridisation of animation and documentary, one that stretches back to the earliest days of the moving image, would suggest that, as in many things in life, opposites can attract in a meaningful way" (Roe 2011, p.3).
2 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185616/ 3 "Laura Marks (1994) uses the term 'hybrid cinema', a form concerned with the histories of minority social groups, to refer to such work.Hybrid cinema is constituted within a mixture of documentary, fiction and experimental genres which, Marks argues, characterizes the film production of cultures and peoples in the process of creating identities" (Beattie 2004, p.113).

Purpose and Methodology
The animated documentary Waltz with Bashir will be analyzed with genre criticism method.The term "type" is defined with the word "genre" in English.The theory of genre originally has its roots in Aristo's Poetica.In literary work, the genre term is used to identify the differences: Such as epic, lyric, dramatic, fiction, documentary, comedy and tragedy.The first critical work about genre movies has released with the theory of auteur which was occurred in France at the end of 1940.Genre criticism has begun to be discussed in cinema since 1960.The question "Why?" has become crucial in genre movies today.After 1980s, the discussion about the terms like hybrid genres or transformation of genres in the theory of genre has begun (Özarslan 2013, p.51-53).The technological advance in screening devices has affected the producing structure in cinema.While the main stream cinema has been producing genre production, a structure based on mass production has been developed.(Kabadayı 2013, p.103).
One of the primary subjects in genre criticism is having the genre of film defined as a fact.
In this context, a theoretical framework should be developed for the discussions about problems related to genre.While researching movie genre, the unusual difficulties which are different from the ones in other arts has been experienced.For film makers, a movie, first of all, is a product and it is commercial.The main image of genre criticism is the triangle which is created by artist, movie and viewers (Özden 2014, p.216-217).
Genre criticism has been asserted for fiction.However, if we imagine a model for film language, genre can direct our attention to its sublanguage.Genre is a concept that obtains in the culture of a significant group or a society.The documentary in modern cinema is a combination of the reality transforming into literalism and the pure reality.In this sense, the fictional structures that have been developed in documentary may be approached within the context of genre criticism.
The purpose of the study is to reveal the hybrid structures which has been developed as criticism of modernism in cinema.The relationship between cinema and social structure has been practiced to solve with Baudrillard's "Theory of Simulation4 ".Baudrillard has explained the "Theory of Simulation" on the basis of consumer society.Baudrillard has pointed out that this principle has emerged in the last two centuries in modern society (Adanır 2010, p.51).
In this context, the movie Waltz with Bassir has been analyzed within the context of documentary realism.And its genre relations have been examined.

