Movement Without Aim Analysis

Mental illness, as defined by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is a condition that affects a person’s thinking, feeling, or mood (“Mental Health Conditions”). According to The Kim Foundation, an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans who are age 18 or older are affected by mental illness each year. That percentage converts to approximately 57.7 million people (“Mental Disorders in America”). Travis Balitz, who is affected by Bipolar 1 disorder, a moderate stage of bipolar disorder, which according to The Sahlgrenska Academy at Goteborg University in Sweden, is “an affective disorder that influences a person’s mood, so that it fluctuates between the two poles of depression and hypomania/mania” (P.D. Jonsson 1218), is interviewed by his …show more content…
In “Movement Without Aim,” Ronald J. Grele discredits the use of interviews or other sources of oral history as credible, useful information for research purposes. He criticises the overall purpose of oral history sources, specifically interviews, as well as the way historians conduct interviews to get their information. In his argument, he quotes “the interview can only be described as a conversational narrative: conversational because of the relationship of the interviewer and interviewee, and narrative because of the form of exposition- the telling of a tale” (Grele 7). Grele means that the interview is basically the narrator communicating his history to the interviewer, and the interviewer withdrawing information from the narrator. For the majority of the interview, K.Balitz and Travis hold a conversation, where Travis tells Balitz how he feels about having to cope with bipolar disorder, while Balitz asks questions to receive information that he wants the audience to know. K.Balitz and Travis do not take the interview seriously, which could possibly steer an audience away from this video and make them look unprofessional compared to other interviews. With this interview, Grele’s claim about the invalidity of oral history is correct, making him more credible to a broader …show more content…
Hoffman refutes Grele’s argument in her article, “Reliability and Validity in Oral History” She.believes that oral history can be credible across a wide range of audiences. She feels that as long as the interviewer and the interviewee are both on the same page with the methods of the interview, and the story is consistent within different sources, the credibility of the interview is legit. In her argument, she lists under what she states is the ‘Guidelines for the interviewee’: “It is important that the interviewee fully understand the project, and that in view of costs and effort involved he assumes a willingness to give useful information on the subject being pursued”(Hoffman 24). What she means is that the participant of the interview should be aware of what is going to happen in the duration of the interview and that the information that he/she gives is legitimate and useful to the audience. However, in this interview, it is noted that Travis is just getting over one of his bipolar episodes. Though he “agrees” to being recorded and allowing the video to be put on the internet, at that point, one could argue that he was not in the right state of being. With that being said, the interview can lose credibility in that the audience may not receive the truth about what/how the interviewee thinks about living with his condition. Hoffman also states in her argument, “...if you challenge him or present him with these inconsistencies, he will often be very glad to have