The Television Documentary and the Real

She: “I always speak the truth”—so what do you … say about that? …

I: No one ever speaks without at the same time saying, “I speak the truth.”

She: Except for the person who says “I am lying.”…

I: And even if I say “I am lying,” I am saying nothing but “it is true that I am lying”—which is why truth is not the opposite of falsehood.

The document vis-à-vis a truth or a falsehood often relates to the law in terms of something presented as evidence of truth and the real. This evidence can of course occur in a written form such as an affidavit, passport, or driving licence. The television and the popular press has during the twentieth and, indeed, twenty-first century created an additional function for the document. This function might be termed “entertainment”. This paper explores how and why the British media document yokes desire for the truth, the real, and entertainment through appropriations of the Provisional IRA (PIRA).

At either a conscious or unconscious level, the televised documentary recruits its audience into a type of game. At stake during this game is the credibility of the implicit declaration: “‘I always speak the truth.’” But, following Lacan in Television, “credibility” can be challenged through the question: “While we play this game, must I have confidence in you, believe that you know something I don't, and that there is something to know?” (xiii). One way in which the televised documentary might persuade an audience that there is something real to know is through the mediation of a symbolic exchange between “truth” and “confidence.” This idea coincides with Stuart Hall's proposal about how “ ‘true’ means credible, or at least capable of winning credibility as a statement of fact” (1057). For Hall, winning credibility demands a statement which synthesizes truth and fact. But truth and fact are not the same thing, because oppositions such as true / false, fact / fiction, and illusion / reality deconstruct to problematize clichéd and aut