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Edmund Carpenter Explorations in Media & Anthropology

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Edmund Carpenter Explorations in Media & Anthropology EDMUND CARPENTER EXPLORATIONS IN MEDIA & ANTHROPOLOGY HARALD E. L. PRINS AND JOHN B ISHOP And how do I know who I am, until I see myself as others of the first scholars to focus attention on the revolution- see me? “Of course in this you fellows see more than ary impact of film and photography on traditional tribal I could see,” writes Conrad in The Heart of Darkness. peoples. In 1948, he teamed up with Marshall McLuhan “You see me.” (Carpenter 1975:455) for a lifetime collaboration, breaking new ground in our cross-cultural understanding of modern media. He also “A fearful thing is knowledge,” says Tiresias in headed the first anthropology department in which Oedipus Rex, “when to know helpeth no end.” (Carpen- filmmaking formed a central component of the curricu- ter 1975:455) lum. And last but not least, he has authored many publications on culture and media and was instrumental We use media to destroy cultures, but we first use media in the production of numerous anthropological films (see to create a false record of what we are about to destroy. Carpenter’s various publications under References). (Carpenter 1972:99) Considering Carpenter’s accomplishments, it is remarkable how rarely his work is mentioned in aca- INTRODUCTION demic publications. And although he remains an elusive figure in the professional corridors of the discipline, we History is a selective process. We do not, cannot, have tried to trace out his fascinating life history. This and need not remember all who contributed to making paper, the first publication to deal extensively with his the past. Most of what really happened will never be oeuvre, offers a biographical sketch and brief review of documented, and not all that has been recorded is his various professional contributions. However, given important enough to be passed on. As perspectives the scope of this visual anthropology conference, it does change, new questions emerge. Occasionally, historical not concern his complex role as a collector of tribal art, revisionism restores some unique characters previously his deep involvement with ethnographic museum collec- neglected. Free souls roaming on the outer edges of the tions, nor his contributions to prehistoric archaeology field, or perhaps even straying beyond, they capture our and tribal art. Instead, we direct our discussion toward attention and invite a closer look. Such is the case with an appreciation of his pioneering role in the development Edmund Carpenter. of visual anthropology, the anthropology of media, and For more than fifty years, Carpenter has explored communications studies. the borderlands between cultural anthropology, visual With this limited objective, we have marked out media, and tribal art. He ranks among a small cohort of several key stages in Carpenter’s career, beginning with forerunners in the anthropology of visual media. Indeed, a sketch of his formative period as one of Frank Speck’s he was probably the first professional anthropologist in students specializing in prehistoric archaeology at the the world to host a national television program, and one University of Pennsylvania (1940-1950). This is fol- 110 Volume 17 Number 2 Fall-Winter 2001-2002 Visual Anthropology Review Fig. 1. East Hampton, April, 2000. Edmund Carpenter listening to Harald Prins reading 1963 newspaper story about Valley State’s ethnographic film program. Photo: Bruce Broce. lowed by a section that focuses on a highly stimulating versations since 1978, and several in-depth formal decade at the University of Toronto (1948-1957), when interviews recorded on tape (McBride 1980; Prins he began exploring the role of visual media in close 1998b) and on camera (Prins and Bishop 2000). collaboration with McLuhan. Then comes a brief review of his years at San Fernando Valley State College (1957- 1967), later renamed California State University, FORMATIVE YEARS: FROM ARCHAEOLOGY TO VISUAL Northridge, where he directed an experimental program MEDIA in visual anthropology. Next, we discuss what is perhaps best characterized as a quixotic adventure in Papua New The son of an art teacher, Edmund Snow Carpenter’s Guinea (1969-1970), where he introduced modern life began in Rochester, New York, 1922. From early on, media to remote tribal communities. Finally, after a brief he was fascinated by prehistoric archaeology. With review of Carpenter’s role in various ethnographic film several cousins and his twin brother, he started digging productions and a discussion of his ambivalence towards at Gull Lake, Michigan, where his parents had a summer visual anthropology, we conclude with a critical assess- home. In 1935, the thirteen-year-old “Ted” met Arthur ment of his tenuous position within the profession. C. Parker, a Seneca anthropologist who directed the Some of the information presented in this paper Rochester Museum and Science Center. During the rests on published work by Carpenter and