However, a scene with a skeleton of a CIA agent is followed up by a local person saying that he “killed himself cleaning his revolver. These scenes give a type of realness as found in real documentaries. The scenes show the local atmosphere, and people living ordinary lives. We found empty beer cans and McDonald’s wrappers everywhere ”. It is followed by interviews with local people who describe them as “not very discreet”, and say that “they had no respect for anything. The scene includes a narrator describing that the CIA knew the local language and techniques for blending in. Screenshot Mockumentary Dark Side of the MoonĪn evident example of parody can be found towards the end in a scene where people from the CIA who worked on faking the footage relocate to Indonesia. Parody is used as a way to mock conspiracy theorists who do not believe in the moon landing.
However, the mockumentary gives their spin by NASA asking Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing footage, in the same set as he directed his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It begins by truthful facts such as the moon landing happening. The use of parody in Dark Side of the Moon becomes gradually more evident throughout the movie. The parody element in mockumentaries is used as a way to emphasize humor and mock documentary conventions. The way mockumentaries operate is through three modes: parody, critique and deconstruction (Lipkin, Paget, & Roscoe, 2006). According to Lipkin, Paget and Roscoe (2006) mockumentaries are intended to raise an issue of concern in media representation. The film mixes real facts with misinformation to entertain the viewer but at the same time it exposes that one should be aware of how manipulation of footage and facts can blur the line between truth and fiction, informing the viewer to always stay critical of what they see. Through this paper, I aim to answer the questions: how does Dark Side of the Moon address a knowing audience, and how was the mockumentary misappropriated? Role of parody and satire in the mockumentary Lastly, I will look into how it was received by the audience and how it has constructed alternative truths. I will analyzethe reality effects used in the film to create a “truthful”, realistic portrayal. I will move onto exploring what makes this mockumentary truthful and construct an image of an intended viewer. In this paper, I am going to analyze what exactly is being parodied and satirized in the relatively new genre of the mockumentary.
An edited mockumentary is floating around on the internet which lacks all the giveaways of suggesting that this is a mockumentary thereby making less critical viewers become victims of fake information. However, despite being a mockumentary, less knowing audiences and conspiracy theorists furthered the debate of the moon landing being fake. The film mixes real facts with misinformation to entertain the viewer but at the same time, it exposes that one should be aware of how manipulation of footage and facts can blur the line between truth and fiction, informing the viewer to always stay critical of what they see. For less suspectable viewers, bloopers are included at the end of the film and it is announced that it is, in fact, a mockumentary. The director left giveaways on purpose, such as wrong dates and facts in the film to make the viewer aware that it is not a documentary. The mockumentary is presented in a truthful way, blurring the line between fiction and reality.
It tells a story of how the CIA recruited Stanley Kubrick to help Americans win the space race by using a fake montage of the moon landing. Dark Side of the Moon (2002) is a French mockumentary which exposes the idea of the moon landing being filmed in a studio with the goal of invoking critical reflexivity to question the reliability of the presented discourse in media.ĭirected by William Karel, Dark Side of the Moon depicts the moon landing being filmed in a studio by the Central Intelligence Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Stanley Kubrick.