Icarus Documentary Reflection

     This post will be centered around the documentary I will be using for my documentary project.  

One scene in the film Icarus that “got to me” was the scene after the Russians were found out for sports

doping.  Bryan Fogel and Grigory Rodchenkov were on an online call, and Grigory expressed a lot of

concern about his life and how it was in jeopardy because he was the mastermind behind the doping

scheme in Russia.  This made me feel a lot of concern for Grigory, as well as made me more intrigued

in the film.  I was very concerned because I didn’t know how Grigory was going to get out of the

situation he was in, as well as the fact that Bryan’s life might be in danger as well since he was working

with Grigory to expose Russian doping.  However, this also intrigued me because it made me ask a lot

of questions, like will Grigory survive, and how long had the doping in Russia been going on for?

One thing that surprised me in Icarus was Bryan’s decision to start doping.  When Bryan found out that Lance Armstrong, an athlete who he idolized, did sports doping, I thought that he would’ve hated him and that he would’ve had a much different opinion about him.  While he did have a slightly different opinion about Lance, this also drove him to start doping for himself.  Bryan did this so that he could see how much doping enhanced his performance, as well as compare how he performed while doping vs. without doping.  This caught me off guard because his reaction to the news of Lance doping wasn’t how I thought he would react at all, but it did make the film more interesting and engaging.

One question that still remained with me after watching Icarus was how long were the Russians doing sports doping?  When the news came out about them doping, it was stated that they were doing it for a while, but another statement after that said that it was unknown about how long the Russians had been doing this.  Going into the film, I was against sports doping because it gave the athletes doing it a huge advantage, and after watching the film I still feel the same.  This feeling popped up throughout the film, but mainly when Bryan was testing out doping, as it proved my feeling about sports doping and made me lean towards that feeling even more so than before I watched Icarus.  It felt good, however, since there was proof in this film that my feeling seemed to be correct, and that I could be more comfortable with it.

There are multiple reasons why we might avoid putting research in our summaries.  For one, it could steer away from the documentary itself.  We could be too focused on the numbers and statistics from the documentary, or the topic it was trying to cover, over being focused on the documentary itself, and what it was all about.  Another reason why we may not want to put research in our summaries is that it could turn the summary into an essay paper rather than a film summary.  Inserting research could make the summary become a formulaic essay paper, with claims and evidence backing up the claims, with the evidence being the research.