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Visual Sociology
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Experience and reality in ethnographic film

Marcus Banks
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Filmmaker and anthropologist at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Oxford University, 51 Barbury Road, Oxford, 082 6PE, UK Version of record first published: 03 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Marcus Banks (1990): Experience and reality in ethnographic film , Visual Sociology, 5:2, 30-33 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725869008583672

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EXPERIENCE AND REALITY IN ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM1

Marcus Banks Oxford University

Introduction Within the field of visual anthropology, ethnographic film has a great advantage that is simultaneously its greatest problem. The advantage is that film is 'sexy' (for want of a better word). It radiates the glamour of television, of Hollywood; unlike many other forms of anthropological research it is expensive and glossy. Moreover, it is a form of anthropological output which bridges most easily to other disciplines and, indeed, outside to worlds beyond academia altogether. But it is the slick, expensive glossiness of ethnographic film that can be its downfall, at least in Britain/ By many anthropologists, film is seen as a luxury at best, as a trivializing and distorting medium at worst. The median approach is to regard ethnographic films as a convenient package for teaching, whereby an impressionistic overview of a 'culture' or a 'society' can be quickly presented to a classroom full of students before they settle down to the 'real' study (through books and articles) of the people in question. In all cases, film is never given any chance to contribute to theoretical debates within the discipline; it merely presents the ethnographic 'facts'. The best that one can hope for is that a film's commentary may provide a few starting points for theoretical discussions. Thus ethnographic films and their creators become the audio-visual handmaidens that wait on the academic theoreticians who shape the future course of the discipline. The blame for this lies partly with the academic anthropologists and partly with those working in ethnographic film. In a journal such as this - where one assumes the readers to be true believers in the redemptive power of film and photography - it is pointless to carp at the blinkered vision of the academic anthropologists who dismiss film as trivial. Instead I wish to address myself to the weakness of the theoretical base of ethnographic film and to suggest one way forward. Perversely, it may be that some anthropologists who appear most eager to use ethnographic film are perhaps those who should be approached with most caution. They are the anthropologists who consciously or unconsciously adhere to a struc-

Marcus Banks is a filmmaker and anthropologist at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Oxford University. Correspondence: 51 Barbury Road, Oxford 082 6PE, UK.

tural-functionalist view of the world, with its attendant positivist and empiricist methodologies and inferences. For these anthropologists, film is to be praised because it shows how things 'really' are in other societies; it is the ideal audio-visual aid that confirms their functionalist view of the world. It is the very enthusiasm of such anthropologists that distances us from those with whom we probably have most in common, the cultural theorists who have slipped the mooring ropes of positivist empiricism and who are charting a course across a sea of interpretation and symbolic theory. Despite their theoretical sophistication, they may tend to see ethnographic films as naive attempts to represent without distortion; recent work on the deconstruction of classic realist ethnographies (see for example, Marcus and Fischer 1986: 54 ff) has, it must be said, offered a fairly positive if cautious view of film (ibid.:75) but it is clear from the scant discussion (Marcus and Fischer give it one paragraph) that it is not taken very seriously. More so, perhaps, than any other form of documentary endeavour, ethnographic film is seen as a touchstone of realism. Through the observational style of filmmaking viewers have direct insight into the speech, behaviour, actions and even thoughts of other people. Since the MacDougalls' pioneering work in Africa (see, for example, their film Lorang's Way, 1977) we have become accustomed to an easy flowing, episodic view of other cultures, where people speak for themselves (translated through subtitles), address the camera or each other as they see fit and go about their daily business accepting or even unconscious of the camera's presence. As viewers, we accept such a view as natural and hence as real, that is: the things we see on screen really happened that way and, moreover, really happen that way generally. The film therefore gives us a specific instance of a general pattern. As filmmakers, of course, we know that the things that happen on screen do not necessarily happen that way: there is a vast continuum from the wholly constructed representation (for example: set ups of completely atypical behaviourand dialogue) to the slightly tampered with (for example: people spelling out things they would normally take for granted, in response to questioning). As ethnographic filmmakers we need to surmount a paradox: we know that other peoples' reality can only be represented, not experienced, yet the conventions of cinema serve to deny representation and to offer direct access to reality for the viewer. What we need, therefore, is to explore cinematic conventions of realism in order to understand the nature of the

