Documentation

All art (stories, paintings, films, etc.) are in some way a sort of documentation in that they are documenting ideas and cultures which relate to the circumstances in which they were made and relate to the audience to which they were made for. They may not be striving to necessarily ‘document’ something but they are. For example, the short story Vanka by Anton Chekhov may not have been striving to document what life was like for a working class boy in 1886 Moscow, Russia or what life was like in a small Russian village but the story does this. This character, Vanka, is technically fictitious, but Vanka can be seen to represent a certain lifestyle of the time. Therefore, the story is a documentation of the culture of how a young working class boy’s life might of been and gives some insight to how the situation of orphanage was handled then as well. 

Another example is the Hollos’ children’s book The Story of Your Coat. This story strives to teach the process of a coat being made and the culture of the time of 1946 is also recorded through the piece. Since this story strives to teach a potential inquiry of a child it could be categorized under as purely education, however, the piece is also documenting a historical process whether it really intended to or not. 

An example of a film which documents a particular culture and era is the  Chinese drama Not One Less (1999). This film captures the educational environment which existed in rural China and contrasts rural China with urban China. For example, the film captures the problem of rural children dropping out of school at young ages in order to start working and to help provide for their families. When in the city the children which are shown who are city natives always have backpacks and appear to be going or coming from school. In contrast, the children who state that they are from rural villages are always shown as children workers in the city and are shown as very poor. Through this the film is expressing that children raised in the city are wealthier and go to school longer while rural children drop out of school and come to the city to work. The film is capturing society, cultural practices, class systems, and economic circumstances of the time through characters and through the story in its entirety. Another specific economic circumstances which the film documents are the specific prices on train tickets, chalk, and the some different employment salaries such as the salary of a substitute teacher for a month, a brick mover, and a laundry girl). Overall, the film captures culture, society, educational, and economic circumstances of specifically rural China and partially of urban China in the 1990s and partially of urban China and therefore is a type of documentation of China in the 1990s.