Shadowing Practice: The Last Documentary: You Can See Everything - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I have been extremely busy in the past few months.

And so I finally, after way too late, finally saw the movie, you can see everything that everyone was telling me to go see.

And now I understand why.

It is quite brilliant.

It is a brilliant piece of storytelling.

And it is a brilliant questioning about the reason or why is it that we engage in representation?

And how is it that we can do that?

That is, what purposes can we accomplish in the act of representation?

So what I want to do is, of course, you know, this is first going to be full of spoilers.

So, you know, always my reviews are always full of spoilers.

I want to go a little bit through the movie, not too much,

but mostly talk about some of the implications of what the movie is doing

so that you can understand what is it saying about the question of representation? what does that mean for symbolism

and what can we learn from that in terms of people that are engaged in symbolic interpretation

this is Jonathan Pajot welcome to the symbolic world

So the movie is, of course, a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder, CEO of Terranos,

who is got these documentarists to come to her house.

Nathan Fielder, of all people, which is that's already a very strange idea

that she got someone who is known for kind of trolling

and being a jokester to come

and spend the last 30 days with her family the last three days before she goes to prison.

Of course, the idea is that you can see everything.

They, at first, have this pretense that the filmmakers will have access to their entire lives, will be there in their house, living there.

Nathan sleeps in the house and that they'll be able to see everything.

And therefore, they should be able to transparently see the dynamics of the family, the dynamics of what's motivating Elizabeth Holmes.

And this, of course, is taken to extremes

In the early scenes of the movie, there's a pretty shocking scene that you don't expect, which is you see her husband naked in the shower.

It's rare in American cinema that they kind of show full male nudity that way.

So it's a little shocking because you're like, what is it?

Why are they showing this in the documentary?

What's the point?

And then as you watch, you realize that, in fact, you know, this kind of full access capacity to see everything,

almost like the pornographic gesture, doesn't mean that you see everything.

In fact, it is a kind of veil for trying to see what is true and that, in fact, the access to factuality

and the kind of access to data does not mean that you will be able to understand what is happening.

That is, the question that you're asking, the reason why you're investigating cannot be fully captured in the transparency and access to the facts.

So this is, of course, something that is very much the theme of the entire movie.

As the Fielder character starts to investigate, you know, you also, as a person watching the movie,

you're taken through these stages where at first you have the sense that this woman is,

you know, obviously manipulative and is trying to kind of control the narrative,

is trying to represent herself as being completely innocent and maybe is also trying to seduce the interviewer.

And so this first sense, you were like, oh yeah, this makes sense.

This is what is happening in the story.

Then it shifts and suddenly you start to realize that her husband is possibly manipulating her,

is controlling the narrative, is trying ultimately to start, he starts gatekeeping the access to her.

And so you start to question that.

And then ultimately, the whole thing becomes a meta experience where you realize the documentary itself is trying to make you realize

that you're watching a documentary and the mechanisms of the documentary are exposed.

They're already there at the beginning, but we're so used to watching documentaries that we often don't question.

Why am I seeing this?

You know, why?

Why am I seeing the interviewer?

Why are there scenes of him, you know, in bed trying to demonstrate certain things?

So he realized that the entire thing is almost like a theatrical performance

and there are many layers of theater that are layered on top of each other.

There is Elizabeth Holmes that might be pretending.

There's her husband who is also might be pretending.

Then there's the actress who played Elizabeth Holmes in the original TV show that featured her,

The Dropout, being used as an actress to represent the moments that the documentary...

guy doesn't have access to.

And so there's this new layer that is this kind of diving into the actor who played her in the series,

now playing her again in a different guise.

And then finally at the end, you have this final layer where you totally realize the documentary itself might also be a kind of fiction

that is motivated possibly by Nathan Fielder's affection for Elizabeth Holmes

as the actress towards the end of the movie is questioning his participation in this movie

and the way that he's trying to portray Holmes.

We cut to a scene where you see him

and Elizabeth Holmes swimming in the water together

and them acting in a way that honestly is very strange for a married woman to act.

She's kind of touching him.

She's pulling him in the water.

There's a kind of weird intimacy that they are dealing with.

And so the filmmaker himself is somewhat trying to question his own motivation in portraying the movie.

And so when the movie ends, you end up in a kind of maze of mirrors where

you don't really know what is true in the sense of the investigative aspect of what is true.

You know, if this documentary was there to show the truth of something, that is, is she guilty?

Is she the one? almost like a court would do,

then it utterly fails and it also exposes the problem of using representation to try to get to this capacity,

to get to the facts, right?

You know, we have lived in a world where we use fiction

that is based on real events and that fiction affects the way that we understand the original events that are being portrayed.

