Barthes

Barthes article was very interesting because it forced me to think about advertising and the strategies that they use to reach their audience. The most surprising thing to me was when he pointed out the color scheme and the use of fresh flood in conjunction with the product, which is more packaged or processed than those to help sell the product. I would have never thought twice as to why they did this because it just made sense. However, now thinking about it, I realized this understanding an outside culture from within your own culture is in fact a cultural understanding that one has. As Barthes states, the linguistic and the connoted and denoted messages within all work with one another to give off this Italianicity that is understood to an outside culture based on stereotypes that we see.

When one thinks of Italian culture, one thinks of pasta and natural tomatoes to make the tomato sauce and how our definition of a supermarket in the United States is different from that in Italy. A Wawa convenient store is really equivalent to the size of a supermarket there, even in the large cities. Italians still go to various specialized stores to buy everything—the fruttivendolo to buy the fruits and vegetables, the macellaio to buy the meat, the panificio to get the bread. It isn’t a one stop shop for your convenience like in the U.S. or as Barthes describes as a mechanical society. We know this to be true as a stereotype of Italian culture and cooking habits. This reminds me of Geertz when he states that common sense should be studied because it essentially something that is understood and not really perceived to be cultural within that society. This understanding only proves that these advertisements are in fact cultural.

He also points out the use of an Italian sounding name for the product to outsiders to make it seem more authentic, marketable, and thus appealing to the audience. He argues that French would only understand that word “pates” which is in French but understand that name of the Pasta company “Panzani” to be an Italian sounding name. However, not being able to speak French and knowing what Italian names sound-like, I can still understand that the company itself is Italian and that this is probably sold in France. This only further emphasizes Barthes point that when we look at an advertisement of a photograph, one picks and chooses and still gets the message from it and even though I cannot read French and ignore “pates,” I still understand the pasta to be Italian.

The color palette also is used to prove its authenticity also by sticking to the colors of the Italian flag. The objects evoke a literal and metaphorical symbolic message, a two-for-one deal if you will, which is what advertisements love to do. This is the most shocking thing that I would have never noticed myself because the staging, light, objects themselves, and the text are all obvious things I would have looked at. I would have thought about color versus black and white, however, I would have never thought of the actual colors used and how they work off of one another and as a purposeful choice to show a symbolic meaning besides the literal and evident meaning. The lighting in this photograph is also very warm and yellow creating a feeling of nostalgia as well to a more quaint of more simple life that maybe the outside might see as something to be longed for.

The thing I did not agree with or maybe follow correctly was Barthes argument of the photographic medium and when he compared it to film. Photographs will never be able to objectively show something or make a copy of something. Yes, he acknowledges the ‘”tricks” as he calls them that can manipulate the photograph and its ability to copy what was in front of the camera as it was, however, a photograph even when not specifically using these “tricks” cannot and will not ever be able to make a copy of the thing in front of it. As John Szarkowski points out in The Photographer’s Eye, the photograph is different from the thing itself. The subject of the photograph and the actual thing in real life are not one in the same or even similar and the photograph is never able to represent it. Therefore, when he argues that unlike drawing which is selective and does not reproduce everything, a photograph is not able to intervene within the object even though it can pick the point of view and its angle. This argument to me is nonsensical and weak because these two things as well as other independent variables will always intervene and change how it appears. As I said before the two are not one in the same, but also because the lighting for example or the vantage point can make something look much larger or infinitesimal in comparison to other things in the frame. This is never possible. As drawings pick and choose, so does a photographer so this is not possible. In this case he says that it can change the connotation, but not the denotation. These two in my opinion are inseparable when looking at a photograph and shouldn’t be looked at separately because they work together. Therefore, I see his point to some extent but his argument is weak and I do not agree with it at all.

Barthes

In his article "Rhetoric of the Image" Roland Barthes uses a photograph for an advertisement for a food brand to illustrate the different messages an image contains. Just as a film is edited to project a certain message, a photograph is also posed to project a certain message. The photograph is only an image of the pasta, tomatoes, string bag, etc. and gives the presence of reality. The image is almost nostalgic in that it shows the benefits of shopping for items to prepare a home cooked meal rather than buying a frozen or pre-made meal. Even if the advertisement does not contain words, it still speaks to the viewer. Barthes writes that images without words were necessary in illiterate societies. In terms of advertising, even today, we recognize certain company logos without seeing words or the product (e.g. Nike's swoosh, Apple's apple and Starbucks' green woman logo).
There are similarities between the photograph and museum still life displays. Griffith notes that viewers realized the no matter how life like the museum still life display appeared they were only an illusion and not real when she writes about the museum displays that were popular at the turn of the 19th century. The viewer develops an imaginary relationship when viewing either the museum display or a photograph. For the museum displays it allowed the viewers to image they were standing in front of an actual scene from another culture. The photograph used in Barthes' article allows the viewer to be transported back to time when food shopping and home cooking was an everyday event.
Both the photographs and the museum displays are framed. The frame allows the viewer to focus only on what is shown - everything that is not relevant is not included. The frame allows for the viewer to study the photograph in great depth. This is no different than Tim Asch's method of breaking down frames of The Ax Fight to allow viewers to critically examine what they see.
Words, whether written or spoken, affect how we see the image. In The Ax Fight, we have a different reaction when we hear the cause is due to an incestuous relationship than we when hear it is about visiting guests demanding food without helping out. Everyone views a film, photograph or image differently. The Yanomami filmed by Ashe consider the films to be like home movies but to his students they reinforce the idea of "the other".

Barthes

In Rhetoric of the Image by Roland Barthes, images and their associated meanings is explored. According to Barthes, there are a variety of methods through which a message can be transmitted via an image. In our world, we are constantly bombarded with images, mostly in the form of advertisements. We take various meanings away from these pictures, some of the direct, some indirect. There is the linguistic message, the denoted image and the connoted image (Barthes 273). He specifically looks at advertisements because, "...in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional; the signifieds of the advertising message are formed a priori by certain attributes of the product and these signifieds have to be transmitted as clearly as possible” (Barthes 270).

While Barthes writing is slightly difficult to follow, I agree with the general point that images have specific meanings. I believe that who views the images and that person's beliefs will also give a depiction a certain interpretation as well. I like how Barthes talks about the connoted meanings of the image and how a symbolic interpretation can be made about aspects. This can relate to other parts of society and draws on a person's knowledge and experiences. As I said, this can mean that an image will hold different meanings for different people, since we do not all have the same lives. Some meanings of images may be lost on people who do not recognize the symbolic images in the picture. I think it is very interesting how the message of a picture can be changed simply by altering one word or color or object.

Rouch

Jean Rouch was an influential and innovative man. It is obvious to conclude this from the articles written about him; from the Loizos's chapter to the nine articles brought together by Faye Ginsburg and Jeff Himpele to the discussion conducted by John Marshall and John W. Adams with Rouch. He was a very intelligent filmmaker, well known for his use of new technological methods like synchronized sound and lighter weight cameras. He brought his own style to ethnographic film. As noted in the article by Jean-Paul Colleyn, “He [Rouch] never tried to be the unnoticed observer, the invisible witness, or the neutral narrator” (113). This style of filming, of being directly involved with the subject matter of his own films, was and still is very controversial. I completely understand why this is an issue for anthropologists cannot then discern what is truth and what is fake. If the ethnographer places himself or herself in the context of the film, sometimes the viewer sees the message of the film as skewed in favor of one bias or another. In some ways, however, Rouch helped anthropologists improve the use of film as a device to convey information because he exposed its limitations. Rouch believed that “....academic ethnographic description not only freezes the situations described, but if those situations are 'tragic' as they so often are, that it is only by introducing fantasy and role-playing that the participants can transcend them and begin to discover a 'way out'” (Marshall 1005). Rather than shunning techniques used by non-ethnographers and documentary filmmakers, Rouch saw all of the abilities we are capable of, from dreaming to improvising, as valid methods to use in film to reveal something about another group of people.

