On Ethnographic Film as Genre: Is “Representing the Real” a Futile Exercise?
On Ethnographic Film as Genre:
Beyond the Salvage Paradigm
On a contemporary scale, anthropologists have increasingly questioned the role of ethnographic film and visual anthropology in a global context of immense political upheaval (Ginsburg 1998). A deeper look at the historical development of the genre of ethnographic film would usefully complicate the conversation on the future possible roles of ethnographic film in global struggles. Margaret Mead, a trailblazer in doing anthropological research through film, emerged in the tradition of salvage ethnography, using film to document “disappearing” native cultures. While the earliest iterations of ethnographic film that Mead emerged from relied on epistemological positivism with the goal of salvaging the lifeways of ethnographic Others, by the 1960s and 1970s, ethnographic filmmakers became increasingly aware of how the edifice of ethnographic film constructs its own untenable “truths” about the ethnographic Other.
The films of Margaret Mead offer a gateway into the methodological impetus of early ethnographic film - namely, rigorous scientific documentation achieved through “objective” medium shots and an omnipresent narrator. First Days In the Life Of A New Guinea Baby, Bathing Babies in Three Cultures, and Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea were all filmed by Margaret Mead in the early 1930s at her field sites in Bali and New Guinea. Mead believed deeply in the primacy of a “scientific” and “objective” approach to filmmaking, one that relied on “long, middle-distance shots, presented with minimal editing” (Jacknis 1988, 172; Mead and Bateson 1976). Indeed, this scientific impulse can be traced throughout Mead’s aforementioned films, which tend to feature full, unobscured shots of the action, with hardly any close-ups unless prompted by Mead’s narrative voice. Crucially, the films are entirely guided by Mead’s narration, rendering the images of child-rearing legible, while the film’s subjects remain silently untranslated. As a result, Mead’s methodology as a filmmaker and anthropologist places a supposedly unmediated “representation of the real” at the highest priority - her omnipresent voice can authoritatively be taken for granted as scientific, and therefore universal.
Devastatingly, Mead’s films reveal much more about Mead and her own theoretical and pedagogical agenda of exploring child-rearing practices than they do about the Balinese and Guinean subjects of her film. Mead’s anthropological intervention hinged on bringing together psychological theories of temperament in dialogue with culture by examining sexual practices and child-rearing norms (Henley 2013, 79). Her films contrast Balinese child-rearing practices with Guinean (and at one point, American) ones, in order to represent Balinese mothers as exhibiting emotionally suppressive behaviors towards their children (Henley 2013, 81). Due to Mead’s omnipresent narration, her filmic representation and anthropological intervention are didactically overdetermined. In other words, “What is noteworthy about the Bateson-Mead corpus on Bali is not that it is biased, but that the biases are so well-recorded” (Jacknis 1988, 172). Emblematic of the early stages of ethnographic film, Mead’s scientific methodology reveals much more about the constructed truths and interpretations of the omnipotent anthropologist/filmmaker than the silenced (but never mute) subjects of the ethnographic films.
Nevertheless, what is at stake for Mead as an ethnographic filmmaker is far more than simply proving her own theories regarding child-rearing practices - Mead is invested in the project of salvaging “vanishing” cultures by scientifically documenting them, a major component of the universalistic ethos of the early ethnographic film genre. Mead writes about the role of “Visual Anthropology in the Discipline of Words,” articulating that “anthropology has both implicitly and explicitly accepted the responsibility of making and preserving the records of vanishing customs and human beings on this earth” in service of preserving “human history” (Mead 1975, 5-8). As such, Mead’s documentation of “vanishing cultures” does not belong strictly to the future descendants of that culture, but to the domain of a “universal humanity.” Salvage ethnographers in Mead’s tradition speak of ethnographic Others as inhabiting an ahistorical, timeless ethnographic present--representing them as “Primitive Man” existing firmly in the pre-history of a developed Man (Fabian 1985; Rony 1996, 100-101). This anthropological teleology allows Mead and other anthropologists to view so-called vanishing cultures as instructive for their own (decidedly more historical, dynamic and advanced) Western societies. As such, Mead’s insistence on objective shots and minimal editing comes from a desire to most fully capture “primitive” cultures before they are lost to humanity, a humanity overrepresented by the West.
Because of her commitment to salvaging vanishing lifeways, parallels could be drawn between Mead and an unintentional predecessor: Robert Flaherty, director of the highly popular fictional (and retrospectively labeled ethnographic) film, Nanook of the North. Flaherty makes no secret of his sympathetic intentions to make a narrative film about the Inuit that “record[s] the life of primitive people in such a way as to preserve the [sic] scientific accuracy…” (Ruby 2000, 86). Though the film’s staged and fictional nature is certainly clear, critical audiences nevertheless interpreted Nanook the way an ethnographic film ought to be received: as an accurate portrayal of the Other that also serves as instructive commentary on “Western civilization.” Critics either reeled back at the shocking “primitiveness” of a “horrible” Inuit culture, reinforcing a notion of Western superiority, or they received the film as a timeless man vs. nature battle that implicitly critiques a “much overrated” Western civilization (Dunham 1922; Underhill 1922). Much like the Margaret Mead films, Flaherty took on the paternalistic mantle of salvaging ethnographic cultures, revealing far more about his own assumptions than he did about the Inuit themselves.
