Donald C Casteel Jr
AN 307
Professor Deubel/Boyer
Constructing Reality: Finding
Ethnography in Film
Introduction
There
are simple truths in life that we ignore or fail to see each day. They surround us, inform us, and incorporate
themselves into our lives. The give is
cultural meaning, a relevance to how we understand one another. Film is just one medium in which as a society
we acknowledge or ignore those simple truths.
It affords us the opportunity to reexamine our world; to offer new
meanings or take a deeper look at social discord. Several themes continually presented
themselves time and again throughout the course. Two such themes will be the basis of this
paper. Those themes are the nature of
truth and authenticity in ethnographic, documentary and conventional film,
furthermore the responsibility of the filmmaker to present their work in an
accurately to the public. Yet there is
more to the argument than the fair and accurate reporting of cultural
events. There is question, can
conventional film be an accurate representation society and cultural believes
or does ethnographic film and documentaries has exclusive rights in constructing
social reality? In brief I will attempt
to answer that question while pointing out the reoccurring themes in film and
texts.
Method
In presenting the aforementioned argument I felt the
logic of the paper would be best served if I started with the examination of
Ethnographic film and gradually work towards examples of conventional
film. This process would be two fold,
first laying the base knowledge to ethnographic film. Secondly showing the linear progression of the
spectrum of film and how multiple forms of media and adhere to the same criteria
of being authentic and truthful. Also to
point out that while Ethnographic film attempts to hold itself to a higher
standard, the personal short comings of the anthropologist and ethnographer can
corrupt and distort their own findings. At the same time conventional
filmmakers unintentionally create art that is taken by academia as wholly
authentic.
Capturing
Reality
Of the film presented in this course I felt that Maya
Deren's Divine Horsemen and Jose
Padilha's Secrets of the Tribe were
fair representations of ethnographic film.
Arguably, they are in fact documentaries, yet they capture truth of
culture that in one instance could have never been captured by another film
maker and the other of the truth that all anthropologist do not always mean
well when trying to capture "primitive culture". The Secrets of the Tribe offers
contradictory alternative to the work of Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy
Asch. So much so one could question the
critical texts Timothy Asch's writings.
Asch wrote:
Our social contract with
our subjects demands that we ask ourselves whether we are working with them for legitimate
reasons or simply for personal gain; whether we can get the footage we need without doing injury to people who have
so generously allowed us to live
with them and see and understand their most closely-held beliefs and customs (Asch
196-204, 197) .
Throughout Secrets Padilha continually questions Chagnon's
methods of fieldwork. There is a scene in particular when Chagnon and his team
our vaccinating the Yanomamo. They state
their reason for doing so was because the valley was suffering from an outbreak
of measles. (Chagnon, Good and Tierney 2010) It is then later revealed
in the film that Chagnon's team never had the appropriate supplies to properly
vaccinate the tribe. James Neel personal
journals confirm the expedition’s ulterior motives. These scenes directly contradict Asch
statements of having legitimate reasons when studying exotic cultures. Not to be outdone, Asch later disqualifies
his previous statement by pointing out later in his article:
Ethical truths are relative to a particular culture and
particular moment in history. As film-makers we should, at least, be
aware of and take seriously the ethical concerns of the time in which we live (Asch 196-204, 204) .
This
would seem that rather than record accurate and truthful data the ethics of the
fieldwork is once that is qualified by the standards in which we live. The problem then being is to whose standards
were Chagnon and Asch adhering to? The Padilha
presents a truth but it not one Chagnon was so willingly to accept and
certainly not a truth in which Asch would have necessary filmed.
Conversely Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen appears to be a genuine
attempt at ethnography and documentary.
The irony of the film was while Deren’s goal was to capture the artist
movement of Haitian ritual dance her film sequences mesmerizes the audience to
the beat of the drum, the rawness of the dance, and the poetry of the
rite. Her film is more than about dance,
it is also about presentation of spiritual possession. Dan Marks points out in his article, "Ethnographic
filmmakers seek ... not to create a cinematic illusion of truth, but rather to
recreate a physical and psychological verisimilitude" (Marks 1995, 342) . Deren’s footage is filled with the physical
and psychological verisimilitude Marks writes about. Point in the fact the slow motion scenes in
which the chickens are held by the dancers and thrust in circles. The brutality of the scene is transformed by
the slow motion. The audience is removed
from the point that a chicken is being man handled and is neck it finally broke
in tribute to the spirits. The audience
in turn sees a prop that is being used by the spirit, but the chicken is more
than a mere prop. It becomes and
extension of the dancer and the spirit.
It is the presentation to the spirit that allows for the rite to
proceed, it is an immutable part of the process. (Deren 1985) Although the completed work was not of her
own. As stated in previous instances,
the story of a film (or in this case the reality) can be created through the
camera and in the editing room. In truth
while the voice of the footage is of Deren’s, the story of the film is told by
her third husband Teijio Ito. For what
the film ended up being the question remains, was the Divine Horsemen Ito’s story with Deren’s footage or the reality of
the dance rite and Deren’s skill transcend Ito’s editorial eye. It is a question that is difficult to answer
even if it could ever be answered. What
is certain the unlike with Asch and Chagnon’s work Deren appeared not to be
grasping for an understanding. In
searching for the artistry of the dance she also finds an ethnographical record
of possession.
