This paper examines the mutually reinforcing relationship between popular and ethnographic constructions of the "primitive" and argues that the mass mediated images of the "noble savage" and "wild savage" influence the way audiences view the "other" in ethnographic film and indigenous media. More specifically, I posit that the latter promotes positive stereotypes of the primitive as "beauty" while the former promotes negative stereotypes of the primitive as "beast".
I field-test this theory by conducting a reception study of two introductory anthropology courses at Temple University and gauging students, reactions to both an ethnographic film (The Ax Fight (Chagnon and Asch 1975)) and an example of indigenous media (In the Heart of Big Mountain (Osawa 1988)).
Different kinds of visual texts require different strategies of interpretation. Unfortunately, these are lacking for the majority of the viewing population. Most of our viewing socialization has resulted in a rather narrow or restricted set of viewing instructions and habits which have produced a meager repertoire of interpretive skills (Chalfen 1988:179). It is my contention that viewers of ethnographic film and indigenous media rely on viewing habits and interpretive strategies more appropriate to popular modes of representation. Simply stated, most viewers attribute to these films what they already know"or think they know"regardless of what the producer intended. In this capacity, authorial intent is largely irrelevant in the communication process.
With only minor variations, all mass-mediated images of the "primitive" can be reduced to either of the two extremes of "noble savage" or "wild savage". Filmmakers of popular cinema manipulated the two divergent images depending on need: the first legitimated the Manifest Destiny ideology while the second sought to re-establish a glorious past when everybody knew their place in society. In this way, Springer has argued that these two conventional representations constitute "two sides of the same reductionist coin" (1987:182).
In a highly heralded project, Wilton Martinez conducted a reception study of ethnographic films among undergraduate anthropology students at the University of Southern California. He found that instead of conveying culturally specific information, the films confirmed and reinforced prejudices and stereotypes which audience members held toward foreign cultures (1990, 1992, 1994, 1995). Martinez devised a catchy phrase for the interpretive gap between the intentions of the filmmakers and student responses by calling this phenomenon "aberrant readings" (1992:132), receiving a lot of praise and adulation in the process. Amidst all the fanfare, it is very difficult to find anybody critical of Martinez work until now.
The chief weakness of Martinez's work is that he never addresses where these so-called "aberrant readings" come from and offers no explanations for their causes. In other words, why do these ethnographic film representations reinforce negative stereotypes? Or, as the title of one of his celebrated articles asks, "Who constructs anthropological knowledge?" (1992). This is not a rhetorical question, despite the fact that he chooses to ignore his own question.
I contend that negative stereotypes of the "primitive" are inherited by and perpetuated through popular media representations. After a lifetime of television programs, feature films, music videos, video games, etc., how can consumers of the electronic age view the "exotic other" in any other way? Based on the breadth and depth of this inculcation, there is nothing "aberrant" about these readings at all. They are, in fact, perfectly normal readings. As Rony suggests, "the exotic is always already known" (1996:6).
To explore these issues further, I have conducted a reception study with undergraduates in two introductory anthropology courses at Temple University. Both courses fulfill a university requirement, which accounts for the main reason most students take these courses. "Cultures of the World" was offered at Temple's main campus during the fall of 1997 in a mammoth lecture hall that easily accomodates the approximately 150 students enrolled in the course. The main campus is a large urban university characterized by racial diversity. The course was taught by a tenured professor and two teaching assistants.
In contrast, "Introduction to Anthropology" was taught by myself, a graduate student, during the summer of 1998 at the Ambler campus which is located in a suburb of Philadelphia. Ambler is generally perceived as "the White Temple" and, true to form, all eight of my students were white and middle class. Despite the many differences, an important similarity between the two courses is that both were film-driven and specifically designed to teach students how to critically view films.
I attempted to investigate all the circumstances of engagement in the viewing process by utilizing such techniques as participant-observation, student profile questionnaires, short essays on what constitutes "the primitive", and structured interviews. In short, this study was intended as a development towards an ethnography of the communication of ethnography.
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM
Due to time constraints, I will not include a description of The Ax Fight under the assumption that most if not all of you are familiar with the film.
In contrast to Martinez, study in which students seemed very homogenous in their reactions to The Ax Fight (1990:202), the students I interviewed each responded very differently. A majority of the students reported not liking the film, but cited varying reasons:
Alec: I might have enjoyed it more if there was some kind of set-up to itI mean, out of nowhere, it just plunges right into chaos. Gertrude: No, I didn,t like it because it didn,t bring out any good points in the people.
Others claimed to enjoy the film, but offered similarly divergent explanations:
Brooke: Yeah, I really like that movie because I felt that
he filmed it and he didn,t say a word. There was nothing going
on except what you saw. Rashaan: It was wild! They was going
after each other!
One student related the altercation in the film to a school yard
fight:
Alec: It was like watching a fight that might have broke out in high school. I guess, that,s how I was watching it.
This student,s comparison of the Yanomamos to kids fighting suggests that he views their behavior as child-like. Significantly, such paternalism is a common element in the depiction of indigenous people in feature films (Springer 1987:180). On the whole, interpretations of this film in both courses were characterized by negative stereotypes of Yanomamos, as evident in the following exchange:
Brooke: They reminded me of a bunch of screaming meemies who are running around.
SP: Screaming what?
Brooke: Meemies. Have you ever seen Yellow Submarine?they,re these little blue people that run around. They,re part of thethere,s good guys and bad guys.
SP: They're the bad guys?
Brooke: They're the bad guys.
