Studies in Visual Communication Volume 6 Issue 1 Spring 1980 Article 5 1980 Margaret Mead and the Shift from "Visual Anthropology" to the "Anthropology of Visual Communication" Sol Worth Recommended Citation Worth, S. (1980). Margaret Mead and the Shift from "Visual Anthropology" to the "Anthropology of Visual Communication". 6 (1), 15-22. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/5 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/5 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Margaret Mead and the Shift from "Visual Anthropology" to the "Anthropology of Visual Communication" This contents is available in Studies in Visual Communication: https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/5 Margaret Mead and the Shift from "Visual Anthropology" to the "Anthropology of Visual Communication" Sol Worth I would like, in this discussion, to explore a shift in how work alike, serve up great slices of ourselves-irre­ certain problems in the study of culture have come to trievable slices-that only serve to entertain briefly, to titil­ be conceptualized. These problems may best be un­ late, and diminish into nothing? derstood by examining how one label, ''visual anthro­ pology," led to the creation of another, "the anthro­ Margaret Mead did not photograph, edit, or produce pology of visual communication.' ' In order to delineate this visual event that Pat Loud speaks of. But in ways and examine some of the arguments, problems, and that I will describe she can be understood to be a ma­ methods involved in this shift it will be helpful for me to jor influence in this and other attempts to show a fam­ cite, and to use as my explanatory fulcrum, the work ily in the context of television. More importantly, her as well as the persona of Margaret Mead. work over the past fifty years can help us to under­ I am doing this on an occasion meant to honor her, stand many of the questions that Pat Loud's cry of dis­ but am aware that even that act - as so often happens tress raised for her (Loud 1974). with Dr. Mead- inevitably gets mixed up with a review There are, it seems to me, at least three basic prem­ of the history and problems in communications and an­ ises which Mrs. Loud's letter forces us to examine. thropology. I should add that I am aware that, even as First is our deeply held and largely unexamined notion we try to develop a history in this field, we also are in that all or most photographs and, in particular, motion many ways that same history. pictures are a mirror of the people, objects, and events To introduce some of these issues in the history of that these media record photochemically. Second is communications study, let me quote from an informant the questionable logic of the jump we make when we whose comments and life history may lay the ground­ say that the resultant photographic image could be, work for certain of the problems I will be talking about. should be, and most often is something called "real," Some of you may still remember a television series of "reality," or "truth." A third concern, which is central several years ago called The American Family. It con­ to Pat Loud personally, and increasingly to all people sisted of 1 2 one-hour film presentations. One of the studied or observed by cameras for television, whether major participants of that visual event was Mrs. Patri­ for science, politics, or art, is the effect of being, as cia Loud, the mother of that "American" family. In a she puts it, "the object of that tool." letter to some of her acquaintances which she sub­ When The American Family was first shown on sequently made public, Mrs. Loud wrote: American television in 1972, mass media critics, psy­ choanalysts, sociologists, and historians as well as Margaret Mead, bless her friendly voice, has written glow­ Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times felt com­ ingly that the series constituted some sort of break­ pelled to comment. Almost all-except Marga­ through, a demonstration of a new tool for use in sociology ret-expressed dismay, upset, and even anger over and anthropology. Having been the object of that tool, I the series. Many of these strong feelings were no think I am competent to say that it won't work .... doubt occasioned by the films themselves-by the way they were advertised and presented as well as by the Later in her letter she continues: events depicted in them. But much of the upset was also caused, I believe, by the fact that Margaret Mead Like Kafka's prisoner, I am frightened, confused ... I find said publicly, and with approval, that this notion of de­ myself shrinking in defense, not only from critics and de­ tractors, but from friends, sympathizers and, finally, my­ picting a family on television was a worthwhile, revolu­ self.... The truth is starting to dawn on me that we have tionary, daring, and possibly fruitful step in the use of been ground through the big media machine and are com­ the mass media. She even compared the idea of pres­ ing out entertainment. The treatment of us as objects and enting a family on television to the idea of the novel, things instead of people has caused us wildly anxious suggesting that it might, if we learned to use it, have a days and nights. But I would do it again if, in fact, I could similar impact upon the culture within which we live. just be sure that it did what the producer said it was sup­ Interestingly enough, in October 1976 the United posed to do. If we failed, was it because of my family, the Church of Christ, the Public Broadcasting System, and editing, the publicity, or because public television doesn't Westinghouse Television will present a series titled Six educate? If we failed, what role did the limitations of film Families, in which the same thing that was tried in the and TV tape play? Can electronic media really arouse awareness and critical faculties? Did we, family and net- Loud family series will now be done on a comparative basis. It seems that most of the objections of social scientists to the Loud family series were that this use Sol Worth (1 922-1 977) was the founding Editor of of "real" people on TV was unethical, immoral, and in­ Studies. This paper was presented at a Symposium decent. It made, many people argued, a nation of honoring the work of Margaret Mead at the annual prurient Peeping Toms out of the American people. It meeting of the American Association for the Advance­ is of course "the church" which in our society can ment of Science, in Boston, February 20, 1976. take initiative and argue that an examination of how people live, shown on TV, is not only not Peeping Tom- 16 studies in Visual Communication ism but the most moral kind of act for a mass medium. The notion of a systematically made ethnographic rec­ We will have to see whether social scientists, TV crit­ ord of the geographic and physical environment of a ics, and newspapers will even notice this second in­ city-in a style conforming to ideas promulgated by stance of an American family. Collier (1967)-was also being advertised and sold in The problem for those who heard or read what Mar­ 1901. The Edison catalog for that year states: garet Mead said about this new use of film- whether they were academics, newpaper people, or even sub­ New York in a Blizzard. Our camera is revolved from right jects-was that we were just beginning to understand to left and takes in Madison Square, Madison Square Gar­ what Bateson and Mead had said in 1942. We were den, looks up Broadway from south to north, passes the just beginning to accept the idea that photographs Fifth Avenue Hotel and ends looking down 23rd Street. could be taken and used seriously, as an artistic as well as a scientific event. We were not ready to ac­ Such a film could have been made with an ethno­ knowledge that we were beyond the point of being ex­ graphic soundtrack on instructions given to modern cited by the fact that a camera worked at all. It was, af­ ethnofilmmakers by archivists in the United States and ter all, understood as early as 1900 that photographs several countries in Western Europe. and motion pictures could be more than a record of We have, it seems, come a long way from the days data and that they were always less than what we saw when just being able to make a picture-moving or with our eyes. Let us look at how it started. still-of strange or familiar people in our own or far­ The first set of photographs called motion pictures away lands doing exotic things was excuse enough for was made by Edward Muybridge in 1877, as scientific lugging a camera to the field or to our living rooms. In evidence of a very serious kind. He invented a process those earlier times, from 1895 to about 1920, the term for showing things in motion in order to settle a bet for ''visual anthropology'' had not yet been coined. Governor Leland Stanford of California about whether People just took pictures, most often to "prove" that horses had all four feet off the ground when they ran at the people and places they were lecturing about or a gallop.