Barthes response

"Rhetoric of the Image" discusses the motif of the image, and the representations and symbols can be told through the image itself, and how the meaning gets into the image. With the example of the Panzani advertisement, there are somewhat hidden signs which give the viewer a sense of nostalgia or familiar feeling, which evokes the good memories connected to the market place, and eventually is connected to the sudden desire to purchase the pasta. The scene of the advertisement gives a sense of "euphoric value" (Barthes 270). Barthes discusses the signs in an image which can include linguistic messages, coded iconic messages, and non-coded iconic messages. Based on the signs which one can apparently receive and decode upon viewing the advertisement in the example, different cultures would view the meaning behind the photograph differently, and many, in fact would not be able to identify with the linguistic messages behind it. Barthes brings up the question "Does the image duplicate certain of the informations given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add a fresh information to the photo" (273)? In regards to the denoted image, it works in giving the viewer a sense of "being-there" creating a new space-time relationship, and how the "absence of a code clearly reinforces the myth of photogenic 'naturalness' " (278).

Loizos response (Chapter 3 45-64)

Jean Rouch's technique and style of film making is unique with what some consider to be 'avante-garde.' As seen in his films "Les Maitres Fous" and "Jaguar," his documentary style ethnographic films have an almost comedic, and loose approach to capturing his subjects. Loizos calls the style of Rouch's film making a "sophisticated and empathic kind" (Loizos 46). Rouche was one of the first to master the hand-held camera techniques, creating films which can be described as 'fluid' (46). The modernization of film technology during the 1970s allowed for Rouche's experimentation with capturing cultures, yet the result was beyond more than just fooling around with a modern camera; he changed the way the spectator viewed the subjects in an up-close and personal way, as they had never seen before. The movement of the camera allowed not only a more modern sense of capturing and watching films, but capturing the realism of the world through the eye of the camera. Even in this modern age I can see how Rouch's filmmaking techniques could have been seen as controversial, eye opening, and revolutionary for anthropologists as well as filmmakers. An example of his controversial work can be seen in "Les Maitres Fous," in which he documents the Hauka people of Ghana.
The film has a beginning, middle and end, similar to the life, death and afterlife sequences. In the beginning he shows the hard lives of the unhappy workers, with the "pressures of migrant life in Accra" and then goes into showing the same group in a trance, taken over the identities of the white colonialists. As they violently tear at a dog carcass and foam at the mouth, the most shocking detail of Rouch's film is the fact that he gives no explanation for the trancing, he provides no background information of the cultural, only explains which person is taking over the personality/character of a certain colonialist (i.e. the governer, etc). The film ends, shockingly, with the same people where were in a trance together, now smiling at Rouch and happily working together in a ditch. The sequencing of the film suggests that the trance was a sort of "indigenous auto-psychiatric cure for the intolerable pressures and oppressions" (Loizos 48). Loizos concludes with summarizing the work of Jean Rouch with the subjects of "collaboration with the subjects, bringing their voices into the films, allowing their dreams and fantasies to take shape, and adding a mode of documentary which was not documentation-realism" (64). Rouch has an unapologetic way of capturing a culture and focusing on the individuals themselves in a shocking, unforgiving way, without explaining motives or traditions, simply capturing the truth and realism of the subjects in a stark, often disturbing way.

Griffith-Exhibiting Others response (week 2)

Alison Griffith's "Wondrous Difference (Life Groups & the Modern Museum Spectator) discusses the reasoning behind exhibiting the "ethnographic Other" for the entertainment and education of the "paternalistic and cultural elites" at the museum of Natural History (Griffith 3). Throughout history, anthropologists have attempted to represent the Other cultures for the amusement of the Western world, which were often given a one-sided perspective on the lives of people much different than themselves. Due to the lack of modern technology and specific philosophy of time, the spectators were given a very skewed truth of the anthropology of Others (non-Westerners). The exhibition of the Non-Western world presents the information in an inappropriate way, not un-like the comical and exaggerated ways of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum. The Orientalism, which fascinated Westerners, was presented through the modernization of technology such as film, which gave museums the chance to "make science and natural history more accessible to the masses through visual spectacle" (Griffith 5). The museums enabled people to become a spectator who were able to gain access to new information, as well as the ability to feel as if they were "a member of a civilized race who was a privileged spectator, as opposed to the passive object of a scrutinizing gaze" (Griffith 12). Regarding the debates of the accuracy and presentation of the cultures in the museums, some defended "the groups exhibit's 'capacity to convey scientific accuracy while at the same time to be aesthetically pleasing" (Griffith 50).

The strengths of Griffith's "Life Groups & the Modern Museum Spectator" include the history of the museums and descriptions of how the new access to information affected the people of the 19th century. It was helpful in which Griffith discussed the debate of whether or not the museum's presentation of information was accurate in expression the truthful information of the Other, as opposed to increasing the sense of the "Other" minority to the Western world, and giving them too much of an empowered feeling. It seems that although the presentation of the exhibits were one-sided and not necessarily presenting the truth of Other cultures, the museums were more concerned with entertaining the public, as well as keeping Americans satisfied with their own personal identities in society (in comparison to Others). Griffith explains that the museum exhibits attempt to attract spectators using "an instrument of scientific edification: in order that a habitat or life group be instructive and impart even a limited number of scientific precepts, it had to be inviting to the museum visitor" (Griffith 30).

Were the museums too focused on giving people a Nationalist sense of pride when they presented the anthropology exhibits of the "Other" cultures? Were they designed to purposely belittle the cultures of others or can the lack of information/modern technology be to blame for lack of accurate representation?

Asch and Chagnon 10.18.11

How interesting to considering the impact of a collaboration between an established photographer with an Anthropology "minor" (Asch) and an establshed Anthropologist (Chagnon) with a "minor" in film. There seems to have been some real innovation in ethnographic film that came about as a result of their partnered work in documenting the Yanomani people. Their collaboration resulted in the documentation of a culture during a period other than 'at peace'. Until their work in the early 1970s anthropologists had mainly reported their field work when tribes were in a peaceful state. Their partnership seems to have added an entire other dimension of depth into the understanding of a people and their culture. Chagnon drew criticism for publishing these accouts of raiding, but I beleive it acknowledg0es that human behaviors/traditions do vary based upon the state of affairs in our tribe, colony or modern government. The new tools in filming equipment, synchronized sound and technique also added to the impact of the film on viewers. The ability to record social interactions at length with less interruption and the sense of immediacy in watching action unfold is significant for the audience. I imagine the combination of both of their professional backgrounds melded together provides quite an opportunity for the film and the associated study guides to offer an educational tool. The context of education seems to fit well with the development to the approach of sequence filming only to be enhanced with further supplements in a classroom or coursework setting.

Loizos

The Loizos' chapters focus specifically on what makes an ethnographic film distinct from a documentary. According to Loizos in "Innovation in Ethnographic Film," in some sense all ethnographic films are documentaries in that they provide evidence of some reality, yet only a small number of documentaries are ethnographic films (Loizos 7). In this chapter, Loizos explains how an ethnographic and documentary film differ, citing Jay Ruby's and Karl Heider's guidelines for doing so. Ruby classifies ethnographic films as having four criteria: "they should be films about whole cultures, or definable portions of cultures; informed by explicit or implicit theories of culture; explicit about the research and filming methods they had employed; and using a distinctively anthroplogical lexicon" (Loizos 7). Heider has similar classfications but adds that these films are most informative when they reveal "whole bodies, and whole people, in whole acts" (Loizos 7). Loizos decides that these qualifications are satisfactory enough to use them in later chapters as criteria for judging a number of films.
This is seen in the other Loizos' chapter "For the record: documentation filming from innocent realism to self-consciousness." In this section, he discusses the various film techniques that affected the value of the work as an ethnographic study, like synchronized sound, subtitles, faster film speeds and lighter and smaller cameras. Loizos also looks at films by Timothy Asch, Napoleaon Chagnon, Ian Dunlop and Robert Sandall to name a few. Using Ruby and Heider's guidelines, Loizos analyzes what helped or hurt an anthropological film. For instance, Chagnon's Yanomano films, through the use of synch sound and subtitles, gave viewers a sense of immediacy as if they were actually there. Overuse of commentary, something that Margaret Meade was fond of, could hurt a film by appearing to tell the viewers what they should be seeing. Overall, Loizos gave a proficient analysis of what makes an ethnographic film good and how various developments aided or hindered this. I liked how he wrote about different filmmakers rather than just focusing on one, which gives a broad spectrum of what the process of filming an ethnographic work is like. I would like to know what Loizos's own argument is towards documentary versus ethnographic film, but he does mention in the first chapter that no matter what definition one tries to apply there are always difficulties in making the guidelines clear and concise.

