Complaining: Documentary Of Lies

Out of over 100 examples, Documentary of Lies has 3 parodies and 6 In-Universe examples. The In-Universe examples are listed at the bottom of the page in the folder titled "Fictional Examples". The rest of the page consists of works that purport to be non-fiction but are inaccurate or biased to varying degrees.

Many of the examples sound like complaining and potential Flame Bait. Additionally, several examples say something to the effect of "X claims Y work is this" without providing any evidence as to whether or not the claims presented are true.

The page discussion is full of rather heated debates (including one about evolution and religion), and references at least one past Edit War. A TRS thread was created a few years ago, but it seems to have stalled before real progress was made. Someone raised the possibility of making this trope In Universe Examples Only Please, which may be worth discussing as a means of eliminating current problems and preventing future issues with the page.

Opening. That page has been a source of problems for a long time.

My first thought was that one particular paragraph in the definition of the trope should be more emphasized: "Television networks that produce a Documentary of Lies usually justify it by saying - off camera - that the programs are entertainment only and the filmmakers have no more of a duty to reflect the truth than do the makers of The X-Files; if viewers mistake it for non-fiction, that's their problem. That defense might work if the programs themselves were actually presented as fiction..."

I think it would be noteworthy and tropeable if someone responsible for such a documentary is reduced to making that defense. Maybe just as trivia rather than a trope, but there are pages here even less important than that. However, I've skimmed the "Film" section of the page and didn't find any instances of people using the "entertainment" defense, which makes me think it might be too rare to trope.

If there are sources out there for that kind of thing, we could use that and/or another criteria: when the creators later admit that key parts were made up, like Fox's alien autopsy documentary, which is on the page.

edited 21st May '15 8:26:04 AM by Cybishop

I've gone through all the examples and found that they fall into a few categories:


The creator uses "It's entertainment, it doesn't have to be true" defense:
Walking With Dinosaurs
Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives


Probably should be considered a Reality Show instead of a documentary:
All of the truTV examples


The creator later admits it's a hoax or joke:
The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark
The Alien Autopsy video


The creator (or the network that showed it) later admits it's inaccurate or that they lied (includes retractions and public apologies):
The ABC piece about the Toyota recalls
The 60Minutes piece about Benghazi
The CNN Newsstand piece about the Vietnam War
The Fox and Friends piece about Obama
The Dateline piece about GMC
The Today Tonight piece about nursing home abuse


The creator reveals it was a promo for something:
The Buried Secret Of M Night Shyamalan


Everything else appears to be (1)"this work lied about X", (2)"this work didn't fact check and X is wrong", (3) "X claims Y is this", and (4)"this person has lied or misrepresented his or her personal history". Additionally, many of the examples sound pretty negative, and not just about the work itself; the directors, news networks, reporters, etc. are in some cases described rather negatively. It seems a little questionable to refer to real people as quacks, for example.


Edited due to my formatting fail.

edited 21st May '15 8:21:10 PM by phoenix

Can't this be made YMMW and be done with?

The cases where Word of God admits that the "documentary" is a hoax, a joke, or at least not accurate are objective, not YMMV.

edited 25th May '15 5:19:05 AM by GnomeTitan

This is not YMMV. Nanook of the North and Chang were staged. Der Ewige Jude is filled with claims that are flat-out false. Those are objective facts.

That being said, I agree that many of the examples are flame-baity and nitpicky, as is demonstrated with the wall of text about Michael Moore's films. I think that cutting this trope on the grounds that it is Flame Bait is better than making it YMMV.

I think the "entertainment, not necessarily true" stuff like Walking With Dinosaurs falls under Mockumentary, so wouldn't really be examples of this trope. The examples where the creator or network admitted their mistake/deception and/or issued a retraction are objectively examples, but even so may attract arguments and natter. The parodies and intentional hoaxes like the Alien Autopsy video don't really have that problem.

We could allow only examples (other than In-Universe or hoaxes/parodies) where there was an actual admission of mistake/deception. Alternatively, we could make this In Universe Examples Only Please. Making this YMMV would do nothing to eliminate the Flame Bait potential, and may just lead to arguments on individual works' YMMV pages (and we probably have enough arguing on those pages already).

Personally, I would support making this In Universe Examples Only Please, perhaps with an allowance for parodies and intentional hoaxes.

I was the person who originally started the YKTTW for this trope. I wanted a trope for things like "Ancient Aliens" that have a documentary format but peddle paranormal/supernatural bullshit. (Often the people who make these things don't believe them.) These shows often tend to be very similar to each other in style, so there's a trope there, but I'm not really sure what to do with it. I could have called it "Paranormal Documentary Show", I guess?

edited 27th May '15 4:00:46 PM by Ronfar

I'm not really familiar with Ancient Aliens. Does it have a disclaimer or anything about speculation? I've seen a few Travel Channel and Discovery Channel specials about things like the Bermuda Triangle where the format of the show is similar to a documentary, but the show has a disclaimer somewhere about some parts being based on speculation. Also, the Travel Channel shows about hauntings in different locations comes to mind. These shows never come right out and say that something is true, and typically have some sort of disclaimer, so they're not really a Documentary of Lies so much as a Non-Documentary of Implications.

We have a Speculative Documentary genre page, but it covers things like Walking With Dinosaurs that are mostly extrapolated from science for the purpose of entertainment and aren't meant to be confused with real documentaries. Should shows like the Bermuda Triangle one and Haunted History (I think that's the name) be classed as their own genre?