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reality that we created in our films. While anthropologists have been happy to draw insights from other disciplines - psychology, linguistics, literary criticism, philosophy etc. - visual anthropologists seem remarkably reluctant to investigate the possible help that may be found in film theory and criticism. This seems all the more remarkable when one considers thatalargebody of film theory is concerned with issues of realism and the representation of reality. By regarding ethnographic films as texts, rather than as transparent realities, the possible objection that film theory is concerned only with fiction film (even if this were true) is countered, just as regarding written ethnographies as texts has opened them up to analysis drawn from literary criticism. My own particular interest is in the writing of the great French critic Andr Bazin, largely because he not only wholeheartedly espoused realism in the cinema, but also because he wrote about it with clarity and humanity. Doubtless there is much we can learn from the formalist film theorists such as Balazs, Eisenstein and Kracauer, but in this paper I wish to consider only Bazin. Bazin, in pleading for a film tradition based upon "the naked power of the mechanically recorded image rather than on the learned power of artistic control over such images" (Andrew 1976: 134) described a position that would be espoused by many in the field of ethnographic film - for example, Karl Heider or Jay Ruby. Like many writers on ethnographic film, Bazin also believed in the redemptive power of technology; in his famous article "The Myth of Total Cinema" (Bazin 1967) he argues that technological progress is drawing us ever closer to "total cinema" - that is the perfect mechanical reproduction of reality. Contrast this with the position of formalists such as Eisenstein or Abel Gance, who saw technological developments as transformative, each leading to a new kind of cinema, and not towards some Platonic ideal. For Bazin, the capture of reality on the Celluloid is an inevitable and automatic process; anything that counters or transforms this - for example, Eisenstein's theory and practice of montage - is a perversion of what cinema is all about. This leads him - again, like many writers on ethnographic film - to be both descriptive and prescriptive: in describing the films he likes he prescribes how films should be make in the future. This conflation of description with prescription is also made by Karl Heider when discussing his attributes of 'ethnographicness' (Heider 1976). Heider here uses the attributes of films he has decided are ethnographically 'pure' to dictate the attributes that films of the future should possess. There is a link, I would argue, between Bazin's insistence of the primacy of the object over its image and the phenomenology of someonesuchas Alfred Schutz(Schutz 1967). Schutzargues for a recognition of memory and experience as interpreters of action, just as Bazin argues for our experiential knowledge of the world as an interpreter of what we see on the screen. Of course, the standard subject matter of the ethnographic film exotic people following strange customs in remote parts of the world - does not (necessarily) permit us as an audience to use experiential knowledge as a filmic decoder: there are too many

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pitfalls of mistaken interpretation that line the path. We rely instead upon the anthropologist/filmmaker to facilitate decoding. In some genres of ethnographic film the decoding is performed through narrated commentary.3 While this is undoubtedly possible, and often useful when films are used for classroom teaching, I confess I find it unsatisfactory, largely because it denies the autonomy of visual images. Instead, following Schutz and Bazin, I feel that phenomenological insights can be found within the raw film footage and sound stock, before the commentary is added, and revealed through skillful editing. It is thus through pointing a way to a phenomenological interpretation that a film may communicate to an audience otherwise ignorant of the society or culture under analysis. In, for example, his (1949) analysis of De Sica's classic neorealist film, Bicycle Thief [Ladri di Biciclette] (1948), Bazin praises the skillful avoidance of meta-narrative. It could, he points out, have been shot as a Communist propaganda film, proving through cinematic discourse, that the workman, who is the 'ordinary hero' of the film, is condemned by his inability to find his stolen bicycle to unemployment and poverty (Bazin 1971). Eisenstein could, I'm sure, have made a startling montage of the events, from which, according to his theory, meaning would have arisen from the contrast and not the content of the images: this would have alerted the viewer to the idea (rather than the fact) that, say, the poor, by being denied access to the means of production, are forced to steal from each other. But, as Bazin points out, De Sica structures the film so that the events refer only to one man: we know from watching the film that only he will certainly be condemned to unemployment Bazin praises the film for its phenomenological qualities: the events depicted are presented to the senses unframed by discourse, and thus the 'reality' of events is untampered with. De Sica thus seeks to privilege event and experience over the abstraction of category and concept. Bazin gains an insight into film that seems overlooked by those who praise the utility of ethnographic film: that is, that its 'reality' is dependent upon its uniqueness. Put another way, the more 'real' a film is (a point often cited in favour of ethnographic film over ethnographic writing) the less we can generalize from the events depicted (despite the fact that the commentary and the 'context' of a film - its title, programme notes, use in teaching etc. - would often have us believe otherwise). While some would see this as a failure of ethnographic film, I would like to present it as a virtue. The anthropological tendency to over-generalize is an error which, thanks to Bazin, is easily revealed in ethnographic film, and the insight can thus be transported with more ease into academic anthropology.

