s and The Real World, today serve as further illustrations of biased documentary work. These "reality television" programs skew the perspective of the audience and manipulate the lens to blur reality. In Dirk Eitzen's "When Is a Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Perception," he concludes; "All documentaries-whether they are deemed, in the end, to be reliable or not-revolve around the question of trust (92). Mock documentaries test the viewer's abilities to distinguish between truth and fiction by presenting them with a text that makes it difficult to decipher between the two. Directors of mockumentaries are questioning: Do you believe your eyes, or do you believe what I am telling you to believe? The audience is given the opportunity to decide whether they will accept what they are shown. If they fail to pick up on the satire (though mockumentaries are often riddled with hints) then they, too become an object of satire. Perhaps the most perfect example of this is Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner's, This Is Spinal Tap, a false ethnography of a mediocre Heavy Metal band in the early 1980's long considered a cult classic. Reiner's directorial debut was shot without a working script and largely improvised. Spinal Tap traces the steady demise of an aging English Heavy Metal band desperate to make a comeback. When the actor's names are revealed in the ending credits Spinal Tap acknowledges the falsity of the band. However, many do not pick up on that blatant hint and continue to believe that Spinal Tap really exists and is just another decent Heavy Metal band.Another Christopher Guest film, Waiting For Guffman, chronicles the production of an amateur play in the fictitious town of Blaine, Missouri celebrating the sesquicentennial. Blaine happens to be the foot stool capital of the United States and was visited by a UFO long before Rockwell. A prime example of Guest's attention to realism is in the hilarious audition scenes. ...
