Ethnographic Film: Proposing an Alternate Critical Framework

Home , Alan Lomax, Ethnographic film, Jean Rouch, Salvage ethnography, Sol Worth

ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM: PROPOSING AN ALTERNATE CRITICAL FRAMEWORK

Eric C. Cotenas B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 2003

THESIS

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

ANTHROPOLOGY

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

FALL 2010

ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM: PROPOSING AN ALTERNATE CRITICAL FRAMEWORK

A Thesis

Eric C. Cotenas

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Raghuraman Trichur, Ph.D.

______, Second Reader Terri Casteneda, Ph.D.

______Date

Student: Eric C. Cotenas

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.

______, Department Chair ______Raghuraman Trichur, Ph.D. Date

Department of Anthropology

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Abstract

ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM: PROPOSING AN ALTERNATE CRITICAL FRAMEWORK

Eric C. Cotenas

Commercial cinema has influenced how we perceive other filmmaking modes; even when we are aware of the alternate intentions of a film. It is invested in clear cut narrative renderings of familiar plots. Our responses to commercial fictionalized films hinge largely on the effectiveness of those narratives. The exotic settings and spectacular practices in traditional ethnographic films make it easy to take them on the level of entertainment. Textual characteristics resembling those from cinema those drawn from other modes including ethnographic film – by cinema aid our ability to disengage with the informative aspect. This further problematizes the debate about anthropological objectivity versus cinematic pretense that has persisted throughout the history of ethnographic film theory. I analyzed ethnographic films by Jean Rouch, John Marshall, and Robert Gardner using a framework combining Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness with Odin’s semio-pragmatic approach. I also assessed the films in terms of Odin’s home movie textual characteristics. I determined that ethnographic films share characteristics with commercial cinema, but they can also be likened to essays, as they are composed towards a certain thesis. The aspect of composition can be likened to “ethnographic fiction” in written ethnography. Ethnographic films also resemble home movies in terms of some textual characteristics, but the presence of narrative supersedes the visual characteristics.

______, Committee Chair ______Raghuraman Trichur, Ph.D. Date iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... ix Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Statement of the Problem ...... 3 Elaboration of the Problem ...... 6 Materials and Methods ...... 13 Overview of the Text ...... 20 2. BACKGROUND ...... 22 A History of Ethnographic Film Theory ...... 23 Objective Film ...... 24 Film as a Communicative Event ...... 30 A Semiotic Approach to Ethnographic Film ...... 34 Sol Worth ...... 37 Criticisms of Semiotics in Anthropology ...... 43 A Semiotic Approach to Narrative Film ...... 45 Film Semiotics ...... 48 Christian Metz and Film Language...... 52 The Grande Syntagmatique ...... 55 Criticism of Metz’s Semiotic of Film ...... 62 A Semio-Pragmatic Approach to Narrative Film ...... 64 Modes of the Production of Meaning and Institutions...... 66 Fictionalization and Documentarization ...... 70 Modes and Operations ...... 73 Revisiting the Grande Syntagmatique ...... 77 Home Movies and Ethnographic Film ...... 80 v

3. LES MAÎTRES FOUS (1957) ...... 84 Attribution of Ethnographicness ...... 86 Fictionalization and Documentarization ...... 92 Les Maîtres Fous and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies ...... 99 4. DEAD BIRDS (1964) ...... 101 Attribution of Ethnographicness ...... 104 Fictionalization and Documentarization ...... 110 Dead Birds and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies ...... 120 5. THE HUNTERS (1956) ...... 122 Attributions of Ethnographicness ...... 123 Fictionalization and Documentarization ...... 128 The Hunters and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies ...... 135 6. CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (1961) ...... 136 Attributes of Ethnographicness ...... 138 Fictionalization or Documentarization ...... 147 Chronique d’un Été and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies ...... 156 7. FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS ...... 159 Ethnographicness ...... 161 Fictionalization/Documentarization ...... 166 Home Movie Textual Characteristics ...... 167 Conclusion ...... 171 Works Cited ...... 173

LIST OF TABLES Page 1. Table 1 - Categories of Ethnographic Attributes ...... 17

2. Table 2 - Attributes of Ethnographicness ...... 26

3. Table 3 - Modality Cues ...... 49

4. Table 4 - Christian Metz's Grande Syntagmatique ...... 57

5. Table 5 - Odin's Institutions and Their Associated Modes ...... 68

6. Table 6 - Odin (1994) Reformulation of Operations ...... 73

7. Table 7 - Odin's Real Enunciators ...... 76

8. Table 8 - Selectional Features of Syntagmas ...... 78

9. Table 9 - Textual Characteristics of the Home Movie Mode ...... 81

10. Table 10 - Odin's Home Movie Textual Characteristics and Their Relation to Heider's Attributes ...... 82

11. Table 11 - Heider's Ethnographicness Attribution of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) ...... 86

12. Table 12 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Les Maîtres Fous (1957) ...... 91

13. Table 13 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) ...... 92

14. Table 14 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Les Maîtres Fous (1957) ...... 100

15. Table 15 - Heider's Attribution of Ethnographicness for Dead Birds (1964) ...... 104

16. Table 16 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Dead Birds (1964) ...... 110

17. Table 17 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Events for Dead Birds (1964) ...... 111

18. Table 18 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Dead Birds (1964) ...... 121

19. Table 19 - Heider's Attributes of Ethnographicness for The Hunters (1956) ...... 124

20. Table 20 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for The Hunters (1956) ...... 128 vii

21. Table 21 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of The Hunters (1956) ...... 128

22. Table 22 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in The Hunters (1956) ...... 135

23. Table 23 - Heider's Attribution of Ethnographicness for Chronique d'un Été (1961) ...... 139

24. Table 24 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Chronique d'un Été (1961) ...... 146

25. Table 25 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Chronique d’un Été (1961) ...... 147

26. Table 26 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Chronique d'un Été (1961) ...... 158

27. Table 27 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for All Films Under Analysis ...... 161

28. Table 28 - Categorical Arrangement of Ethnographicness Attributes ...... 162

29. Table 29 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics for All Films Under Analysis...... 167

30. Table 30 - Attributes Violated by the Presence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics ...... 169

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page 1. Figure 1 - Attribute Distribution Grid ...... 15

2. Figure 2 - Attribute Dimensions ...... 16

3. Figure 3 - Heider's Attribute Dimensions of Dead Birds (1964), Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974), and Dani Houses (1974) ...... 18

4. Figure 4 - The Process of Communication: Ideal Model ...... 38

5. Figure 5 - The Process of Communication: Probable Result 1 ...... 38

6. Figure 6 - The Process of Communication: Probable Result 2 ...... 39

ix 1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Among the common explanations offered by film viewers for their negative

response to a film are often comments on poor acting, poor direction, a low budget, bad

special effects, and so on. The more educated response – or at least an attempt at making

an educated response – is to comment on the defects of the film’s plot. Such a criticism

is not always unfounded, but there are likely as many times that the criticism was not so

much directed at the process of what, how, and why, as it was to the narrative trajectory within which those elements appear. The dominant filmmaking institution in the western world is commercial cinema and that institution is invested in a clear-cut, formulaic, narrative structure of distinct cause and effect. As such, we tend to view other forms of filmmaking through a cinematic lens and entertainment value figures into how we perceive these alternate forms despite an understanding that entertainment is not necessarily their primary intent.

We may understand that a documentary is supposed to be factual, a news program is supposed to be informative, and an art film is supposed to be meditative, but we, as viewers, also have a justifiably cynical understanding of the omissions that come with the slant of a documentary’s perspective on an issue, the fact that news is just as ratings- driven as the rest of commercial television, and the recognition that the artistic importance from filmmakers and actors for films that does not always compare with the works of Visconti, Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut, and the like. Nonetheless, we have been

conditioned by commercial cinema to ferret out narrative in all forms of media, no matter

how loosely structured or unconventionally rendered. Narrative does exist in some of

these other forms – perhaps because of the influence of the dominant institution on the

filmmakers – and we sometimes gauge the efficacy of a documentary or other form of

visual media by our response to the narrative aesthetics over informational value. Visual

and aural aesthetic cues that recall cinematic technique – even those that evoke

documentary technique in fictional films – also contribute to our perception, and even

intentionally or unintentionally manipulate our reception of whatever narrative aspects

we have gleaned from the film text. Even the unfortunate upsurge in reality TV

programming has not heavily altered this perception, as the audience finds entertainment

value in these real lives, while being cynically aware that developments in the narrative

are likely partially scripted or edited to skew interpretation.

Due perhaps to the exotic and spectacular nature of traditional ethnographic populations and settings, it may be easier for viewers to apprehend ethnographic films as cinematic rather than documentary. Feelings of repulsion or awe elicited by the visuals might sway opinion of the work as narrative in either positive or negative directions.

Informative elements such as the narration, synchronized sound, dialogue, the narrative

progression may be undermined by memorable set pieces, such that viewer reception of

individual elements within an otherwise holistically-presented plotline might cloud perception of the overall thematic construct.

Statement of the Problem

This thesis revisits the largely abandoned semiotic approach to ethnographic film

theory in light of recent developments in the semiotic theory of narrative film, applying

critical frameworks from narrative film theory to the viewing and analysis of a selection of ethnographic films. I reconceptualize anthropological understanding of ethnographic film as a genre of film practice, rather than simply a medium of ethnographic data- gathering. The purpose of this approach is two-fold. First, I want to demonstrate the role

played by the cinematic world on the ways in which filmmakers and viewers construct

meaning through film. Secondly, I aim to demonstrate that ethnographic film is distinct

from yet draws upon both the documentary and cinematic genres.

The notion of a film language did not enter ethnographic film theory until the late

1960s and early 1970s when visual anthropology as a specialization was being

constituted. This coincided with the resurgent interest in film language that semantics

brought to in narrative film theory. In 1972, Sol Worth stated that the “mechanical

amalgam of an ethnographically free film theory with that of an anthropology not

concerned with ethnofilm problems will not do” (1981:82).1 His contemporaries

believed they could capture objective reality on film. The parallel development of the

use of film in scientific arenas such as anthropology and in entertainment diverged

relatively early on, not only in terms of techniques – primarily editing at the time – but in

1 Worth (1981) was composed of a selection of the late author’s writings as compiled and edited by Larry Gross. Despite the dates of quotations given, the actual citations were from this edited volume. A virtual publication with the print version’s pagination is available on line at http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/wava/worth/svscom.html.

terms of the connotations of those techniques. Aumont et al. (1992) contend that film

language is “doubly determined” firstly by history and then by narrativity: it is

historically constituted “by the artistic contributions of filmmakers like Eisenstein and

Griffith,” both widely recognized as early innovators of cinematic technique (136).

Despite that, film was still perceived as the “mere recording of an already existing

spectacle or as the simple reproduction of reality” and it was not until “cinema wanted to

tell stories and convey ideas” that it perfected “a whole array of expressive techniques”

that constitute film language (Aumont et al. 1992:136).

Some visual anthropologists have raised objections parallels between cinema and

ethnographic film for such varied reasons as privileging art over science (Heider 1976),

the emergence of postmodern philosophical concerns about subjectivity and objectivity

(El Guindi 2004), and as an anti-humanist disregard of the diversity of human experience

(Tomaselli 1996). According to Karl Heider (1976), ethnographic film reveals “whole bodies, and whole people, in whole acts” (ix). Walter Goldschmidt (1972) defines ethnographic film as endeavoring “to interpret the behavior of people of one culture to persons of another culture by using shots of people doing precisely what they would have been doing if the camera were not present” (1).

Worth (1981) asserts that

training in which anthropologists learn about Eisenstein's theory of editing, and filmmakers learn some basic anthropology, will produce— perhaps—filmmakers who know a little anthropology, and anthropologists who know a little about how to make films, but will not contribute much to the development of problems, whose solution can be integrated into a scientific theory of culture. [82-83]

Jay Ruby (1975) argues that one consequence of this was that “the majority of

anthropologists show only marginal interest in film as a way to articulate the central

issues in anthropology” (104). He further notes that most anthropologists “do not regard

ethnographic film as filmic ethnography; that is, they do not regard ethnography in the

visual mode with the same or analogous scientific expectations with which they regard

written ethnography” (Ruby 1975:104). In reviewing Heider (1976), Ruby observes that

the “difficulties most anthropologists have had when trying to make ethnographic films

revolves around our cultural ideas that film is either an aesthetic conveyer of emotions or

a neutral observer which has the capacity to record reality. Neither of these ‘folk models’

is particularly useful for the visual anthropologist” (Ruby 1977b).

Narrative film theorist Christian Metz believes that documentary films have no

place in films studies; that film constitutes “the feature-length film of novelistic fiction

[…] the king’s highway of filmic expression” (Renov 1993:1). Ethnographic filmmaker

Jean Rouch (1975) states that “ethnographic film has not even passed through its

experimental stages yet, and that, while anthropologists have a fabulous tool at their

disposal, they do not know how to use it properly” (97). The fact that, a quarter-century

later, Ruby (2002) should propose that anthropologists “abandon this genre to those media practitioners who dominate it and begin to produce their own anthropologically intended visual work outside what has become known as ‘ethnographic film’” suggests that little has changed in the interim (628).2

2 Because the formal textual distinction between documentary and ethnographic film is not so superficially fine as the one between the documentary institution and the fictional institution which we wish to erode

Elaboration of the Problem

Anthropological conservatism toward the use of visual media in research, and a reluctance to experiment cinematically with ethnography, in spite of much technical innovation, represents a theoretical stagnation. Yet most calls by anthropologists to be more experimental with the camera are usually of a conservative manner in the service of objectivity (cf. El Guindi 2004). Margaret Mead (1975) states those “who have been loudest in their demand for ‘scientific’ work have been least willing to use instruments that would do for anthropology what instrumentation has done for other sciences – refine and expand the areas of accurate observation” (10). Anthropologists addressing the issue have tended to view the barriers to objectivity as partly technical and partly the antagonistic relationship between science and art; a clash between the ethnographic pursuit of “truth” and filmmaking’s creative distortion of truth towards aesthetic ends in which “ethnography must prevail” (Heider 1976:11-15).

Rather than advocating more experimental employment of advancing technology, they tend to perceive such advancements as making it easier to employ the same methods in continued pursuit of objectivity. There is a sort of enforced technical and theoretical naiveté about anthropological filmmaking in which “the majority of ethnographic filmmakers have apparently assumed that if they satisfied the demands of documentary style they somehow would automatically be using the most scientific means of articulating and organizing images and sound” (Ruby 1975:110). Thus, ethnographic

within this text, we concentrate on the wider distinction between documentary and fictional/cinematic institutions of filmmaking as laid out by Odin (Buckland 1995).

film—as well as visual anthropology—has maintained a precarious position in cultural anthropology.

Christian Metz (1999b), in developing the narrative film semiotics states, “the

cinema is certainly not a language system [langue]” but it can

be considered as a language, to the extent that it orders signifying elements within ordered arrangements different from those of spoken idioms—and to the extent that these elements are not traced on the perceptual configurations of reality itself [which does not tell stories]. Filmic manipulation transforms what might have been a mere visual transfer of reality into discourse. [74]

Metz (1999) contrasts film’s connotative construction of denotation with that of Roland

Barthes on still photographs, in that “the denotated meaning is secured entirely through

the automatic process of photochemical reproduction; denotation is a visual transfer” and

that human perception “affects only the level of connotation” (72,74).

For Worth (1981), a semiotic approach to ethnographic film is an attempt to

“describe film as a process involving the filmmaker, the film itself, and the film viewer”

(38). His model is a sender-receiver relation that focuses on meaningful units of film

communication that are most successful in the viewer’s correct interpretation of the

filmmaker’s message. Before Worth’s death, however, he appeared to have arrived at an

impasse in his treatment of the approach, having only been able to take it so far with a

strict adherence to the linguistic models that hobbled pre-semiotic narrative film language

theories. Similarly, semiotic theory in narrative film also fell out of favor for a while due

to criticisms that Metz’s formulation held too explicitly to linguistic analogies and

emphasized film’s relation to literature over other art forms and poetical discourses

(Wollen 1972).

Given the limits and objections mentioned above, the reader would then question

why this approach bears reassessment. Recently, there has been a resurgent interest in

semiotic theory in narrative film, most notably Roger Odin’s semio-pragmatic theory where meaning is not fixed and transmitted but agreed upon through dispositions shaped by institutions. Anthropology’s concurrent tentative postmodern interest in reflexivity and representation – particularly with regard here to Clifford and Marcus’ notions of writing culture and ethnographic fiction – have also sparked an equally tentative reappraisal of semiotic theory in anthropology. Jay Ruby (2000) has helped make available most of Sol Worth’s writings online and, in his Picturing Culture, Ruby himself

has espoused the hope of sparking an interest in a discourse of “filming culture” (251).

In discussing Godard’s decision to make “nonbourgeois films,” Ruby (2000)

notes that such

a radical departure is only feasible or even understandable if there is a rationale to support a new practice—one that makes it possible to visualize culture and to see behavior as an embodiment of culture so that it can be filmed, and to create film styles that transmit anthropological knowledge to a desired audience while at the same time making the theoretical position of the maker clear and methods employed explicit. [240]

Such an approach for anthropologists requires a way to create an “appropriate practice of film” to convey culture as “created, maintained and modified through social acts of communication” (Ruby 2000:240, 242). Receivers would assume that sign events are in their place intentionally and “assume the maker was competent and that the intended

message was like others located in this social context. They would attempt to infer what

they believe was implied” (Ruby 2000:242-243). Thus Ruby’s call for the production of

anthropologically-intended works, rather than ethnographic films, “requires the

development of a theoretical support for such activity that can come from a critical

analysis of semiotics, film theory and communication theory, particularly a social theory of communication derived from Charles Peirce, Dell Hymes, and Sol Worth” (2002b:2).

As such, I emphasize in the body of this thesis a greater knowledge of the way receivers perceive meaning in and across institutions of filmmaking.

Tomaselli (1996) distinguishes semiotics of visual anthropology and semiotics of ethnographic film-making from semiotics of visual sociology and ethnographic semiotics.

He defines semiotics of visual anthropology as “the means of which we can study and account for the signs, codes and rules of inference that film/TV/video makers employ when making films/videos about groups, people and distinguishable cultures, from conceived to perceived texts, including social texts, con-texts and concealed texts”

(Tomaselli 1996:226). Semiotics of ethnographic film-making involves the analysis of the coding activity that takes place while shooting in the field as well as during the editing stage. Semiotics of visual sociology and ethnographic semiotics are, respectively, the analysis of “social and societal relations through already produced texts” and “the study of how real people make meaning of specific aspects of their sociovidistic environment – the social text of an interpretive community” (Tomaselli 1996:227).

Tomaselli (2003) defines semiotics of ethnographic film as a “conceived text-in-the-

making [that] might apply a reflexive methodology [visible in the film itself or in

accompanying written documentation and analysis]” (226). Developing a semiotic

approach to ethnographic film could lend itself to a sort of visual and aural “writing

culture” in – potentially – as reflexive a manner as the ethnographic writing theorized by

Clifford and Marcus (1986), among others (cf. Geertz 1988; Denzin 1997).

According to Buckland (2000), the introduction of semiotic theory to film

language studies in narrative film theory enables “film theorists to drive a wedge between

film and its referent, to break the supposedly existential link between them, and to

demonstrate that filmic meaning is the result of a system of codes, not the relation

between images and referents” (10). Anthropological film theory needs to take a similar stance with regard to ethnographic film communication, recognizing the representational aspects of ethnographic filmmaking over the apparent literal link between image and referent. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) acknowledge that semiotic theories of truth

“cannot claim to establish the objective truth or untruth of representations”; rather, they

show whether a proposition is represented as truth or not (159). What was in front of the camera in the field would take on different meanings upon its extraction from reality and its combination with other images and sounds and their presentation to different audiences.

I do not think that a semiotic of visual anthropology and a subsequent semiotic of ethnographic filmmaking would bring anthropologists using film any closer to capturing reality or more realistically representing the event. Instead, it should give the filmmaker

an awareness of the institution-crossing conventions of the medium and should assist the

filmmaker in better representing her/his experience of that reality-as-image-event with the film medium. An awareness of cinematic and non-cinematic structures of the medium would allow the filmmaker to not only be more reflexive in conveying human experience with the medium, but also to anticipate viewer readings of various structuring of images in conjunction with other images as well as ambient sound, narration, and text.

A semiotic of visual anthropology and a semiotic of ethnographic film should develop from the reading, practice, and analysis of ethnographic film texts – as well as written texts about ethnographic filmmaking – on a per-film, per-text basis. Conventions of ethnographic film could evolve as a base from which more dynamic employments could be undertaken as the filmmaker engages with the camera and the profimic element.

The development of a semiotic of ethnographic film that creatively employs some aspects of narrative film semiotics could indeed infuse and transform the perceptions of what ethnographic film can do. At the same time, such an approach would have to be wary of the possibilities of distorted meaning due to the connotative associations of denotative imagery in a filmic versus scientific context and account for it. This would be an important consideration from the filmmaker’s point of view as well as anticipated audience interpretation.

A semiotic of visual anthropology combined with a semiotic of ethnographic filmmaking could be perceived as forms of semiotics of visual sociology and ethnographic semiotics in the ways in which we make meaning about our expanding sense of our

environment. This could also contribute to the postmodern self-critique of subjectivity through construction of the other. When ethnographic filmmaking is conceived of as a text-in-the-making, the act of filming is transformed from mere recording of potential data into an act of composition. The resulting footage is not raw ethnographic footage but a draft, or rough cut in filmmaking terminology, to be refined during the editing process. Unlike fictional filmmaking, scripting follows the shooting of an ethnographic film; as such, the rearranging of footage and addition of narration could be likened to the compositional act of revision. It would lend itself to a reflexive methodology in the field because the ethnographer would become a character in the event, a distantiated observer whether s/he appears in front of the camera or remains behind it. This would offer a contrast to the fly-on-the-wall, surreptitiously-panoptic approach that demands a suspension-of-disbelief as to the actors seeming obliviousness to the camera’s intrusive presence. The ethnographer could become less inhibited about asking questions and making statements—immediate, unrefined reactions addressed to those in front of the camera, to the self, to the future audience—while filming, and would not treat the filming of the event as purely illustrative in the context of generalized statements [i.e. not as an act of salvaging a remnant of the filmed moment].

This thesis attempts to develop what Tomaselli (1996) calls semiotics of visual anthropology; that is, “the means of which we can study and account for the signs, codes and rules of inference that film/TV/video makers employ when making films/videos about groups, people and distinguishable cultures, from conceived to perceived texts,

including social texts, contexts and concealed texts” (226). It emphasizes semiotics of visual anthropology over semiotics of ethnographic film-making – that is, decoding rather than encoding – as the latter seemed to the author to require an understanding of the influences from already-produced film texts. I anticipate that the findings here will contribute to my own film practice and to a reflective understanding of what a semiotic of ethnographic filmmaking entails.

Worth (1972) focuses on “developing a semiotic rather than a grammar” because

he feels that it is unwise to “prejudge whether film communication should be considered

a language in a serious and formal sense” (11). It might still be premature to speak of a

grammar of ethnographic film; however, a knowledge base of narrative film

semiotics/language should be essential in developing a semiotic approach to ethnographic

film. As a phenomenon of Western culture, narrative film grammar can be employed in

constructing the visual and towards producing meaning versus behavioral patterns. Ruby

states that as “anthropology contains a particular way of looking at the world it seems

logical that ethnographic films should help audiences to perceive anthropologically and

that ethnographic filmmakers should seek to find ways of infusing films with that implication” (1977b).

Materials and Methods

I analyze four ethnographic films by three well-known documentary filmmakers –

Jean Rouch, Robert Gardner, and John Marshall. The first three films, by Rouch,

Gardner, and Marshall, represent traditional ethnographic film. They continue to be

screened in anthropology courses and are most familiar and accessible – both stylistically

and physically – to anthropologists, anthropology graduates, undergraduates, and general

education students. They are Rouch’s Les Maîtres Fous (1957) (1955) on the annual

ceremony of the Hauka in Ghana, Gardner’s Dead Birds (1964) on Dani warfare, and

Marshall’s The Hunters (1956) on !Kung subsistence. The fourth film, Chronique d’un

Ete (1960) by Rouch and Edgar Morin, is less traditional in its methodology and the

subject population and can be said to deal with what might have looked at that time more

like a sociological than anthropological subject. Writing on ethnographic film has

suffered from “confusion over what might be called the ‘ethnographicness’ of [the film]”

(Ruby 2000:171). According to Ruby (2000), this problem “has continued to the present

and can be found even among people who know ethnographic film well” (171).

To assess the semio-pragmatically modified approach to semiotics of

ethnographic film, I analyze the four films using Heider’s attributes of ethnographic film,

and Odin’s operations of fictionalization/documentarization. As intermediaries, I use

terminology from Worth on the anthropological side and Metz on the film criticism side.

I chose Heider’s framework because it is familiar to visual anthropology readers and is

the most rigorous framework for determining “ethnographicness” as a measurable set of

attributes. These films have not only been subject to Heider’s scrutiny but this same

framework will continue to function as a vetting process for establishing whether a film

possesses traditional ethnographic attributes. The assessment is rendered using Heider’s distribution grid in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Attribute Distribution Grid (after Heider 1976:117)

The degree of each of the attributes is assessed using Heider’s ratings in Figure 2:

Figure 2 - Attribute Dimensions (after Heider 1976 :113)

The attributes are listed in descending order of criticalness with the more ethnographic values on the right. For the sake of discussion, I have segmented these attributes into four categories in Table 1.

Table 1 - Categories of Ethnographic Attributes Category Attributes Contextualization Ethnographic Basis Relation to Print Materials

Technical Aspects Basic Technical Competence Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit Ethnographic Presence Depiction Contextualization Whole Acts Whole Bodies Whole People Distortions Explanation of the Various Distortions Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior Intentional Distortion of Behavior

I found it was almost impossible to organize my discussion of the attributes of the films by these categories in the chapters themselves as discussion of one attribute in one category dovetailed with another; likewise, it was difficult to organize discussion necessarily in Heider’s own descending order of importance as depicted in Table 1 above.

However, I use these categories to order my comparing and contrasting of the four films in terms of their attribution ratings in the discussion chapter.

Not all of the attributes were assessed for those films by Heider (1976), so I will attempt to fill in the judgments of those attributes based strictly on the definitions. I

qualify my decisions where they seem to diverge from the strict definitions. The ratings were meant to be plotted graphically on the aforementioned grid in Figure 3 below with

Heider comparing Gardner’s Dead Birds (1964) to two of his own films.

Figure 3 - Heider's Attribute Dimensions of Dead Birds (1964), Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974), and Dani Houses (1974) (Heider 1976:115)

Given the limited drawing tools in my word processing program, I choose to employ a table format using initials for each film: Les Maîtres Fous (1957) as (LMF), Dead Birds

(1964) as (DB), The Hunters (1956) as (H), and Chronique d’un Été (1961) as (CS). The position each initial in one of three columns indicates the strength of the attribute from left (lesser) to right (more).

I then assess each film in terms of how it satisfies the operations of

fictionalization or documentarization using the five operations that Odin (1985) refined

from the original eight in his essay on documentary film: 1) construction of a diegesis, 2) narrativization, 3) mise-en-phase, 4) construction of an absent enunciator, and 5) fictivization/documentarization. The fictive structures of the films are discussed sometimes utilizing the syntagmas of Metz’s grande syntagmatique, as modified by

Michel Colin (1995) in order to show the influence of narrative filmmaking conventions on other types of filmmaking. Since Colin’s reformulation of the grande syntagmatique ascribes + or – values to the selectional features of diegetic and narrative, there is some

crossover when discussing certain syntagmas between the first two of Odin’s operations.

As expected, ethnographic films, while having a basic narrative structure, evince more

scenes built around diegetic construction, that is to say, scenes in which cultural behavior

is seen and/or narrated do not always have to do with the narrative.

In narrative cinema, mise-en-phase “enlists all the filmic instances in the service of the narration, mobilizing the rhythmic and musical work, the play of looks and framing, to make the spectator vibrate to the rhythm of the filmic events” (Stam et al.

1992:215). I will then analyze mise-en-phase and its contrasting operation, dephasage, in terms of viewer response to ethnographic films as cinema and as documentary. In other words, I demonstrate how elements that could contribute to cinematic mise-en-phase might lead to dephasage when viewed in the didactic mode and how elements that contribute to cinematic dephasage actually contribute to the mise-en-phase of the

ethnographic film as documentary. Heider’s and Gardner’s The Dani of West Irian: An

Ethnographic Companion to Dead Birds (1972) provides a synopsis of events indexed by shot. I include a similar syntagmatic synopsis of events for each film, denoting which events are narrative or descriptive, and what syntagmas are found in the analysis of those events. Lastly, I assess the films in how their textual characteriscs compare to Odin’s textual characteristics of home movies, most of which – with the exception of address to the camera – are shown in the next chapter to violate several of Heider’s attributes.

