The Rise of Acid Attacks in the UK: VICE Reports

The documentary “The Rise of Acid Attacks in the UK: VICE Reports” is about the increasing amount of acid-related attacks in the UK in the last years as the number of assaults have doubled in the last 2 years. The documentary is mainly filmed in east London because there have been many attacks there.

In the documentary there is a journalist called Zing Tsjeng that talks to many people that have to do with acid attacks. The audience gets a good few different perspectives of the situation. First Zing goes to talk to a person from a not for profit organisation where she finds out that the majority of the attacks are at men. After that we get to know a victim of an acid attack and the victim talks about his experience and how it changed his life. Furthermore, we also discover how easy it is to get access to acid as a weapon and how the constitution is missing in laws related to acid as a weapon. Zing then goes to meet up with a former gang member that is now a youth violence consultant and we get to know a person included in these types of attacks. It’s astonishing how this person talks about it as if it were a normal thing to do and that everyone that this happens to probably deserves it. But at the same time talking about how he can’t find a job because of his history and that it hurts having to say he has had criminal activities in his life.

Zing finishes the documentary by giving a conclusion on the subject. I think the documentary fits in the participatory mode of Nichols’ because there is a journalist interacting with the audience and talking to them but also interviewing people that have to with the topic/documentary and acting as a guide throughout the factual production.