We are also used to the documentary, to reality TV, to the possibility of representing ourselves, representing ourselves, representing others through social media,

through all these different means.

And what the documentary is able to expose is the way in

which this actually dissimulates that it is not so much an act of revelation of factuality, but it actually dissimulates, you could say,

the intention of why it is that we are showing things.

And this is, I think, a really wonderful kind of exploration.

I think that it will send long ways in culture

if people are able to pay attention to the problem

that it is exposing and how it is exposing the fact that when representation is used,

it is used to bring about an experience and it is used in some ways to make you experience a story.

And that is very different from the fact -based notion of exposing what really happened, you could say.

And in the movie, they do it in an amazing way where they demonstrate on several occasions

and at several layers of the documentary how if you change only one word in a sentence, you can change the meaning of that word.

And so there's a New York Times article at the beginning of the movie

that is brought up where Elizabeth Holmes says that they changed one word in her statement, which has to do with the fact that,

you know, in the New York Times article, it says that the people believed in the character she made for herself.

I forget exactly how it's phrased.

And then Elizabeth Holmes said, I didn't say for myself, I didn't like say that I myself made that character,

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that is a character that was made, right?

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Like they believed in the character.

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So just these two words, this like little change in the statement completely changes the meaning.

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Then later in the movie,

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when Elizabeth Holmes says that her machine can do the things that she said,

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Fielder realizes that what she means by can is the possibility.

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And so the machine, because it's a platform, it has the capacity to basically analyze any disease,

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but it doesn't mean that it's actually doing it now.

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You have to basically fill up the data so that the machine will come to do it.

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And so she seems to imply that when she says that the machine can do this, she means in potential.

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And what people are hearing, and one of the reasons why she was condemned is

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that what people understood that was meant by that was that in actuality that the machine can do this.

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And so just now it's even the same word, that even the same word with one little difference of interpretation of that one word,

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you actually totally flip the meaning of the sentence.

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You completely invert the meaning of the sentence.

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And this, of course, is taken up later when Fielder himself seems to misremember one word in her testimony in the prison,

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you know, and he hesitates.

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And not only does he hesitate in the meaning of the word, but when the actress is playing the text the way

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that she plays the text will affect the meaning and the understanding

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and so as she reads the lines he says no no don't say it

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that way and then she changes the way she says it

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and it completely changes the meaning of what it is

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that is happening and

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so what the movie is doing is of course almost in in the most radical kind of post -modern way

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it is exposing the impossibility of representation to be mimetic in an objective and completely neutral sense.

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And there is even a suggestion, something that I've believed for a very long time,

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which is that because realism in the sense of either painterly realism

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or realism in terms of the way that movies are made or the way that documentaries are made,

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because realism in some ways hides its artifice, right?

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It uses an artifice of spontaneity.

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It makes you feel like you're watching real life and that you're watching something that isn't controlled, isn't edited, isn't directed.

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Then it actually comes closer to lying because it dissimulates its artifice in a kind of realism.

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And so there are other methods of representation that,

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of course, do not pretend to be accurate portrayals of something that happened, but rather use representation for other means.

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A simple example of that in history is, of course, when Plutarch writes his Lives of Great Men.

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His purpose in writing the Lives of Great Men is not an accurate portrayal of the person,

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especially the fact that they lived hundreds of years before him, but that, in fact, the purpose of the representation is to create models

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that people can look at and identify with and follow.

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And in doing

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that, the use of representation is aimed at a different purpose

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than what we tend to think in terms of kind of reductionist materialist.

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We believe that the purpose of representation is accuracy.

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And this is extremely important at this moment.

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It's important as you kind of think back at the way in

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which I talk about Bible stories or the way if you look at how icons are represented,

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what you realize is that in many traditional modes of representation, whether it's icons, whether it's ancient storytelling, even if it's

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Hamlet or the way that Shakespeare told stories, the artifice of representation is aimed at something different,

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is aimed at the manifestation of truths that are deeper than factuality,

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the manifestation of truths that are there to resonate with us in terms of models or counter models,

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in terms of things that we can identify with and

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that we can feel discussed for or that we can be aligned to.

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And that this honestly ends up being a more truthful mode of representation and you could say a...

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A less deceitful mode of representation,

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you know, and the movie is very fascinating because it feels something like you could say it's like the last documentary.

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I'm not saying there won't be documentaries after it, but it is a documentary that fully exposes the mechanism of documentary making

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and questions the notion that documentaries themselves can lead us towards factuality.

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It's a kind of deconstruction of the documentary process,

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but in doing so, it might also open space for another type of documentary telling,

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a kind of self -aware documentary where the documentary can be

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used in some ways consciously without trying to deceive people as a way in which to create stories that people resonate with.