Documentary and Genre
The word "documentary" has been used for the first time by John Grierson5 in the early 1930s.He has brought a new term to the art of cinema.In fact, the term was not new.In that period of time, The French have used the word "Documentaire" for travel films.But Grierson has brought a different meaning to the term in his article that was published in New York Sun in 1926.Grierson has defined the word "documentary" as "interpretation of reality in a creative form" (Adalı 1986, p.13).
In that period, Grierson's approach has been the focal point of the discussions about documentary.Nowadays, the discussions about the definition of documentary still continue.The focal point of the discussions has been mostly the methods of documentary's production.Is documentary a form?Is it a sense?Is it a genre?Or, is it the reality to be filmed?These boundaries couldn't have been determined.Documentary film makers may rearrange their observations.But they cannot make this on the basis of imagination like narration writers do.Documentary film makers may follow a chronological sequencing and they also may use actors, but they do not build a place or construct characters like fiction film makers do.The forms of documentary are more functional, varied and flexible than novels, narrations and fiction (McLane 2012, p.3-4).
While exceptions are open to discussion, the essential requirement of documentary is to have real characters.The manipulation of image and sound is widely limited in documentary.Bill Nichols has distinguished documentaries in five categories: Interpretative documentary, observational documentary, interactive documentary, reflective documentary and performative documentary.
Interpretative documentary is a kind of documentary which has series of images and voiceovers.Voice-over adresses audiences and presents the images by arguments.It is a documentary genre which is most commonly used on TV.John Grierson's Drifters 6 (1929) and Alberto Cavalcanti's Coalface 7 (1935) are in this category (Buckland 2010, p.163).Observational documentary is characterized by the inactivity of documentary film maker.Voice-overs and interviews are not used in.They emphasize real life.The documentary film maker tries to be completely invisible.In other words, these documentaries are neutral and far from judiciary (Buckland 2010, p.169)."Triumph des Willens 8 (1935) is one of the early examples of 6 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019838/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_2 7 "Drifters (1939) combined the editing sophistication of Russian cinema with the energy of Hollywood and Grierson's own social-minded intimacy.It was the only film Grierson ever directed, but it set the standard for the committed, propaganda documentaries he would champion for the rest of his career" (McInnes 2004, xiii).Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182912/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_35 8 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025913/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 observational documentary, one that raises rich questions about the line between observing and staging" (Nichols 2001, p.186).
On the contrary to observational documentaries, interactive documentary makes the documentary director's interplay visible.It is based on interviews.Film maker is the main subject that serves to keep the elements of documentary together (Buckland 2010, p.171).Examples of this genre of documentaries are Michael Moore's documentaries: Roger and Me 9 (1989) and Fahrenheit 9/11 10 (2004).
Reflective documentary does not offer a cross section of reality.It tries to show audience how to create the images of the movie.It challenges to the objectivity of traditional documentary and it shows that there have been subjective preferences while making movies.Dziga 11 Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera 12 (1929) is the most famous one of this genre's examples.In this movie, Dziga Vertov has shown the camera which has been recording events, editor who has been editing the shoots, the film that has been projected on screen and the audience who has been watching the movie at the hall.These are the features that made Dziga Vertov's movie reflective (Buckland 2010, p.177-178).
Performative documentaries create the air and the atmosphere which are traditionally found in fictions.Highly stylized displays are accompanied by animations and music.In performative documentary, the subject is untouchable.However, the meaning is variable (Buckland 2010, p.179).
Performative documentaries primarily address us, emotionally and expressively, rather than pointing us to the factual world we hold in common.These films engage us less with rhetorical 9 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098213/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 10 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361596/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 11 Denis Arkadievch Kaufmann.commands or imperatives than with a sense of their own vivid responsiveness.The filmmaker's responsiveness seeks to animate our own.We engage with their representation the historical world but do so obliquely, via the affective charge they of apply to it and seek to make our own (Nichols 2001, p.132).
It is mostly diffucult to categorize the genres of documentary.Because, while a documentary seems to be an example of a significant genre, it also may have the features of another genre.The viewers respond differently to animated documentaries than they do to traditional ones.Animated documentaries are movies which uses the expression methods of fictions (especially CGI 13 , compositing 14 and stop-motion).The real sound recordings may be used in animated documentaries or real events may be revived.Different expression methods are tried in this genre.Some animated documentaries are focused on interviews 15 .Some others are presented by voiceovers.In all these different forms, the creation is subjective.

Development of Animated Documentary
The film of Winsor McCay, The Sinking of the Lusitania 16 (1915) is the first animation documentary that is created with non-fiction materials.It is shown in the movie that The German's submarine makes British passenger ship sunk.This event has caused United States to enter the First World War.That incident was dramatized in the movie.Animations have used to depict the event.Winsor McCay has animated ordinary people who struggle for their lives; such as a woman 13 Computer generated image.According to Ryu; "While the aesthetics of analog visual effects, without computing, can be compared to a Fordist production system, digital effects, which hugely rely on CGI manipulation, are examples of flexible accumulation" (2007, p.3). 14 According to Cubitt; "Framing and compositing create diegesis, the properly Imaginary world.Another doubling occurs here: the flaring photons are reduced to the objects of a masterful gaze, the gaze of the newborn subject.But because the diegetic world so created extends to the differentiated space in front of the screen, that subject is also subjected to the diegesis" (2004, p.43). 15 Annabelle Honess Roe is called that "Rotoshopped Interviews".See also.http://anm.sagepub.com/content/7/1/25 16Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009620/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11 who tries hard to rescue her child.This poignant structure has been very effective.The sinking of the passenger ship is quite subjective in the film.Winsor McCay has not used the actual shoots of Lusitania.He has re-created the accident with using animation methods.He has linked it to narration (Sheila 2005, p.7).
Paul and Sandra Fierlinger have originated an essential language in animated documentary genre.Fierlinger has illustrated a narrative through the eyes of Czech diplomat's son in Drawn From Memory 17 (1995).It is defined as an autobiographical story by critics.Paul Vester who is another animation documentary director has used the interviews that are done with people who were abducted by aliens, in his movie Abductees 18 (1995).Many animators have contributed to the film.That kind of films cannot be rendered without recreation.The images of the people who have been abducted were not used in the movie.Personal experiences of these people have been interpreted by animation artists.However, the structure of each story is different from the other.
The animations do not only depict the experience of the abductees, but also give a personal meaning to the story.The drawings which show the abductees have also figured in the movie.As a result, a creative and mighty story structure was built (Sheila 2005, p.7-9).Jin Trnka's movie The Hand (1965) is a political animated documentary.This short puppet animation was created for the purpose of resistance to the totalitarian regime.The artist (in the form of a puppet) has been fighting with a live hand in the film.The hand desires that the artist makes its own sculpture.The artist rejects that.At the end of the film, the artist gets killed by the 17 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322084/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_6 18 Refer to the tag of the movie.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178214/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 hand.Since Jin Trnka's death in 1969, the film has been banned for twenty years (Sheila 2005, p.7-11).
Jen Sacht's movie The Velvet Tigress19 (2001) is a recent example of animated documentary.In the movie, Winnie Ruth Judd's murder trial has been animated.Not only the details of the murder trial have been investigated in the film, but also the attitude of the media has been revealed.Sequential images from newspapers have reflected the atmosphere of the trial.The animations which are used in the film are thought-provoking in terms of unusual comments (Sheila 2005, p.7-11).Since an animated film 'exists' only when it is projected there is no preexisting reality, no pro-filmic event captured in its occurrence its classification as documentary can be problematic (Hann 2012, p.10).
The marriage of animation and documentary may seem like an odd union, a matching of opposites, complicated by their different approaches to representing our experiences of the world.The former conjures up thoughts of comedy, children's entertainment and fantasy; the latter carries with it (often misplaced) assumptions of seriousness, rhetoric and evidence.The long history, however, of the hybridisation of animation and documentary, one that stretches back to the earliest days of the moving image, would suggest that, as in many things in life, opposites can attract in a meaningful way (Roe 2011, p.215).
In these instances, the film makers have tried such methods of expression that are different from real shoots and interviews.In animated documentary, the presentation of the image is completely in the hands of the artist.Animated documentary may be considered contradictory at first.How can a story build the reality by the means of production?Animated documentaries attempt to show the truth with unreality issues.The defined roles may be on a slippery surface in animated documentaries.

