Despite these controversies, Flaherty remains a pioneer of the documentary whose films are situated in a class of their own within the documentary genre. Kimball argues that "Man of Aran" never was intended to be an ethnographic documentary film. As he explains, “in a cosmic anthropological sense it could be counted as an artistic rendition of the struggle of man against nature.” Flaherty had immersed himself in the culture to tell the essence of the truth about the Islanders, “for this reason ethnographic accuracy is an unimportant consideration when the larger goal is some fundamental aspect of mankind.” In Stoney’s film "How the Myth Was Made", John Goldman, the editor on "Man of Aran", is emphatic, “it was not a documentary, it was not intended to be a documentary...it was a piece of poetry.” McNab calls it "not so much a conventional documentary as a poetic meditation.” Arthur Calder-Marshall explains, “Flaherty wasn’t interested in actuality, he was interested in his own idea of life.” If the film was intended to be a poetic statement instead of a factual documentary, one has no right to treat it as an ethnographic film now. Barsam asks, is it unreasonable for the artist to distill life over a period of time and deliver only the essence of it? Seen as the story of mankind over a thousand years, the story of Aran is this story of man against the sea...It is a simple story, but it is an essential story, for nothing emerges from time except bravery. Calder-Marshall suggests the controversies over "Man of Aran" could have been avoided if [Flaherty had had a publicity adviser, someone as verbally agile as Grierson, who had made it publicly plain that "Man of Aran" was not a ‘document’ but an ‘eclogue’ - a pastoral and marine poem.