Searching
for Reality
Louis Malle’s Phantom India as a film departure from conventional film and documentary. On
the style of the film:
Phantom
India was very much in the cinéma vérité
tradition that first flourished in the 1960s
when the appearance of lightweight film cameras made possible the capturing of “real life” activities in the practical
affairs of society. But cinema vérité in
its early European manifestation
was distinguished from its counterpart in North America, known as “direct cinema”, which tried to
capture “objective” reality by attempting to make the cinematographers invisible. Cinéma vérité filmmakers, in
contrast to that, tended to acknowledge
explicitly the presence of the filmmaker and his or her involvement in the processes under study (The Film Sufi: Devoted to the Discussion of Film Expression 2010) .
To that point Louis Malle camera is ever
present in his film. On the presence of the camera:
Indeed, Malle’s film is an extended examination of the
issue of cinematic objectivity. He is
less concerned with the camera’s putative “invisibility” (there are many
occasions when his subjects look
straight into the camera) than with the inescapable fact that the director, as well as each viewer,
brings to the film his or her own intellectual categories by means of which the perceived reality is to
be constructed (The Film Sufi: Devoted to the Discussion of Film Expression 2010) .
Phantom India is filled with an
unsettling truth of reality throughout the film. Not only does it attempt to tackle find the
inherent injustice of the caste system it also observes and gathers the
misconceptions of colonized society. Two
scenes in Phantom India best prove
this point. Malle interviews two French
students (hippies) about their time in India.
The interview is filled will both social and economic myth. Myth of how the people of India are peaceful
simple people who are not bound by the economic pressures of modern society (Malle 1969) . These two students have so idealized a
culture they fail to see the level of poverty in which most Indians lived. The misconceptions of the French students are
shattered by the Fishmonger scene. The
scene is simple enough, a group of people fishing in hopes of earning enough to
provide for their families. The extreme
poverty and contradiction of the previous scene is made when the fishermen come
to near blows with the fishmonger over a few pennies (Malle 1969) . These people are not the pacifist the
tourists were searching for they are merely trying to survive another day. The reality in which Malle presents is a
tenuous one, it is one that he feels he can not truly capture or present. Despite his effort to discredit himself and
the intrusive nature of the camera Malle effectively captures the overwhelming
nature and culture of India.
Creating
Reality
From the Phantom
India to rural India, the argument now switches of true life to scripted
life. Pather Panchali and The
Battle for Algiers are undoubtedly conventional film; both films are based
on novels, one being purely fictional while the other is based on real events. The cinematography of both allows the films
the freedom to create a reality that blurs the lines of true ethnography and
acting. Despite the sheer beauty of the
film and the sequences it is Pather Panchali that makes the strange journey of
conventional film to ethnography and back to conventional film. Chandak Sengoopta article points why the film
took such a strange path to the United States:
Few
critics saw it as a regular drama and nobody said much on the acting,
photography, music or editing. More understandably,
the literary dimension was entirely overlooked, as were the implicit affiliations with Nehru’s modernizing project.
American critics, in other words,
simply did not have the contextual knowledge needed to interpret the film and thanks to the film’s initial reputation
as a documentary, saw it simply as a Flahertyesque portrayal of rural life in India (Sengoopta 2009, 282) .
In short American audiences and
organizations were so unfamiliar with Indian society they took by today’s
standard of a dramatic film as ethnographic truth. Satyajit Ray, the director, was reluctant to break the
illision Franis Flaherty and other Americans had created. Even the misrepresentation allowed new
audiences to see Ray’s films. In
reviewing the film it becoming difficult
to find any particluar scene which presented itself as wholly
ethnographic in nature. But for an
audience that had no frame of refence one could see the potential for the
misinterpretation. Still having seen
Louis Malle’s India, Ray’s film does an extremely well job of recreating the
poverity and the struggle to surive that is captured in Phantom India. (Bannerjee, et al.
1955)
If Pather
Panchali was a struggle for survival, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film
The Battle for Algiers was a film of
resistance and revolution. Whereas Pather Panchali takes place in a non
descript rural home, The Battle for
Algiers took place on the very streets that had been under siege some nine
years earlier. The cast was filled with
non-professionals that had been pulled from the city. While recreated the mob scenes leaned
credence to the truth that Pontecorvo was trying to create. On
third cinima and revolution Solanas and Getino wrote:
The cinema known as documentary, with all the
vastness that the concept has today, from educational
films to the reconstruction of a fact or a historical event, is perhaps the
main basis of revolutionary
filmmaking. Every image that
documents, bears witness to, refutes or
deepens the truth of a situation is something more than a film image or purely
artistic fact; it becomes something which the System
finds indigestible (Solanas and
Getino 1976, 55) .