I hope that the use of some of the syntagmas under Colin’s reformulation will also

elucidate to the reader the separate processes of diegetization and narrativization that

viewers expect to encounter in the dominant filmic mode in contrast to modes

encountered in other institutions. I compare and contrast Heider’s scoring of attributes

with the fictionalizing and documentarizing aspects and then I discuss the films in

relation to Odin’s descriptions of the textural characteristics of home movies. By these

means, I attempt to show that ethnographic films straddle genre boundaries and that a better analytical approach to their making and viewing would be one that recognizes this.

Overview of the Text

The second chapter offers an overview of the theoretical trajectory by which

ethnographic film has been viewed as an anthropological enterprise. I establish that

ethnographic film theory largely assumed a documentary position of objectivity and the

methodological paradigm of salvage ethnography it was seen as supporting. I then

introduce and assess Sol Worth’s semiotic approach to ethnographic film. I follow this

with humanist and methodological criticisms of such an approach. I introduced the semiotic approach to narrative film. Then I discuss the ways in which I found the anthropological approach to have in common some of the same criticisms aimed at the narrative film semiotic approach as well as some criticisms of the narrative film method that I felt paralleled the weaknesses of Worth’s unfinished approach.

I turn to Roger Odin’s semio-pragmatic approach as an alternative due to its more complex conception of the sender-receiver relationship to neutral texts and the social context of viewing a film. Starting with the eight operations of fictionalization as they apply to the institution of commercial cinema, I describe Odin’s subsequent refinement of the operations as he took the institutions of documentary film and home movies into account. I discuss how I felt a combination of the grande syntagmatique and semio- pragmatic operations would be useful in looking at the perception of fictive constructs in ethnographic film whether misread by viewers or not. As such, I also discuss Michel

Colin’s revisiting of the grande syntagmatique in which he determined the generative features of the various syntagmas and how those will aide my analysis.

In the following chapters, I apply these methods to the analysis of the four ethnographic films. In the seventh chapter, I discuss each of the films in relation to

Odin’s textual characteristics of home movies that sometimes violated Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness as well as how other aspects leavened their effect. In the final chapter, I assess the approach and the extent to which I achieved my goals set forth in the introductory chapter.

Chapter 2

BACKGROUND

Worth’s criticism of the paucity of film theory in anthropological filmmaking was

contemporaneous with a renewed interest in film language in narrative film criticism as

well as an abundance of writing on what Karl Heider calls “the ‘ethnographicness’ of film” (Heider 1976:ix). These approaches to writing about ethnographic film were contrasted with previous writing that Rollwagen described as “’war stories’ about how a film was made” (Ruby 2000:4). The theoretical basis of this literature is the perspective set down by John Collier in his key work Visual Anthropology: Photography as a

Research Method (1967). This work lays down a research method approach to visual

documentation of fieldwork that encompasses ways of looking at subjects of study with

or without a camera in front of the eye.

In the second edition, John Collier and Malcolm Collier (1986) advocate a way of

seeing with “visual accuracy, to see culture in all its complex detail” that is less

fragmented than the non-holistic, selective way we normally see in “modern life” (5).

They contrast modern life with “the perceptions of many other peoples [that] are related

to their interaction with their total environment. People with limited technology

necessarily have to live in harmony with surrounding nature” (Collier and Collier

1986:6). They contend that the senses of these others are attuned completely to nature

compared to we who are removed from nature by technology and “cultural development”

(Collier and Collier 1986:6). The key is to develop a “grammar of vision” that, once

mastered, allowed photographic imagery to be “realistically understood [getting the

information off film]” (Collier and Collier 1986:xvi). This allows one to see objectively

with the assistance of a camera, which is defined as “an optical system that has no

selective process and by itself offers no means for evading perception sensitivity” that

can “record on a low scale of abstraction” (Collier and Collier 1986:1,5,7).

A History of Ethnographic Film Theory

I have defined two strands of work on ethnographic film that take this perspective.

The first strand is characterized by the work of Collier (1967, 1975), Mead (1975),

Hockings (1975), and Heider (1976). Their approach recognizes the camera as an

instrument that can be used to capture reality, with the resulting footage or films useful

only for research, archiving, and classroom instruction when qualified by written

supplements.3 The second strand is also oriented towards the capturing of objective reality, but recognized film as a communicative event that should be contextualized as such. This thread is characterized by the work of Asch et al. (1973), Intintoli (1973) and

Feld and Williams (1975).

There is, however, yet a third thread of writing on ethnographic film: the semiotic

approach originally proposed by Sol Worth (1969). This approach would seem to have

been the inevitable next stage if one lined up the writings not chronologically, but in a scale from objective and disembodied to communicative and contextualized to subjective and embodied. I discuss Worth’s approach further on in this chapter followed by an

3 See MacDougall (1978) for the distinction between ethnographic footage and ethnographic film.

overview of semiotics in narrative film criticism that dovetails into the more recent work

of Roger Odin which attempts to define frameworks for other film genres in addition to

commercial cinema. I then cover Michel Colin’s modifications of Odin’s framework.

Objective Film

In her seminal essay “Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words,” which

introduced Paul Hockings’ work Principles of Visual Anthropology (1975), Mead

dismisses issues of objectivity related to selectivity of filming; the selectivity of location being inevitable. She equates ethnographic film with field notes; believing that when a

tape recorder, camera, or video is set up and left in the same place, large batches of material can be collected without intervention of the filmmaker or ethnographer and without the continuous self-consciousness of those who are being observed. The camera or tape recorder that stays in one spot […] does become part of the background scene, and what it records did happen. [Mead 1975:9]

A joint interview with Gregory Bateson is indicative of divergent attitudes as well as the

art versus science criticism reiterated by Heider (1976) and El Guindi (2004):

BATESON: Yes. By the way, I don’t like cameras on tripods, just grinding. In the latter part of the schizophrenic project, we had cameras on tripods just grinding. MEAD: And you don’t like that? BATESON: Disastrous. MEAD: Why? BATESON: Because I think the photographic record should be an art form. MEAD: Oh why? Why shouldn’t you have some records that aren’t art forms? Because if it’s an art form, it has been altered. BATESON: It’s undoubtedly been altered. I don’t think it exists unaltered. MEAD: I think it’s very important, if you’re going to be scientific about behavior, to give other people access to the material, as comparable as possible to the access you had. You don’t, then, alter the material.

There’s a bunch of film makers now that are saying, ‘It should be art,’ and wrecking everything that we’re trying to do. Why the hell should it be art? BATESON: Well, it should be off the tripod. MEAD: So you run around. BATESON: Yes. MEAD: And therefore you’ve introduced a variation into it that is unnecessary. BATESON: I therefore got the information out that I thought was relevant at the time. MEAD: That’s right. And therefore what do you see later? BATESON: If you put the damn thing on a tripod, you don’t get any relevance. MEAD: No, you get what happened BATESON: It isn’t what happened. MEAD: I don’t want people leaping around thinking that a profile at this moment would be beautiful. BATESON: I wouldn’t want beautiful. MEAD: Well, what’s the leaping around for? BATESON: To get what’s happening. MEAD: What you think is happening. BATESON: If Stewart reached behind his back to scratch himself, I would like to be over there at that moment. MEAD: If you were over there at that moment you wouldn’t see him kicking the cat under the table. So that just doesn’t hold as an argument. BATESON: Of the things that happen the camera is only going to record one percent anyway. MEAD: That’s right. BATESON: I want one percent on the whole to tell. [Brand 1976]

While editing gives “the process a new sophistication […] the greatest advances in ethnographic film have come since 1965 with the development of easily portable sound-synchronous equipment” (Asch et al. 1973:180).4 Indeed, Heider (1976) defines

4 Indeed, several early writings concern themselves with equipment and techniques conducive to achieving focus, exposure, and good sound in the field (See Asch 1971; Behrend 1972; Bishop III 1974; Collier 1967; Schreiber 1971,1972,1973; Soloway 1972,1973).

basic technical competence as one of fifteen attributes that contribute to a film’s

ethnographicness. Table 2 illustrates Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness.

Table 2 - Attributes of Ethnographicness (after Heider 1976) Ethnographic Basis Relation to Printed Materials Whole Acts Whole Bodies Explanation and Evaluation of the Basic Technical Competence Various Distortions Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit Ethnographic Presence Contextualization Whole People Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior Intentional Distortion of Behavior

Like Hockings (1975), Heider (1975) imposes further limits on film’s expressive abilities

in stating that no “ethnographic film can stand by itself” and must be supported by

printed materials as the “truism that a single picture is worth 10,000 words can be

inverted as a single word can be worth 10,000 pictures” (5).5 It is due to Heider’s strict

adherence to the preservation of the event’s “ethnographic integrity” that he acknowledges that film is subjective and does distort reality. Heider (1976) does, however, distinguish between creative distortions from the film as art and the direct/indirect distortions inevitable in film in the service of science. Cultural and physical contexts are rendered through the recording of whole bodies, whole people, and whole acts.

This concern shows the influence of Edward T. Hall’s proxemic research

(1959,1966,1974) as well as musical anthropologist and folklorist Alan Lomax (1973)

5 Similarly, Asch et al. believed that several scripted films such as Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds (1965), John Marshall’s The Hunters (1958), and Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) “offer excellent general introductory material for teaching when backed up with appropriate additional presentations” (1973:182).

who feels that a “full and eloquent sound-film record will enable the whole human race to

know it-self in objective terms […] Body style, behavior pattern, group organization,

mind and hand skills, which are communicated with difficulty through print, can be

represented and captured easily on film” (475).6 As such, Heider is quite literal regarding

the recording of whole bodies. He considers close-ups to be unnatural because they are

not how our eyes physically see other people. The notion that we relate to other people

through their faces ignores the importance of body language. While the ethnographic

writer has to use very general language in describing a whole body, the filmmaker is

capable of capturing the body all at once.7 Heider’s discussion of capturing whole acts

also addresses issues of selection and omission as well as real time versus film time.

Technical considerations do not always allow filmmakers to capture in its entirety a

process or a behavior over time. For practical yet scientific coverage of a process, the

filmmaker has to select and cut representative shots of the steps with the length

corresponding to the importance of the steps.8

In discussing the whole people attribute, Heider (1976) observes that “all

ethnographic films show people, even though few are actually about people” touching

upon the question of whether a culture could be adequately represented through the

observed behavior of a large nameless mass or that of one or two people (89). The

6 Hall also influenced Collier (1967) of which he wrote the introduction. 7 Although, Heider concedes, close-ups are an accepted convention and provide visual variety, they also imply a low degree of commitment on the part of the viewer and he things anthropologists should foster a “new way of seeing ethnographic film” (Heider 1976:77). 8 Changes in behavior over time are more structurally complex than the procedural methodology and Heider notes that in some cases full contextualization can be repetitive and meandering but crucial.

salvage ethnography paradigm and early writings on visual anthropology such as Mead

(1975) usually favored society-wide behavior over individual acts or represented individual acts within a cultural context. Although Heider (1976) believes that the

“single best predictor of ethnographicness in a film is the extent to which an ethnographer was involved in the filmmaking” he admits that a film made by an ethnographer can still fail ethnographically (95). It is enough to simply inject ethnography into a film because

“ethnographic understanding is useless unless it is transmuted by filmic imagination”

(Heider 1976:95).

It is telling that Heider chose such an alchemical term for this transformation by

filmic imagination as it is one of the few instances in which he did not associate the

creative aspect of filmmaking with aesthetic – as opposed to scientific – ends. In contrast to taking ethnographic fieldnotes, shooting ethnographic footage produces fixed images,

precluding much of the rewriting possible in textual ethnography. The result is that

whatever ethnographic understanding could be applied to the film must have been present

beforehand. As such, Heider’s approach requires the ethnography to be completed before

the shooting; that is, rather than as a way of taking notes in the field, film should be used

to illustrate ethnographic understanding.9 This approach could work in such instances

where the ethnographer and the filmmaker are different people; for instance, the

collaborations of Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch. It could also work in situations

where the ethnographer did fieldwork and returned later as an ethnographically-informed

9 This would seem to contradict Mead (1975) but the type of filming she encourages is for archival purposes.

filmmaker, as in Heider’s situation in which he assisted Robert Gardner on Dead Birds

(1964) before shooting his films Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974) and Dani Houses (1974).10

Hockings’ Principles of Visual Anthropology (1975), which collected the

proceedings of the 1973 International Conference on Visual Anthropology, is – excepting

Rouch (1975) – largely representative of the objective stance and its writings are marked

by “the explicit salvage paradigm which underpins much of the volume” (Grimshaw

1997:386). Hockings feels that films are useful for teaching and archiving. Ethnographic

films presented to the public can only show “patterns of behavior” but not present

concepts (Hockings 2003:518). Reviews have criticized Hockings (1975) as uneven; its

contents seeming “more of an accident of who was able to attend the conference than the

design of an editor trying to deal comprehensively with a new and developing field” and

its failure to include anything on semiotics or structuralism when speaking of visual

construction (Ruby 1977b:137, see also Nicholas 1977-78). The fact that Hockings’

book is in its third edition suggests the pervasiveness of this perspective despite such

criticism.

In general, this objective stance largely overlooks the influence of the camera’s

presence and the anecdotal nature of what was captured in favor of the potentialities of

improving technology when combined with a simple methodology. Ruby (1975) notes

that in “many significant ways, the field of ethnographic film/visual anthropology has

10 This can be practical when an ethnographer is an anthropologist who also makes films and when a university can afford to sponsor long-term study but it is problematic for a visual anthropologist or if financial support for further study is uncertain or the anthropologist wants to study a behavior believed to be disappearing.

seen little progress since the 1930s when Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead raised the question of the relationship between image-producing technologies and anthropology”

(110). Mead (1975) seems to bear that out.

Film as a Communicative Event

Michael Intintoli’s twelve criteria to evaluate ethnographic film serve to obligate the film-maker to adapt filmic structuring “to adequately reflect the patterns and processes of the societies that are depicted” (1973:3). The criteria are:

(1) Has the filmmaker provided information on how he made the film? (2) Has he "made himself public," and revealed his social identity and his role in the filmed events? (3) Has the filmmaker indicated his intent in producing the communication? (4) Has the filmmaker revealed the data and the approaches to events that he used to infer a structure for the events? (5) Has the filmmaker used an anthropological framework to order the events filmed? (Has he focused on learned, shared patterns, and has he related atypical or deviant events to such a context?) (6) Has the filmmaker contributed to anthropological theory or methods? (7) Does the film impart information that is useful for anthropological study and/or teaching? (8) Has the filmmaker conveyed the "patterns of significance" he intended? (9) Has the filmmaker made the appropriate filmic decisions to make the film "believable" and "true"? (10) Has the filmmaker demonstrated competence with respect to (a) technical considerations and (b) filmic conventions? (11) Has the filmmaker produced a film which is usable as produced or packaged? (12) Has the filmmaker contextualized his communication? [Intintoli 1973:3]

These twelve criteria are closer to Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness in their placement of technical competence, filmic conventions, and a film’s truth value. On the

other hand, some of his criteria address similar concerns of Ruby in regard to the

communication of an anthropological methodology through film or contextualizing

public statements. Ruby (1975) states that while a “scientific justification for the

multitude of decisions that one makes in producing a film” may seem trivial, “unless a

filmmaker is willing to subject these decisions to scientific scrutiny then it is difficult, if

not impossible, to justify or to think of the film in a scientific context” (109).

Asch et al. (1973) believe the aim of ethnographic film is “to preserve, in the mind of the viewer, the structure of the events it is recording as interpreted by the participants” (179,180-183). They define three categories of ethnographic filmmaking:

objective recording, in which the structure is “imposed by the action”; Hollywood-

influenced scripted filming, where the structure is “imposed by the filmmaker”; and,

lastly, reportage, which is “best able to preserve the indigenous structure of an event as

the footage goes through the restructuring process” [i.e. editing] (Asch et al.

1973:179,180-183). The belief that the filmmaker should let the indigenous structure

guide the event’s recording using objective/reportage methods would seem to favor

Mead’s “what happens” stance regardless of the camera’s mobility (cf. Brand 1975). On

the other hand, in describing scripted films as “also an excellent means of expressing

ideas we have about our own culture,” they cite Sol Worth’s 1972 work with the Navajo,

in which the instrument used to express ideas about their culture is an expressive

instrument of Western culture (Asch et al. 1973:183). Worth (1972) notes that modes of

communication are not easily separable from the codes and rules about them, and that in

teaching members of another culture how to use the camera “we implicitly teach them

what and how to film” (Tomaselli 2003:223).

Feld and Williams (1975) cite a “tendency to confuse various filmic styles and

techniques with an anthropological methodology of research film,” (25). They

distinguish their researchable film approach from the “less objective” locked-off camera

(LOC) paradigm and conventional film language (CFL) which are defined as the

arrangements of shots through film editing (Feld and Williams 1975:30). With a nod to

John Collier, they define research in film as “exploring the seeing process, sharpening filmic observation through sharpened human observation” (Feld and Williams 1975:31).

Their approach is concerned with a “reduction of the event-to-film process such that the film moves closer to [cognitively] the actual event itself. In doing so, it is the integrity of the event, its wholeness, and its own structure [not the film’s restructuring] that is communicated. It is such a perception of the event that makes it researchable” (Feld and

Williams 1975:31).

Although they do not mention Mead by name, Feld and Williams (1975) object to what they termed LOC filming – that is, locked-off camera – as attempts “to justify LOC filming based on the idea that the camera’s presence is disruptive are also untenable.

Whatever the methodology, every researcher must deal with rapport problems that arise; cameras are not a special exception” (31). Despite their “desire to re-center analysis in experience, promoting a continuity of the existential and objective,” Feld’s and William’s their approach is too analytically vague (1975:32). They state that they do not allude to

any “film shooting style that exists independently of the events to be filmed” but – other

than contending that a researchable film paradigm should take “CFL as a baseline

competence system, and LOC as an alternative to it” – they do not acknowledge that

various film shooting styles might frame how one sees the event with the camera or in preparation for filming (Feld and Williams 1975:28,32).

MacDougall (1978) defines the distinction between ethnographic footage and ethnographic film as that of field notes meant for research and archiving versus the public writings of anthropologists. Yet he also notes that cinema and documentary inherited differentially from writing, and that ethnographic film spans both genres. He also observes that while lightweight camera equipment at first created a “euphoria among filmmakers, who saw it as a means of extending inquiry into the real world that had previously been possible only in the realm of fiction,” it actually undermined the notion of “cinema as disembodied observation” (MacDougall 1978:415). While film “can never replace the written word in anthropology […] anthropologists are made conscious by their field experience of the limitations which words impose upon their discipline” and

he, moreover, sees ethnographic film as “filling in the blind spots” (MacDougall

1978:424).

Although the distinction between footage and film might be useful in discussing

theory, Feld and Williams (1975) observe that footage does not constitute raw data;

rather, “all retrievable data are non-neutral translations, descriptions, or memories of what once happened in time and space” (31). The filming itself of the event is the

recording of the filmmaker’s experience and impressions. Indeed, any ethnographic footage might be considered to be ethnographic film when projected to an audience to illustrate a concept. In the next section, I explore theorized sender-receiver relationships in the making of ethnographic films.

A Semiotic Approach to Ethnographic Film

For Ruby (1975), the “use of film” to present an anthropological point of view is distinct from “the exploration of the world through the camera” which is where ethnographic film methodology seems to begin and end for anthropologists of the objective stance (104, emphasis added). He was interested in “how film functions as a communicative medium which will allow anthropologists to present ethnography” that is predicated on two assumptions:

(1) that an ethnographic film should be treated as an ethnography; that is, be subjected to the same or analogously rigorous scientific examination and criticism as any other product of anthropology, (2) that ethnographic filmmakers, like ethno-graphic writers, have a primary obligation to meet the demands and needs of anthropological investigation and presentation. [Ruby 1975:105]

For Ruby (1975), ethnographic film is footage from which ethnography could be illustrated and/or extracted while filmic ethnography is an attempt to communicate ethnography using filmic techniques. Ethnographic film, in what Ruby (1975) called the

“faddish” mode, could include almost any film as he considered all motion picture footage to be “products of human consciousness” that “can be considered anthropologically useful in that it contains information which may become data for

research and/or teaching purposes” (105). These films display cultural information on

both the maker and the subject, that a spectator with any level of anthropological

background can analyze “in order to discover the set of culturally specific rules which

govern its production […] or examine a film to describe the nonverbal behaviors of the

subjects” (Ruby 1975:105). In the more serious mode, ethnographic films are “regarded

as the product of an anthropological study, and its primary purpose is to further the

scientific understanding of the cultures of humankind” (Ruby 1975:105).

There would seem to be some apparent overlap between the two. One should be

able to illustrate and extract cultural information from a film that attempts to

communicate ethnographically but filmic ethnography “must include a scientific

justification for the multitude of decisions that one makes in the process of producing a

film” (Ruby 1975:109). The choice of “framing and length of each shot, selection of

subject matter, technical decisions [such as choice of film stock, lens, etc.], type of field

sound collected, use of studio sound, editing decisions, etc” must somehow be conveyed

either in the film itself or published elsewhere (Ruby 1975:109).11 Ruby (1975) observes that ethnographic filmmakers “appear to be primarily concerned with satisfying the conventions of documentary film, and only secondarily, if at all, concerned with meeting the scientific requirements of ethnography” (109). As a result, by “blindly following the conventions of documentary film, and by relying upon the written/spoken word to

‘anthropologize’ their images, ethnographic filmmakers are demonstrating the lack of

11 Ruby cites Jean Rouch’s and Edgar Morin’s Chronique d’un Été (1961) as an example.

conventions for creating image/sound structures which will be interpreted, in and of themselves, as being anthropological or even scientific” (Ruby 1975:110).

Conversely, MacDougall (1978) believes it is “unlikely that [ethnographic film] can abandon its intellectual roots in the cinema and veer toward a specialized scientific language” (424). MacDougall (1998) states that the “threat implicit in analogue representation is the threat of undesired or unexplained [and there-fore uncontrolled] content and, by extension, the ‘misreading’ of it” (69). The selectivity of filmmakers and photographers is recognized, but so too is the tendency of audiences “to interpret films ethnocentrically, even when this runs counter to the filmmakers’ purpose” (MacDougall

1998:69). The relationship of the recipient to visual images is different from that of written text. “Image-based media,” MacDougall (1998) declares,

rely upon the principle of discovery—the discovery of relationships between images, linked not only by their proximity but by their resonances. This is a different principle from the declarative linking of ideas in expository writing […] Cinematic montage, unlike ‘elephant trunk-to-tail’ expository construction, inserts the viewer rather than the author into the gaps between its inference. [70]

Although mainstream cinema may feel like a passive viewing experience due to established conventions of photography, editing, and scoring, film is far from a passive endeavor. The viewer must process direct visual relationships as well as elliptical ones denoting passage of time, change of location, and less overt dialectical relationships expressed within the shot or sequential shots. “The exploratory faculty in turn calls forth the imaginative faculty,” and it is the construction taking place “in the mind and body of the viewer” that takes precedent over direct vision (MacDougall 1998:71). Films about

anthropology “employ the conventions of teaching and journalism” while anthropological

films “present a genuine process of inquiry. They develop their understandings

progressively, and reveal an evolving relationship between the filmmaker, subject, and

audience” (MacDougall 1998:76). As such, this process of inquiry and progressive

understanding should be well served by the processes that cinematic montage arouses in the viewer.

Sol Worth

For Worth (1972), the use of visual images depends “not on arbitrary sign meanings but on an expected common set of rules by which we perceive and organize the world” (9). As the “ethnographer himself organizes the behavior he records,” film codes must be understood “not only within ethnographic research, but within the culture that produces and uses a film” (Worth 1972:9-10). The relation of the filmmaker to the film includes his background as well as what Worth calls a “feeling-concern” to communicate a specific message on film that the filmmaker develops into a “story-organism” capable of embodying that message; the product of which is the “image-event” (1981:40-41).

Figure 4 presents the ideal model of the process of communication between sender/filmmaker and receiver/viewer while figures 5 and 6 present more probable models.

Figure 4 - The Process of Communication: Ideal Model (after Worth 1981)

Figure 5 - The Process of Communication: Probable Result 1 (after Worth 1981:47)

Figure 6 - The Process of Communication: Probable Result 2 (after Worth 1981:47)

A semiotic approach to ethnographic film concerns itself with ways to transmit the

feeling-concern to its intended audience: the receiver. Worth’s theoretical basis not only

emphasizes the construction of the filmmaker’s experience over indigenous structure, or the filmmaker’s experience of an indigenous structure, it also uses subjective and

emotional terms in defining the filmmaker’s motivations for communicating to an

audience through film.

Worth (1981) states that the “only satisfactory end result […] would be the

situation in which we could attempt to explain the failure […] of complete

communication that occurs in viewing a film” towards understanding “the infinitely

complex processes by which humans interact and transmit information in an always

imperfect manner” (49). The focus begin with looking how behavior is analyzed on film,

“alternative ways of organizing the film image itself,” and developing “new methods of

analysis tied to ethnographic and anthropological theory” (Worth 1981:79). The

explanation the audience simply does not get it is not considered a satisfactory defense to

the non-comprehension of a mainstream narrative film as it would to the reception of an

avant-garde film. Since mainstream film producers are literally invested in the audience

comprehension of their films, such alternate arrangements would have been tried out

even before test screenings. In anthropological filmmaking, however, differing levels of

comprehension from different assemblages of the same footage is part of the filmmaking

process.

Worth (1981) began his development of a semiotic of ethnographic film by

looking for the meaningful units. His justification the shot as the basic film sign rather

than the scene, a holdover from theatre, resembles the early history of film editing theory.

This generalized shot that Worth previously called the image-event is now termed the videme. The videme as film sign could be either a camera shot, or cademe, which is “that unit of film which results from the continuous action of the movie camera resulting from the moment we press the start button of the camera to when we release it. The cademe can be one frame long or several miles long, depending on the will of the camera and the limitations of the technology involved” (Worth 1981:53). The videme can also be an editing shot, defined as “that part of the cademe which is actually used in the film”

(Worth 1981:53). Worth (1981) further distinguishes the cademe, “the storehouse of usable sounds available to any one speaker for any one image-event,” from the edeme,

“those specific sounds that a speaker finally isolates to form words and combines to form sentences, paragraphs, and larger units” (53).

Worth’s designations do not have direct equivalents in film semiotics. While

Worth’s ethnographic film semiotics considered the shot to be the most basic film sign,

narrative film semiotics recognizes the shot as an already complex sign. The individual

elements the shot, such as angle and depth of field, cannot exist independently of one

another. Although Worth defines the cademe as a storehouse of usable information from

which edemes are composed, a cademe is not a shot paradigm from which one chooses an

angle with which to record an image-event. Throughout his writing, Worth does not go

into the field coding process that Tomaselli (1996) termed the “semiotics of ethnographic

film-making” (226). The edemes is not seen to correspond directly to any of the

autonomous shot syntagmas unless they comprise one of the autonomous shot syntagmas.

Worth’s edeme does not enter into the syntagmatic processes until it is combined with

other edemes into a sequence, even when an edeme might be a trimmed version of a

cademe of the whole of a single videme. This is likely due to the linguistic analogy as

well as the fact that the elements that make up the narrative film shot and its image-event

can be freely manipulated. Worth (1981) defines a sequence of videmes as “a deliberate

ordering of edemes used to communicate the feeling-concern embodied in the story-

organism” (59). Sequences are employed to give meaning “rather than merely order, to

more than one image-event and having the property of conveying meaning through the

sequence itself was well as through the elements in the sequence” (Worth 1981:59).

Left undeveloped by Worth due to his death is his theory of whether a semiotic of ethnographic film actually constitutes a language with a grammar and syntax. Worth

frames what film students are familiar with as the development of cinematic film editing through analogies with linguistics. In the first stage, the single cademe is used to impart meaning. This is exemplified in cinema by early films such as William Heise’s The Kiss

(1896) as well as the Louis Lumière’s actualites such as Repas a Bébé [Feeding the

Baby] (1895), Sortie des Usines Lumière [Workers Leaving the Factory] (1895), and the more eventful Arroseur Arrosé [The Sprinkler Sprinkled] (1895). This undifferentiated cademe is what Worth compares to holophrastic speech.

