Jay Ruby
Additional
publications available
This paper was presented at a panel at the American Anthropological Association meetings, December 2, 1998 in Philadelphia entitled Seeing Culture: The Anthropology of Visual Communication at Temple University. Do not cite without author's permission.
Ethnographic film is undertheorized and underanalyzed. Anthropologists
tend not to be very knowledgeable about film, semiotic, or communication
theory, as witness the writings of Heider and Loizois. While film
scholars who write about the genre lack an adequate understanding
of anthropology as can be seen in the writings of Bill Nichols,
Fatimah Rony, and Trinh T. Minh-ha.
Recently some visual anthropologists have voiced a concern with
becoming engaged in finding solutions to the so-called "crisis
of representation." Since pictorial media are logically at
the center of any debate about representation, it may be possible
to bring ethnographic film into the midst of anthropological concerns.
To do so means creating a critical approach that borrows selectively
from film, communication, media and cultural studies. The promise
is the construction of a theory and practice of ethnographic film
that challenges the logocentric basis of anthropological theorizing,
while at the same time making a clear demarcation between ethnographic
film and other pictorial attempts to represent culture.
As a step in that direction, this talk presents an argument for
a narrowly conceived and restrictive conceptualization of ethnographic
film and a radical departure from current production practices.
It is an expansion of a position I first articulated in 1974.
The thesis of this talk is that the term, ethnographic, should
be confined to those works in which the maker has formal training
in ethnography, intended to produce an ethnography, employed ethnographic
field practices, and sought validation among those competent to
judge the work as an ethnography. The goal of an ethnographic
film should be similar to the goal of a written ethnography -
to contribute to an anthropological discourse about culture. As
this view flies in the face of common usage, an alternative solution
and one that I am increasingly leaning toward, is to accept that
the term, ethnographic film, has found a particular niche in popular
parlance and that it is simply easier to abandon the term altogether
and describe filmic work produced by anthropologists with a more
accurate phrase - anthropologically intended films.
No one has articulated a theory of ethnographic film adequate
to the task. In 1974 Heider wrote "It is probably best not
to try to define ethnographic films. In the broadest sense, most
films are ethnographic - that is, if we take 'ethnographic' to
mean 'about people'. And even those that are about, say, clouds
or lizards or gravity are made by people and therefore say something
about the culture of the individuals who made them (and use them)."
His inclusive approach seems to still represent the most popular
view even though it is hard to imagine which films he would regard
as not being ethnographic.
The dilemma is an canonical one. If ethnographic film is supposed
to have something to do with ethnography then where do films produced
by non-ethnographers fit? The majority of the films commonly labeled
ethnographic are made by people with little or no anthropological
training and no apparent interest in anthropological theory building.
Excluding Robert Flaherty, John Marshall, and Robert Gardner from
a discussion of ethnographic film seems altogether absurd but
then so does calling all films that deal with culture ethnographic.
If the genre is confined to films made only by trained ethnographers,
an tiny field results. If it is opened up to any film that makes
a sophisticated statement about culture, the definition implies
that one need not know anything about ethnography or anthropology
to produce an acceptable ethnographic film. Either way seems inadequate
and frustrating. Perhaps anthropological filmmakers need to disassociate
themselves from ethnographic film if they are to effectively use
the medium to do anthropology.
There is a general tendency to be overly generous in the use of
the term ethnographic. Some characterizations are merely faddish
and can be offhandedly dismissed. When it is applied to anything
related to the exotic other as in "ethnographic" art,
"ethnographic" ceremonies, or an "ethnographic"
subject, it is merely another manifestation of orientalism commonly
found in popular parlance.
Most people - in and out of anthropology - regard ethnographic
film as simply a subgenre of the documentary that concentrates
on the representation of cultures exotic to the West. In this
instance, ethnographic becomes synonymous with a cultural study
of the other. This usage is reflective of a superficial understanding
of the nature of ethnography and the general inflation of the
term. I not only dispute this usage but contend it is a deterrent
to the development of film as ethnography. While an ethnography
is a study of culture, it is a very particular variety - with
specific intentions, purposes, techniques, practices and, at least,
in written form, a distinctive presentational form that clearly
separates it from other forms of inquiry and dissemination. In
other words, while all ethnographies are cultural studies, all
cultural studies are not ethnographies.
