Can Movies Make a Difference?

They also apparently translate among younger people. According to UC Davis' Drew, these modern personal documentaries, starting with Moore's "Roger & Me" and including "Super Size Me," resonate with much younger audiences who "just don't believe the big traditional documentary voice of God, the omniscient narrator who tells you what's going on."

So now with Spurlock and Moore in the role of the bumbling renegade, Drew said, "It's almost like those 'Jackass' movies which appeal to a lot of young people."

And in that younger audience are Internet users, text messagers and bloggers responsible for what many advertisers now call "viral marketing": the phenomenon of seemingly small ideas or trends that spread quickly to a much larger culture.

So the message of a movie perceived as fun or hip can become widely known even if it isn't widely viewed, at least by traditional box office measures.

Spurlock believes a comedic approach was essential to his movie's success:

"If you can make a film that deals with a very serious issue funny and engaging, and you can have people laugh, you can have that barrier come down to where they actually become receptive to the information. You can make a movie that can have an impact and make a difference."

Whether documentaries now have the same power as they did in Edward R. Murrow's day may be an open question. But Drew thinks the old master would be "pleased with the way documentary film is moving because it has to morph and stay in tune with what's going on in the culture to be effective."