In the second stage, the filmmaker recognizes that “he could combine edemes to make longer statements” (Worth 1981:63). Technically these shots are still cademes as the shots are unedited in themselves but edemes in that they are used as editing shots. For this stage, Worth used Edwin S. Porter’s The Life of an American Fireman (1903) as an example. The film is composed of exactly three edemes: the first consists of firemen sliding down a pole and getting into a fire engine, the second depicts the horse-drawn fire wagon speeding down the street, and the third features the firemen arriving at the fire and putting it out. The third stage is where what Worth defines as an edeme is developed.

The “cademe itself becomes divisible” when the filmmaker realizes that he or she does not need to use everything that was shot and can trim overexposed or out-of-focus parts

(Worth 1981:63). Subsequently, these trimmed shots, or edemes, could be edited together. This is the stage where, linguistically, holophrastic utterances become recognized as divisible units that can be combined with others; where

the filmmaker realizes that just as not every cademe is necessary, so not all of every cademe is necessary. He can use parts of cademes to tell his

story. Until this point, the filmmaker has still not learned to change the original order of cademes. Like a child learning a language, he may be capable of only one thing at a time. He makes edemes out of cademes but still in the same order they were shot. [Worth 1981:63-64]

This is where Worth (1981) leaves off as he did not have any evidence to show the development of “some primitive ‘syntactic sense’” when edemes were combined in some form other than the sequence of shooting (64). This next step should, however, have consisted of meaning being derived from edemes through their length, time of occurrence, spatial dimension – shot size – and semantic content.

Criticisms of Film Semiotics in Anthropology

Fadwa El Guindi (2002) dismisses semiotics as a dated approach "in vogue

through linguistic anthropology approximately from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s"

(2002:524). In Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory, she brings positivist ethnographic film theory – as represented by Collier (1967 & 1975), Hockings (1975),

Mead (1975), and Heider (1976) – full circle by dismissing concerns of objectivity and

subjectivity as “postmodern” and “philosophical” (El Guindi 2004:68). El Guindi is

highly critical of anything remotely cinematic in approaches to ethnographic film. She

accuses some anthropologists of being “seductively drawn to” cinema and refers to a

problem of “imposed parallelism – calls to build a bridge between visual anthropology

and cinema [an idea that was the basis of experiments in graduate visual anthropology

programs that proved unsuccessful]” (El Guindi 2004:90, 186). El Guindi (2004)

attribute blame for disagreement over “what ethnographic film is” to anthropologists

along with filmmakers who may have “leanings toward cultural studies” but “are more

interested intellectually in cinematic arts than in anthropological systematics” (90).

Tomaselli (1996) charges that “First World film theoreticians” embraced narrative

film semiotics as “way of confronting the lack of a European philosophical disciplinary

base and thereby attaining legitimacy for film studies” (22). In doing so, they “eschewed

the categories of experience” and concurrently excluded “human agency, different ways of making sense, manifestations of the supernatural and the possibility of resistance The result was an anti-humanist theory of cinema which also locked out other kinds of ontologies, such as those studied by ethnographers” (Tomaselli 1996:22-23). Tomaselli

(2003) criticizes the positivist, anti-humanist tradition of semiotics in narrative film as emphasizing structure over human experience; therefore, it is not surprising that he is reticent to reference narrative film theory in the construction of ethnographic film.

Instead, he addresses the semiotic of visual anthropology, visual sociology, and ethnographic film from a more humanistic point of view.

The signs from which viewers decode meaning are inherently unstable as meanings change with social context including social struggle. Meanings derived from signs are “saturated by ideological imperatives of society” and the media is “a prime site of struggle for the sign” (Tomaselli 2003:45). The struggle for the sign is a discourse of power. Tomaselli (2003) frames this struggle both within the social context of apartheid as well as the academic relationship of “differential access” to film technology between

“those who study and those who are being studied” (223). Ideas about being guided by

the indigenous structure (cf. Asch et al. 1973) or learning how members of another

culture construct their lives visually, by teaching them to use an instrument not

previously integral to those constructions, are filtered through hegemonic notions of the construction and production of knowledge that constitute our use of scientific tools.

Peter Wollen’s criticism of Christian Metz, that his semiotic holds too fast to the

linguistic analogy, could be extended to Worth (1981) whose discussion of filmic

punctuation suggests an emphasis on making statements rather than communicating

meaning through the syntagmatic ordering of images. His coding is in the assemblage of

the film from footage without any theorizing on the coding that went into the shooting

itself. Perhaps Worth intended to address this later but, as it stands, his theory only

addresses the creation of meaning through editing, cutting cademes into edemes and

joining them with other edemes into sequences likened to grammatical structures. On

that level, an ethnographic film such as Dead Birds (1964) does not benefit from such an

analysis. A better-suited methodology is one that sees such editing decisions and truth

value, or the distortion thereof, as matters of convention and practice in different

institutions of filmmaking.

A Semiotic Approach to Narrative Film

The model for the early film language/grammar theories of Robert Bataille and

Andre Berthomieu was not language systems but literature (Aumont et al. 1992). As

such, the standards of film practice were “made to conform to the practice of the ‘great

writers’” (Aumont et al. 1992:134). The stated goal of Bataille’s cinematic grammar was

to study “the rules that preside over the art of correctly transmitting ideas by the

succession of animated images that comprise a film” (Aumont et al. 1992:135). This goal

was shared by Christian Metz – whose development of narrative film semiotics was

contemporaneous with the rise of visual anthropology – with great filmmakers as the

model of correct film practice. Attributing the correct transmission of meaning to filmmakers held in critical favor became a matter of style over actual practice, and eschewed the expression of less regarded film practitioners. Any evolution in the correct transmission of meaning was less dynamic and more dependent on who was in vogue among academically-minded critics.

For some time, film language had been rejected by film theorists in favor of approaches characterized by “the gradual bypassing of language in its traditional sense in favor of ‘the sublimation of writing [écriture]” (Aumont et al. 1992:140). This could be likened to a movement away from what Roland Barthes calls a writerly text to a readerly one that favors transparency. In such texts “decoupage and editing are decreasingly playing their usual role of analysis and reconstruction of the real” (Aumont et al.

1992:140). In narrative film, this is exemplified by the writings of André Bazin, who felt that the audiences should find themselves “before a window from which they participate in events that have all the appearances of objectivity and reality, events whose existence seems to be completely independent of that of the audience” (Aumont et al. 1992:140).

The semiotic modification to film language seeks “to construct a comprehensive model capable of explaining how a film embodies meaning or signifies it to an audience

[…] to determine the laws which make the viewing of film possible and to uncover the particular patterns of signification which give individual films or genres their special character” (Andrew 1976:217). Metz defines two branches of the field: the filmic and the cinematographic. The filmic are aspects that constitute the making of the film, such as technology, and those resulting from the film’s existence such as censorship, audience response, and the reputation of the stars. The cinematographic is the “narrower subject of the films themselves cut off both from the complexities which brought them into being as well as the complexities which result from them” or the “internal study of the mechanics of films themselves” which is the focus of Metz’s studies (Andrew 1976:217). Metz defines the core material of film as “the channels of information which we pay attention to when we watch film” which are:

1. images which are photographic, moving, and multiple 2. graphic traces which include all written material which we read off the screen 3. recorded speech 4. recorded music 5. recorded noise or sound effects. [Andrew 1976:217-218]

Metz’s theory is not uncontroversial but it has been continually revisited, modified, and re-conceptualized. Conversely, the semiotic approach to ethnographic film largely wound up an “interesting and neglected approach” due to anthropological conservatism towards experimental modes of communication (Jay Ruby, email to author,

26 April 2006). Andrew notes that semiology “leaves the study of the filmic, the externals of film to other related disciplines, to sociology, economics, social psychology, psychoanalysis, physics, and chemistry” (1976:217). In this thesis, the filmic is of equal,

if not more, importance with the integration of concepts of Roger Odin’s semio- pragmatic modification of film semiotics. The significance of a semiotic approach as mediator between film and anthropology is that its visual construction allows reflexive film communication to be studied scientifically.

Film Semiotics

To “’speak’ a language is to use it,” according to Metz (1999), but “to ‘speak’ cinematographic language is to a certain extent to invent it” (71). In the latter case, filmmakers are the inventors of the language, but viewers are its users. What the literal- minded see as a lack of systematicity in film semiotics is actually a lack of consistency in meaning. The film as a text is not merely a discourse on the thematic content of the story; it is “the total discourse of film” (Metz 1976:586). The composition of signs in film is a dynamic process in which a finite amount of codes are combined with content in ways referring to certain conventions, yet these combinations are specific to the film itself.

Since signification is content-dependent in film, film semiotics focuses on the production of signification in its paradigmatic, syntagmatic, and modal dimensions. It does so by examining how signification is coded with the tools and techniques of the medium, such as the lighting, the angle, movement, sound, music, the length of takes, and the type of transition. Codes of spatio-temporal realism in non-fictional and fictional films are judged as such based on their level of modality. Modality refers to the reality status of the text as well as that of the signs and specific genre. The “mode of

relationship of the sign vehicle to its referent reflects their modality” (Chandler

2002:233). In other words, the transparency of that relationship contributes to its level of modality. Due to referents resemblances to the sign and vice-versa, iconic and indexical

signs have higher modality than symbolic signs, the signifier-signified relationship of

which is established by convention rather than resemblance or causal/existential

relationship.

Cues known as modality markers include features of form and content. Content

markers are assessed in terms of “plausibility, reliability, credibility, truth, accuracy or

facticity” and draw upon the analyzer’s knowledge of the world and of the medium

(Chandler 2002:60). Table 3 details the form and content features of modality cues.

Table 3 - Modality Cues (after Chandler 2002:62) Formal Features Content Features 3D—flat Possible—impossible Detailed—abstract Plausible—implausible Colour—monochrome Familiar—unfamiliar Edited—unedited Current—distant in time Moving—still Local—distant in time Audible—silent

Cinema manipulates formal modality features towards the perception of reality or fantasy

regardless of content. Conversely, content features that are considered to be of low

modality in cinema, whether they are considered fantastic or indicative of inept

filmmaking, have a high modality in documentary and ethnographic films of exotic

subject matter. The unfamiliar, the distant in time and/or space, as well as beliefs and

practices that seem impossible and implausible are the default content features of

ethnographic film. Audiences in the anthropological frame of mind are more willing to

suspend belief when ethnographic filmmakers make use of formal features to present the unfamiliar content in familiar terms. The shooting methodology is actually composed stylistic choices that the audience associates with realism. This association has been developed through exposure to film practice in cinema and documentary, and the audience has learned to recognize their overlap while perceiving it differently.

The ethnographic film style is made up of formal modality features associated with realism. An exception would be that of static versus moving camera, as Brand’s

1971 interview with Mead and Bateson bears out. The wide angle lens allows for a panoramic and dimensional display of whole bodies performing whole acts in the context of their environment.12 In contrast, the telephoto lens isolates a subject by angle and reduced depth of field, creating a flattened, out of focus background that could be judged as lacking context. It might also suggest that the filmmaker wants to hide something by framing it out of the shot or out of focus. While it is not always possible to show detailed behavior at length, it is certainly shown in steps and in sequence. While the choice of black and white in the age of color could suggest either fantasy or stripped-down truth in cinema, it is seen as a distracting aesthetic effect ethnographic filmmaking more so than other documentary genres.

Michael Rockefeller recorded wild sound for all of Robert Gardner’s takes to be used in the editing and synchronization of Dead Birds (1964) while Karl Heider felt it would be easier to go silent in his more modest process-based films. The choice to record sound on location has undergone changes in the transition to portable sound

12 At any f-stop, wide angle lenses possess more depth-of-field than telephoto lenses.

equipment and video cameras with built-in microphones. With the exception of films of

the nouvelle vague, fictional film favors studio sound and post-synchronization of sound for location shooting. In ethnographic film, the voice of the narrator is usually more important than live dialogue while ambient adds a degree of realism. In the video age, the lack of recorded audio would be a suspicious choice. Whether silence was chosen for the aesthetic effect of alienation or to remove some unwanted noises, the footage would likely be judged as lacking context.

There are times when the articulation of some formal cues might out of the control of the filmmaker. Depth or flatness of the image is determined by the chosen lens. The filmmaker might not be able to get close enough to the subject and have to use a telephoto lens for a long shot rather than a close-up. The resulting shot would isolate the subject against a flat, out of focus background. The choice of one angle as opposed to another, the length of a take, movement, and lighting may or may not be an intentional choice of the ethnographer-filmmaker as the event might not lend itself to such direction.

In such case, other aspects of generic reality, as well as the genre label of ethnographic film, help to render those cues believable. The filmmaker should disclose such unintentional filming choices in the narration or other forms of critical commentary.

Discussing these elements of film form, whose articulation is out of the ethnographer’s

hands, in terms of narrative film’s paradigmatic sets within syntagmatic combinations can

aid informed spectators in gauging the intentionality and assessing the impact of

unintended meanings communicated through filmic representation of ethnography.

While Worth thought it premature to conceive of film grammar as a language,

Metz asserted that cinema’s “signifiers are just too closely tied to their signifieds” for cinema to “lay claim to a grammar” (Andrew 1976:221). It is more “like a series of sentences,” and, thus “can have no dictionary, no list of words and synonyms” (Andrew

1976:221). It is on this assertion that we part ways from Worth’s semiotic of ethnographic film. Several pictures of the same referent would not conjure up different synonyms because of the closeness of signifiers and signifieds. Likewise, cinematic images could be modulated the way words could, which is why there “is not even any internally natural way to give filmic signifiers tense” (Andrew 1976:220). The use of color or monochrome to convey past or present tense is viewed as a “sophisticated convention added to cinema rather than an indigenous aspect of the language itself”

(Andrew 1976:220).

Christian Metz and Film Language

Christian Metz “distinguished codes from sub-codes, where a sub-code was a particular choice from within a code [e.g. western within genre, or naturalistic or expressionist lighting sub-codes within the lighting code]” (Chandler 2002:165). For

Metz, film language is not, nor could it be, analyzed beyond the level of such codes.

Unlike written or spoken types of language, film language does not possess double articulation; it cannot be broken up into the sort of minimal recurrent structural units

“largely responsible for the creative economy of language” (Chandler 1995). With the exception of verbal extra-cinematic cues such as dialogue and written materials, “nothing

in film is particularly distinctive in the same sense as the phoneme, which depends

entirely on combination to produce signifying units. Cinematic shots and even individual

frames already signify separately without depending upon combination” (Stam et al.

1992:32). Film also lacks anything resembling monemes, or individual words. The image of an object does not signify the object itself; it signifies an assertion about the object.

Denotation and connotation are more closely linked in cinema than in verbal language. The filmmaker’s attitude toward a represented object is apparent at the same time the object is presented onscreen. Unlike verbal language, in which the “rapport between any signifier and its signified […] is terribly distant […] Cinema’s signifiers are just too closely tied to their signifieds […] images are realistic representations and sounds are exact reproduction of what they refer to. One cannot break up the signifiers of film without dismembering their signifieds at the same time” (Andrew 1976:220). Because the smallest elements of film language are already complex codes, the combination of these codes and their signification is governed not by rules of grammar – themselves social conventions – but by conventions of use. Some of these combinations could be divided broadly between documentary and fictional institutions as generic conventions.

If there is no such thing as a film grammar, there cannot be such a thing as an ungrammatical film construction. While the viewer might not agree with the chosen image or the chosen order of images, it is a matter of personal preference. The language of cinema better resembles the expressive qualities of verbal language. J. Dudley

Andrew (1976) describes film as a “weak system of communication in which every use

must be poetic or inventive, even the most crassly prosaic” (222). As the signifier and

the signified are so closely linked in cinema language, so too are denotation and connotation in that “we see the denotation of an image at the same time as we sense the filmmaker’s attitude toward it” (Andrew 1976:222). Metz (1974b) believed that early

film language theorists did not make enough use of linguistic terminology, focused as

they were on the usage of great filmmakers who “cared little about the symbolic, philosophical, or human “message” of their films. Men of denotation rather than connotation, they wanted above all to tell a story; they were non content unless they could subject the continuous analogical material of photographic duplication to the articulations – however rudimentary – of narrative discourse” (95). Metz felt that film was a “mere technical resource” until it was used by filmmakers to address narrative processes (Harman 1999:90). He felt that the focus should be on denotation, or how the plot was presented with audio and images by the sender over the message received by the viewer.

That cinematic language lacks double articulation aids the use of paradigms and syntagmas to discuss shots and sequences even outside the framing of Christian Metz’s grande syntagmatique. The ethnographic filmmaker, looking at footage that has already been shot rather than a script or storyboard, would be forced to consider the components that made up a shot as if it was intentionally composed as such. The filmmaker would perform a mental commutation test to consider what is wrong with the footage and how it

would have been solved as if he or she were storyboarding in pre-production. Of course, the filmmaker could do little to change the shot beyond trimming its duration.

The Grande Syntagmatique

Christian Metz’s grande syntagmatique attempts “to isolate the principal syntagmatic figures of the narrative cinema” (Stam et al. 1992:37). Signs are composed of paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements. A paradigm is defined as “a set of associated signifiers and signifieds which are all members of some de-fining category but in which each is significantly different” (Chandler 2002:80). Paradigmatic analysis concerns itself with questions of substitution, or why one signifier is chosen over another “structurally replaceable” signifier and what effect the substitution of signifiers has on meaning

(Chandler 1995). When speaking of film, paradigmatic content refers to what was in front of the camera as well as the filmic components of the shot. A syntagma is defined as “an orderly combination of interacting signifiers that forms a meaningful whole within a text” (Chandler 2002:81). Syntagmas combine “signifiers from paradigm sets which are chosen on the basis of whether they are conventionally regarded as appropriate or may be required by some rule system” such as grammar (Chandler 1995). The paradigmatic aspect of a code corresponds to content while the syntagmatic corresponds to form. Syntagmatic analysis concerns itself with the positioning and possibilities of combination of signifiers and how each refers “intertextually to other signifiers co- present in the text (Chandler 2002:80).

Syntagmas have sequential relationships – both spatial and temporal – with one

another. In film, the temporal aspect of syntagmas corresponds primarily to the narrative

structure. Sequential temporal syntagmas are the minimal narrative units. Metz defines

narrative as having a beginning and an ending, which is distinct from reality in that it is

composed of events that are discreet temporal units (Chandler 2002). What qualifies as an

event is dependent on the purposes of the narrator. The spatial aspect corresponds to visual montage or the mise-en-scene arrangement within the frame: that is, the

compositional arrangement and its associated connotations such as superiority/inferiority

and domination/submission.

The result of these combinations of signs from different filmic paradigms into

syntagmatic sequences reflects the cinematic construction of classic narrative cinema and

its theatrical and literary antecedents. The coding of syntagmatic figures, however, is

only one of two major halves of Metz’s theory. He also employs “psychoanalysis to

examine the general [or generic] psychic disposition the spectator adopts when watching

a fiction film” and characterizes it “in terms of Lacan’s concept of the imaginary, which

portrays the relation between fiction film and the spectator as a fantasy relation”

(Buckland 2000:80). Metz’s imaginary signifier is defined as the illusion of the

aforementioned existential link between film and referent. Because there is “less of an

obvious gap between the signifier and signified,” film, television, and photography “seem to offer ‘reflections of reality’ [even in that which is imaginary]” as opposed to writing

that is reliant on symbolic signs (Chandler 2002:62). The transparency of the imaginary signifier facilitates this identification.

Metz identifies eight syntagmas for film based on the sequential ordering of time

and space. Table 4 lists the syntagmas and their subdivisions.

Table 4 - Christian Metz's Grande Syntagmatique Single Autonomous Shot • Single Shot Sequence • Non-diegetic Insert • Displaced Diegetic Insert • Subjective Insert • Explanatory Insert Parallel Syntagma Descriptive Bracket Syntagma Alternating Syntagma Scene Syntamga Episodic Ordinary

The first syntagma is the single autonomous shot that is further subdivided into the

single-shot sequence and four types of inserts. A non-diegetic insert is a “single shot

which presents objects exterior to the fictional world” and is often metaphoric and jarring

in effect (Stam et al. 1992:40). A displaced diegetic insert is an image interior to the

fictional world, but it is presented “temporally or spatially out of context” (Stam et al.

1992:40). It has a place in the diegesis but that place is not yet apparent in time or space, whether it is a close-up of an action presented before a wider contextualizing shot or a shot whose meaning does not become apparent until later in the story. Subjective inserts

refer to memories or fears. Lastly, explanatory inserts are “single shots which clarify

events for the spectator” such as a close-up that details a portion of an event seen first in a

wider shot (Stam et al. 1992:40).

The single autonomous shot is the building block of the ethnographic film in both

its traditional and experimental forms.13 Traditionally, a single autonomous shot in

ethnographic film takes the form of a single shot sequence, covering the entirety of an

action in a wide-angle long shot that situates the actor in her/his environment. In

traditional ethnographic film, a single shot sequence might cover a single action or it

might be the entirety of the film itself. In more experimental forms – that is, forms that

allude to the cinematic – a wide shot might be followed by an explanatory insert for

emphasis.14 The shots remain autonomous but the order of their placement enhances

both shots. Although such inserts might have been considered false by Heider (1976) because they were cutaways, the explanatory insert is heavily used in Gardener’s Dead

Birds (1964).

The parallel syntagma alternates motifs “without clear spatial or temporal

relationship, such as rich and poor, town and country” while the bracket syntagma

consists of “brief scenes given as typical examples of a certain order of reality but

without temporal sequence, often organized around a ‘concept’” (Stam et al. 1992:40).

These brief scenes can be composed of single shots or multiple ones. In cinema, the

parallel syntagma could be used to show contrast of the environments and lives of actors

13 I use the term traditional in the same manner that fictional film theorists spoke of how certain techniques might violate conventional or Hollywood film language. 14 The reader will find that such experimental approaches were already in evidence in such traditional ethnographic film fare as Dead Birds (1964).

as well as themes that the film-maker used to structure the film. The parallel syntagma is used in Dead Birds (1964) as the film alternates between its two main characters that embody certain oppositions. In cinema, bracket syntagmas are often used in the openings of films to establish a sense of place and tone. In ethnographic film, the bracket syntagma would be particularly helpful towards giving context to the behaviors of focus.

The descriptive syntagma is a succession of shots of objects that suggest spatial coexistence in order to situate the action. In cinema and ethnographic film, the descriptive syntagma can be used to establish a whole town or village all the way down to the immediate dwelling of a single actor. In Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), a series of shots – Joseph Cotton’s opening descriptive narration – introduces the Austrian setting. The opening contextual narration of ethnographic film Les Maîtres Fous (1957) is also underlined by shots in a descriptive syntagma arrangement.

While the parallel syntagma deals with alternating motifs, the alternating syntagma employs “narrative cross-cutting implying temporal simultaneity such as a chase alternating pursuer and pursued” (Stam et al. 1992:40). An example of this can be seen in Dead Birds (1964), in which the warfare scenes are intercut with the shots of the women traveling to the brine pits. The alternating syntagma would be another of the cutaways that Heider (1976) might describe as false unless multiple cameras were shooting in synchrony, which is not physically practical in an ethnographic film. Even in fictional film, it is often not economically, temporally, or spatially practical to actually shoot two alternating actions in synchrony.

The scene syntagma features “spatio-temporal continuity felt as being without

flaws or breaks, in which the signified [the implied diegesis] is continuous, as in the

theatrical sense, but where the signifier is fragmented into diverse shots” (Stam et al.

1992:40-41). The scene is judged as normal in narrative cinema. It is without flaws or

breaks, and non-diegetic. Action is continuous as opposed to elliptical. The

fragmentation of the action into shots does not disrupt a sense of continuity. The episodic

sequence syntagma is “a symbolic summary of stages in an implied chronological

development, usually entailing a compression of time” (Stam et al. 1992:41). This is

what is commonly known as a montage, where compression occurs to convey the passage

of time. Finally, the ordinary sequence is “action treated elliptically so as to eliminate

‘unimportant detail’ with jumps in time and space masked by continuity editing” (Stam et

al. 1992:41).

Heider uses the episodic sequence in his films detailing the construction of Dani

Houses (1974) and the cycle of Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974), where an uncompressed

coverage of actions would have been impossible to capture in a single autonomous shot.

The use of the scene syntagma in ethnographic film would not be practical as it would

imply planning and staging. Scenes in ethnographic films might look like ordinary sequences, where cuts are used to compress time do not register as jarring to the viewer.

Its use may also be acceptable in parts of the film where details are deemed

ethnographically unimportant.

Worth’s approach to the filmic aspect of ethnographic film does not directly

correspond to Metz’s division between the cinematographic and the filmic. Metz’s focus

is on the cinematographic, that “narrower subject of the films themselves cut off both

from the complexities which brought them into being as well as the complexities that

result from them” (Andrew 1976:217). Metz believes that the filmic aspect – that is, the

“externals of film” – is best left to “other related disciplines, to sociology, economics,

social psychology, psychoanalysis, physics, and chemistry” (Andrew 1976:217).

Worth’s and Metz’s approaches to a semiotic of, respectively, ethnographic and narrative

film focus too much on the cinematographic aspects rather than the filmic ones. They

also place more emphasis on the sender side of the Worth’s sender-receiver model.

Fictional films trade on audience’s experience – not to mention, the filmmaker’s

experience as audience – of news, documentary, and ethnographic films rather than

specific methodologies when wanting to instill truth value in a piece of footage. Jamie

Uys’ film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) is first and foremost a fictional film. Parts of it look like an ethnographic film as a narrator tells us about the Bushmen and translates what they are saying. Although they are real Bushmen, they are also actors. The filmed

cultural behavior is framed within a fictional story, with other actors portraying the

civilized intrusive presence of missionaries and guerillas. The audience must switch

between entertainment and learning modes of viewing; yet the film deftly manipulates the

audiences’ emotions in a cinematic manner during the ethnographic sequences. The

elicitation of such reactions in a traditional ethnographic film would be deemed accidental – perhaps, fortuitous – or even unorthodox, if intentional.

Criticism of Metz’s Semiotic of Film

Metz’s framework has been heavily criticized by other film theorists. Wollen

(1972) believes Metz is too committed to realism and linguistic analogies. Wollen, in contrast, emphasizes the poetic rather than literal nature of film discourse, favoring

Peirce’s tripartite definition of a sign as having iconic, indexical, and symbolic qualities.

Wollen does not feel that film communication is normally used to convey messages.

Instead of literature, Wollen compares films to works of art in which multiple signs bear

competing and open meanings, or “a puzzle of signs; rather than a [false] monolith”

(Casetti 1999:140).

Harman (1999) feels that Metz’s denotation-connotation distinction is not usable,

even for Metz’s own purposes. Harman feels the plot is not presented solely on the level

of images and sound. In order to comprehend the denotation of shots and sequences, the

viewer must understand characteristics of the shots and of the plot that by Metz’s

distinction has its basis in connotative aspects of film. The primary criticism is that the

grande syntagmatique privileges narrative film over the avant-garde and documentary forms as it “deals with the spatial and temporal articulation of the diegesis, it is most effective with those films which presuppose a narrative substratum, a pre-existing nucleus from which the ‘high points’ have been extracted” (Stam et al. 1992:46).

As mentioned above, some of the syntagmas are partially or completely

incompatible with ethnographic filmmaking. Those that are partially compatible might

be misread as either a purposeful structuring or a supposedly objective presentation of

footage-as-fact.15 An event filmed by an anthropologist might have a sort of narrative structure from which high points might be extracted in manners resembling the ordinary or episodic syntagmas. The overall narrative of the ethnographic film, however, is largely created out of footage already shot and information gathered before and during shooting. Anything beyond an outline made before the fieldwork would likely undergo quite a bit of revision during and after filming.

Like Worth’s sender-receiver model of communication, the grande syntagmatique

also focuses solely on the sender side and does not account for misreadings on the

receiving end. In analyzing the bracket syntagma, Stam et al. (1992) notes that it could provide “typical samples of a certain order of reality” but it also serves to reflectively and reflexively comment on those orders that could distance the viewer from the narrative

(40). By not accounting for such misreadings and taking what was likely the filmmaker’s intent for granted, the grande syntagmatique seems to fall in line with the aforementioned theories of Berthomieu and Bataille in which “film language was being made to conform to the practice” of great filmmakers (Aumont et al. 1992:134). In response to such criticisms, Metz (1974a) “redefined the Grand Syntagmatique as merely a subcode of editing within a historically delineated body of films, i.e. the mainstream narrative

15 The author’s citing of Odin throughout and the discussion in the next section provides a suggestion as to why a viewer might misread cinematic structuring into ethnographic film.

tradition from the consolidation of sound film in the 1930s through the crisis of the studio

aesthetic and the emergence of the diverse New Waves in the 1960s” (Stam 2000:118).

