Trying to quickly take a photo of a person that entirely captures their personality is no easy feat. Add the extra challenge of never having met the person and this task begins to seem nearly impossible. Although I feel that I often overlook it, individuality should truly be regarded with awe. The complexities that compromise an individual appear to be infinite. People are so variable and how they are viewed in eyes of the others they have encountered is also extremely variable. It is for these reasons that I become slightly agitated when my mother reminds me of her desire for me to “stay true to myself”. I feel as though she wants my decisions in college and life to be based on some previous version of self; a version of me she favored. However, I often question if I would be committing an injustice against myself for making a decision that I heavily agree with today that I younger or previous me would not agree with. Ultimately, I feel that this idea relates to one of the bigger, more abstract, and angsty questions, “who I am I?”. This is a question that I have not been able to answer for myself. I feel that individuals are always changing on all bases and thus it’s hard to represent all that a person is through any medium.
In terms of documentaries, perhaps this can be applied to how we analyze the information we receive from other people. Donald Glover once said in an interview that he does not want others to think of the thoughts and emotions he expresses in his music as static. Rather, he talks about what he experiences for brief moments of time. For instance, if he writes about being depressed and angry because of racism, this does not mean his entire life is centered on him being pissed off all the time because of racism. He just feels this way at times. While this seems rather obvious, this is something that I often overlook in documentaries. For example, if someone told me how much they love their community in a documentary that supports the idea that their community is great, I might see this person’s prospective as static. However, application of the previously mentioned ideas might lead me to understand that this person might not always be in favor of her community and question what provoked her to answer the way she did when she was interviewed for the film.