Loizos III

I just finished my midterm paper on how technology has affected visual anthropology in the past century, so [especially] found Loizo’s reflections on Rouch to be very interesting. He not only was one of the pioneers of sync-sound, but was a skilled, unique filmmaker and cinematographer himself. I’m interested to see firsthand what Loizos is talking about when he says Rouch’s camera movements are “restless” and give the feeling of “motion sickness.” The latter criticism aside, this fluid, spirit-like motion that is being described seems like such a wonderful way to record such significant events in a culture. I also thought it was interesting that Rouch sought to negate the “problems” of the objective camera, to the camera as a provoking, explorative tool.

I found the discussions of the films rather difficult to understand without being familiar with them, but did find the term “cinema-truth” introduced in Chronique d’un ete to be an interesting word. I get frustrated in class, as it seems every time someone has an opinion, the next speaker always points out the flaws in terms of bias, that the statement contains. It’s hard to do given 1: every movie contains bias; and 2: we’re only watching movies. This term is a good safety net, or at least something new for me to think about.

Loizos- Jean Rouch

Loizos discussed the film experiments by Jean Rouch, which were innovative in the field of documentaries and ethnographic films. Rouch challenged the idea of documentation-realism by using improvisation and fantasy as methods to explore issues in a culture and people’s lives. Him and his colleagues collaborated with the subjects of the films, and saw themselves as agents of the documentaries. The camera and filmmaker were not seen as passive recording devices, but as an active interrogation of the world. Rouch believed that what happened on screen often would not have happened without the actions of the filmmaker. Moi, Un Noir (1957) is a film by Rouch that was innovative because of the “use of projective improvisation to convey something fundamental about real lives, combined with the use of the subject’s voice” (Loizos 50). The subjects were talking about their everyday lives, but would also include who they would like to be and how they would want to live. La Pyramide Humaine (1958-59) dealt with racial tensions in students of Africa by using a narrative, fiction plot line. There was no way to film the issue through reality because the political and social climate would force the students to put forth acceptable ‘official views.’ By making the story up, a message was revealed and the players in the film were all affected by it. Jean Rouch challenged the accepted cultural distinctions between real and fake.

Rouch response

Jean Rouch was deeply interested in experimentation which is evident in his films. But experimentation involves a certain level of risk. As Faye Ginsburg points out Rouch was a risk taker who never played it safe. He filmed in Africa from the end of colonization through the "heady period of independence". Independence involves a huge amount of risk. The risk of independence was something that Rouch could empathize with since he was such a risk taker himself.
Rouch could also empathize with the idea of ritual and total absorption into the ritual. Jean-Paul Colleyn notes that once he began filming, his personality changed and he became lost in the ritual of filmmaking.
For the most part, when Africans are portrayed as "the other", it is usually in the context of rural societies and traditional cultures. Rouch was more interested in culture change and the modern Africa including migrant workers in cities and those marginalized by urban life. In a way he is taking the idea of "the other" a step further. For most westerners, being African is enough to be categorized as "the other" yet the migrant workers are considered "the other" within African urban society.
In many cases, films were shot in the morning, processed in the afternoon and screen in the evening. This did not leave a lot of time for editing. The lack editing emphasizes Rouch's idea about improvisation since he was more interested in the content.
Mishaps did not stop Rouch from filmmaking. When he lost his tripod is a river, he continued filming by holding the camera on his shoulder. This was part of his style of improvisation. This technique became normative in future filmmaking.
Even if Rouch's intent was to produce a dramatic documentary rather than a documentary to actually document history or culture, it seems some of his movies (e.g. Jaguar) may serve to do just that. As Rouch notes in Jean Rouch Talks About his Films to John Marshall and John W. Adams, after African independence many records, photos, etc were destroyed and lost forever.

Jean Rouch Tribute

Loizo: Jean Rouch Tribute

Jean Rouch was an influential filmmaker for many reasons. He is most influentially know for, “his dedication to the promotion of film as a medium for ethnology; his stylistic inventiveness; his radical view of documentary, and his personal politics” (Lorizos, 45). He saw his camera as more than a ‘passive recording instrument’ and an important role in his investigations and research. The term Roach uses himself to describe his research style is the term, “provacation.”

To other’s Rouch is described as a ‘radical empiricist’ who finds importance in fieldwork and time. Rouch found importance in establishing long-term relationships and while filming the Dogon and Songhap People, Rouch visited them every year for 50 years. His groundbreaking filming decisions and techniques made those who viewed his films question what they were seeing and provoked much response and emotion. Those who were filmed went back and forth between acknowledging the camera and ignoring it, questioning whether or not Rouch had hired actors or was filming real people. This filmmaking process was called ‘informant-feedback method’ and involved collaboration between Rouch and those being filmed.

‘Chronique d’un ete’ was one of Rouch’s best-known works and greatly influenced documentary filmmakers. The film touched on real life and real experiences and appears to be brilliantly unrehearsed. There are three aspects to this film that made it innovative and unique. First the sound equipment became mobile and flexible so that people were able to be filmed in their natural habitats and did not have to haul themselves down to a recording studio. Secondly, the technique of ‘jump-cutting’ became possible and in Rouch’s words, “we realized we could cut in the middle of a shot and even shorten phrases” (Lorizos, 59). Thirdly, “there was a clear acceptance of the Film-makers as agents, as producers of the reality being filmed” (Lorizos, 59).

In a conversation between Rouch and Marceline this change and monetous period in filmmaking is illustrated. In the interview, Rouch asks Marceline why he is hesitant and nervous and Marceline responds by saying, “I’m intimidated because at a given moment you have to be ready…” Rouch responds by saying, “If you say something you don’t like, it can always be cut out.” This was an unbelievable change from the way films were edited before and hard for some to believe.

Rouch was a pioneer and inspirations for many filmmakers that followed him. Lorizos sums up his work in four ideas; “Collaboration with the subjects, Bringing their voices into the films, allowing their dreams and fantasies to take shape and adding a mode of documentary which was not documentation- realism” (Lorizos, 64). He was highly respected, looked up to and continues to be a great inspiration and teacher for ethnographic filmmakers today.

About Jean Rouch

This article opened my eyes to the contributions Jean Rouch has made.  He is important for inventing a new style of documentary and he wittingly challenged the traditional thought in his time.  Rouch was called a radical empiricist by Stoller and his style merged opposing ideas.  His work began a new strand of Modernism which was a twist on the Positivist and static views of culture and film. 

Rouch was spoken about for his amount of depth and intimacy in his film as accurately portraying culture. This intimacy was created by how well the image was emblematic of the culture. Also he did more to evoke than explain the rituals furthur creating a more truthful representation.  He challenged notions of European superiority by presenting a world of different experiences which Modern Science could not explain.  Europeans were dismayed and unearthed. Seemingly, his work was documentary and artistic because the film of routines, family, school, work presented drifts, and the dialectical conversations and themes that viewers enjoy. 

Rouch was a Sociologist often of deviance or interaction.  He explanations were sociological and yielded poignant interpretations of communities and social life.  In one film, he devised a scenario for a group of kids.  Some students were black and others were white.  He told them to be racist towards the other race.  This scenario in which the kids must improvise played itself out in the long term and was seen in the jealousy and love interests between the kids.
This study shed light on how blacks could be racist towards whites.   It also was a documentation of reality which was what do people do in an abstract scenario.  This was much different from fly on the wall filming. 

This broke the Positivist thought of the time that interactions and patterns and forces of the world were grounded as very real and happened for scientific and functional reasons.  Rouch showed how a representational idea can change the story of people's actions as well as helping the Thomas Theorem that if "men define their situations as real, they are real in their consequences" 

His work was highly Modern because he managed to make film and reality align so that documentation was a transparent view of reality on many fronts.  And it was slightly postmodern because he showed that culture is not set in stone. There is real in what is spontaneous and what is of artifice such as a hypothetical situation can easily be played out and become reality.

