Sally Ann Ness Trobiand Cricket

This article first begins by stating that it is important to view an ethnographic film along with supplementary materials. It states that it is the key to understanding them because repeated viewings will not give you a better understanding; only supplementary text will give you insight into what the film leaves out. I agree with this completely when looking at these films in class each week. I would have had a totally different reading of these people (they're crazy really or strange...especially if just going in blind and viewing Les Maitres Fous without knowing something) and the film. It helped to understand what was going on and the context in which it was going on in. Viewing these films without supplementary materials really gives the viewer a one-sided and often only side or insight into that culture they are viewing (which sometimes can be a bad thing). He points out that the two most important things when viewing ethnographic films and to do it properly is to have information" about the historical and contemporary background" of what is in the film and also information "that explains or clarifies action presented in the film footage."

For me, if I had watched these films, I would just watch them and leave baffled or intrigued, but would not really look into why it is that way or more about the culture, so for the general audience, this is the only exposure they get when viewing an ethnographic film, usually the only exposure as well. This is something I have become wary of when examining these films and the subfield of Visual Anthropology because I struggled with whether the films are better to support a more public and accessible anthropology, if literature is better because it is written even if it is not accessible to all, or if they can co-exist. Idealistically, I would like the two to co-exist and work with one another, but as a viewer most won't look at secondary sources/supplementary materials, especially literature, to get to know more about a culture.

He states that this film, Trobiand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism, is not only a film that documents the "Trobriandization" of cricket specifically, but also about the "inventiveness of human adaptation, about the capacity of human groups to distinguish themselves from others." This really stuck out to me because its something that I had never really thought about and it really amazes me. We are forever changing no matter what culture you are a part of and this is one of the many examples that shows how we take one thing and we make it our own. In the film, instead of it being a certain number of set players, after the ball is hit, everyone runs into the circle and they dance and they hold their arms out like airplanes (evidence of colonialism). Dancing for them is particularly important and also the inclusion of everyone in the community in their culture so that is why they changed it.

It later talks about the dances that appear during the cricket game of the Trobriand and its resemblance to other ones they normally do. The naming of the dances can be misleading because it points out the movements done during other dances and only appear to look like a plane also appear in other dances and its significance is overlooked. Emphatic phrasing here is somewhat conveyed inaccurately in the film because it is not explained properly. When we see entrance dances in the film, its emphatic phrasing has not "functional purpose and is not imitative" and therefore shows us that its a really important part of the Trobriand culture, however, this is something not pointed out and instead the minor things in Trobriand culture are emphasized in the film. The descriptive commentary is misleading and because is focuses on the imitative aspects of the dancing, it "detracts somewhat from the film's overall instructiveness." We know this because of supplementary text and study of the Trobriand, however, the viewer would not know this and therefore get an inaccurate portrayal of this culture and its practices. Commentary or voice-over narration, which is often times written from the perspective of the anthropologist, is something we also have to be wary of when looking at an ethnographic film because it will persuade us and give up one perspective, so supplementary text really is important because then we can see what aspects were correct and what was more subjective or interpretive in the film we are viewing.