But The Battle for Algiers is a
conventional film right? Well it is, but
Pontecorvo
incorporated documentary film techqiues to create a reality on film that
viusally expresses the feeling of truth.
The scene which Col. Mathieu has Ali la Pointe and crew corned is an
example of such techqiue. Pontecorvo makes serveral cuts from inside le
Pointes hiding place, to Col. Mathieu, to the gathered crowd. It is in the instance in which the edit is
made and the camera lingers on the slighty out of focus crowd. The crispness of the film presentation is
changed. The faces of the crowd appear
so raw so genuine it appears that Pontecorvo used actual stock footage from the
1950’s. (Martin, Haggiag and Saadi 1967) Again the closeing sequence of the film leads
itself to the creation of a reality that echos the truth of modern experiences. The crowds standing defiently against French
forces were renimissent of the news footage from egypt and the Arab Spring in
2011. So much so the difference is just
a matter of black and white verse color footage. The imagery is very much so
the same, again Solanas and Getino make the point:
The
capacity for synthesis and the penetration of the film image, the possibilities
offered by the living document and naked
reality, and the power of enlightenment of audiovisual means make the film far more effective than any other tool
of communication (Solanas and
Getino 1976, 53) .
Solanas’ and Getinos’ statement
could suggest that imagery could be the determining factor in the creation of
truth and reality. That the director
could present a reality; be it fictional, which could lend itself to be
interoperated by the audience as truthful and accurate. But more so they suggest, that film can be an
effective means for revolution. It can
be the motivator, the spark, the action in which people act. By that point alone there is truth within film
even if the film only portrays a truth.
Conclusion
Where does the truth lay
in film? Does the fact that a film is fictional it cannot accurately represent
a culture? The filmmaker of any genre of film bears some responsibility to
accurately present their work to the audience.
In the case of Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch, their conduct in the
jungles of the Amazon was so questionable a special board was convened to
determine if they had done any wrong.
Despite being found not guilty of any of the charges against them their
work for the most part fell out of favor, when the data conflicts with the
visual record there had been a great disservice that is then put upon the field
and its members. The Divine Horsemen
bears another point, which filmmakers work is being presented to the public?
Since the work was complied posthumously we can only guess if Ito
accurately depicted the vision of his late wife Maya Deren. Still what is a
filmmaker to do when it is the audience that gets the intent of the film incorrectly?
In one sense Satyajit
Ray would have been elated that his work was so well revieved in the united
state but on the other to be dejected that the audience was so misinformed they took his movie for
real. As students of film and
anthropology do we give the general audience too much credit? Dan Marks said of
ethographic film:
the point of ethnographic filmmaking ac-cording to Heider
is to maximize the "degree of ethno-graphicness"
(Heider 1977:4) by privileging certain cinematic techniques over other ones and certain kinds of behavior
over other ones. In other words, although it is not possible to get at the absolute truth, some ethno-graphic
films are truer and therefore more
ethnographic than others because through the application of ethno-graphic principles they have achieved a closer
relation-ship to the immutable truth (Marks 1995, 344) .
Maybe Marks
and Heider are correct, ethnographic films are truer because they apply
anthropoligical principles not found in other types of film. Maybe it is not possible for conventional
film to accurately represent society and cultural believes
as well does ethnographic film and documentaries. Maybe it is easier to just
agree with the professionals and not try to present an alternative
viewpoint.
Frankly, Hieder and Marks are wrong, if anything the
films mentioned in the paper as well as the films presented in this course have
been more than capable of capturing and creating truth of ethnography. Secrets
of the Tribe showed us that while the Axe
Fight and other Chagnon films
accurate the assumption the fieldworkers brought to the work clouded and
distorted the results. As unpleasant the
truths about the fieldwork were they were still truths the resound in the minds
of the audience. Yet still the same can
be applied with subjects of poverty and hunger.
As a whole we agree that Pather
Panchali was an conventional drama. But the fictional film the Ray creates is one
which is very believable. The poverty
and hunger in Pather Panchali is confirmed and presented again in Phantom India. It is in the battle cry for freedom in The Battle for Algiers it parallels our
recent memories of current global discord.
In the movie Schinldler's list, are we less inclined to believe the
horrors of the holocaust knowing that the little boy hiding in the filth of the
latrine is a fictional depiction. Sometimes truth is not determined by what you
actually see, but rather by how you are effected by what you see.
Bibliography
Asch, Timothy.
"The ethics of ethographic film-making." In Film as ethnography,
by Peter Ian Crawford and David Turton, 1992. Manchester & New York:
Manchester University Press, 196-204.
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Panchali: Song of the Little Road. Directed by Satyajit Ray. Performed by Kanu Bannerjee,
Karuna Bannerjee, Subir Bannerjee and Uma Dasgupta. 1955.
Secrets of
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by Jose Padilha. Performed by Napoleon Chagnon, Kenneth Good and Patrick
Tierney. 2010.
Divine
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In Innovation
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Inida. Directed
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after." American Anthropologist, 1995: 339-347.
The Battle
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