others. Much, Great Depression, Parker initiated some Work Projects however, is based on numerous ongoing personal con- Administration excavations and invited the young Car- Harald Prins is professor of anthropology at Kansas State University. He served as President of the Society for Visual Anthropology (1999-2001) and as the American Anthropologist's Visual Anthropology Review Editor (1998-2002). He has co-produced documentary films such as Our Lives in Our Hands (1986) and Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me! (2002), and has published a number of articles and bookchapters on visual anthropology, including "Visual Media and the Primitivist Perplex: Colonial Fantasies and Indigenous Imagination in the North America" (2002). See page 16 for John Bishop’s bio. Visual Anthropology Review Volume 17 Number 2 Fall-Winter 2001-2002 111 Fig. 2. East Hampton. April, 2000: Edmund Carpenter and Prins. Photo: John Bishop. penter to spend weekends and summers with archaeo- site, employing some 500 Japanese prisoners of war in logical crews digging Iroquoian prehistoric sites prima- the dig. rily in the Upper Allegheny Valley (1935-1939). By the time of his discharge in 1946, Carpenter had In 1940, Carpenter met anthropologist Frank Speck been promoted to Captain. He returned to Penn where and became his student at the University of Pennsylva- he was granted a B.A. degree for service-related courses nia. The following year, he worked as foreman of a and experience. Speck appointed him Anthropology WPA-CCC crew excavating Pennsylvania mounds. Instructor. Over the next few years, he joined Speck on Just a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl several brief field trips. The two were together when Harbor, the nineteen-year-old sophomore enlisted in the Speck fell critically ill at the Seneca Indian reservation Marine Corps, left Philadelphia, and joined the 25th at Allegany, in Western New York. Many years after his Marine Regiment in the Pacific Theater. He spent the mentor’s death in 1950, Carpenter disclosed: “He re- next four years in the armed forces, and during that time mains my guide, my fond companion, my guardian three of his archaeology papers were published as well spirit.... He shunned parties, conventions, ceremonies, as several articles on indigenous Pennsylvania folklore committees. I doubt if he ever attended a faculty and ethnography (Carpenter 1942a, 1942b, 1942c; meeting.” As if sketching a self-portrait, Carpenter 1943, 1944, 1946a, 1946b). (1991:81, 83) continued: “Great ethnologists do more During the American counteroffensive against the than record: they reveal.... They entered their subjects Japanese, Carpenter’s regiment fought its way from emotionally, intellectually, then revealed what they New Guinea to the Solomon Islands onwards to the experienced within.... Culture, as [Speck] experienced Marianas Islands and Iwo Jima. Promoted to Lieutenant it, was too rich, too full, to preserve in monographs by the time Japan surrendered in 1945, the twenty-two- alone. Nothing, he felt, should be lost. He used both a year-old Marine officer was appointed Judge Advocate, still camera and a movie camera.... What was needed, COM-MARIANAS. While assigned to legal work, he he said, was the power of language, harnessed to found time to find and excavate a local archaeological humanistic ends ‘by men who, if such exist, possess both 112 Volume 17 Number 2 Fall-Winter 2001-2002 Visual Anthropology Review the scientific mind and the literary touch.’” (1991:78, anthropological studies by Edward Sapir (1921), Ben- 80) jamin Whorf (1941, 1950), and Dorothy Lee (1950) In 1948, before completing his doctorate, Carpenter stirred his interest in the complex cultural dynamics of accepted a teaching position at the University of Toronto. language and worldview. No longer a bachelor, he found that his salary was In 1955 Carpenter attempted to revisit the Aivilik inadequate to support his family, let alone research trips only to discover that many had died. Instead, he went to northern Canada. Despite disapproval from col- north to Igloolik and traveled by sled with hunters along leagues, he took side jobs digging the Toronto subway the coasts. The famine continued. “I’d never seen and moonlighting in a brewery. To make ends meet, he anything like that before. I’d gone through the war, the also wrote book reviews for newspapers and began Marine Corps. I certainly saw people die, but I didn’t see doing radio and television work for the Canadian Broad- an entire community die, I didn’t see an entire culture casting Corporation (CBC) (Carpenter 1972:94). Be- die. And so I became very interested in that, and that was fore delving into these early media ventures, however, essentially the last time I did archaeology as anything we will first discuss his shift from prehistoric archaeol- more than a hobby” (Prins 1998b; see also Prins and ogy to Arctic ethnography. Bishop 2000:207). Back in Toronto, Carpenter published his first book, ARCTIC E THNOGRAPHY: CHILLING E XPERIENCES Time/Space Concepts of the Aivilik (1955).
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