By examining the 1967 murder of documentary filmmaker Hugh O'Connor by eastern Kentucky landowner Hobart Ison, STRANGER WITH A CAMERA raises important questions about the role of the media in society.
Can media exposure promote social change? Can media promote reform and economic development in poor communities? Are there different standards and/or practices for media makers living and working within a community and those who have no long-term relationship with the people they are portraying?
In his paper, "Ultimately We Are All Outsiders: The Ethics of Documentary Filming," scholar Calvin Pryluck asks, "What is the boundary between society's right to know and the individual's right to be free of humiliation, shame, and indignity?"
Hugh O'Connor chose to film in Kentucky because the Appalachian region was central to the U.S. government's War on Poverty. The documentary crew and the VISTA volunteers featured in the film were working for economic justice in a community to which they had no ties and where, for many residents, their presence was not welcomed.
Mason Eldridge, the miner who was filmed on the porch of his rental house said, "I come in from work one evening, sitting on the porch, I had the baby in my lap and that Hugh O'Connor or another man want...to take my picture. And I give him permission for it." When asked by filmmaker Elizabeth Barret what he thought O'Connor was trying to portray, Eldrige answered, "I don't think they was trying to portray nothing...I think it was for a good cause. I thought they'd get some factories in here, you see, to where people could get different jobs besides working in the coal mines."
Assistant cameraman Richard Black was on location with O'Connor during the fatal incident. He commented that in the trial summation the defense was not talking about the shooter Hobart Ison, but about "some people who had been coming in...making fun of their families and making fun of their history."
Pat Gish, of The Mountain Eagle weekly newspaper states, "We did not use pictures of poor people in The Eagle because we didn't want to put local people in embarrassing situations in front of their neighbors...But I don't see, with the other people who came in, how they could have done anything else. I don't know what could have been done to show the problem. You can talk about it but it doesn't really come through until you actually see it."
Elizabeth Barret says, "I came to see that there was a complex relationship between social action and social embarrassment."
Many of the best-known people dealing with contemporary documentary film recognize the ethical problem. Acclaimed French filmmaker Marcel Ophuls said, "As a filmmaker you're always exploiting. It's part of modern life."
One school of thought is that the subjects featured in documentary films can participate by viewing and commenting on the raw footage. Esteemed documentarian George Stoney is known for this approach. At various stages in his editing, Stoney shows a copy of his work print to the people who appear in the film and anyone else who might be able to contribute some insight. All of this is influential in the subsequent editing and final cut.
At the end of STRANGER WITH A CAMERA, Elizabeth Barret says, "I live every day with the implications of what happened. This is my community. My life is here. As a filmmaker I have the responsibility to see my community for what it is, to tell the story no matter how difficult. As someone who lives here, I have an instinct to protect my community from those who would harm it. What are the responsibilities of any of us who take the images of other people and put them to our own uses? Hobart Ison was wrong to kill Hugh O'Connor. But saying that is not enough for me. It is the filmmaker's job, my job, to tell fairly what I see-to be true to the experiences of both Hugh O'Connor and Hobart Ison - and in the end, to trust that that is enough."
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