October Update of Jay Ruby's Oak Park Research

Link to OAK PARK: A STUDY OF GAY SUBURBAN INTEGRATION.. A paper to be presented at the 2000 American Anthropological Association meetings in San Francisco.

Oak Park at Oxford

I will be giving a lecture Some Oak Park Stories: Experimental Ethnographic Videos at the Visible Evidence Conference, Oxford, December 11 and 12, 2000. I have a draft in the web that I am circulating for comments, criticisms and suggestions. I will make final revisions over Thanksgiving weekend. I would be delighted to have your reactions. Link to draft of lecture.

One of the distinct advantages of working in a community of highly educated subjects who share many of my cultural values and knowledge is that I can involve them in a high degree of collaboration. Some have graduate degrees in a social science. Most are familiar with the concept of ethnography. To begin I locate people whose lives allow me visually to explore certain aspects of the culture under review. I'm making two films about families in the hopes that through their lives I can reveal some of the values that make up the core of this community. In one instance it is a family that goes back several generations in Oak Park and has been involved in many of the major institutions of the village and, as the 91 year old matriarch, explains is a very "socially minded" family. The other family is composed of two lesbians and their children. One is a native Oak Parker, community activist, and instrumental in the formation of the gay and lesbian organization so prominent in the community.

The process works this way. I begin by explaining what I am interested in and why their lives might be useful in exploring these interests. The underlying assumption is this. I believe that culture is exemplified and personified in people's lives. One can literally see culture. Let me explain. To personify according to Oxford English Dictionary is "to figure or represent (a thing or abstraction) as a person; ... in art to symbolize by a figure in human form, to embody (a quality, etc.) in one's person or self..." People who personify culture live their lives in a way that symbolizes in a direct manner some aspect of their culture. For example, "Sarah," one of the women I am filming, has dedicated her life to "making a difference in the world." This sense of social responsibility I believe is a core value of Oak Park and has been so since the founding of the village. In addition, "Sarah" exemplifies her culture, that is "to show or illustrate by example,...to set a good example" (Oxford English Dictionary). The people I have selected are useful because they also enact their culture, that is "to...play a part of a scene on stage or life" (Concise Oxford Dictionary) and embody it, that is, "give a concrete example or discernable form to (an idea or concept), be an expression of (an idea), express tangibly" (Concise Oxford Dictionary). People who have these attributes should make excellent subjects for ethnographic films. I believe that I have located some.

Once subjects are discovered, it is necessary to transform them into active and self-conscious participants in the process. I explain my interests and how I see their lives as revealing important community attributes. We then discuss the details of their lives - the day to dayness - to determine which activities are filmable. Those deemed too personal or involving people who might be made uncomfortable are eliminated. For example, filming what happens prior to and after a religious ceremony is useful in that those are times when people socialize. The actual ceremony would be disrupted if people saw I was filming. I make certain that people realize that they have sufficient agency to ask me to stop filming at any time they feel uncomfortable. In addition, they may look at the raw tapes and will be given an almost finished version to examine. While they have the right to correct any errors, I reserve the right to make an interpretation that may differ from the way they see themselves. If we have some fundamental difference of interpretation, I ask permission to film a discussion of the disagreement and add that to the final work. Such differences lend a useful complexity to the work.

Then a list of possible activities is compiled and we begin to explore how I might film them. I ask the person to think about what they do in terms of which activities might be usefully filmed. When I can, I observe re-occurring events prior to filming and film them more than once. Once I have gotten to know the person in terms of their daily activities, I begin to compile an outline of their lives and topics I think can be profitably examined in a filmed interview. I do at least two interviews - one chronological and biographical and a second topical. The people I engage in my exploration of this community are educated, self-conscious, and are already reflective about their lives and their community. The process I involve them in only heightens these characteristics and asks them to consider what can be seen. As a final reflexive gesture I intend to ask everyone to discuss how it felt to go through this process.

Going to places like the Oak Park Farmers' Market on Saturdays one is struck with the presence of two kinds of families seen less often elsewhere: families in which one partner is African-American while the other is Euro-American and Euro-American families with children of color (One assumes as the result of adoption.) Most often both kinds of families are labeled "bi-racial" or sometimes "bi- or multi-cultural." In counting the composition of the schools, I believe the tendency is to count the children of two kinds of families as "black." This is a good example of how people confuse culture and race. Are the children of a "black" father and "white" mother to be regarded as "black" or "white"? There is no easy answer because we are really talking about learned behavior and not skin color. Some of these "mixed" families make it a point to teach their children something about both "black" and "white" culture and see that their children of color spend time with other people of color and some do not. The important point here is what sort of cultural identity or identities predominate in the household. I believe we must try to come to terms with the fact that these families blend elements of African-American and Euro-American cultures in ways that are new and thus are in the process of creating a new cultural hybrid. I sense there is a tendency to talk in simplistic terms about "white" culture and "black" culture as if these ways of living were totally isolated and autonomous. At least in Oak Park, it is increasingly the case that the two traditions have become interwoven and inseparable.