The parallels between Mead and Flaherty expose the arbitrariness and futility of the “objective” in the ethnographic film genre, considering that Mead attempted to distance herself from the staged Nanook of the North. Despite Mead’s insistence on separating the artistic from the ethnographic, the fact that Nanook of the North became retrospectively considered an ethnographic film speaks to the flimsy nature of “representing the real.” Whether documentary or narrative fiction, Mead and Flaherty’s work both construct knowledge about “the Other” through the apparatus of film. Mead’s First Days In the Life Of A New Guinea Baby, Bathing Babies in Three Cultures, and Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea decidedly avoid the realm of narrative fiction not only through the guise of objectivity, but through Mead’s overpowering pedagogical voice. Unlike Flaherty’s work, seen by anthropologists as “illustrative rather than analytical,” Mead insists on the pedagogical purpose of ethnographic film (Marks 1995, 341). Yet, the undeniable similarities between Mead’s and Flaherty’s claims of authoritative knowledge production pose serious questions about whether or not unmediated access to reality could ever be achieved in ethnographic film.
These questions are probed more deeply by a later ethnographic filmmaker John Marshall, whose filmmaking practice gradually began to cast a critical shadow on the positivist and universalist assumptions of the ethnographer/filmmaker. Marshall’s first film, The Hunters (1957), follows Ju/'hoansi hunters on a journey to capture a giraffe. The film also features an overbearing explanatory narrative voice akin to Mead’s. However, Marshall retrospectively dismisses the film, admitting that “The Hunters was a romantic film by an American kid and revealed more about me than about Ju/'hoansi” (Marshall 1993, 39). Marshall’s later critical stance towards The Hunters epitomizes the ethos of the 1960s, when anti-colonial and Civil Rights movements put the terms of anthropological knowledge production under question. As a reflection of Marshall’s evolving film practice, his 1961 film A Group of Women does not feature didactic narration. The film is also noticeably more intimate and involved, featuring many dynamic close-up shots of Ju/'hoansi women resting and nursing their children. In A Group of Women, Marshall’s goal is not necessarily to make sweeping claims about the Ju/'hoansi as much as he “desire(s) to record and reconstruct the loveliness of this quiet sensual moment of friendship” (Macdougal 2013, 30). Though Marshall’s filmmaking practice would later evolve to a position of explicit advocacy, it was the 1960s when Marshall’s films first began to put into question the positivist methodology of ethnographic filmmaking.
Similarly to Marshall, Timothy Asch’s Yanomami film The Ax Fighter (1975) provides an early showcase of a more deconstructed, reflexive approach to ethnographic filmmaking aware of its own epistemological blindsides. Asch accompanied infamous anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon for his field work with the Yanomami, where Chagnon penned his “fierce people” thesis (Geertz 2001, 19). Though Chagnon’s thesis utilizes the evolutionary paradigm to make a racialized claim about the Yanomami’s “violent nature,” The Ax Fighter is surprisingly less didactic in its form of representing “truth” than earlier examples of ethnographic film. The film begins with an unedited sequence of a bloodless fight breaking out between Yanomami tribes, shot by Asch with a distant telephoto lens. Then, the film offers a presumptive thesis for the reason behind the fight: Chagnon and the rest of the anthropological crew believed incest to be the central reason behind the fight. The film proceeds to debunk the thesis by offering another explanation that maps out inter-tribal conflict escalating into gendered violence. Then, the fighting footage is replayed, with a commentary explaining a play-by-play of the fight from start to finish. As such, the film deconstructs ethnographic assumptions by formally reconstituting itself as unfinished knowledge production, a model that Jay Ruby calls “prematurely postmodern” (Ruby 1995, 29). Thus, Asch’s early reflexive approach in The Ax Fight is a far cry from the omnipotent, unobstructed positivism of Mead’s ethnographic film.
Despite the reflexivity however, Timothy Asch later disavowed his earlier Yanomami filmography for its uncritical inheritance of the ethnographic film tradition, posing a model for more reparative filmmaking practices. In a move that shares some of Marshall’s concerns, Asch claims, “I am no longer as interested in making films about them as I am in seeing the kinds of films that they might make about themselves. Moreover, I now question my role as an outsider representing their life and concerns to the wider world” (Asch, Cardozo and Caballero 1991, 102). In his later writings, Asch seems critical of his historic positionality as an authoritative producer of knowledge, gesturing towards more participatory modes of filmmaking (Asch 1992, 4). Indeed, critical studies of Asch’s Yanomami films have revealed that student receptions often reify racialized assumptions and stereotypes about the Yanomami, despite Asch’s “premature postmodernism” (Martinez 1995, 54). In Asch’s own words, “we can no longer view our subjects as objects,” instead, “[they] are becoming agents with some control over the strong forces from the outside world that affect their life and culture” (Asch 1992, 2; Asch, Cardozo and Caballero 1991, 106). Therefore, what is at stake for Asch in his disavowal of the Yanomami films is a keen interest in “giving back” to ethnographic Others, who can produce knowledge with their own agendas and on their own terms.