Stam (2000) is of the opinion that a “Bakhtinian translinguistic formulation might

have saved ciné-semiologists […] a good deal of trouble by rejecting from the outset the

very notion of a unitary [cinematic] language” (118). Such a formulation recognizes a

“dialectical interplay between centripetal pressures towards normalization [monoglossia]

and centrifugal forces of dialectical diversification [heteroglossia]” that “provides a

valuable framework for seeing the classical dominant cinema as a kind of standard

language backed and ‘underwritten’ by institutional power, and thus exercising

hegemony over a number of divergent ‘dialects’ such as the documentary, the militant

film, and the avant-garde cinema” (Stam 2000:118). That is precisely what I feel is

embodied in Roger Odin’s semio-pragmatic approach to film language, specifically, his

operations of fictionalization. This social-cognitive approach looks at filmmaking

conventions from the perspective of the spectator, and how his or her disposition towards

both fictional and non-fictional types of films is shaped by the practices of dominant and

subordinate institutions of conventions of film practice.

A Semio-Pragmatic Approach to Narrative Film

In the 1980s, Odin published a series of articles on a semio-pragmatics of cinema

that studied “the production and reading of films insofar as they constitute programmed

social practices” (Stam 2000:233). Odin, along with Francesco Casetti, is “less interested in a sociological study of actual spectators than in the psychic disposition of the

spectators during the film experience; not spectators as they are in life but spectators as

film ‘wants’ them to be” (Stam 2000:254). Whereas Metz’s psychoanalytic approach encourages a fantasy relation with the film being viewed, Odin’s cognitive approach looks at external constraints and dispositions conditioned and fostered by different institutions invested figuratively and literally in the spectator’s pleasurable comprehension of meaning. Odin’s semio-pragmatic approach can be aligned with the recent pragmatic paradigm called cognitive, or mentalist, pragmatics that develops “a theory of competence necessary to the appropriate language use [or the competence necessary to the appropriate construction and comprehension of utterances, or indeed

films]” (2000:79).

Although this approach could correspond to the filmic side of Metz’s

cinematographic-filmic distinction, it does not elaborate on the receiver side of Worth’s

sender-receiver model. Pragmatics, unlike semantics, does not conceive of meaning as

“being determined in advance,” instead, it “is temporarily fixed when language is used in

various contexts” (Buckland 2000:81). The sender-receiver dichotomy is obliterated; the

author and spectator are actants who must assume the same role in mutually creating

meaning through social practices. While the director writes the text and the spectator

reads it, they must adopt the same psychic disposition, or mode of attention, to agree on a meaning. The text itself is posited as a neutral entity. A film has no inherent meaning inscribed into it during the production process by the author, as

an image never indicates what procedures are to be followed for its reading. In order to understand an image, therefore, it is necessary to

follow procedures with no indication, within the image itself, ‘of their nature, or of the order in which they are to be carried out’. In other words, any reading of an image consists of “applying” to it processes that are essentially external to it. This reading does not result from an internal constraint, but from a cultural constraint. [Odin 2000:54-55]16

Both actants “’give it a meaning’ through a series of procedures at their disposal

in the social space where they operate” (Casetti 1999:256). There is no reason for an

“actant director and actant viewer to adopt the same role [the same way of producing meaning and affects]” (Odin 1995:227). There is also “no real communication between the author and the spectator” (Casetti 1999:256). A space of communication is created when the actants “rely on the same procedures [and in this case they can make film say the same things; thus they understand each other]; or they may enact different procedures

[thus constructing a different film]” (Casetti 1999:256). The resulting “feeling of mutual comprehension” gives the impression of a semantic transmission of a message between sender and receiver (Odin 1995:227). As such, Odin’s emphasis is on the procedures that both filmmaker and viewer apply to individually create, rather than decode, meaning and the factors that cause agreement or disagreement about that meaning.

Modes of the Production of Meaning and Institutions

These procedures activate eight modes of production of meaning that characterized by their internal effects. The spectacular mode usually applies to escapist films as it seeks to “distract through the vision of a spectacle” (Casetti 1999:256). Films

16 Odin defines the internal constraints as "obligation of compatibility between procedures through which meaning is produced and the form, disposition and consecution of the permanent marks imprinted on the film, which are accurately reproduced every time the film is projected" (Odin 2000:55).

in the fictional mode demand viewer participation; that is, they seek “to make the spectator vibrate to the rhythm of the events that are being narrated” (Casetti 1999:256).

Films in the energetic mode want the spectator to “vibrate to the rhythm of the images and sounds, without regard for the films’ content” and are largely characterized by musicals (Casetti 1999:256). The private mode is characterized by home movies, with the spectator viewing his or her own personal past experiences. The documentary mode seeks to “inform about reality” while the argumentative mode persuades “through a lesson of some sort” (Casetti 1999:256). The artistic mode, characterized by art films and films d’essai, endeavors to “shed light on an author’s production” of meaning

(Casetti 1999:257). Lastly, the aesthetic mode seeks to “create an interest in the ‘work’ of both images and sounds,” as seen in experimental films (Casetti 1999:257). These modes are known and practiced by both filmmaker and spectators, both of whom intervene in the film to give it body and depth. These modes allow us to

define or redefine the images and sounds that the film contains, order or reorder its various elements, weave or reweave a plot, designate or recognize a character as having a leading role, manifest oneself as “I” or recognize oneself as “you,” and so on. In doing so, they give meaning to what lies before our eyes. Together, these modes shape a subject’s “communicative competence.” [Casetti 1999:257]

The institution, to which both filmmakers and spectators belong, is “what creates agreement or disagreement among the modes” (Casetti 1999:257). It is the social frame to which the modes refer: “a social space that dictates behavioral rules: it tells us which procedures need to be applied, and what kind of sense we should make of the film”

(Casetti 1999:257). While the artistic mode and aesthetic mode seem to produce a

somewhat similar effect to the fictional mode and spectacular mode, it could be said that the former are the more intellectual versions as the two pairs are promoted by different filmmaking institutions. Table 5 illustrates the institutions and their associated modes.

Table 5 - Odin's Institutions and Their Associated Modes (after Casetti 1999) Institution Modes Commercial Cinema Energetic; Fictional; Spectacular Research Aesthetic; Artistic Didactic Argumentative; Documentary Family Private

Individuals internalize the materiality of these institutions; as such, “directors and

spectators of ‘commercial cinema’ know very well what they need to do in order to

construct and enjoy a film appropriately” (Casetti 1999:257). The institution’s most

evident feature is “its very ability to initiate procedures and operations: in our case, the

modes of production of meaning,” thus, insuring “the agreement of sender and receiver”

(Casetti 1999:257). The level of an institution’s materiality – that is, the presence and

efficiency of its machines for type of film’s production, fabrication, and site for its consumption – is an indication of its place in the hierarchy of filmic institutions and, therefore, its ability to regulate meaning. As such, it should be no surprise that commercial cinema is the dominant institution in our society; commercial cinema filmmakers are literally invested cinema modes that foster pleasurable viewer responses.

Besides ensuring agreement between senders and receivers, the institution also

“regulates their disagreements” that “derive from the presence of divergent references”

(Casetti 1999:258). Casetti (1999) uses as an example a film made for commercial cinema when viewed as a didactic aid, transforming it into two films “each coherent

within ‘its’ institution” (258). Since, “in our society films always tend to be presented

and consumed as spectacular fiction,” it requires “truly special conditions for them to become didactic aids [the teacher must destroy our ‘visual pleasure’], or works of art

[critics need to ‘adopt’ them; their enjoyment needs to take place within a festival or

theatre d’essai; and so on], or historical evidence, etc” (Casetti 1999:258). The space of fictional communication is so dominant that “in the social imaginary, we often have the tendency to simply assimilate cinema and fictional film” (Odin 1995:228). Every film signals whether it is fictional or non-fictional, however, rather “than giving instructions, it blocks the use of procedures that do not suit it” (Casetti 1999:258). The dominance of the commercial cinema institution, as well as the tendency of films to be presented and consumed as spectacular fiction, effects the way in which the audience views films meant for didactic or research purposes. This generally results in an unpleasurable viewing experience for the fictionally-oriented viewer. So, one must ask: what are the special conditions for destroying the visual pleasure of a non-commercial film?

For Buckland (2000), the space of communication opens when the viewer

generates inferences about the film text along the lines of the three intentional levels of

meaning of David Bordwell’s four-fold hierarchy of filmic meaning: referential

[diegesis]; explicit [conceptual], and implicit [theme]. It is

only when the reader-actant adopts the role constructed on the fourth level, that of symptomatic meaning (in which the “reader-actant” identifies meaning involuntarily revealed by the text), that we see the space of communication break down (as it does in other cases – i.e. when the spectator is bored) since the reader-actant is breaking with the film’s fictional contract. [Buckland 2000:86]

Typically, the reader-actant who intentionally breaks the fictional-contract is a critic.

Students can also break the contract when they are asked to direct their attention to

aesthetic or technical levels of a film meant for commercial viewing. When the contract

is broken intentionally, it is usually in order “to produce a knowledge […] of film’s

discursive properties, rather than reify its imaginary pleasures” (Buckland 2000:87).

Films also could take on diachronic or historical levels of meaning that may be

unintentional. Diachronically, a style of film could be interpreted as symptomatic of

underlying attitudes or breaking with them. On the other hand, something that came to

light about one of the participants could also color subsequent interpretations. In the

context of evaluating the production and consumption of ethnographic film, synchronic interpretation is valid in terms of evaluating the filmmaker’s intentions – as well as what might be unintentional – in the context of the film itself. Diachronically, an ethnographic

film might be evaluated in terms of how the knowledge produced, and how it was

rendered, were influenced by anthropological paradigms.

Fictionalization and Documentarization

The institution of commercial cinema is both shaped by, and benefits from,

processes that make the spectator resonate and identify unambiguously with what is

onscreen. According to Odin, fiction films activate operations of fictionalization while

non-fictional films block some or all. While Odin contends that there are different spaces

of communication “ranging from the pedagogic space of the classroom, the familial space

of the home movie, to the fictional-entertainment space of mass-mediated culture,” he

believes that much “of the history of the cinema has consisted of a steady perfecting of

the technique, language, and conditions of reception for the requirements of fictionalization” (Stam et al. 1992:214). Fictionalization is “the process by which the spectator is made to resonate to the fiction, the process which moves us and leads us to identify with, love or hate the characters” (Stam et al. 1992:214). This suggests that viewing films requires more cerebral modes of attention, such as those produced by the research and didactic institutions, which would produce an alienating effect on the viewer. This is not the case, however, as both authors and viewers take their experiences of the various modes into the production and reading of all film texts and unconsciously overlap them.

There are seven operations of fictionalization. Figurativization is “the construction of audio-visual analogical signs” or, as Odin calls them, figurative images

(Stam et al. 1992:214). Figurativization, which prefigures all other operations in fictional film, is composed of two sub-operations: figuration, the “setting up of semiotic figures,” and iconization, the “decking out the figures exhaustively as to produce the referential illusion which would transform them into images of the world” (Buckland

2000:91). Diegetization is “the construction of an imaginary world inhabited by the characters […] the literal dimension of the film – the space, time, and events,” (Buckland

2000:92). Diegetization refers to the referential meaning of the film: the configuring of figures that resemble images of the world into the fictive world of the story.

Narrativization deals with the actual narrative structure, the “temporalization of

events involving antagonistic subjects” (Stam et al. 1992:214). In order to refer to a

fictive world, and what happens in it in the first place, narrativization must presuppose

figurativization and diegetization. Belief refers to the “split regime whereby the spectator

is simultaneously aware of being at the movies and experiencing the perceived film “as

if” it were real” (Stam et al. 1992:214). Psychoanalytic critics refer to a pathological

fetishistic disavowal involving a splitting of the ego and a “conflict between a spectator’s

conscious and unconscious reactions to a fiction film,” (Buckland 2000:93). Conversely,

Buckland (2000) interprets belief as referring a normal disavowal, “merely entertaining in

though the fiction film’s illusion while all the time knowing that it is an illusion” (93).

Monstration is the “designation of the diegetic world, be it ‘actual’ or

‘constructed’ as ‘real’” (Stam et al. 1992:214). Monstration distinguishes between showing and narrating, or between the shot and the cut, “since the shot shows space, whereas the cut [and, more generally, editing] introduces temporal and narrative articulation between shots” (Buckland 2000:94). The term is borrowed from Andre

Gaudreault who associated monstration with the theatre and spatial representation, and narration with written narrative and temporal representation (Buckland 2000).

Mise-en-phase is the “the operation which enlists all the filmic instances in the service of the narration, mobilizing the rhythmic and musical work, the play of looks and framing, to make the spectator vibrate to the rhythm of the filmic events” (Stam et al.

1992:215). Odin provides two examples to describe mise-en-phase. In the first, a

shipwreck scene, mise-en-phase is created by filming the scene “using blurred images,

staccato camera movements, misframings, etc, to the point of illegibility, to realize in the

film-spectator relation the aggressivity manifest in the storm” (Buckland 2000:95). On

the other hand, a scene with “carefully framed shots, a softly filtered light delicately

modeling faces, a ‘poetic’ type of dialogue (with rhythm, assonances, timing), a diction

directly anchoring speech in the musical inflections,” elicits in the viewer a feeling of

“extraordinary complicity with the secrecy between characters” (Buckland 2000:95).

Lastly, fictivization is “a modality which is applied to the enunciative structure of film, an intentional modality that characterizes the status, or position, the spectator attributes to the fiction film’s enunciator” (Buckland 2000:96). It is the only operation unique to fictional film as it confers “a fictional status upon the enunciator and addressee of a fictional film” (Buckland 2000:96). The spectator is able to resonate to the fiction because he or she is addressed by a fictive enunciator, not as a real person who has “’to take seriously what is narrated to him’” (Buckland 2000:96).

Modes and Operations

Odin believes the fictional mode activates all of the above operations while non- fictional modes activate some and block others. Odin (1994) reconfigures his operations, contextualizing the various operations into three categories illustrated in Table 6.

Table 6 - Odin (1994) Reformulation of Operations Categories Operations Representational Operations Figuritivization Discursive Operations Diegitization Narrativization

Discursivization (formerly Monstration) Enunciative Operations Fictivization

He further divides mise-en-phase into two categories: fictional and dynamic. The fictional mise-en-phase was here the result of the presence of the other operations.

Like other modes of attention associated with film texts, the documentary mode

“has no privileged relation to reality, since both modes employ the same technologies – mechanics, optics, and photochemistry. All modes that employ these technologies therefore record real events” (Buckland 2000:99). Even fictional modes record real events in the sense that the profilmic event is the performances of actors “at a certain time in a certain place [either on location or in a studio]” (Buckland 2000:99). Whether the reader-actant interprets footage to be real or false concerns the enunciative operation indicated by the textual figures. In his article specifically devoted to a semio-pragmatic of documentary film, Odin (1995) stresses the importance of the fictionalizing regime of communication that is “necessary to realize that the documentary is compatible with the majority of the operations that intervene in the process of fictionalization,” narrowing the operations down to five (229).

The first operation is construction of a diegesis. Both fictional and non-fictional films “construct a world [a diegesis]” which already presupposes “the anterior operation of figuratization” (Odin 1995:228-229). Narrativization still figures into the operations with regard to documentaries as they “comply with the rules of narrative structuration, even if it is to tell the story about how a barrel is made or the different stages of metamorphosis of the dragon-fly” (Odin 1995:229). The third operation is again mise-

en-phase. Documentaries that engage this operation are rare. Odin gives as an example

the documentaries made by Walt Disney and F. Rossif. These works are intended to

entertain and educate, but they simultaneously anthropomorphize the animals and utilize

filmic instances to put the viewer affectively and physically on the animals’ level. The

fourth operation is construction of an absent enunciator. The documentary instance of

occurs in “productions that function in accordance to the ideology of transparency [direct

cinema, ‘candid eye’-cinema, cinema-vérité…]” that “strive to give us a view of things of

the world as if there were no intermediaries, as if the world were there in front of us

instead of on the screen” (Odin 1995:229).

Fictivization is the only operation that is specific to the fictional mode. An imaginary enunciator is posited by the reader “refusing to posit the existence of any process of enunciation at all,” in the fictional mode (Buckland 1995:100). The reader-

actant in the documentary mode, on the other hand, recognizes an enunciator and the film

itself as discourse rather than story, even though it may adhere to other operations of

fictionalization (Buckland 1995:100). Odin (1995) states that a real enunciator is always

constructed when one makes or reads “a film in a documentary perspective,” and that it is

“this operation, and nothing else, that founds the process of documentarization” (229).

The first four operations might intervene in documentarization but are absolutely integral to fictionalization. A film with a high degree of documentarization is one that blocks more of the fictionalizing operations. Consequently, it is less likely to be accepted

by the public as a documentary than a film that mobilizes more operations and resembles

fictional film. Odin sees this as a disadvantage; he acknowledges that the documentary

communication pact is more difficult than the fictional pact, because it has the effect of

dislodging the addressee out of his or her comfort zone as a spectator and treats them as a

real addressee who must take seriously what is presented onscreen. The addressee’s

reaction to this attempted positioning is to mobilize “all of his defenses, and the simplest

solution usually open to him […] is not to take into account the documentarizing

injunction and to take up again as quickly as possible the position of a fictionalizing

spectator” (Odin 1995:230).

Unlike fictionalization, documentarization is not a reading specific to non-

fictional films. The fictional contract can be broken by positing an enunciator – for

instance, the writer or the director – and acknowledging and focusing on the process of

enunciation. Table 7 illustrates six types of real enunciators.

Table 7 - Odin's Real Enunciators (after Buckland 1995:100-101) Real Enunciator The Camera The Cinematic Apparatus Society Cameraperson Director/Auteur Specialist

Odin contends that, while the “technical perfection” of most fictional films allows the audience “to posit the enunciator as imaginary or absent,” the documentary film

“signifies its concrete and contingent location in the profilmic world” (Buckland

1995:101). In reportage-type films, the camera and cameraperson is literally “always

locatable or grounded on a specific point,” allowing the reader-actant to “infer a real

enunciator” (Buckland 1995:101).

Revisiting the Grande Syntagmatique

Michel Colin (1995) observes that the much of the literature criticizing the grande syntagmatique “has all too often been limited to simply discussing it, and to listing counter-examples which, contrary to what the authors seemed to think, could never be

mistaken for counter-evidence” (45). As such, the grande syntagmatique has not simply fallen out of favor with some film semiologists, it has “now been discarded for no real reason and without having been proved wrong,” although “it is still systematically used as teaching ‘tool’” (Colin 1995:45). He does not believe that listing “a range of different types of segments, and examples illustrating them” enables one to teach the grande syntagmatique as “an explicit way to describe certain aspects of film” (Colin 1995:45).

A film semiology must “describe the rules governing the links between the visual

representations of 3-D scenes and conceptual structures” and Metz’s structural linguistic treatment of film semiology did the opposite (Buckland 1995:106).

In his essay “The Grande Syntagmatique Revisited,” Colin (1995) proposes to reread Metz’s syntagmatic tree in terms of Chomsky’s Transgenerational Grammar.

Whereas Metz took the structural linguistic approach in segmenting and classifying syntagmas from examples of their usage, Colin’s approach is to “find the underlying set of generative rules” and “develop a precise, algorithmic formulation of the rules that generate the grammatical sentences of a particular language” (Buckland 1995:28). This

bottom-up approach is able to address certain “asymmetries in Metz’s formulation” by

“making explicit semantic structures inherent in syntagmatic types” (Buckland 1995:31).

Colin looks for sets of selectional features that each syntagma either possess or lack. For instance, the descriptive syntagma is described as “<+diegetic, +specific, -narrative,

+linear>” (Buckland 1995:31). It is diegetic in that

the events depicted are part of the narrative world (in opposition to the generic events depicted in the parallel syntagma, for example); the events depicted exist in a specific space (in opposition to the catalogue of events depicted in the bracket syntagma and the generic events in the parallel syntagma); it is non-narrative (for there is no causality between the events depicted in each shot); and, a chronological relationship is signified between the events depicted in consecutive shots (in the case of the descriptive syntagma, only spatial co-existence is signified). [Buckland 1995:31]

Linear is defined in both temporal terms and spatial terms, while narrative refers to the causality between shots within a syntagma. Specific means that the event(s) took place within a defined space that could be fixed or mobile. Inclusive refers to “relations of inclusion between space” and is what distinguishes a scene from a sequence (Colin

1995:74). Table 8 depicts six of the syntagmas in terms of their selectional features.

Table 8 - Selectional Features of Syntagmas (after Colin 1995:73) Syntagma Selectional Features Parallel <-diegetic, -linear> Bracket <+diegetic, -specific> Descriptive <+diegetic, +specific, -narrative, +linear> Alternating <+diegetic, +specific, +narrative, +linear> Scene <+diegetic, +specific, +narrative, +inclusive> Sequence <+diegetic, +specific, +narrative, +linear, -inclusive>

Colin (1995) discusses how these selection features elucidate the distinctions between

similar syntagmas, such as: the parallel syntagma versus the alternating syntagma, the

descriptive syntagma versus the bracket syntagma, and the descriptive syntagma versus

the ordinary sequence. He also distinguishes scene and sequence, and justifies the

removal of the autonomous shot and the episodic sequence from Metz’s formulation.

The parallel syntagma and alternating syntagma differ in terms of diegesis,

narrative, and linear arrangement. The alternating motifs of the parallel syntagma need

not coexist in the film’s world, need not have a causal relation to one another, nor coexist

temporally or spatially. In contrast, there is a suggestion of simultaneity between the

events in the alternating syntagma. Metz used the chase scene, cutting between the

pursuer and the pursued, as a common example of the alternating syntagma. Colin

(1995), on the other hand, uses the same example for what he calls the successive

syntagma drawn from Noel Burch. The successive syntagma involves alternation within one event, for “the spaces in which the pursuers and pursued are moving belong to the same spatio-temporal location. The space is, indeed, mobile […] but it is the same space” (Colin 1995:69). Colin (1995) reformulates the alternating syntagma as alternation taking “place between at least two events, which implied at least two locations” (69). Colin uses as his example the ending of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a

Nation (1915), in which the camera cuts back and forth between the attack on the cabin

and the Klu Klux Klan riding to the rescue.

The bracket syntagma lacks specificity; its choice and arrangement of shots draws

general impressions of what is covered. The descriptive syntagma, on the other hand, is

specific in its coverage. There is spatial coexistence between the shots, although it is

non-narrative, as opposed to the scene syntagma. While the bracket syntagma “can also

be seen as being descriptive; it does not then describe a specific situation, but a type of

situation. In the case of the descriptive syntagma, the situation is specific, and therefore

localized in the diegesis […] which is not true of a type of situation” (Colin 1995:68).

The difference between a scene and a sequence is inclusiveness. While a scene is restricted to one location, a sequence follows the trajectory of an object or person through many locations. While an ordinary sequence follows a single complex action through an itinerary of spaces, an episodic sequence is “a pattern of events within a fixed spatial frame” so it was less a sequence than a “concatenation of scenes” (Colin 1995:72,73).

The temporal relation between these scenes is also what distinguishes the episodic sequence from the bracket syntagma. Since the “type of space being constructed was the principal criterion distinguishing scene and sequence,” Colin (1995) deems it

“unnecessary to retain the scene and episodic sequence as ‘autonomous’ syntagmatic types” (72). It is also for this reason that Colin does not consider the autonomous shot – that is, the single shot sequence and inserts – as syntagmas. Inserts are embedded within other syntagmas; even the single shot sequence is a concatenation of scenes without edits.

Home Movies and Ethnographic Film

The textual characteristics of the home movie mode demand that the reader-actant posits a real enunciator, but it also blocks major discursive operations. Odin identifies eight textual characteristics of the home movie mode in Table 9.

Table 9 - Textual Characteristics of the Home Movie Mode (after Buckland 2000:102-103) Textual Characteristic Operation Blocked Absence of Closure Narrativization Discontinuous Linear Temporality Diegetization Chronological but fragmented and “temporal relations between the fragments […] are discontinuous” (Buckland 102). Spatial Indeterminacy Diegetization Spatial relation between shots Dispersed Narrative Narrativization Fragmented narrative elements rather than overall structure Jumps Diegetization Disregards spatial coherence of fictional film Camerawork Fictivization “Blurred images, jolting camera movements, hesitant pans, and so on. As with the reportage film, the enunciator is modalized as real” (Buckland 103). Address to the Camera Fictivization Variable Sound Quality Diegetization Also contributes to dispersed diegetization

Since the institution that fosters this mode is the family, the extent to which this blockage affects viewing pleasure depends on whether the reader-actant is a member of the particular family. For those who have lived the experience seen in the home movie, it

does not need to establish a coherent diegesis because the events filmed are already known by the intended addressees. All the home movie needs to do is revive the addressee’s memory of the actual experiences. The home movie itself recalls a previous series of events; it does not need to narrate those events. [Buckland 2000:103]

Since Odin feels that the absence of narrativization and diegetization is “an essential characteristic of the home movie” he is “critical of cine-clubs that encourage

home movie makers to adopt the techniques of the fictional mode” (Buckland 2000:103).

Ethnographic films, as such, would seem to be essentially incompatible with the home movie mode as they possess narrativization and are essentially diegetization.

Ethnographic films, edited in post-production, could be likened to essays, as opposed to films in the home movie mode composed of fragments by starting and stopping the recording, which is different from editing in-camera.

The reader might wonder why the home movie mode bears discussion in a thesis on ethnographic film. Ethnographic films do indeed resemble home movies on a superficial textual level. Depending on the available footage captured, an ethnographic film might still look like a home movie after editing. All of Odin’s textual characteristics of home movies, and the operations they block, have equivalents in Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness; however, the presence of these characteristics violates those attributes, and can be addressed in those terms. Table 10 depicts the textual characteristics and the ethnographic attributes violated by their presence.

Table 10 - Odin's Home Movie Textual Characteristics and Their Relation to Heider's Attributes Textual Characteristic Attribute Violated Absence of Closure Whole Acts Discontinuous Linear Temporality Whole Acts Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Spatial Indeterminacy Whole Bodies Contextualization Dispersed Narrative Whole Acts Jumps Whole Acts Whole People Camerawork Basic Technical Competence Whole Bodies Address to the Camera See below

Variable Sound Quality Basic Technical Competence

The only textual characteristic that does not violate one of Heider’s attributes is address to the camera, which actually contributes to the attributes of whole people, ethnographic presence, and appropriateness of sound. Address to the camera might also contribute to whole acts if someone on- or off-camera explains some part of an event that was not captured; which, in an actual home movie, would have been done either to remind viewers who were there, or inform anticipated viewers.

Chapter 3

LES MAÎTRES FOUS (1954)

The late Jean Rouch is now widely recognized as a major ethnographic

filmmaker, but it was Rouch’s Chronique d’un Ete [Chronicle of a Summer] (1960) – co-

directed with sociologist Edgar Morin – and Les Maîtres Fous (1957) [The Mad

Magicians] (1954) that had Heider (1976) identifying him primarily and almost solely –

unelaborated mention is also made to Luc de Heutsch – with “The French Movement”

(39).17 Although Rouch had been dubbed the “father of French cinema verité,” Heider

(1976) concedes that Rouch has had little influence on an ethnographic film methodology

that seeks to “create the illusion of the ethnographic present, without anthropologist”

(39). In contrast, he describes Rouch’s approach on Chronique d’un Été (1961) as being

built around “the inescapable fact that an anthropologist and a filmmaker are on the spot

and are interacting with the people and thus influencing behavior” (Heider 1976:39). Les

Maîtres Fous (1957), on the other hand does not feature such interaction, but the presence of the anthropologist – as cameraman and narrator – is felt throughout.

Heider (1976) points out that, unlike

most ethnographic films, its visuals and its sounds focus, rather than dissipate, the viewer’s attention […] It forces the viewer to observe reality, and then leads the viewer into deeper understanding. The film is at the opposite extreme from the banality of the travelogue, which shows all men, however exotic, the same. Les Maîtres Fous says that these men are very different from us, and we must understand why. [40]

17 The Mad Magicians is the popular English title and is used by it’s current US distributor DER Educational Films. Stoller (1992) refers to the film’s translated title as Masters of Folly.

These comments may show Heider in a different light than he has been largely

characterized in the preceding chapter; however, just as he tells us that Rouch’s approach is important but has not been followed up in any significant way, Heider himself does not follow it up in Ethnographic Film (1976). Ethnographic presence, the attribute most

descriptive of Rouch’s approach, is more than midway down the list of attributes. The

films most opposed to this attribute, including Dead Birds (1964) and Heider’s Dani

Houses (1974) and Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974), are described in similarly favorable language as Chronique d’un Été (1961) on the other end of the spectrum. This thesis does not place primacy upon this approach either, although it does examine its effect on viewing disposition.