Among anthropologists, the error of being overly inclusive results
partially from the fact that teachers do not distinguish between
the films they find useful to teach about culture and those films
intended to communicate ethnographic knowledge. Once properly
contextualized, any documentary film can be an invaluable aid
for the teaching of anthropology. That is an insufficient reason
for calling a film ethnographic.
The future of ethnographic film as a significant contributor to
anthropological discourse about the human condition lies in the
development of critical expectations about how ethnographic knowledge
can be transmitted pictorially. To explore this possibility, anthropologists
must understand of current thinking about the visible and pictorial
world - both inside and outside of anthropology and examine, critique,
and borrow elements deemed usable in the creation of a theory
and practice of film as ethnography.
And most importantly they need to gain control over the production
of these works by acquiring a rudimentary understanding of video
production and editing. The technology is relatively easy to master
and inexpensive - everything necessary to record in the field
costs less than the average computer. Simple editing facilities
are becoming less and less expensive and more accessible. In this
manner, field workers can have a camera available throughout their
field work. They can grapple with questions about which aspects
of culture are visible and how they might convey that knowledge
and other fundamental questions about doing ethnography with camera.
How does one translate experience into images? Do images merely
illustrate ideas or are there "pictorial" ideas? Can
you actually explore and discover with a camera or must you wait
until you know in order to film? When you are dealing with people
whose sense of space, place, body movement, and event are different
from your own, how do you know what you are looking at and when
to turn the camera on or off?
It is only possible to explore these questions in the field when
the ethnographer is freed from the economic restraints of professional
filmmaking and the need to produce a marketable product. This
approach does not have the burden of raising hundreds of thousands
of dollars, of transporting costly and delicate equipment and
of getting a crew used to the field situation, a particularly
difficult task when they are seldom professionally trained or
even committed to living through culture shock in order to accomplish
their goals. The professional needs of a filmmaker and the demands
of public television for certain production values will not have
to be a factor. Such a method would enable the anthropologist
to show us what he/she "sees" and to edit the work as
he/she sees fit regardless of the market potential of the final
product.
Having access to the technology throughout the period of their
field work, anthropologists will be able to show the images they
create to the people portrayed enabling those depicted to actively
engaged in the creation of their image. They can develop their
own critical relationship to the way in which they are represented,
thus adding another layer of reflexivity to the work. In situations
where people wish to produce their own videotapes, it might be
possible for multiple versions of the same event to appear in
the same work, thus raising new questions about collaboration
and multiple versions of actuality.
A final product could be designed for a tiny audience of specialists
without violating funders' expectation or harming a filmmaker's
reputation. It should be self-evident that this activity would
not be very economically rewarding. These "$1.98" videos
will have little commercial potential and lack the production
values PBS deems necessary for broadcast. One cannot make a living
from the kind of films I envision but then anthropologists don't
make a living from their writings why should they from their film
work. The need to produce revenue from these activities inhibits
the exploration of form that is essential.
As the cost of producing such work is minimal, once the anthropologist
has secured funding for their field work, the tapes could be sold
at very modest prices. No distribution company currently in existence
would probably be able to accommodate this form of dissemination.
Some sort of alternate distribution would have to be instituted.
For film to be truly important as the written word, the cost of
acquiring a tape has to be comparable to that of a book. While
I do not have the time to fully explicate it, Temple's graduate
program in the anthropology of visual communication is currently
exploring these ideas in a number of works produced by Bapa Jhala
in consort with several of our graduate students.
Ethnographic film has been too long dominated by technical specialists
and cinematic artists whose knowledge of the topic of their films
is often limited to a few months of reading and scattered days
of consulting with subject matter specialists. To borrow a military
cliché, ethnographic film is too serious a thing to be
left to filmmakers.