Recorder: The Mar­i­on Stokes Project

For 33 years, the elu­sive African-Amer­i­can archivist Mar­i­on Stokes reli­gious­ly record­ed the TV news for 24 hours a day. Trig­gered by the 1979 Iran­ian hostage cri­sis, it was Marion’s belief that, ​“the TV was part of what was tak­ing us hostage,” and so she set out to doc­u­ment how his­to­ry is record­ed. In his film, direc­tor Matt Wolf illu­mi­nates frag­ments of her obscure life and sense of dis­ci­pline, but he also reveals the true grav­i­ty and scope of her project.

The film’s biggest strengths lie in its first half, where we learn how Mar­i­on became such a dili­gent and iso­lat­ed fig­ure. Described by Melvin, her first hus­band, as a woman who was, ​“inde­scrib­ably loy­al to her own pref­er­ences and ten­den­cies and beliefs,” Mar­i­on met him while she was a librar­i­an and he was an active mem­ber of the Social­ist Par­ty. When the cou­ple grad­u­at­ed to Com­mu­nism, Mar­i­on lost her job and was sub­ject­ed to FBI sur­veil­lance. After a short flit to Cuba with their young son Michael, their mar­riage dis­solved. Mar­i­on remar­ried and, soon after, her own sur­veil­lance project began.

Through­out the doc­u­men­tary, Wolf uses inter­views with Marion’s fam­i­ly and staff and, lat­er, TV researchers and jour­nal­ists, as a way to shed light on exact­ly what she accom­plished and at what cost. Visu­al­ly, the blend of fam­i­ly pho­tographs and footage of notable news sto­ries cre­ate an easy-view­ing doc­u­men­tary. Wolf also uses shots of Marion’s mul­ti­ple apart­ments, the chaos of her sur­round­ings seem­ing anti­thet­i­cal to the metic­u­lous­ness of her work – a tele­vi­sion in each room, always record­ing, bags of VHS tapes and floor-to-ceil­ing book­shelves spilling out on to the floor.

Marion’s love of Star Trek and her obses­sion with Steve Jobs era Apple prod­ucts (on which she made hefty returns on invest­ment) por­tray her as an eccen­tric futur­ist, almost reluc­tant­ly ahead of the curve and con­stant­ly demand­ing more of her­self and those around her. The del­i­cate descrip­tions of Mar­i­on by those who knew her, empha­sise her com­plex­i­ty beyond the easy char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of an oddity.

Dur­ing the sec­ond half of the doc­u­men­tary, Wolf becomes fix­at­ed on the archive that was the prod­uct of her labour and iso­la­tion. Over the 33 years she spent record­ing, Mar­i­on amassed 840,000 hours of news footage on 70,000 tapes, only 100 of which were digi­tised to make the film. Fol­low­ing Marion’s belief that those in pow­er are able to ​“write their own his­to­ry, from their own bias” the impor­tance of this painstak­ing archive can’t be underestimated.

Stand-out news seg­ments fea­ture the ​‘Pres­i­dent of the anti-nos­tal­gia asso­ci­a­tion for the advance­ment of time’ – a group that believes Amer­i­ca is too pre­oc­cu­pied with the past, and an illus­tra­tion of the time it took four sep­a­rate news chan­nels to break the news of the ⁹⁄₁₁ attacks.

There is always an issue of sen­si­tiv­i­ty with doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing, but the final film is want­i­ng. Want­i­ng more Mar­i­on, and want­i­ng more inter­ro­ga­tion of the role pub­lic news plays in Amer­i­can life. But that doesn’t mean this doc­u­men­tary isn’t worth your time, Mar­i­on was an action­able inspi­ra­tion and con­tra­dic­to­ry genius. The digi­ti­sa­tion process is ongo­ing and her archive will be avail­able for gen­er­a­tions to come. A stern moth­er and devout intel­lec­tu­al, Marion’s work as sur­vey­or and truth teller continues.