Les Maîtres Fous (1957) details the Hauka possession ceremony enacted by

Nigerian laborers working in Accra, the capital of the then British colony of the Gold

Coast. While Rouch’s wife was giving a lecture in Accra – featuring footage shot by him

– Rouch was asked by Hauka priests in the audience to create a filmed record of the annual Hauka ceremony. Prior to this, Rouch had already seen some of the smaller

Hauka ceremonies (Eaton 1979). The Hauka mediums become possessed “violently in expressing their otherness: wide, wild eyes slice the darkness like beacons; foaming saliva covers black chins like scraggly white goatees; bellows, grunts, and groans shatter

the silence of night” (Stoller 1992:147). The possessing spirits take the form of Western colonial administrative figures and acted out “in exaggerated form the theatre of British military ritual” (Stoller 1992:150). They demonstrate their otherness by animal

sacrifices, burning their clothes – their flesh remains unscarred – and sacrificing and

eating a dog. Rouch has surmised that “the ritual plays a therapeutic role in the lives of the marginalised and oppressed people, allowing them to accommodate to the psychological disjunctions caused by colonialism” (Eaton 1979:6). MacDougall (1995) feels the film is successful in depicting the ritual’s function as a “psychological safety valve for the frustrations and loss of dignity under colonial rule” (237).

Tomaselli (1999) is more specific in describing such rituals as being “enacted by communities of sign-users to confirm their cosmological locations, their relationships to forces of the universe, and to solidify social organization,” and that the film itself

“conserves the image of Songhay cultural resistance” (168). Similarly, Kuehnast (1992)

“offers a poignant example of what it means to break with the romantic tradition s of the big screen, full of images of a pristine people, and instead confront the world now dominated by colonial and imperial forces […] The irony of the title, ‘the masters of madness’, is that it refers both to the Hauka cult members and to the British colonialists”

(190).

Attribution of Ethnographicness

In addition to identifying Heider’s evaluations of the films in terms of the attributes, and filling in attributes that were not evaluated, I also critique Heider’s

evaluations. Table 11 depicts Heider’s ratings for Les Maîtres Fous (1957).

Table 11 - Heider's Ethnographicness Attribution of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis

Relation to Printed Materials Whole Acts Whole Bodies Explanation and Evaluation of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit H Ethnographic Presence Contextualization Whole People Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior H Intentional Distortion of Behavior

Heider had only evaluated the film on only two of the attributes: inadvertent distortion of

behavior and narration fit. Heider (1976) had graded narration fit as optimal; the narration “was used to explain and translate those symbolic aspects of ceremonies which simply could not be elucidated in a purely visual manner” (105). The two major factors that have an inadvertent effect on behavior are the “degree of camera consciousness, resulting in unease before the camera, and the relative energy levels of the camera crew and subjects” (Heider 1976:99). In the case of Rouch’s film, the ceremony “had such high levels of energy […] that the filmmakers were virtually ignored” (Heider 1976:99).

With this in mind, as well as the non-presence of Rouch on-camera or speaking to the participants from behind the camera, I have given ethnographic presence a low rating.

I have rated the attribute of ethnographic basis on the informed end. Besides

Rouch’s previous exposure to the Hauka ceremonies, Heider’s own comments assert that

Les Maîtres Fous (1957) would likely rate on the informed end of the attribution scale; it

was certainly enough for the priests who had asked Rouch to film in the first place. Thus,

I choose to rate the attribute as on the informed end as being “deeply shaped by ethnographic understanding” (Heider 1976:113). Some scholars had complained about

the “incomprehensibility” of the film, “which stems from a lack of ethnographic

contextualization” (Stoller 1992:152). Indeed, Jean-Claude Muller feels it is impossible

to “fully understand and appreciate a film that concerns religion and symbolism […]

without prior knowledge of something about the religious setting of the population

filmed,” but Rouch’s film is “still a complement—a very important one—to the written

ethnographic account, and not the other way around” (Stoller 1992:152-153). If this were

what Heider had meant by contextualization, I would have rated the film on the low end

of the scale, despite its high ethnographic basis. Heider, however, defines

contextualization on the level of establishing the physical landscape. Such

contextualization is established by Rouch in the opening shots of Accra and its

populations. I have rated the film’s contextualization, as such, in the middle of that

attribute scale, making “gestures towards contextualization” (Heider 1976:113). I have

rated relation to print materials on the low end of the scale as there are none directly associated with the film. Unlike Dead Birds (1964), No transcripts or study guides were

released with the picture by Rouch or the film’s distributors.

The film’s depiction of whole people is not so easily discernable. The people in

front of the camera do become distinct from the mass of Accra workers by their presence

at the ceremony, and then as Hauka mediums distinct from the penitents. For the bulk of

the film, they are characterized by the narration only in their possessed form: as the

Governor-General, the Admiral, and so on. Stoller (1992) told us that Rouch had wanted to learn how life in the Gold Coast “had changed this ‘family’ of Songhay possession spirits. Did they still handle fire? Did they still foam at the mouth like rabid dogs and eat poisonous plants? Were there new deities? Rouch had come to the ‘Mecca’ of the Hauka to find out” (44). I do not think that Rouch had been interested in whole people as spirits or the possessed. It is not until the end of the film that we found out who the Hauka mediums are as people, largely by trade rather than name, and in comparatively denigrating terms in relation to the spirits and the colonial ranks they mocked.

While Rouch’s thesis about the ritual might require that the viewer get to know the characters, the film is also a commissioned work for the Hauka mediums; the Hauka may regard the spirits to be the main characters. Criticism by African scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that representations of “wild-eyed black men foaming at the mouth, drinking dog blood, and eating dog meat […] would reinforce racist myths about black Africa” (Stoller 1992:151). Relevant to the scoring of whole people and contextualization is the charge by Ousmane Sambène that Rouch dwells “on a reality without showing its evolution,” and that he “observes us like insects” (Stoller 1992:152).

I have given a low rating whole people, since they are depicted as “only faceless masses”

(Heider 1976:113).

Regarding the attribute of whole bodies, Rouch does make use of emphatic close- ups, but they no more fragment the action incomprehensibly than the explanatory insert

close-ups in Dead Birds (1964). There is only one close-up that I have classified as fragmented, but that is because of its position in the continuity. I will elaborate upon it when discussing of continuity distortion. I have chosen to give a maximal score because the close-ups are illustrative and function as explanatory inserts, the use of which in mainstream cinema predisposes viewers to their use elsewhere.

Taking into account the shooting conditions and equipment, I have rated the

film’s degree of basic technical competence high. The film was shot with a hand- cranked Bell and Howell 16mm camera that “allowed for 25 sec. shots,” and the sound was recorded by Scubitophone clockwork motor tape recorder “that had to be wound up

between takes” (Eaton 1979:6).18 As the bulk of the final film’s sound is made up of the

narration, I have rated the attribute of appropriateness of sound in the middle of the scale as having “moderate narration” (Heider 1976:113). Although Heider (1976) had rated narration fit as wordy, the only other choices for appropriateness of sound are

“inappropriate [e.g., orchestral music, heavy narration]” on the low end and “natural synchronous sound” on the high end (113).

Such filmmaking conditions inevitably lead to certain kinds of time distortion.

The twenty-five second shot limitation of Rouch’s camera meant that things might be

missed during the rewinding. The compression of events in coverage was partially

caused by the shot length limitation. This was not the only reason, however, as Rouch

“edited in the camera as much as possible and the eventual shooting ratio was only about

18 There is some disagreement about the technical aspects of Les Maîtres Fous as Stoller cites a personal communication between Jay Ruby and Rouch that suggests that no sound was recorded “so the soundtrack had to be dubbed” (Stoller 1992:152n).

8-10” (Eaton 1979:6).19 I have scored Rouch’s film in the middle on the time distortion attribute; the time was condensed but the narration made such distortion less jarring.

There is little continuity distortion in the film outside of the bookending scenes of

Accra. It is impossible to determine if these scenes were indeed shot before and after the

ceremony, or all at once for use as a framing device. The continuity of the ceremony,

however, is preserved so I have rated the attribute on the higher end of the scale. There is

one shot during the opening scene that breaks continuity. It is a close-up of one of the

possessed Hauka mediums. The shot functions as a displaced diegetic insert; the shot is

temporally and spatially out of place with the surrounding action as the Hauka and the

ceremony have not yet been introduced by the narrator. The shot is a teaser of sorts,

tantalizing the viewer with an out-of-context image. I have rated the film highly in terms

of intentional distortion of behavior, meaning that such distortion is minimal. Even

though Rouch was asked by the Hauka mediums to shoot the footage for use in future

ceremonies, there is no obvious camera consciousness, nor did Rouch have to trigger the behavior of the possessed.

The ratings of ethnographicness are graphically illustrated below in Table 12.

Heider’s ratings are marked with an “H” and my own are marked with a “C.” Attributes are in descending order of importance, while more ethnographic values are to the right.

Table 12 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Les Maîtres Fous (1957) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis C

19 The shooting ratio is the ratio of footage used to the amount of footage shot. The low amount of footage actually shot is not so difficult to believe when one takes into account the limitations of the camera which Rouch learned to work around.

Relation to Printed Materials C Whole Acts C Whole Bodies C Explanation and Evaluation C of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence C Appropriateness of Sound C Narration Fit H Ethnographic Presence C Contextualization C Whole People C Time Distortion C Continuity Distortion C Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior H Intentional Distortion of Behavior C

Fictionalization and Documentarization

In this section, I have assessed the film in terms of how it satisfies the semio- pragmatic operations of fictionalization and/or documentarization, or the processes by which the film orients the spectator to receive and interpret it. I have used Odin’s five operations, refined from the original eight when he had previously concerned himself only with fictionalization. Table 13 is a syntagmatic synopsis of events for Les Maîtres

Fous (1957); the divisions of events are chosen by me.

Table 13 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) Event Narrative/ Syntagma(s) Noted Descriptive 1. Accra Descriptive Bracket with Displaced Diegetic Insert 2. The Songhay Narrative Bracket/Scene 3. Pilgrimage Narrative Sequence 4. The Compound Descriptive Descriptive 5. Confession Narrative Scene 6. Purification Narrative Scene 7. Possession Narrative Scene

8. Sacrifice Narrative Scene 9. Coda Narrative Scenes with Subjective Inserts

The first of these five operations is construction of a diegesis, which is the inverse

of figurativization. Following the producer’s warning before the opening credits, there is

a text screen that sets up the film’s general premise: young people from the interior are

arriving in the cities encounter mechanical civilization for the first time and facing new

conflicts; the result of which is the formation of new religions with which to deal with

these conflicts. The Hauka sect, formed in 1927, is such a religion. Following the

credits, the first nine shots form a bracket syntagma experience of Accra as a “black

Babylon” (Mâitres Fous 1957). We are told that we will meet “men from all parts of

West Africa” who “have come to live the great adventure of African cities” (Mâitres Fous

1957). There is no descriptive arrangement of these opening city shots. The cuts are disorienting, complementing the narrator’s opening exclamation: “Here, traffic never

stops. Here, noise never stops” (Mâitres Fous 1957).

While the diegesis is established at the beginning in order to situate the narrative,

a major change in location could require another construction of the diegesis. In Les

Maîtres Fous (1957), such a change occurs when the viewer is shown the compound where the ceremony will take place. The descriptive syntagma arrangement is utilized in establishing the diegesis and setting in three shots used to describe part of the compound,

with its color rag Union Jacks and statue of the governor.

The second operation is narrativization, or “the production of a story, of a

narrative” (Odin 1995:228). Rouch singles out the Songhay and Zerma of Gao as the

“most interesting community” (Mâitres Fous 1957). Rouch and the camera establish

where this community is found: among smugglers, porters, turf manufacturers, mosquito killers, various salesmen, and miners. The bracket syntagma, rather than the descriptive

syntagma, is utilized here; there is no spatial coexistence of the shots, and they constitute

a bracketing of experience among a socio-economic subset of the Accra population.

This syntagmatic arrangement continues as Rouch shows us weddings, prostitutes protesting low wages, churchgoers, and bands as further examples of the cacophony of city life. Grimshaw (2001), likens the opening scenes to “a style which echoes the

European city symphony films of the 1920s. Through montage, he evokes the rhythm and complexity of a machine in which migrants function as a skilled and varied workforce” (96). At this point, Rouch hints at the narrative core by telling us that the men who come from “silent savannahs to seek some peace in the suburbs of the city.

And there, every Sunday night, they go to ceremonies not yet known to us. They call the new gods, the gods of the city, the gods of technology, the gods of power, the Hauka”

(Mâitres Fous 1957). In conjunction with the narrative, there is another bracketing syntagma arrangement in these shots establishing the order of reality of the Songhay.

The visual track of this syntagma is disrupted by a displaced diegetic insert of a close shot of a Hauka medium foaming at the mouth, which is shown temporally and spatially out of context. There is also strong a strong visual contrast as the image is a night shot inserted in the midst of an otherwise sunny series of shots. This is followed by a scene of the salt market, the meeting place of the Hauka. We are then introduced to the

members of the sect, although only one is mentioned by name. They are then shown leaving the city by cars and trucks. This is followed by a series of shots depicting the pilgrimage, first by car and then on foot, to the compound of Nigerian cocoa farmer

Muntyeba, who is also a Hauka high priest.

The second construction of a diegesis establishing the compound setting is

followed by the ceremony. The depiction is that of a series of scenes composed of

different events depicted linearly in the same setting, as opposed to a sequence which

would be a single event within an itinerary of spaces. Grimshaw (2001) notes the

Rouch’s “rejection of montage as the cinematic technique for capturing the simultaneity

and complexity of the Hauka possession ceremony” in contrast to the montage of the

opening and closing sequences, being “narrative with a marked linear movement” (96).

It also stands in contrast to the montage-heavy depictions of the ganekhe ceremony and

the funeral in Dead Birds (1964).

Within one of these ceremony scenes, there is another displaced diegetic insert.

In “imitation of the real Governor-General’s plumes cascading over his ceremonial

helmet,” an egg is cracked over the head of the medium possessed by the Governor-

General (Rouch 1995:225).20 Despite the basic narrative structuring of the ceremony’s

depiction, in that it is linear and composed of scenes, these scenes also possess a denoted

diegetic value; Rouch’s heavy narration distinguishes shots as belonging to one scene or sequence, the previous, or the next. The bracket syntamga arrangement depicting the

20 Incidentally, this shot got the film banned in the United Kingdom as it was considered an “insult to the Queen” (Rouch 1995:225).

restoration of order in the closing scenes has Rouch juxtaposing shots of the Hauka

mediums in their roles as sweets sellers, pick-pockets, shop clerks, and the like with shots

of them in their possessed states. While the shot of the possessed Hauka medium that

disrupts the introduction of the Songhay in the opening montage is a displaced diegetic

insert, these contrasting shots are subjective inserts within the bracket syntagma

arrangement.

Les Maîtres Fous (1957) does not activate mise-en-phase. The combination of explanatory narration and the camerawork is in keeping with the aforementioned criticism that the film looks at the people as if under a microscope. Such dephasage does, however, in the context of an ethnographic film, reinforce truth value to the audience. It would have been extremely artificial for Rouch to have subjectively conveyed the possession stylistically through camerawork, editing, and opticals. Those

viewing the film in search of spectacle might find the displeasures of dephasage lessened by the exotic, and possibly repellant, imagery.

The fourth operation is the construction of an absent enunciator which occurs in

fictional films and documentary films, and strives “to give us a view of things of the

world as if there were no intermediaries, as if the world were there in front of us instead

of on the screen” (Odin 1995:229). This occurs rarely in ethnographic films; there is

often a narrator structuring the narrative, and the audience takes that narrator to be a real

person with factual knowledge. In fact, the narrator is often taken as the actual

ethnographer rather than a voice actor delivering scripted narration. The narrator on the

English version is indeed Rouch, who had preferred to narrate his own films “even with

my own bad English accent” (Rouch 1975:92). The eye contact made by the miners in

the opening and the address to the camera of some of the Hauka mediums in the coda –

although their voices are not heard or translated – posits the enunciator as the camera

operator existing beyond the frame. Ethnographic films require a present enunciator of

some sort. In the case of the other Rouch’s Chronique d’un Été (1961), we actually see

the enunciator on camera. As the film is often viewed in didactic institutions, such as

anthropology classes, the viewer takes the narrator at his word that the shots introducing

Accra are indeed Accra, and the various divisions of the populations are not actors. At

the same time, the audience does not take literally the narrator’s assertion of Accra as a

“black Babylon” (Maîtres Fous 1957). Regardless of whether or not the viewer believes in spirit possession, he or she sets aside this question; instead, the viewer assesses what is seen in the frame of Rouch’s interpretation of the ceremonies as a way of coping with the alienation of technological society.

Before the film proper commences, the viewer is given first a warning from the producer, and then Rouch’s thesis statement in text. The first text warns that the film

contains “scenes of violence and cruelty,” and that the ritual depicted is “a particular

solution to the problem of the readjustment […] that shows indirectly the representation

that some Africans have of our western civilization” (Mâitres Fous 1957). While the

presence of the enunciator does not preclude fictivization, there are plenty of fictional

films that are not only narrated, but also authored in the sense that the unfolding events

are imagined and constructed by a character. Les Maîtres Fous (1957) is not only viewed

mainly in didactic settings, the ethnographer’s name and voice is stamped upon the film,

along with the producer’s disclaimer.

The second part of the opening text states that the film depicts “an episode of the life of the Hauka of the city of Accra - filmed at the request of the priests Muntyeba and

Muykayla - proud of its art. No scene is secret nor prohibited, but that is open to that they want to participate and this violent game is only the reflection of our civilization”

(Mâitres Fous 1957). Such a statement blocks fictivization, even outside of the didactic institution. While there are fictional films that make similar claims for entertainment purposes, the audience is assured of their fictional status by commercial cinema’s overriding concern with a pleasurable reading of the film. As Buckland (2000) states when discussing Odin: “the documentarizing reading is privileged only in films generated by the documentary mode and institution” (100). Ethnographic films, however, belong to a didactic institution that, not unlike commercial cinema, is invested in audience comprehension of certain meanings; the films, however, demand a more active reading mode than the spectacular. Les Maîtres Fous (1957) is not a film d’essai; it is more like a

formal essay in which a specific meaning is attributed to the depicted behavior.

Since fictivization is the only operation unique to fictional film, Odin (1995)

states that a documentary “will have a higher decree of ‘documentarity’ the more it

blocks a greater number of the operations,” but it will have “more chance to be accepted

by the public if it mobilizes more operations belonging to the processes of

fictionalization” (229). Les Maîtres Fous (1957) blocks two of the more important

operations of fictionalization: the construction of an absent enunciator and fictivization.

In Les Maîtres Fous (1957), the combination of diegesis, a visually fragmented narrative,

heavy narration, stylistic dephasage, and contextualization – as well as the film’s

ubiquity in anthropological circles – privilege a documentary reading. The exotic subjects of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) may be spectacular enough to be accepted outside of

academia, despite its degrees of documentarization and ethnographicness.

Les Maîtres Fous and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies

Due to the narrative constructed around the coverage of the Hauka ceremony and

Rouch’s psychological interpretation, Les Maîtres Fous (1957) does not lack closure.

Like Dead Birds (1964) and The Hunters (1956), Rouch’s film suggest a thesis-

antithesis-synthesis structure that is also cyclical. The film suggests that life does indeed

continue on after the film, but that the situations and dispositions depicted in each of the

stages are characteristic of prior and future cycles of adaptation. There is discontinuous

linear temporality due to the film’s singular focus on the Hauka ceremony, its causes,

and its effects. A linear narrative is assembled from the coverage of the ceremony itself, from the shots depicting the participants in the context of their city lives before and after the ceremony, and Rouch’s elucidating narration. Spatial indeterminacy exists between shots, but the environment is established through editing and the link between actions in different shots is clarified through narration.

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There are no jumps as defined in the home movie mode, in which spatial coherence is disrupted; the slathering of narration over the action, rather than editing-for- diegetization, is utilized to maintain spatial and temporal coherence when the coverage is insufficient. The camerawork, while proficient, evidences high grain and contrast due to low lighting; that could, however, be said to enhance the feeling of capturing non- planned, non-scripted moments. Combined with the narration, the camerawork helps modalizes the enunciator as real. As ethnographic presence is largely ignored, there is also no address to the camera by any of the participants in front of it, other than a couple glances at the camera in the closing shots. Table 14 summarizes the presence or absence of home movie textual characteristics in Rouch’s film.

Table 14 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Les Maîtres Fous (1957) Textual Characteristic Present or Absent Absence of Closure Absent Discontinuous Linear Temporality Absent Spatial Indeterminacy Absent Dispersed Narrative Absent Jumps Absent Camerawork Present Address to the Camera Absent Variable Sound Quality Present

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Chapter 4

DEAD BIRDS (1964)

In Dead Birds (1964), Robert Gardner depicts the lives of the Dani people of

West Irian as revolving around revenge and intertribal warfare. He follows a Dani warrior Wayek and a young swineherd Pua through their daily lives. Part of Wayek’s day is spent in the watchtower looking out for the enemy; throughout, he is seen presciently weaving a funerary bracelet. The less sure-footed Pua is depicted seeing to his swines. When another young boy, Wejakhe, is killed by the enemy, Wayek gets to use the funerary bracelet. The grief of the funeral ceremony revs up the warriors, as well as the audience, for the ensuing revenge warfare where only the death of a member of the enemy tribe can set things right.

Dead Birds (1964) is probably one of the most ubiquitous ethnographic films in

American anthropology; it “has been widely used in teaching, perhaps because among

other things it contains extremely unusual material on a form of controlled warfare which

the Dani indulged in with their neighbours at frequent intervals. It also contains powerful

material on mourning of a vividness and directness unusual until then” (Loizos

1993:144). Even outside of the classroom, the film’s combination of spectacular imagery and informative narration makes for engrossing fare; yet, Dead Birds (1964) is not only

an ethnographic film, it is also very much a movie. It is not merely a chronicle of events,

but a plot with a chain of causation; it depicts through parallel construction the daily lives

of two Dani people, contrasted by age and occupation. These storylines are filled out by

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ethnographic detail of behavior enacted by other sometimes unidentified characters. Its

thesis is that of life revolving around warfare, its antithesis is death and mourning, and its

synthesis is the resulting warfare and the return to a tense normality. The death of an

innocent is the second act climax; the ensuing massive warfare, depicted in a less

leisurely manner than the previous battle scenes, is the finale. A circular return to the

tense calm of the start is the falling action. The presence of explanatory narration may

not necessarily turn off an audience in the commercial cinema mode of attention; the

most engrossing sections of Jamie Uys’ The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) have made this

evident. It is due, perhaps, to its cinematic style that this ubiquitous example of

ethnographic film does not rate a mention in El Guindi’s Visual anthropology: Essential

Method and Theory (2004).

The film was made as part of the 1961-63 Harvard-Peabody Expedition of the

highlands of New Guinea, one of the few areas not colonized by Europeans.21 Heider

(1976) points out that the film was only one of the reports on the Dani produced during that expedition; for it

was not a ‘film expedition’; it was an ethnographic expedition which coordinated the efforts of three ethnographers (Broekuijse, Gardner, and Heider), a natural historian (Peter Matthiessen), a botanist (Chris Versteegh), a professional still photographer (Eliot Elisofon), and others (Michael Rockefeller and Samuel Putnam); as well as, in the 1968 and 1970 follow-up, a psychologist (Eleonor Rosch). [34]

21 The Harvard-Peabody expedition and the film Dead Birds (1964) achieved some notoriety due to the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller (son of former vice president Nelson Rockefeller) who served as still photographer and sound recordist on the film.

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In the film’s companion text, Gardner discusses his “purist’s attitude” towards the

selection of equipment and “finding a remote and fully traditional society” (Heider and

Gardner 1972:31,32). He recalls that besides Adrian Gerbrands’ warnings of the Asmats’ secretive behavior, “the purist in me recoiled at the highly visible and frequently visored cap, Heineken Beer T-shirt and the cast-off police clothing which was so prized by the

Asmat men” (Heider and Gardner 1972:32).

Gardner admits that he “lacked context” for evaluating the missionary reports on the Dani, that made “references to the perfidy, cruelty and intractability of these people”

(Heider and Gardner 1972:32). He had been more interested in “speaking to certain fundamental issues in human life. The Dani were then less important to me than those issues” (Heider and Gardner 1972:34). His way of accomplishing had been “to document with as much discernment as possible the most telling and important aspects of their life.

Only when this had been done was I free to try and determine the significance of their behavior for the audience which might see my work” (Heider and Gardner 1972:34).

Gardner had sought to “convey a greater sense of character, even personality by developing he life situation and particular circumstances of a few individuals,” and believed that the individuals he followed were “typical in their responses and yet individualistic in their behavior” (Heider and Gardner 1972:33,34).

Gardner, in Heider and Gardner (1972), is forthcoming in admitting some of his faulty assumptions. When he first had realized that a ceremonial war was about to take place, he had asked all of the expedition to stay near the village, being “uneasy and shy

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about permitting too many incredulous eyes to fasten on the vents which were unfolding”

(Heider and Gardner 1972:33). It was only after that he had realized that Dani war was

“above all an occasion for display, for savage boasting and for lethal pleasures” that it would have been “less comprehensible” if the expedition had not come out to observe the battle (Heider and Gardner 1972:33).

Attribution of Ethnographicness

Along with Heider’s own two films on Dani culture, Dani Houses (1974) and

Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974), Gardner’s Dead Birds (1964) is one of the film’s most thoroughly rated on Heider’s scale of ethnographic attributes. Table 15 illustrates

Heider’s attributes of ethnographicness for Dead Birds (1964).

Table 15 - Heider's Attribution of Ethnographicness for Dead Birds (1964) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis H Relation to Printed Materials H Whole Acts H Whole Bodies Explanations of the Various Distortions H Basic Technical Competence H Appropriateness of Sound H Narration Fit H Ethnographic Presence H Contextualization H Whole People H Time Distortion H Continuity Distortion H Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior H Intentional Distortion of Behavior H

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For the most part, I agree with his ratings, so the explanations of the scoring of those

attributes are a combination of his comments and my own. The one attribute left blank

bears a greater discussion, particularly in preceding semio-pragmatic analysis.

Heider (1976) had rated the film highly on ethnographic basis, although it was shot during the first five months of the expedition. Gardner had worked closely with a

Dutch government anthropologist and had input from the rest of the expedition. He had started editing the film in 1962. He returned to New Guinea in late 1963 to discuss the film with Heider, who then assisted him in the final editing. Heider (1976) stresses the integration of ethnographic films with contextual printed materials, and he had scored

Gardner’s film highly on the attribute of relation to print materials. For Dead Birds

(1964), Heider had co-authored, with Robert Gardner, a companion book that featured a

shot by shot description of the film (Heider and Gardner 1972). It is likely that the film

could be used to support the other materials produced by the members of the expedition,

or vice versa.

In recent years, Dead Birds (1964) has received a two- disc DVD release featuring an audio commentary by Gardner, six edited scenes cut from the film, raw outtakes,

excerpts from Gardner’s field journals, and an archival TV interview. Such technology

was not available at the time the film was made, and how this sort of contextual material

would score on this attribute depends on how the film is being viewed. Print materials

are reproducible and can be distributed to a viewing audience in advance of the

screening. An interactive DVD, particularly one with an optional commentary track, is

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more suited to individual viewing. If the DVD set sets a new standard for ethnographic

film distribution, then the gathering of footage for the production of such contextual

materials may become part of the information-gathering methodology.22 I wonder,

however, if supplementary material prepared at the time would be as informative and

elucidating as analytical produced in retrospect.

Heider had scored explanation and evaluation of the various distortions as

making “some attempt” to address the distortions (Heider 1976:113). He is forthcoming

on the distortions in the companion text (Heider and Gardner 1972) as well as his own

book on ethnographic film (Heider 1976). Heider (1976) had given a low rating for

continuity distortion because the film’s battle sequences are constructed “from shots of

different battles at different locations” (67). The thematically relevant action of Weyak

weaving a funeral bracelet, although immediately described as such, is also fragmented

throughout the film in order to prefigure Wejakhe’s death. Since audiences “view

ethnographic film as much for its truth value as for its entertainment value, it does matter

whether the continuity of a sequence is real or has been contrived in the editing room”

(Heider 1976:66-67). The battle scenes are also intercut with shots of the women

traveling to and from the brine pool which had been shot on a different day, which is why

the film had been given a score on the less ethnographic end of time distortion.

Although the aforementioned distortion is more commonly seen in commercial

cinema, it is not unprecedented in documentary and ethnographic film; Heider (1976)

22 There is a danger of such extras – manufactured in concert with production as opposed to retrospectively- created – becoming as superfluous as is sometimes the case with the obligatory special features on many contemporary commercial cinema DVD releases.