If so, quite a few examples currently on Documentary of Lies would better fit under that instead, including most of the History Channel entries. Some of the others, like Walking With Dinosaurs, don't really seem to fit this trope and are already on the Mockumentary and Speculative Documentary pages.

Even so, the other problems with the page would still need to be addressed.

edited 29th May '15 3:18:19 PM by phoenix

The show doesn't have a speculation disclaimer at all.

How does the show present itself? Is everything worded in such a way as to imply that it's fact, or does it make outright statements? Is it more "Aliens could have been behind everything! Here's the evidence that supports this conclusion." or "Aliens were behind everything! Here's the undeniable proof."?

The show only seems to briefly mention other non-alien related theories, and when it does, it very quickly dismisses them. And I think the reason that other guy in the thread submitted the YKTTW is because the show has sometimes even lied about the facts, such as claiming the Puma Punku site in Bolivia is made out of Granite and Diorite, when in actuality the site is made out of red Sandstone and Andesite.

edited 30th May '15 9:17:25 AM by harryhenry

But I don't want this thread to turn into complaining about Ancient Aliens, this thread is about the trope's current problems.

Agreed. I just thought it might be worthwhile to pin down the different types of things we're dealing with here, in case some of these things need to be moved to another page.

So what's the best way to address the issues of complaining?

My thinking is to start off by putting in a more prominent "this is not a page for Complaining About Shows You Dont Like" note, and adding something about keeping examples neutral and to the point.

I think a "criteria test" might also be in order, as has been done for pages like MacGuffin where the definition is firm, but with nuances that are easy for the "tl;dr" crowd to completely miss.

Something like:

The following are not a Documentary of Lies

• If there are disclaimers explaining that the work is not true, even if you think they may be easy to miss, it is a Mockumentary.
• If the work makes it clear that it is positing a What If?, while grounding itself in hard fact, it is a Speculative Documentary.

If the work answers yes to any of the following, it may be a Documentary of Lies:

• Does the work present wild speculation as equal in weight to legitimate theory?
  • If the work clearly distinguishes between wild speculation and real world fact while also delving into mole-people related theories it may be a legitimate Documentary attempting to liven up the show with an enthusiastic Cloudcuckoo Lander or two.
• Does the work present things which are easily disproven as true?
  • Take into account Science Marches On and the degree of error- for instance, featherless dinosaurs in a 90's documentary were in accordance with scientific knowledge at that time. Einstein Sue velociraptors, less so.
• Has the work been retracted by the creators or declared to have been made purely for entertainment value?
  • Failure to retract does not disqualify, but doing so almost universally makes a work this trope.

edited 3rd Jun '15 2:55:55 PM by Scorpion451

That might work, but the first criteria may still be too YMMV, drawing natter about what counts as "wild speculation" or "legitimate theory" and exactly how they should be distinguished from one another.

Limiting it to in-universe examples and cases where the creator(s) admitted the work is fake would be more clear-cut.

Maybe we should just merge with "Based on a Great Big Lie"?

A bit apples/oranges, I'd say. A documentary that exists to misrepresent something has a different scope than a work based upon a major misrepresentation.

Based on a Great Big Lie says that Documentary of Lies is its Sub-Trope, so I don't know if merging them would make any practical difference. The issues at hand seem to be (1) the tone of the page, which sounds like complaining in many places, and (2) the dissimilarity of examples, which makes it seem like this page is trying to cover several very different ideas under one trope.

We could probably deal with (2) by clarifying the trope's definition, then relocating any examples that don't fit to more appropriate pages. This may involve the creation of a new trope or genre page, if it's decided that some of the examples don't fit any existing tropes.

Issue (1) has several possible fixes. We could leave it as is. We could cut all the examples from the page. We could make it In Universe Examples Only and cut everything except the bottom two folders (I believe a few more In-Universe examples are listed on work pages but aren't on the trope page). We could make an attempt to rewrite the examples to sound less like complaining and as neutral as possible. We could have it listed as Flame Bait and disallow its use on work pages.

Let me know if I've missed anything, please!

Personally, I'd prefer to try to salvage as much as possible without leaving the potential for the problems to resurface later. So I think cutting the page or all the examples would be a little too extreme. I'm partial to the idea of making it In Universe Examples Only, as I believe there's a viable trope here if we clear up the problems. Also, I apologize if this post is a little long.

Edit: Looking at both again, I'm starting to think that Documentary of Lies really shouldn't be a Sub-Trope of Based on a Great Big Lie.

edited 6th Jun '15 1:39:30 AM by phoenix

Hm. I'm trying to find a meaningful distinction between Documentary of Lies and Based on a Great Big Lie, and failing.

To me, it seems like Based on a Great Big Lie is inaccurate for artistic reasons or to make a better story, while Documentary of Lies is inaccurate because the creator either fails to fact check or has an agenda.

No, taking artistic licence with a true story is Very Loosely Based on a True Story. A work Based on a Great Big Lie is completely fictional.

The difference between Based on a Great Big Lie and Documentary of Lies is probably at least as much as the difference between Based on a True Story and Documentary.

And I don't think they should be subtropes either. There's likely to be some overlap, but a Documentary of Lies is often based on a real subject, not all made-up.

I personally think this trope page shouldn't exist, unless it can be proven that the examples in the documentaries are genuine lies or misinformation. From what I've read about many of the examples, it doesn't point out blatant lies, just a disagreement about what was in the documentaries.

Well, I provided three examples in my post above of documentaries that are known to have been falsified, including Nanook of the North, the first documentary ever. There is a distinction between Michael Moore-style "he edited two speeches together!" nitpicking and outright falsehoods.