Documentary, parenting governmentality, and belonging
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2024-08
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Melbourne Authors
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School of Culture and Communication
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Masters Research thesis
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Open Access
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© 2024 Sandy Joy Watson
Abstract
Documentary, parenting governmentality, and belonging
ABSTRACT
The parental figure and their care for the child is intrinsic to many actuality-based accounts of social experience and belonging, beginning with Robert Flaherty’s ethnographic portrayal of Nanook. Documentary’s portrayal of belonging often “hinges upon representations of family” (Nichols, 2010: 85-86). This thesis examines documentary performances of parenting from the perspective of how these situate vulnerable communities in relation to the imagined nation. It argues that, in a ‘post-racial’ landscape where culture has emerged as an important barometer of the values and acceptance that underpin belonging, representations of parenting have important considerations for the reshaping of contemporary belonging.
Actuality-based formats have been part of the broader socio-political context of heightened public attention to the parental figure and their parenting. Parenting has gained increased visibility following its explication as a subset of family and social policy in Australia and the United Kingdom from 1997 on (Zubrick et al., 2008, Wasoff and Hill, 2002). From 2004 on, commercially successful mega-hits such as Supernanny and Honey You’re Shrinking the Kids have highlighted parenting in primetime broadcast programs that revolve around subject experts who appraise parenting problems. Picking up on this aspect of appraisals, the research examines parental themes in social documentary formats which have a legacy of speaking on the issues facing the nation. It pays attention to the 2001-2010 period which saw discourses of parenting become prominent in two national Australian debates which involved the exclusionary treatment of Muslim and Aboriginal communities (‘Children Overboard’ in 2001 and the Northern Territory Emergency Response of 2006).
The research examines the representation of Muslim and Aboriginal parents in three Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentaries: Jihad Sheilas (2008), Intervention: Katherine, NT (2008), and Intervention: Stories from the Inside (2009). It argues that, as well as visualising the values and expectations deemed to ‘belong’, parenting themes infer community appraisals with implications for ‘race’. Research is guided by the questions: How do documentary representations of the parental figure and their care for the child situate communities in relation to national belonging? What implications do representations of parenting have for culturally sensitive practice?
Following political scholars Michel Foucault (1991a), Nikolas Rose (2017), and Jacques Donzelot (1980), the research applies a governmentality framework to consider documentary depictions of parenting in terms of the evaluative aspects of norms of parental responsibility. Scholars have shown that norms of parental responsibility connect to broader processes of mobilising family to address government-identified problems, including affective attachment to children (Rose, 1990, 1998, Cruikshank, 1993). Together with Foucault’s concept of dividing practices (Foucault, 1982a: 208), this allows for consideration of the parent’s individuation in relation to the collective (the imagined nation) as an approach to belonging. This places representations of parenting in a biopolitical context which treats difference as a target of power (Allen, 2005: 93-94, Dean, 1999: 137).
Using discourse analysis, research undertakes a socio-politically contextualised analysis of parental themes and norms of parental responsibility. It argues that social documentary performances of parenting connect to belonging via the individuation of the parent and their parenting as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which both separates and aggregates. The research contemplates the relationship of documentary performances to reformulations of ‘race’, discussed in terms of the need for greater industry efforts to protect against objectifying practices.
First Nations readers, please be advised that this research contains the names of people who have passed away.
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Keywords
Documentary, Actuality-based television, Public broadcasting, Governmentality of parenting, Parental responsibility, Family, Foucault, Belonging, Appraisal, Parenthood, Childhood, State racism