Documentary style as post-truth monstrosity in the mockumentary horror film

This article argues that the mockumentary horror film uses its stylistic hybridity to address the ontological and epistemic challenges posed to factual media in a post-truth and post-modern age through an analysis of the film Apollo 18 (Gonzalo López-Gallego, 2011). By adopting the visual aesthetics associated with factual media, and particularly those associated with post-9/11 surveillance culture, the form challenges the endurance of longstanding cultural structures (news, documentary, factual broadcasting) upon which our conceptualisation of the world is founded. In this respect, the boundary-crossing aesthetics parallel longstanding conceptualisation of the monster in horror. This aesthetic approach is most clearly manifested through the emulation of medium-specific textural artefacts which accrue across the film in a structured manner to create a situation in which the documentary investigation records its own destruction. The mockumentary horror film literalises the broader conceptual failure of the documentary project to work through and make sense of unresolved traumas and stand up to the threats posed by the epistemic horrors of a post-truth cultural turn

Singing for lung health in COPD: a multicentre randomised controlled trial of online delivery

BACKGROUND: Singing for lung health (SLH) is an arts-based breathing control and movement intervention for people with long-term respiratory conditions, intended to improve symptoms and quality of life. Online, remotely delivered programmes might improve accessibility; however, no previous studies have assessed the effectiveness of this approach. METHODS: We conducted an assessor-blind randomised controlled trial comparing the impact of 12 weeks of once-weekly online SLH sessions against usual care on health-related quality of life, assessed using the RAND 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) Mental Health Composite (MHC) and Physical Health Composite (PHC) scores. RESULTS: We enrolled 115 people with stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), median (IQR) age 69 (62-74), 56.5% females, 80% prior pulmonary rehabilitation, Medical Research Council dyspnoea scale 4 (3-4), forced expiratory volume in 1 s % predicted 49 (35-63). 50 participants in each arm completed the study. The intervention arm experienced improvements in physical but not mental health components of RAND SF-36; PHC (regression coefficient (95% CI): 1.77 (95% CI 0.11 to 3.44); p=0.037), but not MHC (0.86 (95% CI -1.68 to 3.40); p=0.504). A prespecified responder analysis based on achieving a 10% improvement from baseline demonstrated a response rate for PHC of 32% in the SLH arm and 12.7% for usual care (p=0.024). A between-group difference in responder rate was not found in relation to the MHC (19.3% vs 25.9%; p=0.403). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: A 12-week online SLH programme can improve the physical component of quality of life for people with COPD, but the overall effect is relatively modest compared with the impact seen in research using face-to-face group sessions. Further work on the content, duration and dose of online interventions may be useful. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04034212

Textualism, extratextualism, and the fiction/nonfiction distinction in documentary studies

This article critiques existing textualist and extratextualist (intentionalist and reception-driven) approaches to capturing the ordinary understanding of the fiction/nonfiction distinction in philosophical and film scholarship on documentary and offers an alternative extratextualist approach dubbed institutionalism. I argue that textualist attempts fail because no textual element (presentational strategy, misrepresentation, staging, or indexicality) is necessarily either fictive or nonfictive. Intentionalism falls short because films can change their non/fictional status over time (e.g. phantom rides). Finally, reception-driven approaches confuse personal categorizations for public ones. The proposed institutionalism, by contrast, combines the strengths of moderate textualism and reception-driven theories (allowing for the changing status of documentary and nonfiction) with those of intentionalism (denying that some textual elements are necessarily fictive and others nonfictive) to capture the ordinary understanding of the fiction/nonfiction distinction