His work though was viewed as slightly poetic and his view of other cultures is intimate maybe causing empathy. He could have perhaps romanticized the other cultures by not giving adequate scientific context for their culture. Even still I think poetry is justified for presenting reality.

A Tribute to Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch is an extremely influential filmmaker. His inability to reach an international and commercial audience is due partly to issues of distribution and partly to his own personal distaste for what is considered a "good film", aesthetically speaking. In challenging notions of the detached observer, Rouch's cinematic style allowed him to probe politics through a camera lens, dissolving the boundaries of same/other, modern/primitive, practical/poetic, mundane/magical, producer/subject.

Characteristic of all his films is the sense of fluidity, the notion that the view is transcending time and space and actually there, witnessing what is caught on film. This is due to Rouch's own participation within each of his works; he saw the camera as an active agent, and the result was a physical manifestation of synergy created through subject (both Rouch and Africans) and technology. His ability to provoke is the the essential quality of his work. Through provocation and improvisation, Rouch's films were literally created on the spot. He was in no way the sole producer of the work, since every person participating took on an active role in the film's production. The usually authoritative voice that dominates commentary became a source of poetic reflection in Rouch's films.

Rouch understood that in order to dissolve boundaries, and make European views uncomfortable with their own supposed position of authority over colonial Africans, he had to make himself uncomfortable as well. His critique of the West was embodied in his approach to filmmaking: there is a significant component of activism, and the dissolution of normative power positions allows for his films to act as mirrors for Europeans. Rouch explores human nature beyond physical and material culture, realizing that truth is something to be uncovered through cinema. His films allow for a multifaceted view of the individual, giving the viewer the experience of "being there. Through provocation, Rouch comes closest to capturing reality, and cinematic truth: reality in terms of the most authentic in relation to all those participating, rather than reality as discourse that has become most accessible and widely recognized because of propagation.

Etra credit / Jersey Shore Studies Conference - U.Chicago.

Just to reiterate, we decided that you can make up one missed blog posting by writing an intelligent posting about the Jersey Shore or another reality TV show from the perspective of Visual Anthropology. This is not required. It is extra-credit.

This is serious stuff! The University of Chicago is hosting a Jersey Shore Studies conference next week. See for yourself.

http://www.striking.ly/s/pages/jersey-shore-conference

For the record: documentation filming from innocent realism to self-consciousness

Loizos' chapter traces the evolution of ethnographic film from a genre concerned with representing the real, to one that recognizes truth and reality as social constructs created through negotiations of various perspectives. Influenced by social revolutions throughout the world, such as Marxist political theory and the feminist movement, filmmakers such as Tim Asch and John Marshall began to concern themselves more with  issues of representation in documentary filmmaking. For a long time, the traditional method had been the recording of particular cultural events, which appeared to occur in a sequence, and became units of representation, portraying the entire cultural identity through these events which occurred in patterns. This style did not, however, allow for the unusual occurrences to be part of the data, which are a major aspect to every culture. With new technologies such as synchronized sound, the ability to use recorded footage as a visual document changed the way filmmakers approached and contextualized the appropriation and execution of their data.

The ability to record subjects in both speech and movement changed the role of the filmmaker, especially in ethnographic filming. There arose a window of opportunity to give voice to those being documented, allowing them to explain their social roles from their own first person perspective. Filmmakers became aware of how every film was the product of the directors and producers own cultural bias. In editing footage and creating a cohesive narrative, those involved in the production of a film could very well create a biased view of reality for whatever culture they are concerned with. Rather than simplify the existence of tribal peoples to an epic struggle with nature, filmmakers began to incorporate various techniques, allowing their ethnography to shift away from the highly idealized and romanticized portrayal of tribal peoples. Anthropologists such as Chagnon focused on the role of warfare in dictating tribal life, a topic many people had distanced themselves from in the past. Rather than imbue their subjects with some sort of inherently ethereal nature, ethnographic filmmakers now started to capture people such as the Yanomami as entirely human, and closer to the modern human than once expected.

The issue of whether or not to include voice over, or to let the subjects speak for themselves in interviews, is still a conflict for filmmakers. Most would agree that any ethnographic film requires a textual analysis to coincide with its findings, along with several viewings and study guides. In the case of  extremely novel events caught on film, the viewing experience of dramatic events supplants any additional need to explanation: the capture of the vent on film manifests itself as an explanation of that groups cultural identity, with little need for further explanation from authoritative voices, such as that of the filmmakers. New technology, therefore, changed the voice of authority.

The self-consciousness referred to the in the title of the chapter implies that filmmakers became more aware of their role in the creation of documentary films, and that in order to lessen that role or make the presence of the subject of documentation more prevalent, there had to be a change in the way it was produced, and the role of those being filmed within the films production. This led to new practices, such as screening the film for the subjects, and distributing it so that it reaches a broader audience. It also involves practices such as including subjects within the films production, and giving voice to characters ordinary deemed powerless (women, children, etc.)

Loizos Week 7 Response

Loizos analyzes documentaries and ethnographic films, and tries to find the difference between the two. There is a difference in documentaries and ethnographic films because anthropologists are approaching their subjects from a social science viewpoint, while documentaries are geared to appeal to the public on a mass medium. Film can send many different layers of interpretations, which depend on the decision when to film, decisions in editing footage, the camera’s point of view, and the interpretation a viewer has of the film due to personal background and experience. Asch and Chagnon’s films were recognized as innovative ethnographic films because they had a sense of immediacy which made it seem like real world was unfolding in front of the camera. They also used stills to let the audience get to know the subjects and events before seen in live action. The films were meant to be taught in a classroom, and were intended to be analytically viewed numerous times. Dunlop had significance in his portrayal of the Australian Aboriginals because they suggested a respect for the individuality of the subjects filmed. They respected the culture of the people they filmed and respected their laws, ceremonies, and restricted materials. Leach filmed Trobriand Cricket, which to the uninformed viewer seemed like a fun game. The commentary of the video contextualised how cricket was brought by European missionaries to substitute for fighting between local groups. Asch was also innovative with his films in the Jero Tapakan Project because he wanted there to be no sense of superiority for Westerners, and he wanted the inner thoughts and reactions of subjects. There is no way to make a film objective, but all ethnographic film’s innovative ideas came from trying to state and explain the biases that existed, while also treating the subjects as human beings with thoughts and feelings.

Lazio - 10/18 response

Lozios talks about the difficulties in making documentaries which includes the camera's position and the point of view. The point of view being shown has a strong effect on the film. For example, when we view N!ai, the story of a !Kung Woman, in many shots, the camera is positioned to see the woman from the viewer's point of view. Even though we this point of view, like any point of view does not depict the whole story, it does create a an intimate relationship between the woman and the viewer. This makes her story more real and appealing.
Lozios includes the films of the Yanomami by Chagnon which he broke with tradition and filmed their practice of raiding. It allowed the viewer to feel that he/she was viewing the actual events as they unfolded which was thought provoking and emotionally compelling. This can be compared to today's reality TV. Reality TV allows the viewer to watch events as they unfold which are more emotionally compelling than thought provoking.
The curious case of censorship reminds me of the lawsuit around the documentary Crude: The Real Price of Oil. The film documents the legal battle between indigenous Ecuadorians and Chevron over oil pollution. A federal court ordered that the filmmaker, Joe Berlinger, release his raw footage to Chevron so they could stop the lawsuit. Berlinger argues that there is an expectation that the raw footage is not going to be released but edited to be honest and accurate. Will this court order change the way documentary filmmakers make films?

Loizo: "For the Record: Documentation filming from Innocent Realism to Self-consciousness”

Loizo: "For the Record: Documentation filming from Innocent Realism to Self-consciousness”

There are certain distinctions and characteristics of Ethnographic films that separate them from being labeled as documentaries. Jay Ruby describes these films as having to fulfill four specific criteria. He believed that ethnographic films must concentrate on an entire culture or a specific group in a culture. The films must explore theories of this culture, must give a detailed report of their filming and research methods and they must use appropriate anthropological lexicon. Ruby and Heider stressed the importance that it is not just a desire to involve oneself with other cultures but an “Intellectual discipline.”