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points out similar usages in Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) and John

Marshall’s The Hunters (1956). He is forgiving of these distortions in the case of

Gardner’s film because editing was “used to construct a description which is plausible”

(Gardner 1976:67). In the case of the intercutting between the men’s battle and women’s

brine pool trek, “Gardner was careful to determine that it could have happened. And it

accurately illustrates the apparent indifference with which women did go about their

normal activities while their men were engaged in battle” (Heider 1976:67).

Although Heider had scored Dead Birds (1964) highly in terms of basic technical

competence, he had given a moderate score for appropriateness of sound. Although he

had stated that all of the sound in the film is post-synchronized, Heider did not mention

that the non-synchronous untranslated dialogue attributed to Weyak was actually dubbed

in by himself (Ruby 2000).23 Despite this, I have agreed with the assessment of that

attribute, as the sound is neither synchronous nor wholly inappropriate. Heider (1976)

had scored narration fit towards the “redundant overly wordy, unrelated” end of the attribute spectrum (113). He had conceded that “Gardner’s interpretation of the meaning of war to the Dani or his attributions of thoughts to specific people at specific times can be challenged,” and that there are some sequences where the narration “is used to carry a story line when in fact the visual show nothing of the sort. In some of the more exciting sections of Dead Birds, the excitement exists only in the narration, and the visuals are

short, bland, scenic cuts” (Heider 1976:72). Of Gardner’s “created and narrated interior

23 In Heider and Gardner (1972), Gardner stated that though sound recordist Michael Rockefeller recorded sound for each take although it was not all used.

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monologues for some of the principles,” Ruby (2000) identifies these as “fiction tactics” that “provide continuity between sequences and act as a lead-in to a sequence that would otherwise be missing a smooth transition” (101). His referral to the third-person passive narration as being “known among filmmakers as ‘the voice of God’” is also indicative of his own feelings on Gardner’s storytelling (Ruby 2000:100).

Heider had scored the film highly for whole people due to its focus on two individual characters: the man Weyak and the boy Pua. Criticisms of the thoughts attributed to them, and the way in which they are manipulated within the storyline, do not technically contradict the rating of “develops feeling for an individual” when the alternative is “only faceless masses” (Heider 1976:113). Ruby’s comments on the fiction tactics of the narration, including Heider’s dubbing in of Weyak’s thoughts, should be taken into account along with speculation on the reasons Gardner chose not to subtitle any dialogue. Heider had scored the film mid-way between “fragmentary bits of acts” and “beginnings, peaks, and ends of acts” for whole acts. The reason for this may not only have been the time and continuity distortions mentioned above, but also the criticisms of the narration.

Heider had given a moderate score for contextualization attribute as the film only gestures towards cultural and physical context. Although Ruby (2000) praised the opening sequence, in which Gardner used narration and montage to describe the environment of the Dani, Heider (1976) did not offer any criticism or justification as to why he had rated it moderately. While ethnographic presence is ignored by the film,

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Heider (1976) had conceded moderate inadvertent distortion of behavior by the crew; however, like the possession ceremonies in Les Maîtres Fous (1957), “the battles and funerals […] had such high levels of energy of their own that the filmmakers were largely ignored” (99). Gardner had said that his job of documenting

was made much easier because no one knew what I was doing. My camera was no more or less interesting or threatening to them than my belt buckle or sunglasses. It was part of a strange costume which I always wore and that it made a noise was a matter of complete indifference. I might have been holding a large insect which occasionally murmured as I put it to my eye […] I would sometimes ask the Dani to look through my camera so that they would at least understand it was a way for me to see more clearly what they looked like and did. [Heider and Gardner 1972:34]

To maintain such innocence, Gardner had insisted “that no photographs be shown to anyone” (Heider and Gardner 1972:34). Ruby (2000) notes that Gardner’s “concealment of intentions” runs in direct opposition to Rouch’s “notion of a shared anthropology” in

Les Maîtres Fous [1957] (102).

Heider also had scored intentional distortion of behavior moderately. Heider recounts how the leader of a Dani sib had expressed the desire to perform “a renewal ceremony for their sacred stones” known as the wam kanekhe but that he did not have enough pigs (Heider 1976:58). The leader had said that if the filmmakers would pay for the needed pigs, they would be allowed to film the ceremony. Of the resulting filmed event, he writes

I am still not fully certain what was really going on. We did contribute to the ceremony. But were they planning it anyway and saw an opportunity to make us pay for it? Had our expressed interest in seeing their sacred stones planted in their minds the idea of killing two birds with one set of pigs? As the ethnographer, I should know but I do not. [Heider 1976:58]

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While he had made some attempt at explaining and evaluating this bit of distortion in

Heider (1976), such questions are not asked in the film itself. Reading such candid

comments makes me question the authenticity of parts of Gardner’s narration.

The only attribute Heider had left blank was that of whole bodies. The film’s cinematic, and syntagmatic, treatment does not lend itself to either end of that rating scale, nor even a moderate rating between “excessive fragmented close-ups” and

“maximally necessary whole bodies” (Heider 1976:107). I have given it a rating of

maximal rating; I found the close ups explanatory and descriptive, functioning as inserts

within scenes that also possess spatial context. The scoring of the film’s attributes

appears in Table 16.

Table 16 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Dead Birds (1964) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis H Relation to Printed Materials H Whole Acts H Whole Bodies C Explanations of the Various Distortions H Basic Technical Competence H Appropriateness of Sound H Narration Fit H Ethnographic Presence H Contextualization H Whole People H Time Distortion H Continuity Distortion H Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior H Intentional Distortion of Behavior H

Fictionalization and Documentarization

Table 17 presents a syntagmatic summary of events for the film.

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Table 17 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Events for Dead Birds (1964) Event Narrative/ Syntagma(s) Noted Descriptive 1. The Setting Descriptive Bracket, Descriptive with subjective inserts 2. Introduction of Weyak Narrative Scene 3. Introduction of Pua Narrative Scene 4. Weyak goes to the watchtower Narrative Sequence 5. Pua takes out his pigs Narrative Scene 6. Lakha goes to her gardens Narrative Alternating (with 4 and 5) 7. The enemy raiding party Narrative Sequence burns down a shelter 8. Battle on the Dogolik Narrative Alternating 9. Weyak goes to the gardens Narrative Scene 10. Boys have a grass spear fight Narrative Scene 11. Repairing the watch tower Narrative Alternating 12. Lakha and the other women Narrative Sequence go to the brine pool 13. Battle on the Watabaka Narrative Alternating (with 12) 14. Battlefield surgery Narrative Scene 15. Um’ue makes protective Narrative Alternating magic for the wounded man 16. The ganekhe ceremony Narrative Scene 17. The death of Wejakhe Narrative Sequence with subjective inserts 18. Wejakhe’s funeral Narrative Scene 19. The killing of the enemy Narrative Scene 20. The EDAI dance Narrative Alternating

Some of the events listed above actually encompass more narrative events than the

headings suggest; for instance, Wejakhe’s funeral features two additional lengthy scenes.

After the scene in which the child’s corpse is reduced to ashes, there are two alternating scenes of 1) Pua wondering when Wejakhe’s death will be avenged, and 2) Wejak talking to Wejakhe’s uncle about what must be done to avenge the boy’s death. Not all of these

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scenes are discussed below, but the reader should assume that there are more events

under a heading when the alternating syntagma is noted.

Both Ruby (2000) and Heider (1976) praised the setup of the physical and cultural

environment of Dead Birds (1964). As part of the construction of the diegesis, Gardner

relates the fable that lends the film its title. The first three shots – a bird in flight, a

funeral, and a close up of one of the men at the funeral – are a bracketing syntagma arrangement; the shots are diegetic but they lack specificity. Heider (1976) had scored the narration following the credits and the accompanying landscape shots score highly for their contextualization. Ruby (2000) describes it as “one of the best uses of montage in an ethnographic film” (99).24 MacDougall (1995) believes that Gardner’s “interpretation

of Dani experience through literary convention is an instance of a filmmaker crossing

generic lines in a way in which an anthropologist usually would not” (237).

Following the introductions of Weyak and Pua, Gardner presents eleven shots,

underlined by the narration, that describe the spatial layout of the villages. The next four shots are of various species of bird. Under the last shot of ducks in the Aikhe River, the

narrator tells us that “only ducks are avoided, it being supposed that they carry harmful

magic fed them by the enemy downstream” (Dead Birds 1964). The subsequent shots of

birds take on a metaphoric relation to the film, even though they exist in the diegetic

world. Since the narrator, though absent visually, is a character of sorts, these shots of

birds are subjective inserts within the descriptive syntagma.

24 Ruby believes that the potential of the technique of montage to “make analytic statements in a film” has not been adequately explored among anthropologists (Ruby 2000:99).

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The narrator then tells us that Homaklep is the village where Weyak and his

family live. During this narration, however, we are shown panning and zooming shots of

various features of the village, but not specifically Weyak or his as-yet-unintroduced family. In contrast, we are told that Pua lives in a village close to Weyak’s over a shot of

Pua himself. I deem this a continuation of the descriptive syntagma above in which the

aforementioned subjective inserts are embedded. Since all of the sound is post- synchronized and there is no subtitled dialogue, most of the story is set up in the narration, which gives us more information about the individual characters than could be gleaned visually. The cultural behavior throughout an ethnographic film, denoted visually and by narration, could be seen as a constant restating of the reality of the filmic world when it is viewed in the spectacular mode. In the didactic mode, the lack of such scenes draws more attention to constructed narrative.

The presence of narrativization presupposes diegetization. Before the environmental construction of a diegesis, the film introduces us to the two principle characters in two short scenes. Weyak, introduced as among “those who tell why men must die,” is seen near the watchtower weaving a funerary bracelet. Pua, “having been named for the yellow clay these people put on when a relative has been killed or dies, when an enemy has been killed, and sometimes for no reason at all,” is seen reflected in the puddle of a garden ditch (Dead Birds 1964). These two short arrangements of shots initially appear to be individual scenes. As the film progresses, however, a recurring arrangement between scenes with Weyak and scenes with Pua, in relation to each other or

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to other narrative events, becomes evident. Although these are scenes with narrative

features, they also emphasize the parallel motifs of old and young; yet, their arrangement

is that of the alternating syntagma, rather than the parallel syntagma, because they are

diegetic and narrative.

The intentionality of Gardner’s choice of the “quite awkward, vulnerable, and

moody” Pua should also be noted. Gardner originally had chosen another boy whom he

described as “immediately appealing and bright but I soon realized that there was

something too sleek and perfect about his manner. Fortunately, I realized this before

much time had passed and I chose, instead, another child at about the same age named

Pua and he survived, to my continuing delight, into the film” (Heider and Gardner

1972:34). MacDougall (1995) also notes that Gardner’s constructed symbolic relationships between the focus characters corresponds to Western “familiar circle of the

nuclear family,” in that

out of the man Weyak and the boy Pua, Gardner creates a father-son archetype with a resonance for Western viewers and a utility for the plot that one suspects would not have borne the same significance for the Dani […] The introduction of Weyak’s wife Lakha completes the familiar circle of a nuclear family. The creation of these characters, their needs, and problems is consistent with the character-centered narration of much Western fiction. [235]

At most, they are related by the bracket syntagma; together, Weyak and Pua suggest an

order of reality.

One wonders if Gardner had attempted to forge an alternating relationship

between Weyak and Pua where one did not exist in reality. There is never any diegetic

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point of convergence between the two. They are seemingly present together in scenes

late in the film; however, much of this may have been constructed in the editing room.

Before I had reacquainted myself with the film for analysis, I had misremembered that

Pua had been the one killed. MacDougall (1995) notes that the

reversal of fortune represented by Weyakhé’s death is centered by the film as though it had happened to Pua and from this point onward Weyakhé is Pua’s surrogate self, just as Weyak is his surrogate father […] The point at the river where Weyakhé was killed has been carefully set up earlier in the film as a place where Pua could be in danger, so that when the death occurs, we feel “It could have been Pua.” [236, emphasis added]

There is no more special motivation for Weyak to avenge Wejakhe’s death than there is for any of the others, other than what Gardner had set up. The result is a certain sense of narrative dephasage, in contrast to the dephasage intentionally or unintentionally created with the aspects of the cinematic apparatus, in spite of Heider’s whole people rating.

In addition to scenes featuring Pua and Wayek, there is also an alternating syntagma arrangement in the contrasting of other Dani men and women. After Wejak and Pua are introduced and the terrain contextualized, Lakha is shown tending her garden. We discover that the prior sequence of Weyak and scene of Pua are not distinct since they alternate with a series of scenes in which Lakha tends her garden. These scenes are then interrupted by a series of shots depicting other Dani men, women, and children that establish an overall order of reality; as such, it can be seen as a bracket syntagma within an alternating syntagma. Colin (1995) notes that a bracket syntagma can be narrative without being descriptive; it could do more than situate the action generally.

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The second battle scene alternates between the men on the Watabaka and the women at the brine pits. The reader will recall that the battles had been composed from multiple instances and that the women’s visit to the brine pits had been shot on a different day entirely. As such, the alternating syntagma relationship between the battle and the visit to brine pit had been constructed in post-production.25 These scenes in themselves

are distinguished from the descriptive syntagma because they include the principal

characters.

Many scenes, however, follow the scene syntagma arrangement, albeit with heavy

narration. Scenes depicting Weyak weaving the funerary bracelet make use of close-ups

mainly as explanatory inserts. When these close-ups begin a scene, they are displaced

diegetic inserts as the diegesis of the scene has not yet been established. In mainstream

cinema, when a scene begins close-up, we have learned to expect a subsequent wider contextual shot. The inverse of this is the traditional master shot setup, in which a wide

shot establishes placement and is augmented by closer angles. Some longer scenes such

as Weyakhe’s funeral would be episodic sequences under Metz’s formulation. Colin

(1995), however, has removed the episodic sequence from his formulation as type of

space defines the distinction between scene and sequence. It is not a bracket syntagma of the order of reality of mourning; the bracket syntagma can be narrative without being descriptive, but it cannot be linear.

25 Gardner had participated in the post-production of John Marshall’s The Hunters (1956), which had constructed a single giraffe hunt from several filming sessions, “in some cases even using shots of a different person to stand in for one of the main characters” (MacDougall 1995:234).

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Dead Birds (1964) does not activate mise-en-phase; however, the narration and cinematic techniques do not ameliorate the usual sense of dephasage one encounters when seeing a documentary film. The use of slow motion for the opening shot a bird as the narrator intones the myth is emphatic in a cinematic way, as is following it up with the film’s main titles. It is only in the revelation of Wejakhe’s death that the film most actively engages the viewer. Through editing and opticals, the film literally stops the

action on a freeze frame, disrupting the momentum of the ganekhe ceremony. The film then cuts to a shot of ducks, which the narrator has told us represents ill omen.

This sequence comes at the end of the second reel of the three-reel 16mm prints,

as well as the subsequent three videotape set by Documentary Educational Resources;

whether by accident or design, Weyakhe’s death is a cliffhanger of sorts since the actual

confirmation and circumstances of the boy’s death are not revealed until the third

reel/cassette. The placement of this revelation at the end of the second act, so to speak, also functions as the inciting act that spurs the final battle. Outside of 1970s television,

the freeze frame technique is usually associated with endings rather than cliffhangers or

revelations.

The killing of the enemy, one of the more important scenes in terms of plot

resolution, is rendered as a single shot of the corpse and a series of explanatory insert

close-ups of the body. As with the revelation of Wejakhe’s death, the impact of this

scene is not dramatically satisfying. In conjunction with the narration, the rendering of

these scenes possess a reportage feel. Such scenes may still surprise the audience by the

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bluntness of their revelation, but they do not draw the audience into the fiction in a

spectacular manner.

As with Les Maîtres Fous (1957), ethnographic presence is ignored by the filmmakers; yet, the film does not activate the construction of an absent enunciator operation. While the viewer might believe that the “world and events shown to him exist in themselves,” the enunciator is not effaced; it would be difficult for the film’s thesis of cyclical warfare to be comprehended without the filter of the narrator’s visual and intellectual perspective. The invasive close up of Pua crying is affecting, but it would have lacked resonance without the narrator explaining that he was crying because one of his pigs has died. Since the film has no subtitles or overdubbing, it would be difficult for viewers to divine Gardner’s fundamental issues without the narrator’s intercession. Since the responsibilities of the narrator are not taken on by a character within the film, the narrator is equated with the cameraperson and the editor.

The presence of the filmmaker outside of the diegesis of the film as a real person

– that is, Robert Gardner of the Harvard-Peabody expedition to the highlands of New

Guinea – effectively blocks fictivization. Within the film itself, it would difficult to

construct the fiction without the presence of the narrator as the only way of interpreting and conferring familiarity upon the behavior of such unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar environment. In contrast, the fictional film The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) has both a

narrator as enunciator explaining behavior, thoughts, and motivations as well as English-

speaking fictional characters interacting with the Bushmen. I think it would be

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impossible to ignore that the film is meant primarily for didactic viewing even if viewed on the level of spectacle.

While the film blocks two important operations of fictionalization, certain

attributes of ethnographicness lean it away from documentarization. Although the film

does not possess ethnographic presence, the narration fit is wordy and appropriateness

of sound is neither synchronous nor wholly inappropriate. Heider (1976) is of the

opinion that Gardner, in “his attempt to use the standards and conventions of both cinema

and ethnography, he had to compromise, and he betrayed both to some extent” (67-68).

It had been necessary, however, “to tamper with the literal chronological truth in some

points” in order to “capture so many truths about the Dani” (Heider 1976:67-68).

On the other hand, Ruby (2000) believes that to “argue that the nature of film

requires that certain liberties be taken with knowledge,” suggests “a serious lack of fit between film and anthropology” (101). He charges that the film is a “moral tale in the guise of an ethnographic film,” and that “Gardner’s humanist desire to provide a meditation about morality took precedence over the need to articulate details of Dani culture or to adhere to what was actually knowable about the people” (Ruby 2000:101).

In response to Craig Mischler’s criticism that the film “has been colored by so many subtle fictional pretensions and artistic ornamentations” so as to be rendered useless as a scientific document, Ruby (2000) comments that to “suggest that this film would be more useful if it were an ‘astylistic’ document seems to me to suggest that film’s purpose is to

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produce primary research materials—documents—a strange assumption indeed…” (99-

100).

Dead Birds and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies

The thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure of the film allows for a sense of closure;

Dead Birds (1964), however, explicitly affirms the cyclical nature of the behavior to

which Les Maîtres Fous (1957) merely alludes. Despite the intercutting of the actions of

multiple characters, there is no discontinuous linear temporality; the narration continually

reminds the viewer of the characters’ names and restates the locations. The editing also

gives the impression that the intercut actions are occurring simultaneously, even though

we know this is not true. Spatial indeterminacy is absent because of the high degree of

contexualization present in the film.

Dispersed narrative is absent, despite the intercutting between multiple characters and locations, due to the structuring presence of the narrator. Jumps are absent due to the use of cutaways of birds, the sunset, or other characters to visually bridge narrative events. The intercutting of the brine pit sequence with the battlefield scenes not only suggests the simultaneity of events, it also helps obscure breaks in continuity in the coverage of the battle. Basic technical competence is high but the camerawork is somewhat rough; combined with the editing, this favors a sense of documentarization.

There is no address to the camera; its presence is ignored by the actors. Variable sound quality is not an issue as the sound is separately mixed. Table 18 summarizes my observations of these characteristics in Gardner’s film.

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Table 18 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Dead Birds (1964) Textual Characteristic Present or Absent Absence of Closure Absent Discontinuous Linear Temporality Absent Spatial Indeterminacy Absent Dispersed Narrative Present Jumps Absent Camerawork Absent Address to the Camera Absent Variable Sound Quality Absent

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Chapter 5

THE HUNTERS (1956)

The Hunters (1956) depicts !Kung subsistence strategies in the Kalahari desert.

When initial day-long hunts bring back an insufficient amount of meat, three !Kung men

decide to go on an extended, large-scale hunt. They wound a female giraffe with poisoned arrows and spend the second half of the film following her trail. They eventually track down the delirious, yet still dangerous, animal; however, killing it proves no easy task. After it has been killed, the animal is butchered and the meat is taken back to the camp and distributed; then, the hunters then regale the group with tales of the hunt.

Barbash and Taylor (1997) accurately describe the film as “very much a

Flahertian struggle for survival” and they criticize Marshall’s subjective approach for

attributing “thoughts to the hunters that may sound patronizing and improbable to an

audience today” (30-31). They do, however, acknowledge that the film had “displayed

an interest in the subjective lives of indigenous people that surpassed both anything in its day and Flaherty’s Nanook a quarter of a century previously” (Barbash and Taylor

1997:31). Marshall himself had said that the “reality of what I was seeing while the men were hunting was far less important to me than the way in which I was shooting and interpreting the reality to reflect my own perceptions” (1993:36).

The “most serious problem” with the film, notes Heider (1976), is “that its basic premise is inaccurate, as John Marshall is the first to recognize now” (32). At the time that the film was made, the anthropological opinion had been that hunting and gathering

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groups “were hanging onto a marginal environment with an inadequate subsistence

technology” (Heider 1976:32). Marshall (1958), in Natural History, opines that the

!Kung nation cannot so live for much longer. Already their last lands are being occupied by Herero nation […] who say: “The Bushmen are like our children. We feel obligated to care for them.” It seems likely that, in a few years, these lands will be farmed by white people. Then […] some !Kung will become farm laborers, some will contract syphilis, some will die and some will breed. Few will marry. [305]

Heider (1976) references the work of Richard Lee and Irven De Vore as having

painted a more accurate picture of !Kung life. Tomaselli (1992), however, states that

they too had denied history by omitting reference to “the social linkages between the San

and their hostile white and black neighbours who chased them into the Kalahari over

many hundreds of years,” and that they had operated under the “dominant

anthropological paradigm of the late 1970s […] that the San were remnants of the stone

age living in a state of ‘pristine primitiveness’” (208). Furthermore, The Hunters (1956)

cinematically anchored the evolutionary theory of isolate human material development that was the accepted teaching model within social science in the 1950s. Though superseded in contemporary anthropology, the model is now an accessory to contemporary popular Western belief in the superiority of modern over pre-modern societies. [Tomaselli 1992:217]

In recent years, Marshall’s remarks about the fate of the San seem more accurate;

Tomaselli (1992) states that the San are “dying faster than they are reproducing themselves in squatter settlements” (209).

Attributions of Ethnographicness

Heider’s scoring of the attributes of The Hunters (1956) is provided in Table 19.

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Table 19 - Heider's Attributes of Ethnographicness for The Hunters (1956) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis Relation to Print Materials Whole Acts H Whole Bodies Explanation and Evaluation H of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit Ethnographic Presence Contextualization Whole People Time Distortion H Continuity Distortion H Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior Intentional Distortion of Behavior

The lack of scoring of many of the attributes of The Hunters (1956) is puzzling. Since

Gardner’s Dead Birds (1964) and Heider’s Dani Sweet Potatoes (1974) and Dani Houses

(1974) only figure into the final mapped attribute dimension grid, it may be that Heider only had used other films where they were representative of certain attribute ratings.

I he rated basic technical competence in the middle of the scale. The blazing sun creates harsh contrasts, rendering details indistinct in wider shots. This actually assists in obscuring the fact that the members of the hunt were not always the same people.

Framing is only distracting during the final battle with the giraffe as its head is often above the frame in the wide shots. Coverage is not always up to the demands of the narration; for example, late in the film, the intercutting between the hunters and the giraffe exists almost solely on the level of narration.

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I have found the degree of inadvertent distortion of behavior to be minimal.

There does not seem to be any acknowledgement of the !Kung to the camera crew; as such, I also have rated ethnographic presence as non-existent. Tomaselli (1992) points out the irony that American anthropologists criticize Jamie Uys’ representation of the

Bushmen in The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) as being racist when their “own analyses and edited films until the late 1970s had, paradoxically, eliminated most traces of alien contamination, and who themselves contributed to the myth of modernity versus the traditional” (210). Under analysis, the omission of ethnographic presence draws attention to itself. Young (1995) cites Marshall’s film in his criticism of concealing the evidence of an ethnographic film’s manufacture, noting that we

can read Baldwin Spencer’s early aboriginal studies without wondering what he had for lunch, but we cannot resist wondering about the crew’s diet during the last stages of Marshall’s The Hunters. Trying to conceal our act is defeatist. We are throwing away the most important advantage of the non-scripted observational approach and lending support to the fiction that our work is objective.” [112-113]

I have rate intentional distortion of behavior as extreme. Heider (1976) states that

“persistent rumors that the giraffe was finished off with a rifle” were not true (32).

Marshall, however, “only admitted setting up scenes, especially the ‘kills’[…] almost 38 years after the film’s release” (Tomaselli 1992:210). During the giraffe killing sequence, there are reverse angle shots facing the hunters in which they throw spears past the camera. It is unlikely that these were shot at the same time since the narrator mentions that a kick from the giraffe can split a man in half.

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The fact that the five day hunt had been reconstructed from footage shot between

1952 and 1953 has a bearing on other attributes. Heider had given the film

Heider had given low ratings to the film for time distortion and continuity distortion.

While the film “tells a story,” it is one that is “composed in the editing room with footage

shot not over a single two-week period but on expeditions which took place over several years” (Heider 1976:31-32). He also had scored Dead Birds (1964) with the same ratings

for these attributes. There is a connection between the two films since Robert Gardner

had assisted Marshall on editing his film.26 I have rated the film highly for whole bodies

since it favors long shots for overall action. Despite the time and continuity attributes,

Heider had scored the film highly for whole acts. Heider (1976) describes the film as one

of Marshall’s two Kalahari films that possess “particularly fine treatments of closure”

(85-86).

I have given a low rating to the film for relation to print materials. No guide to

the film seems to have been provided at the time of its release. The film is not mentioned

in Marshall’s Natural History article (1958). It is only briefly referenced in Lorna

Marshall’s !Kung kinship terminology article (1957), and not at all in her later book The

!Kung of Nyae Nyae (1976).27 The lack of print materials for The Hunters (1956) means

that, at the time of its release, Marshall had offered no explanation and evaluation of the

various distortion; thus I have rated the film low for that attribute.28

26 The film’s credits list Gardner has having directed the film “in collaboration with” John Marshall. 27 The lack of supplemental text made it impossible for me to find correct spellings of character names. 28 Marshall had been more forthcoming in later writings (cf. Marshall 1993).

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Since there was little synchronized sound and the film’s music was non-

diegetically employed, I have given the film a low score for appropriateness of sound. I

have rated narration fit on the lower end since the narration attributes thoughts not only

to the hunters, but also to the wounded giraffe. I have noted moderate contextualization in the film’s setting up of the physical environment of the Kalahari, but it compares

poorly to Gardner’s setup of the physical and mythical worlds of the Dani. The narration

focuses on the characters themselves and contextualizes their behavior as a Flahertian

struggle against nature.

I have rated ethnographic basis as low since the shooting of the footage had been

uninformed by the ethnography of the time. The films’ ethnographic premise is

inaccurate, having been based on a “long but nonprofessional study of a people” and its

story not constructed until years later (Heider 1976:31). Furthermore, the film’s

emphasis on hunting over gathering inaccurately depicts the !Kung subsistence strategy.

Richard Lee, in his own studies among the Bushmen in the early 1960s, had shown “that

the Bushmen actually had an abundance of food—especially in the undramatic but

protein-packed mongongo nuts which were available by the millions” (Heider 1976:32).

The film does not mention that most of the food comes from women’s gathering; rather,

it shows that the gathered food only just compensates for the poor results of the first hunt.

I have given the film a high whole people rating since Marshall establishes the characters

with subjective montages and narration signifying their roles as part of the group. Table

20 combines my ratings of the attributes with those of Heider (1976).

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Table 20 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for The Hunters (1956) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis C Relation to Print Materials C Whole Acts H Whole Bodies C Explanation and Evaluation H of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence C Appropriateness of Sound C Narration Fit C Ethnographic Presence C Contextualization C Whole People C Time Distortion H Continuity Distortion H Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior C Intentional Distortion of Behavior C

Fictionalization and Documentarization

I have included a syntagmatic synopsis for The Hunters (1956) in the table 21.

