  Coney Island  is a surrealist performative experimental documentary exploring the gap between the nostalgic mythical view of Coney Island and the modern reality of the location. Inspired by the ironic tone of Luis Bunuel s Land Without Bread, the vintage filmstrip style narration in  Coney Island  shows no mercy or compassion for the people it describes, causing a reaction of simultaneous humor, disgust, shame, and horror within its audience. Writer/director/producer Demi Pietchell ( Relative Dysfunction,  2003) employs this technique in order to question the established stereotypical notions of both place and time while also calling attention to the conventional audience s assumption that the narrator will maintain impartial credibility.  Coney Island  also explores the notion of society s  tough love  heartlessness for the heroin addict, especially among his/her peers. The comic notion of society s having looked the other way is portrayed to an extreme which causes the audience to face its laughter as ironic guilt through its measure of coldness and cruelty.