Ethnographic films have continued to change overtime with the introduction of sound and the ability to record any language translating it later onto a film via subtitles. Filming becomes more conspicuous and became less intrusive on the subjects allowing the cameras and film crew to be less noticed. Post 1950, ethnographic films no longer concentrated on formal rituals and practices but rather discussed more in-depth matter regarding political domination, market economy and feminism.

In Loizos' "For the Record: Documentation filming from Innocent Realism to Self-consciousness” I was struck by Dunlop’s style of filming as he and Tucker filmed two Aboriginal groups in the western desert. His films began with commentary describing the characters and scenes that were being displayed. The information presented was not information that could be collected by pure observation but information that was learned through communication and interaction with the culture and people being filmed. This struck me as very different from the way Mead’s films used commentary. While watching the video about sibling rivalry her commentary was a bit exaggerated and the assumptions she made and commentated on seemed to be unfair. Perhaps no commentary is needed in these films. Ash found importance in providing detailed information and teaching material along with his films, which may be the best way to inform people about the culture but not in a bias way which is seem in some commentary and subtitles.

Isaac Candelario

Analysis of Shelly Errington on Primitive art

The word primitive can have many negative connotations to it. Webster’s dictionary defines it as being something from antiquity or something underdeveloped. Shelly Errington gives an in depth portrayal of primitive art showing just how complex the history is. She gives insight into how certain words have been used over time paralleling changing definitions with specific historical situations.

Terms that Errington is dealing with include art, primitivism, and authenticity. Shelly holds that primitivism and authenticity have died as concepts for the modern cultural analyst. So, we are left with a problem. What do we make of primitive art? She goes about defining art through historically centered cultural analysis. Taking time to point out the ways in which museums, popular artists, art theorists, catalogues, transnational mobility, and economics have contributed to the ways people view and think about art. Errington paints the nineteenth century as a time of intense technological advancement in the west leading to the modernism of the twentieth century.

The importance of intention in art is always a popular subject among art theorists and philosophers. Shelly sets up a dichotomous view of art by paralleling art by intention with art by appropriation. It is through a treatment of these terms that she sets up her history of primitive art.

Jacknis/Ginsburg on Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson

Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film – By Ira Jacknis

Faye Ginsburg
“Now Watch this very carefully…”
The Ironies and afterlife of Margaret Mead’s visual Anthropology - By Fay Ginsburg

Both the Ira Jacknis and Faye Ginsburg articles focus on the Anthropology of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. Ginsburg emphasizes how ethnographic films thanks in large part to Margaret Mead who was responsible for preserving indigenous cultural in a way that we all can experience. Mead understood that things were changing and that with the new age of film making the way Anthropologist documented and did research also needed to change. She saw film as a way to reach a larger audience and to expose more people to other cultures.

Jacknis focused more on the process that Mead and Bateson used to research and document there journey. From why Bali was chosen and how they received funding to how many hours of film was used. It was interesting how Mead and Bateson had different perspective on how to do field study. Bateson was “just enough observation to supply a basis for his logical and theoretical interest.”(Jacknis, 161) and Mead “had a passion for specific detail and intricate pattern.” Mead wanted to document every second spent in Bali. One statement that stayed with me is “Those who know what they are looking for usually find it” (p. 173) Did Mead know what she was looking for and at what point of her stay in Bali was it realized? I think that Mead was meticulous in documenting and knew that her notes, her film footage and photos would speak for themselves. However,how much does our perceptions and preconceptions factor in the finished product?

Isaac Candelario

Jacknis on Mead and Bateson

Ira Jacknis writes a history of visual anthropology stemming from a close look at the work of Margaret Mead and Greg Bateson. Mead and Bateson were prolific during a time when anthropological field notes and data collected in the field was romanticized. Anthropologists such as Mead were trying to establish anthropology itself as a pure science, and a romanticising of this "raw data" was one characteristic of the field at the time. many researchers found themselves puzzled as to what they should do with the information they were gathering and how to apply it to good use. The fifties brought about action anthropology and activism anthropology with their groundings in kantian ideas about using other people. Sol Tax, an anthropologist who went through many ideological transformations during this period said, “Community research is justifiable only to the degree that the results are imminently useful to the community and easily outweigh the disturbance to it.” he made this claim at the 1951 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Just one year after Margaret Mead and Greg Mateson finished their first visual ethnography.

When they went to Bali they were thinking in primarily theoretical terms. Looking for some secret of human nature locked away in this far away place. She did initial study through visual representations, film that a student had made. She began her use of film as a way to create data that was somehow free from current theoretical language. Bateson was not a fan of such an empirical approach. His style was more suited towards making just enough observation to make a logical comment. The synthesis of these two styles ultimately shaped their project. They were not the first ones to use visual images in anthropology, but they are the first ones to apply it heavily in research and ask some foundational questions that were not all together unique to their style or mode of anthropology, but they were dealing with problems of anthropology of their time.

Isaac Candelario

Shaky Camera

Verisimilitude is one characteristic of art that claims to be realistic, and is an obsession of filmmakers trying to represent people. Perter Loizos creates a history of how ethnographic filmmakers have dealt with this obsession. It all starts with a search for cinematic truth, which proves difficult to achieve for Jean Rouch and Edgar Martin who are trying to determine the extent to which the camera alters behavior in people. Nichols (1991) determine that documentaries and fictions differ in that documentaries are more caught up in historical argument. Documentaries differ from fiction in their representations and not in their form. I find this claim to be false.

Fictions can be given the same form as documentary, and can even be driven by similar themes, motives, and certainly historical commentary/argument. The work of several directors could be mentioned hear, but perhaps the best would be directors from china’s underground guerilla film making scene. The current political mileu of china is responsible for the censorship of all kinds of media, but none are more heavily regulated and confined than film. Throughout history film has proven to be the most successful form of media in shaping public opinion. Perhaps this is why it has been regulated so harshly in a country whose identity is shaped by its control of large amounts of people. Now, with the emergence of new editing software and the affordability of film making in a digital age, a new wave of film makers is arising that operates outside of China’s censorship bureau. Ying Liang is one of these filmmakers. His film The Other Half (2006) is a good example of why fictions are just as caught up in historical narrative as documentary while also holding a form that lends itself to the appearance of verisimilitude as documentary does. Liang’s use of alianation effects, minimal editing, and long stationary shots made with a commercially accesable camera all make for a convincingly real film. Even the stories in it are real, but played out with unprofessional actors. The sound work is done with the in camera microphone. These factors along with other subtle alienation effects make for a convincing piece of realist art that is not ethnographic film, but plays with the line between reality, art, and fiction.

The politics of production are what ultimately label a film. The context from which it was made aids it, and the viewers experience with it ultimately leads to its identity and further labeling.

Clifford

James Clifford ON Collecting Art and Culture

In On Collecting art and culture, James Clifford discusses Art, what is considered art, art collection and the categories of art and how culture is affected. By citing the James Fenton’s poem ‘The Pitt Rivers museum’s he explores the historical aspect of art and museums. He describes ethnographic collections as intriguing and forbidden objects and museum viewers as being child-like with curiosity. I found it interesting how he broke down the poem to illustrate how westerns look at “exotic collections” like a “Journey into otherness leads to a forbidden area of the self.”(p. 95) As if to say whether westerners view primitive art or the “other” as something natural, pure and idealistic or merely as something that they can made better has more to say about the westerners than the “Other”.

He talks about Westerners as being obsessed with collecting things. Their possessions define them and are extensions of their self-worth whereas some cultures accumulate objects not for self but for the redistribution. Children in western society are taught early to collect things whether it is toys or certain experiences we are taught to hold on to things. We are also taught to place these Items on display like shot glasses from ever city you have traveled or snow globes all on display so you can have visual for anecdotes. It concludes that the obsession would extend out and touch other cultures. The affect it has however somewhat damages the other culture. Items from other cultures are taken out of context and labeled art whether it is a tribal mask or ceremonial relic it is considered art collectors. The Item then becomes a symbol of a culture even though it is a miniscule part of the culture and to me that reduces the culture, a culture that is much more than just a tribal mask, fertility doll or maracas.

