This is Spinal Tap (1984) – Formalist
Ya girl did it, darlings. I am currently awaiting the final thumbs up I need to submit my PhD thesis. I wrote a whole ass book and then some, and I cannot wait to share it with you all when it gets to that stage, but for now, we have some business to attend to.
To the lovely, wonderful, loyal ones reading this, thank you for your patience as I had several major life events over the last two months while working to finish the thesis. I am immeasurably grateful that people read the words I write and care to consider the thoughts I have on movies they love. We’re coming up on a year of this newsletter’s existence (despite the two-month hiatus) and I am just so proud of the work I have put into it. It isn’t perfect; it isn’t brilliant; it isn’t the baby of Virgil, Shakespeare, and Julia Quinn, but it is mine, and I am proud of it. So, thank you for being part of my pride and joy.
Let’s rock.
Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap (1984) is an absolute treat. If you haven’t had the pleasure, Spinal Tap is a mockumentary (a term we will return to) about a fictional British band, Spinal Tap, consisting mainly of David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) as well as a litany of former drummers who died under varied extreme circumstances. The Review Roulette wheel landed on Formalist for our approach this week, so let’s ease back into the groove of weekly reviews with a long tangent on the meanings of truth and reality. Why not?
Nothing is real and therefore everything is. Or something. Rob Reiner is the director of the film in our world This is Spinal Tap, but he also plays the director of This is Spinal Tap in This is Spinal Tap, Marty Di Bergi. Spinal Tap was a fictional band on Reiner’s earlier TV show The T.V. Show, but they also have played Wembley and Glastonbury. At what point does fiction become fact? McKean, Guest, and Shearer are actually singing and playing their instruments. They are a band in our world and also a fictional band.
Now, I just finished a thesis on the influence of latent messaging in Hollywood cinematic releases and the cultural ramifications of exerting influence over that messaging via a case study on Christmas films. In other words, what is real and what becomes real as a result of pressures on and pressures from cinema? So, please indulge me while we have this little tour of the remnants of my thinking capacity on the subject.
To start off controversially, I think “mockumentary” is an unfair term because documentaries are afforded too much value as “truth”.
This is Spinal Tap is a comedy that creates a fictional context for the fictional band. Spinal Tap is presumably on a comeback tour around the US. The characters are not real people in our world (but are played by comedic geniuses such as Fran Drescher and Billy Crystal in mime). The film is mocking documentaries and stories of other musical groups (e.g. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, etc.). This much we know.
Reiner hired documentary cinematographer Peter Smokler who employed the cinéma vérité (truthful cinema) technique. Cinéma vérité is a style of filmmaking that was integral to the French New Wave and became popular in documentaries in the 1960s for its “honesty”. Generally, it employs an improvisation with the camera to capture the “real” moments of the subject’s life, a hidden “truth” behind the face of a subject. The camera can also be held in hand in this technique, lending a bit of imperfection to each shot that adds to the “real feel” of the scenes. Obviously this is ripe for parodying.
I’ve used so many quotation marks thus far because I do not want to give the impression of an objective truth. Everything that goes into a film, documentary or fictitious, is decided by the people making the films. Documentaries are inherently biased pieces; no matter how hard the filmmakers try to show multiple sides of the subject, no objective truth can be achieved, only approximated which by definition is not objective in itself. It is dangerous to assume that documentaries are showing unbiased presentations of facts, and to that end, I think mockumentary productions like This is Spinal Tap are the brilliant treats they are because they remind us in such exquisite comedic form how structured documentaries are.
At the beginning of Spinal Tap, Reiner’s director character Di Bergi talks about his own personal interest in producing this documentary. He recounts how he first heard of Spinal Tap, became a fan, fell in love with them over 17 years, and “jumped at the chance to make the documentary, the, if you will, rockumentary” that follows. He addresses his biases immediately, something we don’t often get with documentaries that are pleading the truth.
Bias in the creation of media is crucial to understanding the latent messaging in that media. Understanding what “truth” means to the person creating that “truth” is essential. When watching a documentary – or, say, something as innocuous as a Christmas film – you should be able to identify whose interests are being served by the plot, characters, stereotypes, and subject matter. You should know who produced it and what their opinions on the subject are. Ultimately, a documentary has a thesis just like a doctoral thesis or an essay you wrote in school – they are persuasive pieces of cinema and have an argument, even if that argument is that more people should know about the subject because it’s the director’s favourite band. There is always a reason and a choice behind making a documentary.
And I am not trying to claim there is some sinister group backing your favourite documentaries. I’m not saying that documentarians are the Illuminati, pulling the strings of the casual Netflix-binger looking to learn about the world. Documentaries are, in fact, good things that expose us to important issues or lifestyles or cultures we otherwise might not have even known of without them.
What I am saying, I suppose, is that one of my biggest concerns in the world we live in is the polarisation of “truth” as though the world is a black and white thing and Louis Theroux will explain it all to me in 3-hours deemed “vitally important” by some newspaper I don’t even read. We’ve developed a dangerous obsession with seeking the “truth”, especially in the US, without a national acknowledgement of the concept of nuance, or a solid understanding of bias, or an allowance for nonjudgemental ignorance. Despite finishing a PhD on Hollywood Christmas films, I’ve never seen a Christmas slasher, and I think that’s okay because I don’t need to be the holder of all knowledge on a subject. It is okay not to know some things, even when you are an expert on that thing. And I just think that that grace of allowing people to be human is lacking a bit as we head deeper into this polarisation of what is true and what is false.
Documentaries present facts in support of an argument. Even in those employing cinéma vérité, choices are made that present the reality in support of an argument. The filmmaking process for a documentary can be just like researching for a PhD: you form research questions about your set subject; you choose your source base and whom to interview or whose works to read; you gather your information and begin to form opinions and links between that data, reforming those thoughts as you learn more; and then you write, incorporating all that you have learned, stating your biases and opinions, showing how your ideas developed and with whose influences, and concluding with a discussion of why any of it mattered and suggesting steps for further research. Just like any history you read, hear, or watch, a documentary is an interpretation of its subject.
And that’s why This is Spinal Tap is so brilliant. It interprets its subject, Spinal Tap, through the lens of the director’s love for the band and its members. It humanises the bandmates and shows the intimacy between them and endears you to the characters, ultimately choosing the perfect moment of camaraderie to end on a beautiful, emotional, cinematic note of enduring friendship. It presents a representation of what the audience believes to be the harsh sides of life on tour and interpersonal conflicts and the perception of being a rock star as juxtaposed with understated domestic desires. It has Christopher Guest show off an amp that “goes to 11” as though the power of the 11 on his amp’s dial exceeds the 10 in the same place on identical amps with identical amplifying capabilities.
This is Spinal Tap parodies the idea of “truth” but also becomes a truth in itself by launching the fictional band into existence in our own reality. McKean, Guest, and Shearer are members of a real band that started as a joke and is still a joke but is also very much real. The film is made as a fictional comedy commenting on documentaries and rock stardom in our real world but becomes such a cultural statement that that satirical view permeates the film and becomes a real entity in itself.
If you’ve missed my ramblings on films, I’m sure this was a doozey to come back to. The line between fictional and truth is a fine one and a crucial one to understand in our world. Cinema has the power to create reality while also reflecting it. Documentaries can start movements that effect change, and mockumentaries can start bands that headline Glastonbury. Nothing is real and therefore everything is.