Table 21 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of The Hunters (1956) Event Narrative/ Syntagma(s) Noted Descriptive 1. The Kalahari Descriptive Bracket 2. The !Kung Descriptive Bracket 3. The Water Hole Descriptive Bracket 4. Women’s Work Descriptive Bracket 5. Men’s Work Descriptive Bracket 6. Play-hunting Descriptive/ Bracket /Sequence Narrative 7. Introduction to Koma Narrative Sequence/Bracket 8. Hunting/Introduction to !Kwe Narrative Sequence/Bracket 9. Back Home/Introduction to !!Kao Narrative Sequence/Bracket 10. The Waterhole Narrative Scene 11. Porcupine Narrative Sequence; Alternating; Scene 12. Stalking/Carrion Narrative Scene; Sequence

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13. The Giraffe Narrative Scene 14. The Fourth Day – Tracking Narrative Sequence; Scene; Alternating 15. The Fifth Day – Pursuit Narrative Successive 16. The Giraffe Kill Narrative Scene 17. Butchering the Giraffe Narrative Scene 18. Meat Distribution Narrative Sequence 19. Tale of the Hunt Narrative Scene

As with Les Maîtres Fous (1957), no ethnographic companion had been published, so I

have determined what I had felt to be the film’s major events. In the hunting sequences

where we see the men hunting different prey, I decided to classify all of that as one event.

Construction of a diegesis is established in a manner similar to the opening of

Dead Birds (1964), setting up a psychological context before the physical one. The

Hunters (1956) opens with a long sequence of nineteen shots depicting the desert environment, the plants, the animals, and a few solitary Bushmen. No narration is offered, nor is there any sense of spatial continuity. Non-diegetic music is over shots of the environment and the animals but which stops whenever the camera cut to the men.29

This sequence is a bracketing syntagma arrangement that gives the audience an

atmospheric picture of the environment without specificity; we do not learn that the

location is the Kalahari desert, and that its human inhabitants are the !Kung, until after

the title sequence.

The film’s title appears over a close-up of one of the hunters. After a fade out, we

are shown an animated map of Africa with emphasis on the Kalahari desert. The !Kung

are first introduced walking across the landscape in wide shot, and then in a subsequent

29 We later hear this same music in its diegetic placement being played and sung by one of the !Kung hunters.

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closer shot, as the narrator intones: “The northern Kalahari is a hard and bitter land. In

this bitter land live a quiet people who call themselves !Kung” (Hunters 1956). They are

shown in separate bracket syntagma arrangements – depicting women’s work, men

hunting, and boys practicing hunting as requirements to subsist in the desert environment

– as opposed to a bracketing of !Kung life as a whole.

The film segues to sequence arrangement when it shifts focus to one specific boy

who kills a mongoose, which he then hangs from a tree outside his family’s tent. This

character does not figure specifically anywhere else in the film; the sequence, however,

indicates the primacy of hunting among male !Kung. The descriptive syntagma

arrangement that follows depicts the fashioning of poisoned arrows. It focuses on the

overall process, rather than of an individual arrow; thus, it prevents a direct segue into the

narrative portion by the previous sequence.

Narrativization is set into motion with the introduction of Koma. The narrator tells us that he intends to kill a buck to provide meat for his family. The introduction of

Koma is accompanied by a flashback montage of sorts giving us background on him.

This is an instance of the bracket syntagma within the narrative portion though it is non- narrative. This montage could be contrasted with Gardner’s more simplistic, and more effective, introductions to Weyak and Pua in Dead Birds (1964). !Kwe, another hunter, is

introduced in a like manner during the first hunting sequence. The hunt is defined as a

sequence because it takes place over an itinerary of space with different hunters, but there

is no alternation. When the hunters return and combine their meager returns with what

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the women have gathered, the narrator tells us that the hunters are planning a larger hunt.

During this sequence, we are introduced to !Kao in another bracket syntagma montage.

The hunt, which will take up the rest of the film, is preceded by a scene in which one of the hunters kisses his child goodbye. The relation of the hunters to their children is a common thread between the hunters.

The first scene of the hunt is that of the men milling around a watering hole. The narrator tells us Koma is telling the other hunters his prediction that the animals have gone south. The camera follows Koma and !!Kao into the plain where Koma kills two porcupines; the scene depicting burning of the porcupines’ quills to make them easier to skin alternates with a sequence of !!Kao hunting a buck. The alternation transitions to a scene when !Kao returns and the hunters make a meal of the porcupines. !Kwe finds the dung of a larger animal. When the hunters find the tracks of the animal, they decide to follow them. The narration of this action is supported by the visuals. While the film’s narration may be criticized for ascribing thoughts – and we may question whether some of what the narration transcribes is actually spoken by the Bushmen – the film does visually support the discoveries that drive the characters and the plot.

The segment of the film, in which the hunters find the group of animals, is composed of two scenes and one sequence. The first scene depicts the stalking and hunting of the animals. Five arrows are fired. In the next scene, the hunters look for the arrows and only find four. !Kwe finds a fifth arrow shaft and is sure that he hit something. The sequence occurs during the next day. The hunters see carrion in the sky

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and follow them, only to discover the next day that other predators have already gotten to

the wounded bull. After the hunters wound the giraffe, they must wait a day until the

poison has begun to take effect. The coverage of the waiting hunters and the giraffe that

night are scenes without alternation.

The next day, the hunters discover the animal’s dung and see the discoloration

caused by the poison. The first part of the pursuit embodies a sort of alternating syntagma arrangement that is limited by the available footage. The alternation between the actions of the hunters and those of the giraffe takes place primarily on the level of

narration, a verbal shifting back and forth over a sustained long shot of the giraffe.

Visually, the footage of the hunters is rendered as a sequence while the giraffe footage is

a series of scenes.

The fifth day of the hunt encompasses the pursuit of the giraffe. The narration is more suggestive of successive alternation, yet the visual aspect comes across as more of a sequence with displaced diegetic inserts featuring the giraffe. While the editing fails to match the intensity of the narration, the shots of the giraffe are only suggestive of pursuit when in conjunction with the narration and shots of the hunters. Even if the hunt had not been a composite of years of footage, it would have been impossible for the filmmaker to have followed the hunters and the giraffe simultaneously. We must assume that the giraffe being filmed may not have been the one that was wounded previously, the one that is killed, the one that is butchered, or the one that is distributed at the end.

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The giraffe killing scene set itself apart from the rest of the film as the lengthiest

inclusive scene in the film. There is time compression, however, the scene feels less like

it could have been composed of footage shot at different times. Given how ferocious the

animal is said to be, the reverse angles of the hunters throwing spears past the camera

could not have been shot at the same time as the giraffe killing. These shots may not

disturb causal viewers but they distract when the scene is submitted to analytic scrutiny;

they feel more like a cinematic affectation. The subsequent butchery of the animal is

another lengthy scene, although it is shorter than the killing scene.

The segments depicting the return to the camp and the distribution of meat are

sequences. The passage that concludes the film, in which the hunters regale the camp

with tales of the hunt, is rendered as a scene; without the narration, however, the

transition from the meat distribution sequence could have gone unnoticed and the last

scene might have been construed to be part of that sequence. Although Dead Birds

(1964) and Les Maîtres Fous (1957) have endings that denote a return to normality, the

closing sequence and scene of The Hunters (1956) denote a triumph over nature; like

those films, however, there is a sense that this cycle will repeat itself.

Although The Hunters (1956) is an unprofessional study, it is very much in the documentary mode; thus, the film blocks mise-en-phase. Since the story had been constructed in the editing room from footage used to make an entire series of films on the

!Kung, I am uncertain whether Marshall had this specific film, or specific sequences of it, when he shot certain angles and footage that was used as inserts. The aforementioned

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reverse angles during the giraffe killing do not really simulate the giraffe’s perspective; the flashback montages that introduce each character, however, seem to suggest we treat the hunters as characters rather than as subjects.

Since the narrator is always an intermediary between the viewer and the world on film, The Hunters (1956) blocks the construction of an absent enunciator. The film can be followed without narration but it would be lacking not only in ethnographic detail, but also in motivation and character. Even without the narration, the editing forfeits its value as archival ethnographic footage. The film also blocks fictivization. The typical institution for viewing this film is didactic and the typical viewing mode is documentary.

The mode could be argumentative if the film is used anecdotally; for instance, an anthropology professor screening The Hunters (1956) as a misleading statement of the situation of the !Kung – in light of Lee and De Vore (1968) – or as an example of the

Flahertian documentary style. The fact that the film had been made in association with

Harvard University would also block fictivization by leading the viewer to posit the enunciator as real and his statements as facts. However inaccurate the ethnographic basis and the narration fit of The Hunters (1956), the film leans towards documentarization by blocking fictivization, construction of an absent enunciator, and mise-en-phase. That anthropologists have been able to set aside, but not overlook, the inaccuracies and find value in the footage Marshall captured as a whole, transforms the film from documentary to argumentative tool.

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The Hunters and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies

Due to its thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure, The Hunters (1956) does not

possess an absence of closure. Like Les Maîtres Fous (1957), it alludes that the behavior

depicted will be repeated. The presence of narration leavens the sense of discontinuous

linear temporality by introducing the audience to characters and reminding the audience

of each character’s identity throughout. This is helpful since Marshall had used multiple recordings of hunting parties featuring difference participants to construct the single hunt.

The narrative imposed upon the edited structure, as well as the accompanying narration, obscures any elements of dispersed narrative by removing extraneous material. Due to the editing and narration, spatial indeterminacy is also lacking; likewise, they effectively

cover what would be construed as jumps without the context of narration and camera coverage. Camerawork is variable but the sound quality is consistent due to the heavy narration and post-produced soundtrack. Table 22 summarizes my findings as to the presence or absence of home movie textual characteristics in Marshall’s film.

Table 22 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in The Hunters (1956) Textual Characteristic Present or Absent Absence of Closure Absent Discontinuous Linear Temporality Absent Spatial Indeterminacy Absent Dispersed Narrative Absent Jumps Absent Camerawork Present Address to the Camera Absent Variable Sound Quality Absent

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Chapter 6

CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (1961)

Chronique d’un Été (1961) takes a different stylistic and methodological approach than Rouch’s more traditional Les Maîtres Fous (1957). The film has often been described as a study of happiness; however, it is less of a study of a cultural event or behavior than “an attempt to give shape to an idea” (Ruby 2000:171). Rouch had described co-author Edgar Morin’s intentions as a “’sociological fresco’ […] about Paris in the summer of summer of 1960, when it was thought that the Algerian war was going to end” (Eaton 1979:14). Rouch had “found that the experience of filming Parisians […] stimulated a synthesis of his approach to realism, narrative, and the drama of everyday life” (Rouch and Morin 1985:2). Morin’s interests, however, “grew out of his own sociological inquiries about mass culture and alienation, but the experience prompted him to turn a sociological eye on the study of film itself” (Rouch and Morin 1985:2).

The premise of the film is whether it is feasible to record a conversation naturally with a camera present. The camera would function as a “’catalyst’, and ‘accelerator’ making people reveal themselves” (Eaton 1979:14). Ruby (2000) describes Rouch’s film as combining “ideas he borrowed from Flaherty with those of Soviet film theorist and practitioner Dziga Vertov” in that Rouch “took cameras into Paris streets for impromptu encounters in which the filmmaking process was often a part of the film, with filmmakers and equipment in the frame. Those filmed became collaborators, event to the extent of participating in discussions of the footage, which where, in turn, incorporated into the

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final version of the film” (12). Indeed, the film ends with the filmmakers and their

interview subjects at a screening commenting on an early cut of the film. Rouch and

Morin are then seen speculating on the ambiguous success of their venture. For Barbash

and Taylor (1997), this “self-conscious, or self-reflexive, style addresses the process of

representation itself and foregrounds the relationship between the filmmaker and the

spectators as well as between the filmmaker and the subjects” (1997:31). MacDougall

(1998) opines that the resulting work “had opened up an approach in which testimony

was transformed into narrative, an externalization of interior space” that “took place in an

atmosphere of political change and shifting cultural boundaries” (111).

Morin calls the resulting film “an experiment in cinematographic interrogation”

that is “not, strictly speaking, a sociological film. Sociological film researches society. It is an ethnological film in the strong sense of the term: it studies mankind” (Rouch and

Morin 1985:6). Rouch and Morin had seen the focus of the film differently. For Rouch, the focus had been “the chronology and evolution of the people as a function on the film,” (Rouch and Morin 1985:22). Morin, on the other hand, had felt that

the real question is not whether Marilou, Angelo, Marceline, and Jean- Pierre are rare or exceptional cases, but whether or not they raise profound and general problems, such as job alienation, the difficulty of living, loneliness, the search for faith. The question is to know whether the film poses fundamental questions, subjective and objective, which concern life in our society. [Rouch and Morin 1985:27]

Not only did Rouch and Morin have to contend with their own disagreements over final hour and a half cut of the film – which had been distilled from twenty-five hours of footage – they also had encountered interference from producer Anatole

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Dauman. Dauman had wanted “one ‘editor-in-chief’ who will give the film an

‘incontestable technical and artistic quality’” (Rouch and Morin 1985:22). Rouch, however, had wanted to use the editor who had worked on his earlier films. The input of the two proposed editors, however, had mediated some points of contention between

Rouch and Morin.

This participatory and self-reflexive approach to filmmaking has gone largely unexplored in ethnographic film. Heider (1976) calls the film “a richly provocative film in the extent to which it reveals the methodological mystery of ethnography” but, as yet,

“no other ethnographic films have risen to its challenge” (61). Similarly, MacDougall

(1995) suggests that, while the film “is an elaborate experiment which one would not expect to see transferred intact to a traditional society […] it is remarkable how few ideas of this extraordinary film managed to penetrate the thinking of ethnographic filmmakers in the decade after it was made” (126). The reason, he suggests, is that this approach had

“proved too alien to an effort preoccupied with the needs of teaching or the urgency of preserving overall records of imperiled societies” (MacDougall 1995:126).30

Attributes of Ethnographicness

Heider had scored only one attribute for Chronique d’un Été (1961): that of

ethnographic presence, the film’s most distinct characteristic. This is not surprising since

Ruby (2000) notes a general confusion over the film’s ethnographicness; even Heider, he

30 MacDougall (1998) also suggests that Rouch had abandoned the methods employed in this film because he had believed that psychodrama had been “too dangerous to the people involved” (111).

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notes, had raised “doubt about its anthropological appropriateness” (171). Table 23, as such, is almost blank.

Table 23 - Heider's Attribution of Ethnographicness for Chronique d'un Été (1961) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis Relation to Print Materials Whole Acts Whole Bodies Explanation and Evaluation of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit Ethnographic Presence H Contextualization Whole People Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior Intentional Distortion of Behavior

Since Western societies had been deemed the domain of sociology at the time, I

have given a low rating to the film for ethnographic basis. Rouch had admitted that he

knew “very little about what was happening in Paris at the time” (Eaton 1974:14). Most

of the film’s participants had been Morin’s friends. Most of what the audience learns of

Paris in 1960 is from participants and a few newspaper headlines. I have given a high

rating to the film for relation to print materials. Rouch and Morin (1962) features essays

and a transcript of the film; the transcript also includes extended dialogue scenes not

included in the final cut of the film. Although this helpful book had not been translated

into English until 1985, the film’s distinctive approach to the documentary film format

did not necessarily require such materials; the film “clearly sets out its methodology from

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within the film text, while the vast majority of other ethnographic films draw legitimation

from without the film text, in the form of study guides and the like” (Banks 1992:121).31

I have given a rating midway between the two extremes for whole acts. Scenes

possess a fragmented feel that may have been the result of stopping the camera to reload

the film, stopping during long pauses, or abruptly transitioning for effect. Due to the

framing premise, the film possesses does possess a sense of closure. The filmmakers had

been uncertain of their achievement; however, they had concluded that there is to be no

more filming of this configuration of actors. I have given a high rating for whole bodies.

Morin is aware that the selective process of editing “theatricalizes life,” and that the

close-up “accentuates dramatization” (Rouch and Morin 1985:26). While there are many

talking heads throughout, the camera does establish the main contributors within the

context of their environment.

Explanation and evaluation of the various distortions had been acknowledged in

print; but the film itself also questions and assesses the effect of the camera throughout.

As such, I have rated the film’s scoring on this attribute as fully adequate. I have rated

time distortion as condensed. The street surveys are fragmented while interviews possess

a real time feel. In syntagmatic terms, the interviews are scenes and the street surveys are

sequences. The scenes where the camera follows a character through their daily routine

are also sequences rather than bracket syntagmas. Morin acknowledges that “editing can

improve everything that does not develop through the length of the film,” but he is also

31 The translation was begun in 1972 by Steve Feld, Jay Ruby, and Anny Ewing; but its publication as an entire issue of Studies in Visual Communication was continually put on hold. In 1985, Feld refined the translation and it was published in the Winter 1985 issue, referenced herein as Rouch and Morin (1985).

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aware that “it also weakens and perverts the very substance of what happened in real time” (Rouch and Morin 1985:26). While the film itself has a linear arrangement, it was not until the publication of Rouch and Morin (1985) that we learned that the St. Tropez sequence had been filmed before Angelo had even met Marceline; as such, the sequences featuring Angelo on vacation had not been at the same time as the St. Tropez footage.

The editing does not make this clear. Continuity distortion, therefore, is not apparent in the film itself; yet, I have given the film a less ethnographic rating for continuity

distortion.

I have rated the film highly for basic technical competence. Rouch had embraced

new technology and developments in 16mm filmmaking. Although the factory scenes

had been shot from a distance with a noisy handheld Arriflex 16mm camera, Rouch had

used a lighter Éclair prototype camera for the interviews (Easton 1979:14). The camera

was “being developed for use in a space satellite for purposes of military surveillance”

and only had a reel capacity of three minutes. Rouch had been in constant contact with

Éclair’s Andre Coutant on developing ways to extend the camera’s capacity. The

filmmakers had signed a contract absolving Éclair “from all responsibility regarding

malfunctions, such as scratches of the film stock as it passed through the mechanism”

(Eaton 1979:14).

Since the film consists mainly of sound recorded on site during the filming – be it the voices of the interviewers and respondents, a music box in the home of one of the characters, or the noises of the city streets, the factories, and the bustle of San Tropez in

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the vacation scenes – I have rated the film highly for appropriateness of sound. There is little narration in the film; but what there is functions to clarify the passage of time between meetings with each of the characters and the shift in locations from Paris to St.

Tropez. The latter is conveyed succinctly with the line: “So Landry became an African explorer in holiday France” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). Superimpositions of newspaper headlines are sometimes employed to give a social context to life in Paris as well as frame some conversations. I have, as such, rated narration fit is optimal.

This film is Heider’s only example of optimal ethnographic presence. It is this attribute that distinguishes the film from other ethnographic films of the period. It had been the filmmakers’ first instinct to cut back on their presence until it was observed

“that experimental screenings also bring out the fact that our few critical spectators believe much more strongly in the truth of those scenes in which Rouch and I appear in front of the camera, participating in the dialogue with our characters. They feel that the scenes in which we do not appear […] are ‘acted’” (Rouch and Morin 1985:24). The scene late in the film, in which Marceline and Jean-Pierre discuss their relationship, is one of the pieces of footage singled out as having seemed acted. In my opinion, it is the day-in-the-life sequences, along with Marceline’s monologue, that come across as artificial since the participants seem to have been asked to ignore the camera and the people behind it. The disregard of the camera by the actors seems unforced in other scenes and sequences such as the Milly picnickers; the gathering of the children into a choir, however, does possesses a bit of cinematic artifice.

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Morin refers to the interaction of Rouch and himself as a “Pirandellian movement

of research,” or “two authors in search of six characters,” since there was “not a moat on

either side of the camera but free circulation and exchanges” (Rouch and Morin

1985:6).32 The characters – a term Morin himself uses in Rouch and Morin (1985) – had

assisted the authors in their experiment and were able to reflect on it during the screening

of an early cut of the film. MacDougall (1998) does not make the author versus character

distinction; rather, he states that “it is difficult for filmmakers to photograph themselves as an element in the phenomenon they are examining unless, like Jean Rouch and Edgar

Morin […] they become ‘actors’ before the camera” (120). One might ask if the presence of Rouch and Morin as actors before the camera had shaped the interviews and conversations differently than when they had been behind the camera.

Some attempt is made at contextualization. The film opens with a shot from a

train arriving in Paris and then cuts to a shot of people emerging from the underground.

The day-in-the-life sequences convey a diverse sense of terrain but there is no narration

to elaborate on the spatial context. When the film moves to San Tropez, the montage

seems more interested in establishing the atmosphere instead of the physical terrain. This

is likely due to the notion that the film’s audience would be primarily French.

I have rated the film highly for whole people. The film develops feeling for the individuals and conveys dimensional portraits of some participants more than others;

32 Morin was making reference to the Luigi Pirandello play Six Character in Search of an Author in which a play’s rehearsal is interrupted by the arrival of six strange people claiming to be unfinished characters in search of an author to finish their tragic story. After much argument, the director and the cast become interested in their story and help them stage it to its tragic denouement.

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Marceline, for example, is afforded a monologue that seems inspired by Emmanuelle

Riva’s similar one in Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Even though the

film meets Heider’s criteria for this attribute, this feeling for the individuals had been

highly problematic for Morin. Morin writes that the compromises that he and Rouch had

made in the editing had caused the characters to be “perceived globally by means of mere

fragments of themselves” (Rouch and Morin 1985:26).

An observation from Landry, in his questionnaire, that would have influenced my

judgments is that his close friendship with Marilou was not conveyed in the film (Rouch

and Morin 1985:74). Marilou had seemed to only interact with Morin. Rouch and Morin

appear to have wanted to isolate Marilou from the others to emphasize her loneliness.

Although she is later seen interacting with the other participants in the post-screening discussion, the friends she had interacted with in earlier sequences are not any of the other participants. The alternative to the highly ethnographic rating in Heider (1976) is

“only faceless masses,” so I have retained the rating of “develops feeling for an individual” (113).

Camera consciousness certainly had an effect on behavior, but this had been the intent; as such, I have rated intentional distortion of behavior towards the less

ethnographic end. The camera had been intended to act as an accelerator or catalyst so

the elicited responses from the participants are valid data. Whether the day-in-the-life sequences could be construed as reconstructions – and, therefore, intentional distortions

of behavior – is debatable; there is, however, certainly a degree of camera consciousness

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in these portions. If the camera is not meant to be a stimulant in these sequences, then

possible attempts to play up to the camera – such as Marceline’s monologue and

Angelo’s taekwondo routine – would fall under inadvertent distortions of behavior.

The participants of the film had discussed camera consciousness after screening scenes from the film. Jacques had felt that “most every time anybody wanted to express themselves, they often spoke in generalities” (Rouch and Morin 1985:68). Some of the participants had liked the meeting scene between Landry and Angelo because of the sense of human contact; others found these scenes artificial. The child Veronique had expressed that she did not understand the criticisms; as far as she had been concerned, one “can’t lie in front of the camera” (Rouch and Morin 1985:68). Simone Gabillon had been embarrassed for Marilou, whom she had thought “revealed too much of herself”

(Rouch and Morin 1985:68). Jean Pierre, on the other hand, had remarked of Marceline’s

scenes that, if they are “more perfect than others […] it’s because she is acting” (Rouch

and Morin 1985:68).

Marceline did not counter Jean-Pierre’s remark. She had said that her memories were intimate and “the most pervasive” ones that she had; at the same time, she was

“absolutely not involved with those feelings between shootings” (Rouch and Morin

1985:68). In Marceline’s reply to a questionnaire about her experience, she had admitted

to “having had Antonionian reminiscences” during the filming of the scene with herself

and Jean-Pierre in St. Tropez (Rouch and Morin 1985:77). She also admits to having

“cinematographic fantasies” during her monologue on deportation, in which “certain

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lines from Hiroshima Mon Amour came to me and I pushed them away” (Rouch and

Morin 1985:77). I cannot say that it takes away from her image as a whole person because the camera-as-catalyst might have stimulated, rather than inhibited, her exhibitionistic tendencies. Marceline might also have been more aware as an actor as to what to give the audience; Angelo, in contrast, came across as having an agenda throughout the film. Landry, in his response, had expressed an anxiety about “not being able to stay myself until the end” (Rouch and Morin 1985:72). While camera consciousness is a criteria of inadvertent distortion of behavior, it is not detrimental to the ethnographic/sociological observation of the filmmakers in this case; nevertheless, I have given an extreme rating to inadvertent distortion of behavior. Table 24 synthesizes my ratings with those of Heider (1976).

Table 24 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for Chronique d'un Été (1961) Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis C Relation to Print Materials C Whole Acts C Whole Bodies C Explanation and Evaluation C of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence C Appropriateness of Sound C Narration Fit C Ethnographic Presence H Contextualization C Whole People C Time Distortion C Continuity Distortion C Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior C Intentional Distortion of Behavior C

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One can see from the attribute table above, that Chronique d’un Été (1961) had rated

highly in terms of ethnographicness in several attributes. The attributes in which the film

had rated problematically, however, did so because the film had taken a different approach and had asked different questions. The camera had not been employed to simply observe behavior; indeed, the effect of the camera on behavior had been the question. The question of happiness in Paris of 1960 had functioned as sociological data while the effect of the camera on behavior had been the ethnographic data.

Fictionalization or Documentarization

In constructing Table 25, the syntagmatic synopsis table for Chronique d’un Été

(1961), I have utilized the event headings present in the English-language translation of

the film’s transcript in Rouch and Morin (1985).

Table 25 - Syntagmatic Synopsis of Chronique d’un Été (1961) Scene Diegetic or Syntagmas Narrative 1. Introduction Diegetic Descriptive 2. Marceline Narrative Scenes 3. Are You Happy? Narrative Bracket 4. The Mechanics Narrative Scene 5. e and Henri Narrative Scene 6. The Workers Narrative Scene 7. Angelo Narrative Scenes 8. Angelo and Landry Narrative Scene 9. Gabillon Narrative Scene 10. Marilou Narrative Scene and Sequence 11. Jean-Pierre Narrative Scenes 12. The Algerian War Narrative Scene 13. Racism in Question Narrative Scene 14. La Concorde Narrative Scene 15. 14th of July Narrative Scene

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16. Marilou is Happy Narrative Scenes 17. Angelo Gets Pushed Around Narrative Scene 18. France on Vacation Diegetic and Bracket and Narrative Scenes 19. Irene and Veronique Narrative Scene 20. At the Bottom of the Sea Narrative Scene 21. Milly Narrative Scene 22. Truth in Question Narrative Scene 23. Self-Criticism Narrative Scene

Although the “story” of the film has been constructed in the editing, the sequential nature

of the experiment and the progression of the real lives of the characters gives a linear

ordering to a mostly scenic syntagma construction. The revelation of Angelo’s troubles

at work due to his participation in the film is an effect of the earlier scenes. The self-

assessment and self-criticism at the end of the film provides a satisfying narrative closure,

even if the filmmakers are uncertain about the project’s success or failure.

Construction of a Diegesis is achieved in the film through a combination of

descriptive syntagma arrangement and narration. The film opens with a shot of a train

followed by a shot of people emerging from the underground station with the film’s title, under which is superimposed the subtitle “Paris 1960.” This is followed by shots of the

Paris streets, under which we hear one of the few instances of narration by Rouch: “This film was not played by actors, but lived by men and women who have given a few moments of their lives to a new experiment in cinema verité” (Chronique d’un Été 1961).

The day-in-the-life bracket syntagma sections lend dimension to the characters and to the depiction of Paris as a real place. When the camera follows the characters throughout their day, the film gives the viewer that they are seeing the Paris of these

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characters as opposed to the Paris of Rouch and Morin. The switch to St. Tropez towards

the end of the film is depicted in a series of scenes that function in place of the bracket

syntagma in establishing the order of normality in St. Tropez during the holiday season

through the reactions of Landry and Nadine, who have never been there before. The first

features shot a woman water-skiing that sets the holiday atmosphere. In the same shot, the camera pans to the Landry and Nadine emerging from the water as Rouch intones

“that’s how Landry has become the black explorer of France on vacation” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). The next scene features Landry and Nadine ringside at a bullfight reacting to the sport. Just as we had become acquainted with Angelo through Marceline and Landry through Angelo, we are introduced in the third scene to Catherine, the water- skiing model from the first scene through Landry-as-interviewer.

The film also activates the operation of narrativization. Due to the nature of film’s content as interviews, most of the events in the film are constructed as scenes.

Although there is a chronology to the presentation of the characters and scenes based on the reality of filming, it is not made clear whether the placement of later revelations have been rearranged for the flow of the film. The St. Tropez footage was filmed before

Angelo became involved in the film, so his vacation scene with the picnickers had been incorporated into the France on Vacation sequence.

The film has a dual structure. Firstly, it follows the lives of a handful of

Parisians; and secondly, it is a meditation on a series of themes: happiness, work, loneliness, sex, race, and leisure. The arrangement of scenes is dually determined by

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these foci. The emotional trajectory of the lives of the characters is linearly maintained; however, that does not always mean that the scenes and sequences had been preserved in their shooting order. Since the question of happiness had been used as a starting point, we can assume that the street survey sequence and some of the interviews were shot early on; however, did Angelo come into the film before Rouch and Morin changed focus?

