Normal is relative.
Without a doubt, the most impressive element in any documentary is in the mental conditioning of the subjects. Consider this: for months, often years, people are followed around by a group of men with machines and coaxial. Loud, smelly, 30ish men in shorts and t-shirts and vests visit them every single day and stand near them as they eat breakfast.
And yet people act normal. Utterly candid, true, real moments play out on film time after time. The immense powers of the human brain permit permanent interruption to become nothing more than background. We can normalize to almost anything, even being shot with a high resolution telephoto lens and recorded with a microphone that looks like a graphite banana.
Herein lies the spectacularity of the documentary: it records people not only going through extraordinary circumstances, but it records people under the duress that comes with being recorded.
Consider yourself. How would you manage these strains? Would you soar to fame as a result of your compelling lifestyle? I don’t have an answer to this. I just know that those doing it (and some are doing it better than others) are impressive on a psycho-physiological level.
It begs the question: are we normalizing things without realizing it?
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