From “Selling out” to “Sold out”: Affinity Alienation in the Gilded Age of Documentary

In semi-autonomous creative fields, there is a well-documented tension between the commercial interests of the marketplace and the cultural values of the field. When artists privilege commercial interests over the cultural values of the field, they are often imagined as “selling out,” with the impact of decreasing their cultural capital within the field for the promise of economic capital. But what happens when a cultural production field undergoes a major market shift, with the commercial interests of the market now challenging the field’s core cultural commitments?

I investigate the independent documentary film field as a case study. First, I trace the historical rise of streaming platforms and their role in the “boom and bust” of independent documentary film. I argue that the popular myth of “the Golden Age of Documentary” should be reconceptualized as the Gilded Age of Documentary, with streaming companies as modern day robber-barons who engage in modified practices of vertical integration and automation, resulting in increased economic inequalities among creative workers in the field. Second, I draw from 56 interviews with U.S.-based documentary filmmakers and industry leaders to understand how the commercialization of independent documentary has impacted worker feelings of affinity for their work. I argue that rapidly shifting market forces have caused widespread alienation among both filmmakers and industry professionals, as workers experience a sense of discordance between the appetite of the marketplace and their moral and aesthetic values. I contend that the documentary field has moved from a semi-autonomous field of cultural production to a semi-automated field of mass cultural production, with significant implications for workers’ sense of creative purpose. In conclusion, I describe the theoretical implications of an agentic conception of creative workers in semi-autonomous fields “selling out” to a structural conception of creative workers being “sold out” during major market shifts.