Hiding from Significance: Winnebago Man

Abstract

Marking the distinction between art and criticism is necessary in a discussion not of film per se but of documentary film, which arguably straddles worlds of art and criticism. Is an effectively rendered documentary an example of art, or criticism, or both? This question bears on what I want to say about Winnebago Man (2009), a film documentary that is an example, I will argue, of what Robin Wood calls “oppositional cinema.” Therefore, we must ask not only if Winnebago Man is oppositional in the sense that Wood uses the term but also if it is indeed cinema—in the way Wood conceives of cinema. I will answer this latter question first by differentiating between art and criticism, noting that we are more likely to conceive of documentary film as criticism, as opposed to art. To make the case, then, that (this) documentary is indeed, or can be, art, we must take pains to show that criticism is, or can be, art as well.