Jacknis

Jacknis is pointing out the dilemma of anthropology, which is objectivity. Mead and Bateson tried to avoid or solve this problem by using still and cine photography in Bali. They were very efficient in taking notes and recording. However, the reason why they headed to Bali was to study children and the “missing type” which Mead thought the Balinese exhibited. Yes, they wanted to try to document or record cultural themes or behaviors exhibited, but that was their main intent. Going in with this in mind, you will be biased in what you look at and record.

Bateson took the photos and Mead would be a director pointing out interesting behavior to be filmed. The article said that this was because it would have been things Bateson might have missed with his eye to the viewfinder. However, this reasoning proves that this was biased.

Firstly, the fact that Mead was pointing out things that he should make sure to record suggests that they did pick things that would fulfill their thoughts or hypotheses when they first started their research their. Secondly, the pictures being taken are biased because the person using the camera chooses where to aim it, how to aim, and when to click the shutter button. Different things are especially interesting to different people and the person will be drawn to these things and focus on them more than collecting a general overview of every aspect of culture. Thirdly, the use of the camera made the cameraman miss things because their eye is always in the viewfinder ready to get the next shot. So one can possibly argue that one who writes notes from observation can argue that they will have better judgment from this because they can observe to the best of their ability and then assess the situation fully. Lastly, the difficulty with visual anthropology in my opinion is that because it appeals to the most popular and useful senses, those viewing it can take it to be real. Photographs, still and cine, are figments of the real world. They are a representation and this representation sometimes, if not all times, cannot be accurate. Without providing supplemental text and background to the photograph, the viewer can make judgments and their own conclusions, which can be the wrong ones.

I agree with the first paragraph on page 173 in the fact that film is not a copy of something. The medium itself is subjective because we decide where we point the camera and it is a form of communicating our observations and ideas in the world. There is no pure ethnographic truth in my opinion in, no matter how you choose to document it—on paper or with a camera. It is almost like an oxymoron in a way because the people going to study have a specific purpose for and when they are there they influence that culture, too. as we saw with the recording of the trance dance, they had them do it during the day because it could not be filmed at night because they needed more light and it was only something around two or three hours long when in reality it took upwards of eight hours. They also asked women to participate for the film when they normally don’t. This would, therefore, have the viewer be mislead to a certain extent. This also changed the culture in that from then on women were always included.

The conclusion of this article argues that this, however, is not a bad thing. They were subjective and the finished product was definitely biases but it is a “disciplined subjectivity.” The use of visual anthropology is good because it is something that can be taken back for other experts and anthropologists to analyze. So the study does not only happen in fieldwork and is not a two-way interaction between the anthropologist and the culture being studied firsthand. There can be secondhand analyses. This can be a bad thing though because the medium itself is not a copy and is not as accurate sometimes in my opinion as something is firsthand. There are so many different factors that can change our view of something. For example, the angle at which something is taken can change the feeling a viewer gets from the picture. If something is taken from below looking up, the subject can be seen as superior or also in a very negative light because it can be unflattering, etc.

Because the general viewer tends to think that photographs and films represent the real world and that the subject in the photograph and the actual real person are one and the same. What often happened early on is that a whole culture would get sized up from a small collection of photographs, which can be kind of insulting. Photographs and films are almost too accessible now and this realness, as the trance dance film example in the article suggests, can be really dangerous when being used as an accurate document and can be confused as it being the real thing.