I appreciate that this article touches on everything from the discrimination, moral, economic and political aspect of identifying what an artistic object is. Why some objects are considered works of arts while others have to meet a certain criteria to earn that tittle. Why does African art need to be an artifact or ceremonial object to be considered “Art” or “primitive art” why can’t it just be Art? I also appreciate his breakdown of the “The Art-Culture System” and how a piece or a collection can one day be considered a masterpiece and the next not so much. And at the same time how something not once considered art can move into being a piece of art.

Visual Anthropology Prompt.

You can use the following prompt to guide your writing process, *or* you can supply your own prompt, as long as it meets the objectives of 1) demonstrating your mastery of the material from the Part I of the class and 2) causing you to reflect on how this knowledge may affect how you interpret the Ethnographic and Indigenous films the we will be watching.

Please bring your print out to class. In lieu of a timed- writing, we'll do a peer-review of the papers. Send me the final draft by Sunday morning (preferably sooner) so I can grade them by Tuesday.

Make sure your essay has a thesis statement that you support in the subsequent paragraphs.

Papers should be 4-5pp, double-spaced, 1” margins, Times New Roman.

Use in-text citations and a bibliography (MLA, APA, Chicago Manual, etc. are all fine.)

PROMPT

Drawing on the readings and films assigned during weeks 1-4, describe turn-of-the-century Western paradigms of collecting art and culture and discuss how they inform contemporary practices regarding the visual representation of “Other” cultures.

Be sure to situate these visual discourses in their historical context in terms of:

·        Cultural context: What other visual discourses made representations and displays of exotic cultures meaningful to audiences?

·        Political-economic context: What was going on during this period and how was it related to these practices?

·        Social Context: How did social concerns within Western societies affect the public reception of these productions?

·        Scientific/Technological Context: How did scientific discourses and the availability of technology during this era impact representational practices and their circulation?

Loizos Chapter (23-44)

Loizos' "For the Record: Documentation filming from Innocent Realism to Self-consciousness" discusses the various point of views of the filmmaker/camera, focusing on John Marshall's subject and filmmaking beginning in the early 1950s of the "Bushmen," otherwise known as San of the Kalahari desert. He presents the lives of individuals and focuses on their growth and development within their culture and environment, with an intense authenticity. As we watched in class, "N!ai, the story of a !Kung Woman," it seemed that the people being filmed were not characters, but subjects, and they were having their stories told by themselves, as accurately as possible. The film portrayed the young girl as she grew into a woman in a realistic light, based on the fact that it was social commentary from her perspective, and it was informing the viewer of her personal struggles, and the struggles of her people over the years.

With the help of Timothy Asch, Marshall began to incorporate the technique of "sequence filming." Asch also began to use the newly developed film technique of continuous synchrous-sound. Asch came to work with Chagnon, who used a "demanding behaviour-science approach to anthropology" (Loizos 24) with his portrayal of the Yanomami.

Loizos also mentions the collaboration of Dunlop, Tucker and Tonkinson in which they filmed Aboriginal groups in Australia, using methods of re-enactment and reconstruction with their subjects, who aimed to show the filmmakers the way they used to live before their culture was taken over by the missionaries. It is interesting, because one might ask if it is still authentic because it is the original culture of the people themselves that they are reanacting, or if it is controversial because it is being repeated for the sake of ethnography.

As ethnographic film advanced over time, cultures became weary to allow their sacred rituals and practices to be recorded, as the case with Sandall in Australia, post-1960s when they had the chance to view themselves. With the modernization of ethnographic film techniques and sound technology, the Aboriginal cultures who were made the subjects of the films became involved in controversy regarding ethics, and the sacred nature of their rituals which were being recorded.

Dunlap, in collaboration with the anthropologist Godelier, filmed the Baruya people of Papua New Guinea in 1969, with their consent, which seems like an breakthrough in the ethics between the spectator and the subject.

Loizos also brings up the example of the project between Asch and Linda Connor, filming the subject Jero Tapakan. This project seems revolutionary for ethnographic film for the fact that Asch specifically "wanted there to be no chance of the films helping Westerners see themselves as superior to the people filmed, so any unusual behavior would have to be contextualised through commentary" (Loizos 39), and also wanting to include the inner throughts of the people, as to acheive truth and reality throughthe accuracy of his ethnographic film. The fact that he was interested in presenting Jero as a person, as an individual and was concerned with expressing the truth, emotions and authentic life of Jero seems groundbreaking. As opposed to being a nameless, faceless member of a culture, Jero became a person with a story to be told.

Loizos 10.11.11

In this week's readings, I'm still ruminating on a point made in Chapter 2 of the Loizos book. In discussing the praise worthy work of Asch and Chagnon he mentions that Asch had developed his "own view" of the Yanomami culture. Over a series of films Asch and Chagnon had chronicled various view of Yanomami society. Initially the ethnographers had brought to the film the warlike behaviors demonstrated by the tribe, but over type they had actually also captured footage of the same man engaged in an aggressive attack on an enemy village was also filmed peacefully engaged at another time in bathing his child. Initially, I thought how important it was that the series of films is accessible so that the characters can be viewed as more than one dimensional in their daily or seasonal activities. An ethnographic film series can certainly add a level of depth about a culture, society and humans that would be difficult to appreciate in a one-time film release. However, Loizos points out that the Asch had developed a different point of view as he spent time studying the tribe. The readings have presented many questions surrounding authenticity, bias, editor's judgement, but I had not yet considered the very nature of how much time an ethnographer spends with their subject is yet another layer of complexity in interpretation. It stands to reason the more one enters into a relationship with a subject matter that understanding and opinions will change and evolve. So which interpretations are more accurate --- first impressions or understanding that can only be achieved through iterative relationships built over time?

Authenticity, Gordon and Garland

In their article concerning authenticity, Gordon and Garland draw on post structuralism to explain meta-tourism, and how the bushmen's reliance on tourists for economic development places him in a perpetual state of otherness. The government instituted policies which give locals more control over tourism are in many ways beneficial. They allow indigenous people to claim land and wildlife, while also giving them an opportunity to profit off of the tourist fueled economy. However, in return, the bushmen must remain subjects and spectacles, and their history is reduced to a narrative of progress, from primitive to modern man, completely devoid of any accounts of the substantial bloodshed and ethnocide that occurred throughout this transition into modernity.

Foreign investors have been encouraged to collaborate with locals on joint ventures in the tourism industry. In addition to the scenic deserts and wildlife that comprise Namibia, agencies also market the bushmen as a major component to the experience. This form of cultural tourism, regardless of the monetary return that  bushmen directly profit from, explicitly commoditizes them as subjects to be observed and consumed. Going beyond exploitation, it creates new forms of authenticity, and allows Westerners to reaffirm their sense of self as ecological and conscious travelers reinstating their connectivity to the rest of the world, and most especially the "lost tribes". The bushman offer a "last chance glance" into a sacred way of life that is quickly disappearing.

The activities that tourists engage in include semiotic displays of authenticity by the bushmen, such as dances and rituals, hunting expeditions, purchasing bushmen crafts, and immersing themselves in "authentic villages". However, authenticity, as argued by the two authors, is a ideological construct, which allows those in a position of power (the tourists) to decide what is authentic and what is not, based on their own needs for self reaffirmation. It allows foreigners to see themselves as part of "community empowerment" rather than ignorant and exploitative Westerners. In analyzing this creation of authenticity, Gordon and Garland recognize the underlying motivations of tourists: not for authenticity itself, but rather a quest for authenticity. This idea of quest, or adventure, compensates for the bushmen's own lack of authenticity, and allows tourists to feel good about their travels, even if they did not have the opportunity to become part of a romantic, lost tribe for a few weeks.

The tourists do all the justifying, and create and assign meaning to their experience, mostly because they are the ones paying for it and being confronted with a different culture, voluntarily. By allowing themselves to believe they are part of the development process, they begin to see themselves more as genuine individuals with good intentions than wealthy tourists in search of adventure. However, this translates into a never ending power struggle, for the bushmen are not making any independent choices. Instead, they must become part of the global economy in any way possible to sustain themselves, with no other options but to "hunt and gather", which actually means begging tourists. They do not live an "authentic" primitive lifestyle because their environment has been forever altered by foreigners to the point where they can no longer live off the land and survive. Therefore, despite the illusion of empowerment, the ideology of meta-tourism is actually disempowering, and for the bushmen, its either "join or die".