The Features of Animated Documentary
Animated documentaries provide film makers with a whole control that traditional documentary film makers can never have.The animator artist has an exact control on his work as much as a painter has on his canvas.Traditional documentary film maker's success may be measured with his work on camera, shooting angles, using lights, directing and so on, but there are no such problems in animated documentary.Because each image is being created artificially.
Documentaries that rely entirely on animated images may be somewhat rare, but the use of animation in individual sequences is not […] Because it successfully evades the documentary's commitment to the indexicality of the image, the use of animation seems like a perfect fit for experiences of which there is no historical record.Animated sequences work as a sort of reconstruction, the re-creation of events that are no longer available for documentation (Spence and Navarro 2011, p.209).
The main technical elements which are used in animated documentary can be summarized as follows: Animated cartoon, puppet film, shading film, hand painted animation, computer animations.Animated cartoon is also called cartoon movie.The first step of the preparation of the animated cartoon is its illustration from beginning to the end.Then the audio tape will be mapped according to this draft.Movement will be cut to pieces and each part will be painted one by one, by hand.Then they will be transferred to film.Puppet film is a movie which is performed by puppets instead of pictures drawn by hand.Shading film consists of a combination of puppet film and animated cartoon.Hand painted animation is based on artwork.The artist draws images directly on the film (Özön 2010, p.258-260).
Computer animation is a kind of animated documentary that came into action in 1980s.
These sorts of animations are not generated in animation tables.The animations are composed with computers.At the beginning, it was carried out with the support of very powerful computers.
It has been developed step by step every year.The models have been calculated for each images in computer animations, according to the lighting conditions of the environment in which they found themselves drawn and painted over.In comparison with the various film tricks of usual old movies, computer animation is much more believable (Özön 2010, p.258-262).Traditional animation techniques have left their place to computer animations (CGI).Key-framing, morphing and motion capture techniques have been widely used in modern cinema.Also the use of CGI20 has changed in animated documentaries.Furthermore, the use of CGI may illustrate the reality.
According to Annabelle Honess Roe; Animation, it seems, is able to be polymorphous in a way that the "sacred" form of documentary is not.One could argue that an example of a documentary-led animation is Walking with Dinosaurs21 , because of the reverse emphasis in this animated documentary (or documentary animation).The hyper-realistic living, breathing dinosaurs are created to scientific specifications and rely upon "markers of indexicality […] to add authenticity to constructed imagery (2013,49).
Moreover, it may compose a reality defined as Augmented Reality22 .The effects of CGI can be summarized as follows: New animation techniques, character modelling, virtual reality and Augmented Reality (Song 2009, p.3-10).

