Analysis of "The Man Card"

Upon watching the documentary “The Man Card,” a film by The Media Education Foundation, a lot of things stand out about the stylistic decisions made by the editors. 

The editing in this documentary actually stands out quite a bit, since there is no original camera work. All of the footage in the documentary consists of previously filmed protests, rallies, broadcasts, or other video/ image sources. But what makes all these different formats of video fit seamlessly in an editing standpoint is the presentation. Though the documentary is split into different story beats so to speak, the editing style and presentation remains consistent. Graphics are used to further conceptualize election results, and text is sparsely used in these graphics past identification of markers. 

The editing ties in especially well with the sound mixing when discussing societal events and even when discussing the topic of presidential races. Sounds of protests, attacks, speeches, and other audio sources often played over the presentation of videos that didn’t need to present sound and/ or images relating to the topic. Because the majority of the auditory part of the documentary was a narrator explaining, the inclusion of sound while presenting media made a big impact. The other inclusions of sound usually came from commercials or the presidents being discussed speaking. 

One notable moment of this sound and media presentation was the inclusion of a commercial created during George W. Bush’s campaign. This presentation was not seen again, and the commercial itself was appalling, so it tied in well with the documentary.

Another one of these notable moments was near the beginning of the documentary when an editing technique was used twice. In a group picture, one person had color and the rest of the image was in black and white. The color slowly spread from this person. I took this to mean that this person stood to represent their surroundings— whether in an emotional or symbolic way. 

There was no true mise-en-scene because of the variety of footage used, but a recurring theme of suburbia and construction sites was present. Because the documentary didn’t have any original footage past the graphics, there was no way to establish mise-en-scene.

I found the documentary quite informative. It is biased against the Republican party and white men may feel victimized because of some of the language used, but past the bias is interesting information about the evolution of the American public. Discerning the audience is a bit difficult, but I think the most intended audience was younger people, straying away from the subject of most of the documentary— working class, Republican, white men. Though the film itself does not speak on the subject, these types of films are a slow way of further separating and alienating political parties if audiences are not careful to look past the creator’s and the audience’s own biases.