“It is the victim’s very fragility (attributed to race, class, gender, sexuality, health, nationality, and the like) that makes her the documentary’s subject; it is the documentarian’s very potency (economic, technological, social, national) that allows him to record her pain; it is the viewers’ curiosity, founded in their distance from the scene, which elevates them from the victim…Thus the ultimate position of authority for documentarian and viewer is the one of judge who determines if the other’s suffering is deserved.”
Alexandra Juhasz, “No Woman is an Object,” Camera Obscura 54