Jacknis Reading Response

As I'm reading the beginning of the article by Ira Jacknis entitled "Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali," I am reminded of the trance-like chanting performed by the aboriginal Australian women, as we saw in the film we watched during class. Jacknis mentions that with the Bali culture, "they seemed to have culturally institutionalized dissociative and trance-like behavior, which in our culture is regarded as schizophrenic." (Jacknis 161) Mead and Bateson, as a married couple and an anthropological team worked together using new methods of research and technologies to capture the culture of the Bali people, with a focus on child development.
Meade used her personal method of "running field notes" to study the Bali culture, that went along with the photographic recordings and films, and a daily diary. Meade's early methods of anthropological studies of a culture clearly influenced the future of cultural anthropology and changed the ways in which people studied other cultures, using new technologies to gather their data. I think it is important to note Meade's gathering of native visual documents, such as paintings and carvings, which in a way defined the culture itself. The new technologies used by Mead included a hand-powered projector, which allowed the Balinese to watch the people of their society and comment on authenticity of a trance, among other things. The fact that they were able to watch what the anthropologists had documented was a major breakthrough in the ethnographic studies of other cultures because they were able to gain perspective, and give feedback to the anthropologists themselves. This technique was called "film elicitation" (Jacknis 165).
Another way in which they allowed the Balinese to give an accurate portrait of themselves was their candid use of photographing the people of Bali, in a natural setting as to give a realistic portrayal of their culture. It's interesting that Meade tried to eliminate any kind of "observer bias..." using " long, middle-distance shots, presented with minimal editing" (Jacknis 172) from her observations and recordings, in order to gather the most natural data and information of the Bianese culture. To me, this is one of the most important things about ethnographic films, to eliminate any kind of bias or opinion towards the given culture to project onto the viewers, instead capturing the culture in what is considered to be their natural state, without posing them in situations or positions or editing the film in a manner that gives a certain forced perspective on the studied individual/culture.
The editing itself if very important in ethnographic films because every shot, in a sense, gives the viewer a specific perspective as presented by the filmmaker. As Sol Worth wrote regarding Mead and her work with visual anthropology, "Film is not a copy of the world out there but someone's statement about the world." (Jacknis 173) Overall, it is evident that Mead's work with ethnographic film was a breakthrough in the world of visual anthropology because it focused on the subjects, and not a certain perspective on the subject. It is important that she recorded a culture based on "ethnographic truth" and filmed and photographed her subjects in a natural state.