A Spectatorship-Based Approach to Undoing Blindness Stereotypes in Documentary Practice

A Spectatorship-based Approach to Undoing Blindness Stereotypes in Documentary Practice Catalin Brylla A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the School of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 DECLARATION I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own Signed: Catalin Brylla 2 Abstract The research is presented as an audio-visual thesis, consisting of a 62,000-word thesis and two documentary film artefacts (forty-five and forty-eight minutes, respectively). The equal ratio of theory and practice symbiotically combines the background research, written analysis and practical experimentation. The portrayal of blind people in Western media largely conforms to stereotypical representations that oscillate between two poles: either as unfortunate, disabled and deprived, or exotic, mysterious and in touch with the supernatural. This ‘othering’ of blindness in documentaries is the symptom and partial cause of socio-cultural stigmatisation and ‘ableist’ hegemony. Challenging this hegemony, the thesis proposes the adoption of a spectatorship-based approach to film practice. It first identifies a range of stereotypes in mainstream documentaries, revealing the overwhelming use of formulaic narratives that foreground either tragic or heroic, goal-oriented plot trajectories, and stylistic devices that objectify blind characters. These insights frame the making of my own documentary films about two blind people. The aim is the mediation of everyday experience from the characters’ own perspective, with the result that the spectator experiences them as ordinary people, performing ordinary activities, albeit with extraordinary bodies. The films focus on everyday objects and spaces, and use narrative fragmentation to elicit a temporal sense of ‘everydayness’. The methodology operates on two levels of filmic mediation: the pre-filmic, comprising my first-person encounters with the subjects, and the post- filmic that addresses the mediation of pre-filmic experience to the audience via the film. The pre-filmic level makes use of phenomenological methods; the post-filmic implements a range of methods adapted from cognitive film studies. This spectatorship-focused model offers a new way of representing and communicating the ordinary ‘everyday’ of the two blind characters, undoing the stereotypes that consistently ‘other’ members of this community. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................. 3 List of Figures ......................................................................................... 8 List of Tables ........................................................................................ 11 Acknowledgements ............................................................................. 12 Chapter One: Introduction................................................................... 13 1.1 Context .................................................................................................13 1.2 Components ..........................................................................................18 1.3 Outline ..................................................................................................21 Chapter Two: Documentary Practice and Spectatorship ..................... 26 2.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................26 2.2 Documentary and spectatorship ...........................................................27 2.2.1 Documentary practice textbooks ............................................27 2.2.2 Documentary studies texts ......................................................39 2.3 Cognitive film theory ............................................................................42 2.3.1 Cognitive film theory and documentary practice .....................42 2.3.2 Cognitive film theory and documentary spectatorship ............43 2.3.3 Cognitive paradigms ................................................................46 2.4 Conclusion.............................................................................................53 Chapter Three: Dispositions and Mediations ...................................... 55 3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................55 3.2 Spectator dispositions...........................................................................56 3.2.1 Dispositions through content analysis .....................................56 4 3.2.2 The target audience ................................................................59 3.3 Documentary practice as a process of mediation .................................62 3.3.1 The mediation process ............................................................62 3.3.2 A model of mediation ..............................................................63 3.4 Pre-filmic mediation .............................................................................66 3.4.1 Whose experience? .................................................................66 3.4.2 Mapping emic experience .......................................................69 3.5 Post-filmic mediation ............................................................................71 3.5.1 The naturalisation of emic experience .....................................71 3.5.2 The implied audience ..............................................................72 3.5.3 The homogeneity of post-filmic experience.............................74 3.5.4 Spectatorship models for formalising emic experience ...........78 3.5.5 Film form and emic experience ...............................................79 3.6 Ethics.....................................................................................................83 3.7 Conclusion.............................................................................................84 Chapter Four: The Framing of Documentary Practice ......................... 85 4.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................85 4.2 Current media representations of blindness ........................................86 4.2.1 Sampling .................................................................................86 4.2.2 Evaluation of narrative stereotypes .........................................89 4.2.3 Evaluation of aesthetic stereotypes.........................................98 4.2.4 Interpretation of the content analysis ................................... 105 4.3 Alternative representations ................................................................ 111 4.3.1 The ‘everyday’ ....................................................................... 111 4.3.2 Alterity .................................................................................. 117 4.4 Conclusion........................................................................................... 119 Chapter Five: Ordinary Materialities ................................................. 123 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 123 5 5.2 The evocative object ........................................................................... 125 5.2.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 125 5.2.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................. 130 5.3 The historical object............................................................................ 134 5.3.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 134 5.3.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................. 136 5.4 The domestic space ............................................................................. 145 5.4.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 145 5.4.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................. 149 5.5 The intersubjective object .................................................................. 160 5.5.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 160 5.5.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................. 163 5.6 Conclusion........................................................................................... 165 Chapter Six: Ordinary Temporalities ................................................. 167 6.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 167 6.2 The narrative fragment ....................................................................... 168 6.2.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 168 6.2.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................. 170 6.3 The narrative bracket.......................................................................... 180 6.3.1 The post-filmic beginning ...................................................... 180 6.3.2 The post-filmic ending ........................................................... 185 6.4 The cyclical event ................................................................................ 190 6.4.1 Pre-filmic methods ................................................................ 190 6.4.2 Post-filmic methods .............................................................

Load more