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You know, there's an amazing moment in the story where, I mean, there's so many meta levels.

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You can't even stop seeing them once you start to see them.

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There's an amazing scene where the actress, Amanda Seyfried, who plays Elizabeth Holmes in the TV series,

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The Dropout, but then now is playing her again for the documentary, plays Elizabeth Holmes in prison,

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telling Nathan Fielder how Amanda Seyfried's representation of her,

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in the dropout was extremely damaging to her. And so, I mean, can you even count the levels of representation

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that are being represented in this and the levels of irony and of twist that are being represented in this moment?

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And as she's representing Elizabeth Holmes,

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that is, uh, complaining, not complaining or expressing how much pain and suffering she's experienced,

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um, because of that actress's representation of her.

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Then you cut back to the actress in the documentary who is defending herself, right.

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And trying to defend the use of the, uh, the, the, the thing that she did, the fact that, you know, her acting her, you know,

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that the things that she represented, obviously they weren't there.

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They can't know what happened, She even says, well, that could have happened.

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Right.

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And it is captured, you know, that even though I don't know how she lied and how she pretended, we know that she did.

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And therefore, representing her in this different in these different ways is completely appropriate.

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And then as you're watching, you realize, I mean, at least I kept asking myself, I mean, is that also a script?

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That is, are the parts of the documentary that are meant

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that when the actress is being herself and is speaking to Fielder, was that scripted?

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Was that planned?

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Or is that truly spontaneous?

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And there's absolutely no way to know that.

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And you know that how anybody who's participated in a documentary, I participate in documentaries where the documentarist tries to guide you and tries to say,

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oh, well, maybe you could say this because you know that it'll fit in in his narrative.

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It can be very frustrating, but this is obviously how documentaries are made.

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And so you keep jumping out of the documentary if you're very attentive and you keep asking yourself, you know,

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how far removed do I have to stand outside of this experience to be able to wholly realize what really is happening?

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And the answer is you can't.

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You can't step far enough outside the documentary to understand what is really happening

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and how much the director is playing a part in the artifice

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and how much the interviewer and how much the actress

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and how much Elizabeth Holmes and how much of her husband are playing parts in this representation.

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And so the whole thing is this fractal kind of deconstruction of representation in ways

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that are so surprising that these things came together.

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And a whole level, a whole layer of how this representation is there is this

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whole other layer of how the husband pretends to be Elizabeth Holmes

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and how the husband also has made an AI version of Elizabeth Holmes

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that he has in his house as this giant screen that he can talk to and engage with.

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And he sees that it's completely normal.

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And as if he doesn't actually need to be in a relationship with his actual wife,

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you know, this AI and his internal representation of her is sufficient for him to be in communion with her.

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So it brings this image of representation and the accuracy of representation, not only in terms of the documentary,

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but even in terms of the mental images that we have of others,

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the mental representation that we have of the other person and how we in some ways are engaging in that mental representation,

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even obviously as we are talking to the person in front of us, that even as we're speaking to them,

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we are also at the same time engaging with the mental representation of that person.

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And so the ultimate finality is that the purpose of communion, right?

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And the purpose of being in a relationship, the purpose of telling stories, the purpose of representing something cannot be accurate portrayal

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because you can never step enough outside of your experience to get to the objective portrayal in the first place, right?

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And the whole frame, even the frame of the documentary, and of course, even the frame,

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you could say, of the trial is not really to arrive at a completely neutral, objective, you could say, representation of reality.

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But even the trial itself is pointed.

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That is, we're trying to discover some truth.

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And the means by which we're going to represent

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and to mediate these facts is always going to come together towards the discovering of something particular,

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like of moving towards a direction.

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And of course, a court has its own means of doing that.

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And sometimes we confuse the way in which the court does it,

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which obviously sometimes misses, but still has developed the right way of presenting evidence

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and of doing it in a forensic manner that can help lead to a verdict of guilty or not guilty.

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But sometimes we pretend, we think that the social media and media representations are equivalent to the court.

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And we've seen that, of course, in the way in which

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You know, people often go to the court of public opinion during the Me Too era.

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You saw a lot of that where people would basically use narrative, use representation in order to create certain effects.

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And people were confusing that with the way in

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which a court functions and the way in which you can arrive at an actual, truly, you could say, guilty verdict in a legal manner.

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And so we have to, you know, as we watch the movie, you know, these are the questions that are still kind of haunting me.

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thinking about, you know, what then can be the purpose of documentary?

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You know, is it only propaganda?

