Misrepresentation of reality in Nanook of the North

Throughout the film Flaherty consistently and deliberately misrepresents various aspects of Innuit life to make it conform to his ideal vision of a majestic humanity confronting the power of nature. This primarily took the form of occluding parts of Innuit life and reinforcing this manipulation through the framing intertitles. In 1921, when Flaherty was filming Nanook of the North, the Innuits were buying their blankets from Manchester and listening to fur prices on the radio. The film makes no reference to these facts or to the amenities of the trading post. Nor does the film address the polygamy which was a central part of Innuit culture choosing instead not to comment upon the identity of Cunayou, Nanook's second wife. Furthermore the film deliberately misleads by showing Nanook hunting only with spears and harpoons, as in the image to the left.
The visual manipulation is underpinned by explicit intertitles:

In fact the Innuit had also been hunting with guns for generations since the Hudson Bay Company had been trading with the Inuit in the area since 1670, providing weapons and not 'knives beads and brightly coloured candy' as the films intertitles state.

More specifically this sequence of Nanook biting the trader's phonograph record loses credibility in the face of the fact that Flaherty had consistently kept Nanook and his friends entertained with his own gramaphone which, according to Rotha and Wright he played continuously with such records as Harry Lauder's "Stop Your Ticklin' Jock".
Nanook is mugging for the camera but the intertitle which precedes the sequence frames his behaviour in terms of an paternalistic racial stereotype.

In reality the Innuits were generally very knowledgeable in dealing with such examples of western technology as the Anglo-Saxons brought to their communities. As Flaherty recorded in his diary one of the Innuits was deputised to take care of the camera and proved more capable than Flaherty of keeping it in working order which was a difficult task in the freezing conditions:

              bringing it in from the cold to outside into contact with the warm air of the base often frosted them inside and out, which necessitated taking them apart and carefully drying them piece by piece ... I found to my sorrow such a complication of parts that I could not get it together again . For several days its innards lay strewn on my work table. 'Harry Lauder' [named by Flaherty after the record] finally volunteered for the task of putting it together, and through a long evening before a flickering candle and with a crowd of Eskimos around ejaculating their 'Ayees' and 'Ahs' he managed to succeed where I had failed