Angelo was not present in the Racism in Question scene and his meeting with Landry – who had come into the project before him – focuses on their alienation at work.

In terms of character development, the film’s first few scenes and sequences follows Marceline from her meeting with Rouch and Morin, to the streets with Nadine, to interviews the mechanics at the garage, and then to Henri and Maddi at their home.

This section presents Marceline as intellectually involved, and somewhat bemused, by the experience. The next time she appears is in the scene that introduces her boyfriend

Jean-Pierre. It is difficult to discuss Marceline and Jean-Pierre separately since

Marceline is present in five of Jean-Pierre’s six scenes and, thus, Jean-Pierre is present in five of Marceline’s ten scenes. When Jean-Pierre is introduced, his relationship with

Marceline is already waning. Marceline starts to bare her emotions in this scene. In response to Jean-Pierre’s statement that he can no longer see things in black and white but “sickening” shades of grey, Marceline expresses her guilt in having brought Jean-

Pierre into the project, and into her life, and possibly having taken him off a more idealistic path (Chronique d’un Été 1961).

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Marceline and Jean-Pierre are next seen together in the Racism in Question scene;

details of their relationship, however, are overshadowed by the differing experiences of

racism shared by Marceline and Landry. This scene segues to a long scene Marceline

walking La Concorde delivering a monologue about deportation. Marceline and Jean-

Pierre are next briefly glimpsed Fourteenth of July sequence. Marceline is addressed, but

not seen, in the France on Vacation segment. When next seen together on a jetty in St.

Tropez, Marceline and Jean-Pierre’s relationship has reached a state of Antonionian ennui.

In the film, Angelo is introduced on camera through Rouch and Morin; although,

Angelo reveals in Rouch and Morin (1985) that he was first interviewed by Marceline.

As with Marceline’s introduction, this scene segues to a day-in-the-life sequence following Angelo from home, to work, and back home where he does some Judo, and goes back to sleep. Angelo is next seen when he meets Landry. At the start of this scene,

Morin says to Angelo: “you saw Landry at the screening of the rushes, you wanted to

meet him” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). A footnote in Rouch and Morin (1985) states that

the rushes screening was of the St. Tropez footage that, as mentioned elsewhere, had

preceded Angelo’s involvement in the project; this, however, is never clarified in the film

itself and may have been left vague due to the placement of the St. Tropez scenes later in

the film. The trajectory of Angelo’s character in the film is a series of scenes and

sequences depicting how he lives and works, a scene in which he makes a connection

with another character, a series of scenes depicting a crisis for Angelo at work, and then a

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scene of Angelo on a picnic during the France on Vacation segment. Angelo had an

overpowering personality similar to that of Marceline. Jean-Pierre, Landry, and Marilou

were more passive in the filming experience; Jean-Pierre contrasts Marceline as Landry

does so with Angelo, and Marilou with Morin himself.

Landry is introduced in the film through his meeting with Angelo, even though he

came onto the project before Angelo. They quickly connect over their inferiority

complexes. In the midst of discussion, Angelo asks Landry if he could “maybe use ‘tu’

with you, do you mind?” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). Landry also connects with

Marceline during the Racism in Question scene when Morin points out the serial number

on her arm that her deportation as a Jew during the war. Landry’s next appears onscreen

in the Fourteenth of July sequence along with some of the others. He takes a larger role

in the film during the first half of the France on Vacation segment. Landry gets his

chance to interview some of the St. Tropez residents as “the black explorer of France on

vacation” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). These are also Landry’s last scenes in the picture

since he does not appear at the post-screening; Landry does, however, respond to the

questionnaire about the shooting experience in Rouch and Morin (1985).

When Marilou is introduced, she is already in crisis. Her day-in-the-life sequence

begins with her leaving her small maid’s room and heading to her job as a secretary at the

Cahiers du Cinema in which Morin interviews her. She explains that had come from

Italy and initially had liked living “without comfort” in her small room “in the bustle” of other people (Chronique d’un Été 1961). She has, however, grown tired of the “false

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mechanisms” used to quell her loneliness and has taken to drinking and sleeping around

(Chronique d’un Été 1961). She does not know where to go or what to do; even the motivation for suicide seems “false” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). In contrast to her introductory scenes, she is next seen dancing among other characters Fourteenth of July sequence, which is then followed by the Marilou is Happy scene and sequence that we learn from Morin is a month after Marilou’s introductory interview. A few days after the interview, she explains, things suddenly had started turning around for her and she had started letting other people into her life and had became a “part of things” (Chronique d’un Été 1961). She still expresses a fear of it all falling away again but this scene, and the subsequent sequence showing Marilou with her friends, establishes her happiness in contrast to the paths of Marceline, Jean-Pierre, and Angelo. Most of Marilou’s scenes suggest an intimate relationship between her and Morin; however, Landry, in Rouch and

Morin (1985), says that the filmmakers ignored his close friendship with Marilou. The filmmakers seem to have used editing to emphasize her loneliness, although there was obviously someone operating the camera and someone else recording sound while she spoke with Morin.

The transition to the post-screening discussion suggests that all that we have seen before might have been what the participants themselves had been watching. The critiques are evocative of reactions of an audience following a movie screening. They speak of the truthfulness or falseness of character as if it was dependent on performance rather than the camera itself. The transition to the final scene with Rouch and Morin

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once again alienates the viewer. The post-screening discussion now is incorporated into

the film body and the Self-Criticism scene is the coda. With the final shot of Rouch and

Morin walking away from camera, this last scene also becomes incorporated into the

narrative.

The film blocks mise-en-phase largely due to the presence of the enunciators, on-

and off-camera, throughout. The emphasized presence of at least one observer behind the

camera with the participants, even in scenes in which they are supposed to ignore the

camera, does not even allow for the distantiating dephasage found in nouvelle vague

films where the intentional rough-edged coverage and editing call into question the filmic

act of enunciation in cinema. The participants are seen acting out or exhibiting themselves for Morin and/or Rouch as well as the camera. The only thing that remotely resembles a traditional cinematic effect is the introductory shot of the France on

Vacation. The pan from the water-skiing model to the principal characters transforms the shot from a bit of stock tourist-board imagery into a scene. Newspaper headlines, commonly used in fictional films to convey exposition in a way that suggests verisimilitude, appear occasionally; however, such effects in cinema were drawn from documentary and newsreels.

The film also blocks the construction of an absent enunciator. Despite “the anonymity of the actual cameraman [which is unfortunate], there is no pact made with the audience to ignore the role of the film’s makers. On the contrary, it is the making of the film that binds them and their subjects together” (MacDougall 1995:126). As previously

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mentioned, the consulting editors had felt that the scenes featuring Rouch and Morin interacting with the actors had more truth value than those without. We not only connect the actual vocal narrative enunciation to Rouch who exists as both a character and the director – although, at times, Morin narrates from in front of the camera – we also know that the narrative is constructed in terms of what had been filmed and how it had been edited by Rouch and Morin.

Some of the footage that did not make the final cut – such as Rouch’s prompting of Morin to say something to break the long silence following one of Marilou’s anguished responses – might have further aided in the construction of the present enunciator in order to discourage the viewer from getting caught up in the narrative. On the other hand, the sudden appearance of the filmmakers in some scenes gives them, as characters, an air of omniscience. At first, the scene of Marilou at work appears to be part of the day-in-the-life sequence following her from home to work. Morin’s introductory speech to Marilou is delivered in voice-over and suggests that the film will soon cut to an interview segment. Instead, the camera cuts away to Morin who is in the office with her; thus, the shot of Marilou in the office is the start of the interview scene.

The final scene is, of course, the final affirmation of the present enunciators. It distinguishes them from their presence as characters in the preceding footage.

The framing scenes and constant interjection/interaction of the filmmakers with the participants in the film blocks fictivization and leans toward documentarization.

Unlike Vigot Sjöman’s Jag är Nyfiken - Gul (1967), which purports to be a documentary

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based on the protagonists curiosity about social issues, sex, war, and so forth, Chronique

d’un Été (1961) does not afford the viewers a truly subjective view of the characters’

lives. While the film is a study of happiness or a study of camera consciousness,

Chronique d’un Été (1961) could be also seen as a film about the making of a film, not

unlike Sjöman’s film. While all of the participants, including Rouch and Morin, are certainly characters in the film, the film’s documentary status is emphasized in its institutional showings and it continues to be so in its position as a social document.

Chronique d’un Été and the Textual Characteristics of Home Movies

Absence of closure is harder to gauge in Chronique d’un Été (1961) because some of the participants’ stories are left open. Landry connects with Angelo and Marceline but disappears after the first half of France on Vacation. While Marceline and Jean-Pierre’s relationship has deteriorated by the end of the film, the lack of closure proves satisfying in an Antonionian fashion. Angelo’s troubles at work are touched upon in the film but never resolved.33 The scene of Rouch and Morin assessing their results provides closure in the sense that the experiment is over, even if the results are uncertain. In this film, absence of closure enhances ethnographicness since it depicts the inability of scientific observation to be all-encompassing.

Although the film follows the narrative trajectories of several characters,

discontinuous linear temporality is absent due to the contextualizing presence of Rouch

and Morin throughout. Morin framed the Marilou is Happy segment by reminding

33 In Rouch and Morin (1985), the authors provide information on their subsequent interactions with Angelo.

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Marilou on-camera – and, therefore, the audience – that it had been a month since they had last spoken. Discontinuous linear temporality is also leavened by the editing that maintains a linear order of the events in relation to each character by altering the overall chronology of these sets of footage. Angelo’s footage had been shot after the St. Tropez footage, but the film introduces him early on with the others in order to suggest the simultaneity of their experiences of the ensemble. Although Landry had been present in the St. Tropez scenes, their movement to the end of the film and the movement of the linear arrangement of Angelo’s footage to the beginning, introduces Landry for the first time on film through Angelo, who comes across as a more dominant character. On the other hand, the film itself is made up of several dispersed narratives with a very loose overall structure; the film, however, is defined by Morin as a “sociological fresco,” so it functions more as a meditation on themes rather than an essay on Paris 1960 (Eaton

1979:14).

Because of the interview format of most of the scenes, there is very little spatial indeterminacy. Wider shots orient the viewers within the scene and close-ups occasionally punctuate the questions and responses of the filmmakers and the participants. Also due to the interview format as well as the likely planned/staged filming of the day-in-the-life scenes, there are no jumps. Although the film rates as highly ethnographic for basic technical competence, the camerawork does possess some home movie characteristics; however, they help modalize the enunciator behind the

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camera as present. Since the film also rates highly for appropriateness of sound, it goes without saying that variable sound quality is not a distracting issue.

Address to the camera is entirely absent. Although the film scores highly for ethnographic presence and whole people, the filmmakers and the participants do not address the camera; hence, they do not address the person behind the camera, or the audience, either. Although the act of enunciation with the camera – and through the filmmakers before and behind the camera – is always evident, the camera itself is not the addressee. Although address to the camera could actually enhance ethnographicness, it is not essential here because the filmmakers themselves are not observing solely from behind the camera; likewise, the directions taken by the film’s structure, and the participants’ reactions to what had been filmed recorded, are addressed within the film.

Table 26 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics in Chronique d'un Été (1961) Textual Characteristic Present or Absent Absence of Closure Absent Discontinuous Linear Temporality Present Spatial Indeterminacy Absent Dispersed Narrative Present Jumps Absent Camerawork Present Address to the Camera Absent Variable Sound Quality Absent

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Chapter 7

FINDINGS AND INTERPRETATIONS

Prior knowledge of the films and their reputations may have influenced my

analysis of the films as texts. I had researched the material for the introductory

background of the chapters for each of the films. I had also tracked down the transcripts

of Dead Birds (1964) and Chronique d’un Été (1961): Heider and Marshall (1971) and

Rouch and Morin (1985), respectively. While I had only learned of the structural re- ordering of Chronique d’un Été (1961) through the background materials, I had been

aware that central hunt of The Hunters (1956) was assembled from footage of a number

of hunts over a period of years. It had been obvious upon first viewing of Dead Birds

(1964) that scenes which were intercut with one another could not have been shot at the

same time with only Gardner operating the camera.

Were I to continue to explore and expand upon this approach, I would choose

films that are not as well known and not as heavily studied or reviewed. I would once

again use Heider’s attributes as a vetting process for the ethnographicness of the films.

The low scoring of a film would not disqualify it from further analysis; the lack of ability

to score a film on some or all attributes, however, would be a way of sifting through a

perhaps random selection. I would, perhaps, read some background material on the

population covered in the film but I would save research into the film’s background and

the filmmaker until after the analysis. I would then be able to compare by ratings of the

film before and after that research. The film analyses and the cultural and film

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background research would give adequate preparation for an interview with the

filmmaker for inclusion with the analysis.

I am uncertain whether being exposed to information on the films prior to

analyses would have affected my other analyses of the films. Since the other analysis criteria was drawn from writing on narrative film – including documentarization and home movie characteristics as counter to the fictional aesthetic – manipulation of the characters in front of the camera by the filmmakers and the variance in the film from the order of shooting would have been less important to the integrity of the final product; thus, the assessment of the criteria would be unaffected by such knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge of the film’s production could sometimes dull ones appreciation of the aesthetic effectiveness and ones belief in the fiction; for example, knowing that a fictional film was fraught with recasting, budgetary shortages, reshoots, and the like might cause one to look for visible seams rather than taking in the film as a whole.

Tense usage was an issue in writing this thesis. I had initially used the past tense

for the literature review section, as well as in citing those writings throughout the rest of

the work, because some of the filmmakers were deceased while others have – or may

have – changed their views since these writings. I had to conceive of these theorists in

terms of their works in order to cite them in the present tense. Instead of “Heider said …

(1976:page number),” I had to treat “Heider” as the work rather the person, hence

“Heider (1976) contends…” I used the present perfect tense when discussing the ratings

I have given to the attributes of ethnographicness for the films. I used past perfect tense

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when describing the filmmakers’ backgrounds, intentions, and actions apart from the

films. When summarizing the content of scenes and sequences in the film, I used the

present tense as I do when writing film and DVD reviews. Discussion of whether the film as an entity blocks or activates operations of fictionalization, as well as the presence

or absence of home movie textual characteristics, also required the present tense.

Ethnographicness

Table 27 features an attribute distribution chart of all four of the films. Les

Maîtres Fous (1957) is designated as LMF, Dead Birds (1964) as DB, The Hunters

(1956) as H, and CS for Chronique d’un Été (1961).

Table 27 - Attribution of Ethnographicness for all films under analysis Attribute Scale Ethnographic Basis H, CS LMF, DB Relation to Printed Materials LMF, H DB, CS Whole Acts DB LMF, H, CS Whole Bodies LMF, DB, H, CS Explanation and Evaluation LMF, H DB CS of the Various Distortions Basic Technical Competence H LMF, DB, CS Appropriateness of Sound H DB LMF, CS Narration Fit H DB LMF, CS Ethnographic Presence LMF, DB, H CS Contextualization H DB, CS, LMF Whole People LMF DB, H, CS Time Distortion DB, H LMF, CS Continuity Distortion DB, H CS LMF Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior CS DB LMF, H Intentional Distortion of Behavior H, CS DB LMF

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Attribute distribution for all four films was varied. Below, I explore some of the

commonalities and differences of attribute distribution among the four films. I have

organized the discussion of the attributes into four categories as seen in Table 28:

Table 28 - Categorical arrangement of ethnographicness attributes Category Attributes Contextualization Ethnographic Basis Relation to Print Materials Technical Aspects Basic Technical Competence Appropriateness of Sound Narration Fit Ethnographic Presence Depiction Contextualization Whole Acts Whole Bodies Whole People Distortions Explanation of the Various Distortions Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Inadvertent Distortion of Behavior Intentional Distortion of Behavior

For Heider, ethnographic basis is the most important contextualization attribute;

however, I have found that two of the films rate on the uninformed end while the other

two rate on the other extreme. The Hunters (1956) rates as being uninformed because its

“basic premise is inaccurate, as John Marshall is the first to recognize now,” although it was in keeping with the dominant anthropological paradigm of the time (Heider

1976:32). Chronique d’un Été (1961) also rates as uninformed because anthropology had

not been not traditionally directed at the Western world at the time, and secondly because

Rouch claimed to have been largely ignorant of what was happening in Paris at the time.

While ethnographic basis is not only the most important contextualization attributes but

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also the most important ethnographicness attribute overall, it might be argued that the

inaccurate premise of The Hunters (1956) arose out of those dominant beliefs rather than from the footage. The lesson here is that a film should be informed by ethnography but not to the point that it does not question the dominant perspective when there is doubt.

The films are divided between the low and high ethnographicness attributes for

relation to printed materials. Although the Marshalls had written much about the !Kung

(John Marshall 1958, Lorna Marshall 1957), those texts did not address the film or the characters. The printed materials supplied for Dead Birds (1964) and Chronique d’un Été

(1961) not only provide contextual background and transcripts, they also provide

explanation and evaluation of the various distortions. While the contextual information

on the DVD edition of Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds (1964) is retrospective, the medium

provides another means of ethnographic contextualization in the form of DVD-ROM

materials, commentary tracks, additional video, still, and audio features not unlike the

electronic press kit and bonus materials on DVDs of mainstream films.

In the technical aspects category, basic technical competence is the most

important attribute. While none of the productions is slick in the mainstream sense, their

rough-hewn nature is not distracting. The Hunters (1956) actually benefits from its rough

technical quality since footage of different hunters had been used to illustrate the same

characters. As mentioned in the section on home movie textual characteristics, the presence of narration and editing tends to make the coarser technical aspects more forgivable. Appropriateness of sound and narration fit are intertwined because of the

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heavy emphasis of narration over dialogue and ambient sound on Dead Birds (1964) and

Les Maîtres Fous (1957). Due to its use of non-diegetic music and overly wordy

narration that is not always supported visually, The Hunters (1956) rates as less

ethnographic. Dead Birds (1964) suffers less so from this, but Gardner’s work on the

Marshall film suggests the influence. Chronique d’un Été (1961) is the only film that rates highly for ethnographic presence, however, the attribute had been a fresh idea at the time and the Rouch film is the only example given by Heider. The off-screen, after the fact narrator, of the other three films is still a conventional technique of the genre.

In the depiction category, contextualization means the establishing of the physical

terrain and only The Hunters (1956) truly lacks adequate contextualization. The attribute

is most readily visible, and audible, in the film text and it possesses an equivalent in

narrative film’s construction of a diegesis. The four films score highly for whole acts

because of the overall thematic structuration. The hunt of The Hunters (1956) and the

hauka ceremony of Les Maîtres Fous (1957) are single acts with delineated steps in

concert with the narration; however, the thematic constructs that provide cultural and

psychological context should be considered part of the act. While Chronique d’un Été

(1961)’s interviews are edited but feel complete in themselves, they are also part of the larger thematic meditations on happiness, race, politics, and leisure. The introductory discussion between Marceline, Rouch, and Morin and the closing reflections by Rouch

and Morin also give a sense of closure to the whole act of the experiment.

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All four films are successful at showing whole bodies, but only Chronique d’un

Été (1961) and Dead Birds (1964) venture beyond the “maximally necessary whole bodies” to close-ups without disorienting the viewer; as such, they also rate highly for whole people (Heider 1976:113). The Hunters (1956) also rates highly for whole people

even though some shots representing the same character are not actually of the same

person. Les Maîtres Fous (1957) does not develop “feelings for the individual,” but the hauka spend the bulk of the film possessed by other entities.

Only Dead Birds (1964) and Chronique d’un Été (1961) adequately provide

Explanation and evaluation of the various distortions in print. The Hunters (1956) and

Dead Birds (1964) assemble sequences out of shots from different filming sessions and

make heavy use of cross-cutting and intercutting; as such, they rate as less ethnographic

for time distortion. Chronique d’un Été (1961) rates moderately for time distortion

because the temporal sequences are indeed rearranged, although this is not readily

apparent when viewing the film; likewise, continuity distortion is extreme even though it

is not apparent onscreen. Chronique d’un Été (1961) rates as less ethnographic for

inadvertent distortion of behavior but camera consciousness is part of the experiment. In

the other three films, the actors virtually ignore the camera and, thus, ethnographic

presence. Chronique d’un Été (1961) rates as less ethnographic for intentional distortion

of behavior since the camera had been intended as a catalyst to trigger behavior.

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Fictionalization/Documentarization

Construction of a diegesis, as the inverse of figurativization, is common across

the four films. Besides the use of the bracket syntagma arrangement and narration, Les

Maîtres Fous (1957) also includes prefatory text and disclaimers. While fictional film also commonly uses of the bracket syntagma arrangement – although, the descriptive

syntagma arrangement could also be used. The addition of narration usually occurs when

the film has a distant and unfamiliar historical or exotic setting. Narrativization is also common for all four films as well. The actual vocal narration elaborates on the images

and conveys character rather in addition to objectively describing the steps of processes

conveyed in additional explanatory insert shots. An alternative is difficult to imagine

since Odin (1995) states that most documentaries “comply with the rules of narrative

structuration, even if it is to tell the story about how a barrel is made or the different

states of metamorphosis of a butterfly” (229).

None of the films activate mise-en-phase. The view of the world is mediated through narration and an often objective camera. Angles that suggest character point-of-

view shots in The Hunters (1956) are deemphasized in meaning by the visual quality of

the photography and the excessive narration. The very presence of a narrator, and the

emphasized act of enunciation, in all four films effectively blocks the construction of an

absent enunciator operation. It is difficult to imagine an effective alternative without

triggering behavior and camera consciousness. The stories become discourse and block

fictivization; therefore, all four films activate documentarization.

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Home Movie Textual Characteristics

Table 29 summarizes the presence/absence of home movie textual characteristics

in the aforementioned films. While the films may possess these some of these

characteristics, I have rated them as absent when the narrativization and diegetization

leaven or obscure them.

Table 29 - Presence/Absence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics for all films under analysis Les Maîtres Fous Dead Birds The Hunters Chronique d’un Été Absence of Closure Absent Absent Absent Absent Discontinuous Absent Absent Absent Absent Linear Temporality Spatial Absent Absent Absent Absent Indeterminacy Dispersed Narrative Absent Absent Absent Present Jumps Absent Absent Absent Absent Camerawork Present Present Present Present Address to the Absent Absent Absent Present Camera Variable Sound Absent Absent Absent Absent Quality

Absence of closure is not an issue in any of these films because they are not

considered archival footage. The first three films can be likened to essays because they

frame the behavior within thematic structures: coping with the alienation of city life in

Les Maîtres Fous (1957), the cyclical nature of warfare in Dead Birds (1964), and

subsistence of the marginalized in a dying land in The Hunters (1956). Chronique d’un

Été (1961) is a meditation on several themes framed within the context of an experiment.

Discontinuous linear temporality is absent in all four films since narration

cements the connection between scenes. Narration also contextualizes the use of

explanatory inserts in Dead Birds (1964) which is the only one of the four films

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methodically apply the wide-contextual-shot-explanatory-close-ups arrangement. All four films score highly on the attribute of whole acts. Spatial indeterminacy is not an issue in the four films; where coverage fails to fully establish locations and the linkage to previous actions, the narration fills in, orienting viewers to the various settings of the hauka ceremony in Les Maîtres Fous (1957) and the environs associated with each

character in Dead Birds (1964). Dispersed narrative is present only in Chronique d’un

Été (1961) which features multiple stories within a loose framework. While the

individual narratives are edited so that their development coincides with the placement of

various themes, the actions of each of the characters do not serve of a main plotline;

Angelo’s problems at work, for instance, disrupt the film’s flow while Marilou’s acting

steals focus.

Whereas discontinuous linear temporality is absent because of narrativization,

jumps are absent due to diegetization. Dead Birds (1964), Les Maîtres Fous (1957), and

The Hunters (1956) establish their overall setting as well as the settings through editing

for diegesis, and then through narration; as such, the shot arrangements used to establish

locations are usually more detailed than the narration. Chronique d’un Été (1961) gets its

more familiar setting out of the way quickly with a few brief shots of Paris and the

narrated disclaimer over the opening segment. The day-in-the-life sequences are great examples of the use of editing to establish the parts of Paris in which the characters exist.

Table 30 below summarizes the points above.

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Table 30 - Attributes Violated by the Presence of Home Movie Textual Characteristics Textual Characteristic Attribute Violated Absence of Closure Whole Acts Narrativization Discontinuous Linear Whole Acts Narrativization Temporality Time Distortion Continuity Distortion Spatial Indeterminacy Whole Bodies Diegetization Contextualization Dispersed Narrative Whole Acts Narrativization Jumps Whole Acts Diegetization Whole People

Neither narrativization nor diegetization leaven the aesthetic textual

characteristics of camerawork, address to the camera, or variable sound quality;

however, these could be said to add truth value to the ethnographic film. The rough

quality of the camerawork heightens dephasage, defocusing awareness of the narrative

structuring and taking narration on the level of commentary rather than direction.

Address to the camera suggests the antithesis of viewer passivity, even though the

dialogue may have been selected to support the narrative and the narration. Variable

sound quality is largely absent from the films under analysis since the post-produced

narration encompasses much of the films’ sound design. Audiences also tend to be more

lenient about the quality of location sound recording in documentaries in contrast to fictional films where muffled or uneven sound suggests amateurism and sloppiness. The sound quality of Chronique d’un Été (1961), the only film under analysis to feature heavy

quoted dialogue by the participants and the filmmakers, is good overall; although, one

may wonder if certain response were re-recorded for sound problems, or discarded altogether. The sense that the film is a documentary, along with the fact that it had been

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shot in busy, active locations, adds to the verisimilitude of the setting and the truth value

of the experiment.

In home movies, editing-in-camera – that is, starting and stopping the camera – is primarily responsible for discontinuous linear temporality, dispersed narrative, spatial

indeterminacy, and jumps. In ethnographic film, editing-in-camera is a planned action that sometimes results in the same qualities; physical editing – that is, the rearrangement and insertion of shots from other bits of footage – as well as narration, however, jointly produces the narrativization and diegetization that distinguishes sometimes rough- looking and -sounding ethnographic films from home movies or archival footage. One might ask then if ethnographic footage-as-film is more like home movies in its emphasis on showing things that can only be recalled by the researcher or decoded by someone with similar ethnographic knowledge. Some of the textual characteristics of home movies found in ethnographic films, and their interpretation, are dependent on how one views their anthropological use. If one views ethnographic films as archival footage to be recalled or decoded, then the home movie-like technical faults are irrelevant. If one construes raw ethnographic footage to be ethnographic film when it is presented to illustrate a concept, then the narrativization and diegetization provided by the presenter- as-present enunciator would smooth over the faults in the film itself and provide documentarization.

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Conclusion

The goal of this thesis was to demonstrate the influence of the dominant filmic

institution on the way in which filmmakers and film viewers construct meaning through

film. I wanted to demonstrate that the ethnographic film genre draws from both fictional

and documentary genres. The terms cinema and documentary had been used as examples

of pure form in contrast to ethnographic film; this, however, is erroneous as it suggests

that the two genres do not draw from one another. In spite of this, I still feel that I have

established that there are narrative cinematic elements in these four rather prominent ethnographic films; as such I do not feel the need to revise the statement.

The presence of narrative, more so than editing for diegesis, is one of the primary elements that separates ethnographic films from home movies or archival ethnographic footage. That the variable visual and aural qualities of an ethnographic film could sometimes resemble home movies but for the narrative which is made accessible to the general viewing public rather than just those with specialized knowledge such as family members or academics viewing raw footage. Ethnographic film could be said to

resemble a formal essay more so than other film genres, in that those films do intend to

transmit a message to their audience in a meaningful way. At the same time, they are

unlike a formal essay, and commercial cinema, in that their methodology for doing so is

often more exploratory than anecdotal; in that respect, they sometimes resemble art films.

I had hoped that this way of looking at ethnographic films through a framework that incorporates narrative film theory will put the ethnographic filmmaker critically in

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touch with the emotional responses to their work. There is, however, the danger that

filmmaker will conform the editing and scripting of their footage to the notion of a style

instead of exploring what possibilities the footage offers to render certain ideas.

Similarly, the academic in his criticism might overlook or dismiss that which does not conform to their conception of an ethnographic auteur. Poet Octavio Paz had said, in relation in conversation with Robert Gardner in relation to Dead Birds (1964), that

“anthropology is a very peculiar science, because the moment we can see a film as your

film, this society is disappearing. Even the fact that you are using the cinema as a way to

know them, in the moment they are disappearing. The object of anthropology is corroded by anthropology itself” (Coover 2007:206).

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