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Because this is, of course, I think one of the problems that the movie is exposing is that,

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in fact, you can manipulate reality, right?

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If your purpose is to discover what's real,

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the mimetic element of the documentary can actually simulate a narrative in order to bring about a conclusion

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that ends up being more something like propaganda.

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And so how do we get out of it in a documentary purpose?

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You know, that's why I tend to like narrative storytelling more, that is, films and books and,

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you know, ancient stories, because already in its own representation,

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there's a manner in which we're pointing towards a purpose that is the manifestation of true patterns, right?

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The participation in them

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And so I don't know what the future of documentary

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Storytelling can be After this kind of movie

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It has to be probably

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More clearly about inspiration

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Maybe about trying to kind of Help people see something beautiful

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That they can follow, that they can emulate

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Or something that they can despise

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Or criticize, but also

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Always understanding that it's always

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It's not just the facts

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That you have to be able to, that it can't just be about the understanding of new neutral factuality,

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but using factuality and weaving it together towards something

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that can inspire us or help us see a truth that is higher than the factuality.

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And so it leaves me very puzzled about, you know, what a documentary can be, but at the same time,

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it is an absolute gem of a movie.

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If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it you know you there are

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so many more questions to be asked

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and there are all these levels of of representation

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that stack on top of each other um

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that really leave you disoriented at the end not sure of what it is

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that you have actually watched and not sure exactly what it is

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that just happened to you and

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so uh i hope this was useful this was just a few thoughts on the subject

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and uh thanks for your attention everybody and i'll talk to you very soon bye -bye hello Hello, everyone.

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I'm excited to announce that the fourth book in our Tales for Once and Ever series is out, The Valant Little Tailor.

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This was one of my favorite stories as a child.

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It's a story of trickery and of giant killing.

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And if you get it now until November 21st, you will get a free copy of the audiobook read by myself.

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So I cannot wait for people to see it.

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It is beautifully illustrated by Eloise Scherer, who had illustrated our Jack and the Fallen Giants.

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And you will see that she did an amazing job.

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It feels like these illustrations are getting better and better at every book.

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So I cannot wait for you to have it in your hands

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and especially to know how your children react to this new story.

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación se basa en el vídeo “The Last Documentary: You Can See Everything”. Las palabras que más se repiten: representation, documentary, movie, Holmes, Elizabeth. Este vídeo tiene 273 frases y 3729 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 23:32. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 158 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. El 86 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
documentary sustantivo	/ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/	documental
representation sustantivo	/ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/	representación
actress sustantivo	/ˈæk.tɹɪs/	actriz
expose verbo	/ɪkˈspoʊz/	exponer, develar
layer sustantivo	/ˈleɪ̯ɚ/	capa, tongada
narrative sustantivo	/ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/	narrativa
pretend verbo	/pɹəˈtɛnd/	aparentar, hacer de
realism sustantivo	/ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/	realismo
engage verbo	/ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/	embebecer, embelesar
storytelling sustantivo		narración, narrativa
fiction sustantivo	/ˈfɪkʃən/	ficción
discover verbo	/dɪˈskʌvə/	descubrir
objective sustantivo	/ɒbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/	objetivo
neutral adjetivo	/ˈnuː.tɹəl/	neutral
portray verbo	/poɹˈtɹeɪ̯/	retratar

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
come together verbo	/ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/	juntarse, concitarse
end up verbo		terminar, ir a parar
bring up verbo		levantar, alzar
fill up verbo		llenar, repletar
get out of verbo		salirse de, ponerse fuera de

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:

That is, what purposes can we accomplish in the act of representation?
Why am I seeing this?
Why am I seeing the interviewer?
I forget exactly how it's phrased.
You know, is it only propaganda?

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	is known · is taken · cannot be fully captured
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	have been · have lived · I've believed
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	people that are · people, which is · someone who is

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 45 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, don't, can't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/, truthful /ˈtɹuːθ.f(ə)l/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/, participate /pɑːˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, participation /pɑːˌtɪs.ɪˈpeɪ.ʃən/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: script /skɹɪpt/, spoiler /ˈspɔɪ.lɚ/, swim /swɪm/, stack /stæk/, spontaneous /spɑnˈteɪ.ni.əs/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: narrative /ˈnæɹ.ə.tɪv/, discover /dɪˈskʌvə/, objective /ɒbˈd͡ʒɛk.tɪv/, interviewer /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/, arrive /əˈɹaɪv/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/, expose /ɪkˈspoʊz/, realism /ˈɹi.əlɪzəm/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, hesitate /ˈhɛz.ə.teɪt/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como documentary, representation, actress.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: The Last Documentary: You Can See Everything - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Gramática en este vídeo

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?