Animated Documentary and Reality
The film makers may try to increase the perception of reality in the movies.According to many of the film critics, there is no pure reality, because a part of reality would be dissimulated by the film maker while film is being edited.In some hybrid kinds of movies, some scenes may be reconstructed.Do these scenes still have reality?In comparison with traditional documentaries, animated documentaries would seem completely unreal.It has got neither actual shoots nor real photos; it is just based on the imagination of the artist.The reality of animated documentaries cannot be compared with the traditional documentaries.However, animations have made contribution about creation of new aesthetic forms to both documentary and fiction movies.Jean Baudrillard has put forward "Simulation Theory" which influenced all social sciences.
According to his theory, simulation has entered into a period that the reality is disappeared and its place is taken by Simulacra 23 (Öker 2005, p.211-212).The reality has turned into hyper reality in the simulation universe.The differences between reality and simulation have been removed.All communication means have evoked a fictional reality.This reality has turned into a functional medium.This is actually not the reality, because it is deprived of the unreality that surrounds it.This is the indication of the fact that we have entered into an era of simulation (Öker 2005, p.213).
In this world, it is possible for the real to be a copy of the model.Baudrillard's simulation universe seems like a kind of imaginary universe, but it obtains a physical truth and vision by means of language: just like animated documentary.As Friedrich Nietzsche said; "As we have disposed of the real world, how are we supposed to call the rest.Is it the view of the world?
Definitely not!Because we have destroyed the real imagination with the real world" (Adanır 2010, p.163).The abstraction has pushed cinema to be a form.Despite this, cinema has chosen reality for the sake of general aestheticization.Realism has become a rule.In the end, the art which has lost its function has seemed like holistic reality, because it has exhausted all that it has (Adanır 2010, p.222-223).
23 "Indeed Baudrillard pronounced 'the end of art' in an era of simulacra and simulations, and so he was hardly going to endorse and praise those artists who were now claiming their art to be simulacra" (Smith 2010, p.23).
Baudrillard's work, leading to an awareness of points of resistance against the hyper-real: "sending back to the system its own logic by doubling it; to reflecting, like a mirror, meaning without absorbing it" (Smith 2010, p.46).According to Baudrillard, these images can be summarized as follows; an image as a reflection of deep reality, the image that is changing and hiding a deep reality, the image that is not associated with any kind of reality and that is simulacra of itself (2010, p.20).Indeed Baudrillard pronounced the end of art in an era of simulacra and simulations, and so he was hardly going to endorse and praise those artists who were now claiming their art to be simulacra (Smith 2010, p.23).
The problem is partly attributed to the way that a distinct language of documentary film has been established over the years, which distinguishes it from other film forms such as animation (Danta 2013, p.2).Although animated documentary, as to content, moves away from traditional documentary from time to time, it can be considered as a kind of re-presentation of the anti-theater of communication.Animated documentary which is based on reality merges into the communication game instead of representing the reality.
When it comes to animated documentary films, such spectatorial responses are not trivial.This is because the animated documentary is locked into a tenuous relation with the world it represents, a relation expressed in the mixing of 'realistic' themes with fantastic forms.In other words, it seems rather preposterous to attribute a film that deploys an array of non-realistic stylistic devices with the capacity to make powerful truth claims about reality the essence of documentary film according to Nichols (Nichols 1998, p.20 transfer Bendor 2011, p.2).

The Analysis of Waltz with Bashir
The story begins with Boaz Rein who escaped from twenty-six dogs in his dreams.Boaz is a former Israeli soldier.He tells his nightmare to Ari Folman (the director of the movie) in a bar.
He has been chasing continuously in his dreams by twenty-six dogs.Boaz explains to Folman that the number of dogs in his dream is symbolic for it is the exact number of dogs that killed when he and his regiment were patrolling the terrains of Lebanon in Operation Peace for Galiee (Hankir and Agius 2010, p.73).
Dream sequences such as the one that begins the movie; reinforce the cartoon quality, even when the theme is horrific.These nightmares are related to the Lebanon War.Folman has not remembered much about that period of his life.Intrigued by this, he wants to find his military friends in order to learn about what happened in the war.As Folman seeks the mystery, his memory awakes by the means of surreal images.Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008), for instance, uses animation as an alternative to live action footage and as a means of reflecting on the nature of memory.The film collects various testimonies from individuals who were involved in Israel's 1982 military offensive against Lebanon.Folman chooses to animate the stories in a dreamlike way that represents the subjective character of the recollections and phantasmagoric dimension of the war experience (Spence and Navarro 2011, p.209-210).
Folman served in Israeli army in the period of Sabra and Shatila Massacre.The depression of the main character and his effort to get rid of his memory loss has been treated in the movie.
The truth is handled with fictional methods in the documentary.The movie is based on reality.In this context, the real interviews which are done with Folman's friends, specialists and journalists are represented by animations.Waltz with Bashir is written from the perspective of a real ex-soldier who visualizes, or reenacts, memories of murders conducted by the army he served in, in his presence, maybe by himself.Folman calls the massacre of Sabra and Shatila the worst thing that humankind can do to each other and scripted it as his film's climax (Neidhardt 2011, p.10).