Tomaselli, Garland, Loizos

Tomaselli, Garland and Gordon and Loizos all address how being under scrutiny affects the actions of the scrutinized. Loizos writes about various ethnographic films and whether or not each film falls into the category of purely documentation, entertainment or a mixture of the both. In the case of a film being a partly fictionalized documentary, the film loses value as being an anthropological work. The problem of analyzing these types of films is that is impossible to determine what is the factual and what is contrived for the purpose of entertainment.

Loizos's chapters, while solely addressing documenting realism, relates to the content of Tomaselli's and Garland and Gordon's articles as well. Rather than focusing on various filmmakers and their works, these articles take a different look at derived culture, seen in the tourism industry. Both articles focus on the group of people in Namibia known as the bushmen. Here the tourism industry markets a 'rich cultural heritage' by promoting an inside look at the authentic, primitive culture of the bushmen. Same as with ethnographic films, what the people see is not always what is the truth. The bushmen are well aware of their marketability as a commodity and cater to what tourists wish to see. They understand that cultural tourism will yield profits for them, if they play up that they are a 'dying culture,' or a simple, nature loving, live on the land type of people, all the while knowing that they are in fact very modernized. This type of tourism attracts those looking for an adventure, or who wish to get closer to the land, or discover themselves through the simplicity of another society. In Tomaselli's article, it is noted, "Cultural or eco-tourism is basically the commodification by capital of the romance of anthropology” (Tomaselli 189). The bushmen are profiting from the Western desire to seek the untouched, the so-called 'primitive.' My thought is to wonder if they are somehow morally wrong to do this. Does this have a negative impact on the actual record of the bushmen's place in history? With something like this happening, I'm sure Namibia is not the sole example, how can authenticity be proven? As Garland and Gordon pointed out, “authenticity is not the same thing as primitivity, ethnic originality, or historical stasis” (Garland & Gordon, 280).

Margaret Meade

Anthropologists use ethnography to study how another culture is organized and what cultural markers they operate on.  There is an issue of to what extent should Margaret Meade and Bateson just show the footage and culture as it is? Must they include some conclusions and comparisons of what they saw in their work?  Would these conclusions be their own opinion or objective fact? 

I do think something is lost when Meade would only film the interesting parts of culture.  Maybe something can be learn from the body language and specific patterns of everyday interactions. 

Their reasoning that they should shoot spontaneously is sound but participants should have been asked afterwards if their photo could be used.  However, Meade still did good fieldwork within the limits of technology of that time.  She was also working in a different time when there was a drive to find a correct method of child development. The line between Anthropology and Psychology was perhaps blurred.  Her work also was influenced not only by psychological questions but the ideas of cultural types and a reason to find these missing types.

Why Meade would try to illicit reactions from children and stage certain actions when she is an Anthropologist does not make sense to me. 

As far as the films, Meade shortened the trance film to 20 minutes.  The article said "it is easy to slip into the belief that the film is the ritual."  I wonder if her decision was due in part to how much film she had available.  If the video went on for longer than 20 minutes what else would we gather?  Shooting the film during the day might have been her best option with the technology that she had. 
Why would she interfere and use women in the dances when they were traditionally not allowed.

Overall Meade was influenced by the ideas of her time.  She did work to gather a large amount of information about the Balinese. She reasoned through her methods and stated that they were there for future researchers to critique.  There were some incongruencies in her work.  She, unlike her husband wanted to acquire information and not order and summarize it however she did include her own thoughts (non-objective) in her objective work and interfered with the culture she was objectively studing.

Tomaselli

Loizos’s points on ethnographic film and the ideaThe Tomaselli article is the one that stuck out to me the most. Because it points out the interesting juxtapositions found in anthropology. The second we go to study a culture for academic purposes, even worse for more commercial purposes like tourism, the culture is influenced and changed. If the Bushmen were put in park-lands, they would be required to wear loin-cloths that they normally did not wear. They also were a nomadic people and this would mean they would be confined to one area. They would have to adjust to this change, resulting in a change in who they are really.

The part of the article where they agreed to wear loin-cloths distributed by the film-makers was really jarring because these people acknowledged what these filmmakers were doing—portraying this culture inaccurately—but also acknowledged that they couldn’t do anything about it because they needed money and these loin-clothes symbolized future income for them because the public would want to buy them. So again they are sacrificing who they are or their integrity to make money.

We saw the same struggle with the film we saw on African Art. The Africans who were Muslims were the traders of the art—art which they saw as “pagan.” They would hide the art from their kids because it was seen as mysterious and bad, and yet one could say that their lives revolved around it each day to make money. This was all because they knew a profit would come out of it. They are sacrificing their beliefs, and in the San’s case their integrity, to conform to our currency.

We see the same thing with Body Shop’s recurring return to Kayapo to learn about their natural health products. Everytime they visit, their influence slowly grows. They saw our cameras and now use them to defend their culture and authenticity and yet somehow they are compromising a piece of their “authenticity” in the process.

This notion of objectively studying another culture can’t really exist because we will influence in one way or another and change them. We also saw this when Mead filmed the trance dance in Bali. They included women in the ritual, shortened it, and performed it in the day. These things done all for the purpose of academia had a consequence and influence on that culture. The women were then on included and played a more important role in that culture then so gender role slightly changed.

Tomaselli - Meg

In his article Psychospiritual ecoscience: The Ju/'hoansi and cultural tourism" by Keyan Tomaselli, he discusses that 1950s policy of South West African Administration dilemma of balancing preservation of the Bushman with the objective to "make them useful and contented people". It not this insulting to the Bushman because who is to say they were not useful and contented before?
Since animal preserves are so popular with tourists, the question is asked if people can be preserved in the same way. They would "pretend to be wild" to satisfy a tourist's romanticized belief of what constitutes "the other". This idea is not that different from the world fair and Wild West shows popular during the late 1890s and early 1900s.
Tomaselli makes that point that anthropology is one of the methods that have lead to destruction of societies. He writes that once societies become know they are doomed. He cites an example of the Kayapo of using video cameras to document their own authenticity which they use to appeal for international justice. Because the films are made and produced by indigenous peoples, do they hold more weight and thus are considered more legitimate than films made by outsiders? But if the film is edited to project a certain viewpoint, does it matter who makes it?
It is ironic that the Ju/'hoansi lump anthropologists, filmmakers and tourists into one group which is really their "other". They did not seem to care that each group has a different objective. The Ju/'hoansi are more attracted by money and goods so they continue to portray themselves as the poor Bushman. Yet they do not always feel comfortable with the way they are portrayed as commented by N!ai (e.g. drunkenness, decaying social relationships and accusations of prostitution). But the decaying society is a result of the idea of producing culture and society as a commodity. In a sense Tomaselli blames subjects themselves for the images that are projected to outsiders. But is this really a fair assessment? If it were no buyers (filmmakers and tourists), there would be no commodity to sell. On the other hand, maybe Tomaselli is right when he says the last laugh is on the observer and the subjects are really savvier than they are given credit for.

Garland Article

I was greatly intreged this week by the Garland’s article on Bushman tourism in Namibia. My sister just returned from a four-month research trip in Namibia and although most of her time was spent in the desert she did have some unique experiences interacting with the Namibian people. From her experiences most of the bigger villages she visited were full of tourists and had somewhat of an unauthentic feel to them. She said that the shops were filled with touristic souvenirs that tended to be ridiculously marked up and that these villages were not most desirable places for travelers like her to be. However, to these tourists it did not matter that a show was being put on for them and the pieces and artwork being sold may not be completely authentic or of the best quality. To these tourists the only thing that mattered was that the souvenirs were from Namibia and that were sculpted and created by Namibians.

Tourists rather than travelers as Garland expresses, are not concerned with authenticity but easily satisfied with men dressing up in loin clothes and dancing around. This same intrigue of the “others” can be seen in the traveling show and the video of the caged couple. For many tourists I think this is due to time and an urge for understanding. I believe that “rich tourists” usually have limited travel time and want to experience everything in a short amount of time, which affects their ability to detect authenticity. These types of tourists are satisfied seeing stereotypical routines and people and are pleased that they will be able to understand and describe what they have seen when they return home.