INDIGENOUS MEDIA
Produced and directed by Sandra Osawa (a Makah Indian), In the Heart of Big Mountain (1988) tells the story of a Navajo family involved in a bitter dispute with the federal government over legislation which may relocate them and other Navajos from their homeland. The strength of the film lies in Osawa,s emphasis on the emotional and human aspects of the issue. She demonstrates how the land dispute has adversely affected the lives of various Navajos from Big Mountain who have become afflicted by alcoholism, mental problems, physical illness, and even death as a result of their separation from their birth place. Previous knowledge of Native Americans varied among the students. Most claimed very little knowledge, but the one aspect cited repeatedly was the Indians, connection to the land.
Rashaan: You know, that,s what I kind of figured what the Indians was all about anyway. Just one with the earth, you know what I,m saying?
Osawa's conferred legitimacy as a Native American automatically granted the film a degree of authenticity. As such, a common feature of virtually all the responses is sympathy for the Navajo's "plight""which manifested itself in anti-government and pro-Navajo sentiments:
Karen: I felt really bad for these people. What right do the whites have to come in and drive those people from their homes? I greatly admire Katherine and the others who stayed where they belonged regardless of what the government said.
As a whole, students disproportionately described the Navajos in the film in a positive light. The dominant image that surfaced repeatedly was the New Age stereotype of the peaceful savage living in harmony with Mother Earth only to be victimized yet again by an oppressive alien force.
ANALYSIS
So how do students watch ethnographic films and indigenous media? One of the students I interviewed eloquently argued that the process is inherently ethnocentric.
I quote:
We're going to watch the things and look out for the important things to us. That,s the most fundamental problem about learning things when it comes to different cultures. We, through media, through television, through advertising, through personal experience, through what we learn from our parents, we grow up our entire lives looking at and I'll be real general"the world in a very certain way, other people in a very certain way. And to suddently alter things that have been ingrained in our brains for our whole lives is exceptionally difficult.
What a picture means to the viewer is strongly dependent on his or her past experience and knowledge. The reading of an image, like the reception of any other text, is dependent on prior knowledge of possibilities. As anthropologist and filmmaker Allison Jablonko points out, "people only see, what they already have in mind" (1988:175). In this interpretive setting, viewers construct their own meaning of the images, and they do so on the basis of previously acquired knowledge and in the context of their own particular lives.
In the final analysis, native-authored texts do not provide a means of taking control over one,s own image because the viewer interprets the film according to existing stereotypes of his or her own culture. Despite a filmmaker,s best intentions, ingrained viewing habits encourage viewers to attribute to footage whatever stereotypic explanations they may believe to be accurate. Research indicates that when the intended message conflicts with viewers, world view, the viewers, attributions will likely dominate (Ruby 1994:195). In the contested space between the power of the filmmaker and the power of the viewer, the latter will always win.
Indeed, both negative and positive stereotypes of the "primitive" are shaped by popular modes of representation which influence how viewers interpret ethnographic films and indigenous media. But the reverse is also true: ethnographic"or that which purports to be ethnographic"representations reinforce popular ones. Thus' the process is circular rather than linear as the "reel" and the "real" are mutually perpetuating.
To the undiscerning eye, the antics of the "Uta Bagee" in Krippendorf's Tribe is given credibility because of his similarity to a Yanomamo headman on "The Discovery Channel" or to Tim Asch and Napolean Chagnon,s portrayal of another Yanomamo headman in The Ax Fight. All of these images meld together into a homogenous, nameless, indistinguishable mass called the "primitive".
PRESCRIPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Devising ways to combat ethnocentrism in film spectatorship in introductory anthropology courses is certainly a formidable challenge. Ruby wonders how many instructors even recognize the need to deal with students, visual naivete: "In order to teach anthropology with film, teachers have to first instruct students on how to critically examine what they see". (1995)
The majority of introductory anthropology courses survey a wide variety of cultures around the world. This form of "ethnic snacking" is hazardous to the goals of cultural understanding. One week, it is the Dani, next the Yanomamo, followed by the Kayapo, and so on. Ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall asserts that "we shouldn't be surprised to hear that after a quick trip on the ethnographic Love Boat most students remain ethnocentric, oblivious and self satisfied" (1993:129). Even the most serious student has trouble remembering all of the exotic names, much less anything substantive about the culture of the given week.
As a pedagogical model to remedy some of these deficiencies, I humbly offer my own experiences of teaching anthropology through film. The course I taught operated from an underlying premise that most students bring certain preconceived notions of "primitive" peoples which have been shaped by media representations of alien cultures.
I designed the course to explore this relationship between ethnographic and popular constructions of the "exotic other" with the ultimate goal of utilizing the former to help dispel the latter. Therefore, I showed Krippendorf's Tribe in conjunction with A Man Called "Bee" to compare and contrast the depiction of anthropology and its practitioners. In a similar capacity, we, as a class, juxtaposed the African villagers in The Hunters with their fictional counterpart in Ace Ventura 2.
The class assignments further compelled students into confronting their own ethnocentrisms. For their final papers, students selected a feature film that described some component of their own culture and related its treatment by an ethnographic film. Paper topics included investigating kinship in The Brothers McMullen and Jaguar, cultural change in Hoosiers and Trobriand Cricket, warfare in Braveheart and Dead Birds, and social control in Good Fellas and The Ax Fight.
In another variation of the same assignment, students were
asked to analyze one of their home movies as if it was an ethnographic
film about a culture different than their own. In a style similar
to Ralph Linton,s "Nacirema" work, one student described
a video of her wedding from a surprisingly detached perspective
while another commented in detail about all of the exotic rituals
involved in footage of a friend,s 21st birthday party. By turning
the tables, students were able to see and feel what it is like
to be on the other side of the anthropological gaze. In the process,
the "us/them" dichotomy began to blur. Thus, one path
to making the "strange familiar""which is the expressed
goal of all anthropologically relevant films"is by first
making the "familiar strange".
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