In charting the future for the ethnographic film genre, a broader look at the history of the ethnographic film tradition reveals the genre’s elusiveness and dynamism. In its earliest iterations, ethnographic film could not be disentangled from the broader methodological assumptions of scientific positivism. Margaret Mead, a trailblazer in ethnographic film, epitomizes this intellectual and aesthetic impulse through her “objective” and scientific documentaries about child-rearing practices. Her truth-telling claims about ethnographic Others could be productively put side-by-side with the more “artistic” Robert Flaherty, revealing the artificial nature of the formal construction of objectivity on the genre of ethnographic film. Moreover, later developments in anthropology placed Mead’s position as anthropologist and omnipotent producer of knowledge under deep questioning, as exemplified by Timothy Asch and John Marshall’s disavowal of their earlier filmographic corpus. Asch and Marshall’s more reflexive approaches to their own work signify an internal critique of the edifice of ethnographic film, advocating for its endurance in more reflexive and reparative ways. In the spirit of Asch and Marshall, further critiques and interventions into ethnographic film practice necessarily prompt innovation within the genre of ethnographic film. As indigenous agendas receive greater coverage and support, filmmakers operating within the ethnographic genre will likely be pressed to push at the edges of what constitutes the “ethnographic,” or escape the label entirely.
Bibliography
Asch, Tim, H. Cardozo, and J. Bortoli Cabellero. 1991 “The Story We Now Want to Hear Is Not Ours to Tell: Relinquishing Control Over Representation: Toward Sharing Visual Communication Skills with the Yanomami.” Visual Anthropology Review 7(2): 102-06.
Asch, Tim. 1992 “The Ethics of Ethnographic Film-Making.” In Film as Ethnography, pp. 196-204.
Dunham, Curtis. 1922. “THE ESKIMO LAUGHS LAST.” In The New York Tribune (1911-1922) from ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Tribune (1841-1922).
Fabian, Johannes. 1985. “Conclusion.” Time and the Other. Columbia Univ. Press, pp. 143-165.
Geertz, Clifford. 2001. “Life Among the Anthros.” New York Review of Books. 18-22
Ginsburg, Faye. 1998 “Institutionalizing the Unruly: Charting A Future for Visual Anthropology.” Ethnos 63(2): 173-201.
Henley, Paul. 2013. “From Documentation to Representation: Recovering the Films of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.” Visual Anthropology 26(2): 75-108.
Jacknis, Ira. 1988. “Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film.” Cultural Anthropology 3(2): 160-77.
Marshall, John. 1993 “Filming and Learning,” In The Cinema of John Marshall, ed. Jay Ruby, pp. 29-46.
Marks, Dan. 1995. “Ethnography and Ethnographic Film: From Flaherty to Asch and After.” American Anthropologist 97(2): 339-47.
Martinez, Wilton. 1995. “The Challenges of a Pioneer: Tim Asch, Otherness, and Film Reception.” Visual Anthropology Review 11(1): 53-82.
McDonald, Scott. 2013. Introduction and ch. 1. In American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, pp. 1-18; 19-60.
Mead, Margaret. 1975. “Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words.” In Principles of Visual Anthropology, pp. 3-9.
Mead, Margaret & Gregory Bateson. 1976. “For God’s Sake Margaret, …” Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 10(2): 78-80.
Rony, Fatimah Tobing. 1996 “Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography.” In The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. pp. 99-126.
Ruby, Jay. 2000. “The Aggie Must Come First: Robert Flaherty’s Place in Ethnographic Film History.” In Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicago, pp. 68-93.
Ruby, Jay. 1995. “Out of Sync: The Cinema of Tim Asch.” Visual Anthropology Review 11(1): 19-37.
Underhill, Harriet. 1922. “On the Screen: The Devil’s Pawn With Pola Negri, Disappointing; Nanook of the North Pleases.” In The New York Tribune (1911-1922) from ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Tribune (1841-1922).
Filmography
Asch, Timothy. The Axe Fight, (1975) 30 min.
Flaherty, Robert J. Nanook of the North, (1922) 79 min.
Marshall, John. The Hunters, (1956) 73min.
Marshall, John. A Group of Women, (1961) 5 min.
Mead, Margaret. First Days In the Life Of A New Guinea Baby, (1951) 19 min.
Mead, Margaret. Bathing Babies in Three Cultures, (1951) 9 min.
Mead, Margaret. Childhood Rivalry in Bali and New Guinea, (1952) 17 min.
