Film Review: `The Music Shaping Harlan County USA' Musical themes in documentaries are a key factor in setting the overall mood for the audience. The documentary Harlan County USA accentuates and enhances the validity of this characteristic. Directed by Barbara Kopple in 1976, this feature bestows more than the typical boring news interview with miners on strike in Kentucky. Kopple structures her material to provide tension, vivid characterizations and dramatic confrontations through the usage of music. More so however, it is because of early documentaries such as Harlan County USA that has aided in deriving a propaganda filled news genre of today. In the documentary, music brings an audience not only into a sense of what the times were like in association with the middle of the 20th century, but also is justifiably imposing compassion in the hearts of the viewing audience. This has led to a trend of propaganda found in nearly all news documentaries about controversial topics evolving around human welfare. To acknowledge this topic, the term propaganda must be understood more loosely than its general association with war. Propaganda is not always negative, and is frequently used in news stories to gain sympathy and mix emotions on a specific topic. For instance, if a story is proposed on ABC's 20/20 about child molestation, a theme of insecurity is a requisite for success. There are numerous tools that could be used for developing propaganda. However, the most common and effective tool is music. In the film, music plays a vital role in developing emotions for the audience in relating with the miners and their families. Songs such as `Cold Blooded Murder', `Which Side Are You On', and `The die has been cast now, and a good man is gone' are self-explanatory through their titles in demonstrating the hardship and struggle the miners faced. The images and interviews seen throughout the film help in understanding the facts but these songs amplify a greater amount of sentiment in the audience's minds. Near the end of the documentary `They Can't Keep us Down,' by Hazel Dickens is played to resemble a prominently happy conclusion in the miner's fight. This connotation is contradicted however when a miner states that the fight will continue and hardship will still be faced by many of the older miners whom are nearing an insufficient retirement. The ending of the documentary substantiates that in all fights there is usually no conclusive winner, just influential music to force the audience to support one opponent over the other.
Review of Harlan County U.S.A.
