Introduction: awkward moments -- Awkward aesthetics: Michael Moore and Christopher Guest -- Awkwardly reflected: mirroring anticelebrity in the portrait film -- Awkward satire: comedies of deception -- Awkward extremes: reaction videos and the "reactive gaze" -- Awkward moments, endless days: feeling time in The Office --Conclusion: post-awkward?
Summary
"Despite the prominence of ""awkwardness"" as cultural buzzword and descriptor of a sub-genre of contemporary film and television comedy, it has yet to be adequately theorized in academic film and media studies. Documentary's Awkward Turn contributes a new critical paradigm to the field by presenting an analysis of awkward moments in documentary film and other reality-based media formats. It examines difficult and disrupted encounters between social actors on the screen, between filmmaker and subject, and between film and spectator. These encounters are, of course, often inter-connected."--Provided by publisher