Image1: Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Voice-over method is generally used in both fiction and documentary.Ari Folman is the voice-over of the film.In addition, interviews are used in the documentary.Interviews are animated as dialogues.The dialogues which are based on animation enhance the impression of being a documentary of the movie.It can be seen in the film that thirty Israeli soldiers shot a child.
The documentary also shows that Israeli soldiers helped Phalangists 24 to reach the camp and they pursued everything from a hill overlooking the camp.Moreover they provided a carry light in order to continue the night of the massacre.But the message of the movie is that "Phalangists are the real criminals, do not forget it".The soldier (Shmuel Frenkhel) who waltzes in front of the Bashir Gemayel's portrait confirms this claim.
At the same stage, Palestinians are likened to cinemagoers.The situation of the Palestinian people is left vague in the movie.The main character does not have any memory about the massacre, at all.All he's got are some images about the times he spent on the beach.These images are accompanied by music with a fictional narrative.Many scenes of the film are like the filmic reality that captured by a camera.Animated characters and the formal structure of the film have 24 The name is given to the fascist Christian militias during the Lebanese Civil War.
announced the death of unreal to viewers.In cinema, repetition of the indicators is required for system to prove the reality of itself.Thus, the cinematographic indicators may have a dimension of reality.Baudrillard has described these images as synthetic images and he has ruined it to perfecting process performed on DNA.Baudrillard has defined these images with holistic reality (Adanır 2010, p.166-167).If the politicians remember the consequences of the conflict, they can resort to diplomatic channels before armed forces.Animated documentaries begin to have a seamless outlook, gradually.So, they continue reproduction as being virtual angels of the evil that settled in us.In this context, at the end of the movie, actual shoots are given on the purpose of creating the reality allegation of the documentary.
According to Baudrillard; "photographs give an account of the state of the world in our absence.The objective searches for this absence" (2013, p.143).Simulacra is also like that for Baudrillard.

Image 3: Waltz with Bashir (2008)
At the end of the documentary, a wailing lugubrious woman mourning the deaths of their loved ones, their screams penetrating your soul and Folman has been standing at the end of road beholding the spectacle before him utterly stupefied.And Folman's search for his lost memories comes to an end (Hankir and Agius 2010, p.75).
The distinctions between fiction and documentary are presented with formal methods in Waltz with Bashir.Although historical memory is idealized with the intervention of the economy, organization of events and time are fragmentized logically.With Baudrillard's own words, the art has transformed into holistic reality, because it has used up whatever it had.

Conclusion
The development of the art of cinema has progressed in two main categories: Documentary and fiction.Documentaries are often less popular than fiction.Reality has always been at the center of documentaries.Documentary may not penetrate to pure reality.However, its power is based on the reality allegations.All the representing problems should be questioned clearly in the integration of the documentary and fiction.Hybridity matters have shown up in the field of documentary due to artistic concerns since 1990s.These concerns are resolved by animations in animation documentary.On the other hand, the screening changes do not only involve narration, but also they can be reduce the reality of documentary.
The film critics mention that every movies include fictional structures even documentaries.
Because, every movies involve their possibilities (such as shoots, sounds and editing).In other words, real events are edited by imaginative structures.All the films are fiction in this sense.Animated documentary genre is so, two times more: It is unreal, based on imagination and it offers all the methods of the fiction, but it uses the allegation of reality of documentary.
However, the strength of impression of reality may restrict the filmic possibilities in cinema.The combination of documentary and fiction may merge in some movies.On the other hand, the hybridity of the documentary may reveal new cinematic languages.Thus, the film makers may rearrange images, events and reality from a different point of view.In animated documentary,

Image 2 :
Waltz with Bashir (2008) Beach SceneThe patriarchal structure can be seen when the structure of the narrative of the movie is analyzed.This structure originates from the intolerance of irregularity and complexity.Recent crisis of Western society have been effective on that.The apparent structure of the film continues to do a subliminal propaganda by indicators and secret codes.The movie helps us to realize the importance of what happened in Palestine.This documentary may be considered as healing due to showing the human sufferings.