The best times my sister had, was when she happened upon a small village or tribe and was welcomed in for dinner or a drink. She said they would perform for the group she was traveling with and graciously welcome them into their homes. As Garland expresses in this article, “there is no competition, you share everything”. These experiences for my sister were authentic, genuine and very memorable. She was able to experience their culture and interact with the people on a different level then most tourists. This quest for authenticity is desired by some but not by all. I believe the more one travels and experiences the world, the more authenticity becomes important.

Oct 11-Loizos, Garland and Tomaselli Response

The Loizos reading, "Innovation in Ethnographic Film" he discusses the different ways in which one can create a sort of documentary/realism in portraying a specific culture. The idea of "cinematic truth" is brought up, as well as non-actors, in a way, acting in front of the camera. It is clear that there is a thin line between visually presenting a documentation of a given culture, and creating a work of fiction through film. As noted by Brian Winston, this occurs by "editing and selection. Both, wittingly and unwittingly, embody a viewpoint" (Loizos 6). Ethnographic films are distinguished from documentaries for criteria described by Jay Ruby, including "using an anthropological lexicon". The innovations of filmmaking techniques and technology allow for more ethical ethnographic films to be developed, and using realism.

Garland & Gordon's "Authentic (In) Authentic: Bushman Anthro-Tourism" regards margeting schemes to attract tourists to visit the area of Namibia. The tourism creates a loss of real culture as its reproduction results in the loss of authenticity. It is unfortunate that the tribe of people known as the 'bushmen' has been replicated in the form of logos and other uses for tourism and other companies. The business made out of exploitation of the so-called 'bushmen' is unethical and morally wrong, all for the name of creating money out of racism. It is noted in this reading that the Bushmen are considered to be the most famous example of the "Others," which of course means that their culture is made up of highly "marginalized and disempowered people" (Garland 270). This culture has also been objectified to the point where the people themselves have been tourist attractions, and the individuals have been made into characters in books, newspapers, postcards, and other media.

In the article, "Psychospiritual ecoscience: Ju/'hoansi & Cultural Tourism," Keyan Tomaselli discusses similar themes of tourism and preservation of a culture's authenticity as the Garland reading. As mentioned in the Garland reading in which tourists could not see the Bushmen wearing Pepsi shirts, instead insisted on presenting them wearing grass skirts to look more authentic, Tomaselli discusses the anthro tourism/ public's need to 'conserve' the culture of the Bushmen, despite the fact that their culture had modernized and was adapting to the new societies of the world. The manipulation and objectication/false realism of the Bushmen can be described as "commodification of the the "ethnographic" takes place within the context of the "mobilized gaze" that is part and pacel of the transnational media flows' (Friedberg 1995) (Tomaselli 189). In order for the tourists (as well as the Bushmen) to be properly manipulated, the Bushmen have to look as if they are poor. The look which labels them as the 'Other' will feed the appetite of the tourist, who come searching for what they think is the truth of this culture. The sense of what is authentic in regards to this culture from the viewpoing of the Westerners/tourists is strictly based on stereotypical mindsets set in racism. It is only successful tourism when the culture is manipulated into becoming the "Other" and being portrayed negatively, destroying the authenticity of the Bushmen.

Jacknis

In Jacknis's article, background information, parameters, procedures, and analysis of Margaret Meade and Gregory Bateson's (as well as their team) study of the Bali people are presented. In their stay in Bali, they both learned the language Balinese and attempted to study the gestures and interpersonal relations between the people, with a focus on child development. What made their study stand out was the usage of a different medium, in this case film and photography. The experience of the extensive research team with photography as well as their education assisted Mead and Bateson in the completion of their project. A main objective of the team was to combine images, film, artifacts, and written records to show their work and studies. This was done by creating 'scenarios'. In their finished project, analysis from many different people was included. The analysis was also as extensive as the fieldwork research. Even though captions were made for photos and such, and context created in notes and photos, it was a step closer to a less biased perspective due to the usage of the camera. However, bias and subjectivity was still present via editing, selection of photos, and grouping of photos on a 'plate'. They tried to limit this by saying if the Bali in the photos were conscience of the camera and if they had posed or not posed. Nonetheless, the utility of film and photography was a huge advancement in the field of anthropology. Jacknis quotes Sol Worth in the end saying "Film is not a copy of the world out there, but someone's statement about the world," which sums up a great point from i received from the article.

The first two chapters of Griffiths book ‘Wonderous Differences’ was an interesting explanation of Anthropologists impact on both the American Museum of Natural History and the traveling show. I have been to the American Museum of Natural History many times before and was fascinated to know much research and care went into creating the experience that one has when visiting the museum. The museum had to be a place that captured the eyes of normal people and encouraged those who normally wouldn’t venture in to do so. Comparing the museum to an amusement park or a shopping mall was comical. I have never thought of it that way however it needed to attract as many people and be an open environment for people of all ages and status.

I enjoyed the way the author explained how the museum should make a person feel, “ under the spell of nature” and have an almost “drunkenness” to them. I believe this to be true as a feeling comes across you as you enter and walk through the dim, quiet and mysterious turns of the hallways. Seating is placed just right and the lighting on the displays is arranged in such a way as to not take away from the art. Knowing how much energy and thought was put into the placement of the display and making sure I am not too distracted as I pass through the halls makes me appreciate the museum even more.

In Chapter 2 Griffith goes on to explain the traveling shows/fairs that were put on. These fairs showed the American people what those of other cultures ate, dressed like and acted in their daily lives. These museums of mankind were fascinating to people and attracted many who wanted to experience all different cultures in one day. It is human nature to be interested in things that are different from you and this show did just that and gave those who never had the chance to stand next to a person completely different than them and just stare.

It is interesting that nudity was such a big deal and although it was fine to show the natives interacting in their daily lives, they could not do so in their traditional wear. The president told them that they must wear something that covered their privates from the public. So although these natives were awed at they were also asked to transform to a more ‘western’ appearance and began to be ridiculed and targeted inside and outside of the fair. The cinema could not compare to seeing a live person up close and personal.

I wonder what those who were ‘performing’ felt about themselves being put on display in such a manner. The article briefly discussed this but I am just wondering was it an honor or a bit shameful to be in a traveling show as a native?

Week 2 Reading

This weeks readingconsisted of two articles, Clifford’s article discussed ethnographic surrealism and the Stoller’s article discussed the emergence and rise of African Art. Clifford’s article described surrealists as being intensely interested in exotic worlds. There was a “radical questioning of norms and an appeal to the exotic, the paradoxical, the insolate.” Clifford described reality as being no longer a given and a know environment. Ethnographer’s are describes as being something of a surrealist because they shift and recreate realities. I really enjoyed the quote by Mauss, which compares ethnology to the ocean: “Ethnology is like the ocean. All you need is the net, any kind of net; and then if you step into the sea and swing your net about you’re sure to catch some kind of fish.”

Stoller’s article was very interesting and talked about the emergence of Tribal art and the popularity it has in New York City today. Tribal art has made a name for itself and is considered ‘high art’ found in the streets of NYC but also in many museums and in collectors homes around the world. ‘High Art’ is described as giving an educated person a “transcendental aesthetic experience” which is pared with high ceiling, a beautiful building and a wide space. I found it interesting that Tribal art is known to be an inspiration for many other art styles and techniques such as surrealist art and cubist art. I also found it very interesting the way in which this art is traded and moved from place to place. Trading is always done within the family and is done in a very honest manor. In NYC this same family trading system is used and much of the money vendors make today is used to support their families back home. I wonder if this art has any value where it is made? How much more is it appreciated outside of Africa and especially in NYC?

Walking through street fairs in NYC I am constantly seeing African and Tribal art being sold. I do always wonder if the art being sold is real or not. It all looks very similar to me and I actually rarely stop by any stand because I assume it’s not really from Africa. However, after reading about the trading system and the warehouse in Chelsea I will likely now stop and talk to one of the men or woman selling the art and ask where it is from and what their story is. Maybe someday I will get lucky and stumble upon a gem, a real piece of art. I am fascinated by this art form as are many and wonder if it’s because of the exotic, foreign and ancient feel or if it’s something else. This article was really informative and I would like to learn more about the trading system, street vendors and high sellers of Tribal art in NYC.