Ethnographic Film and Anthropological Theory The anthropologist Paul Hockings has recently claimed that film has an essentially phenomenological character as opposed to the deductive and empiricist character of conventional an-

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thropological analysis (Hockings 1988). I would dispute this as a general statement on the grounds that certain shooting and editing techniques can subvert this character, but I would agree that the 'observational' style of documentary shooting and cutting is most likely to preserve the phenomenological character. Meaning is seen to arise from the casual and unscripted interaction between people and between people and objects. Nancy Munn has also recently demonstrated through the linked concept of 'experientiality', that casual and formal interactions are located by actors (and thus for analysts) in a grid of space and, more importantly, time.^ These seem to be obvious truisms, but it is crucial to realize that events take place not as representatives or examples of abstract categories ('marriage payments,' 'dispute settlement') but as contingent phenomena where the status of the person with whom one interacts, one's previous contact with them, one'spredictions of future contacts and a whole constellation of related factors may singly or together be far more important than the label which is attached (by analyst or actor) to the interaction. Film is ideally suited to a phenomenological analysis of another's world, for it can show-in a way that words never cana person's familiarity with a street, a doorway, a room. The laughing glances exchanged between friends, the teasing banter, the gestures of hands; these things cannot be described with words, only demonstrated.

An Example: Raju and his Friends In 19871 traveled to the State of Gujarat in North India to shoot an ethnographic film in a town, Jamnagar, where I had previously conducted conventional ethnographic fieldwork. The film, edited the following year, is called Raju and his Friends (Banks 1988). Itisapersonalandbiographicalaccountof aman I have known for the last six years: I met him originally when I was conducting fieldwork and, although he became a good friend, he was never an important source of field data. In making the film about Raju and his friends (in which, as a friend of Raju's, I was involved as a player as well as a documenter), I knew that everything I saw and heard had no simple explanation, that because I had my own experiences and knew many of theirs, any attempt to generalize or to single out a statement or event as 'typical' or representative would have to be endlessly qualified. At one point in the film for example, Raju (who is unmarried and a Jain, something like a Hindu) explains that he had wished to marry a Muslim woman but that family pressure had prevented it. As a student of anthropology some years ago, I would have explained this episode as an example of India's well-known rigidity (the 'caste system' being the archetype): different religious groups rarely interact and certainly never intermarry. But the event is more complex and is not time-bound. In the film goes on to explain that he and this woman still meet, that they both feel tied to each other and would help each other in times of trouble. He shows us gifts she has given him (rings, a watch) and points out that some of them have (popular) Islamic significance. Elsewhere in the film we

see him in warm and loving interactions with members of his family, which are intended to demonstrate (from an editorial point of view) that the family is not authoritarian and repressive. We also see him with another Muslim woman, not his exfiance, but one who in a sense stands for her. All these events or phenomena (described weakly in words, as here, but demonstrated in the film) reveal that the marriage would merely have been one strand in a complex web of relationships between Raju and his family, between Raju and his fiance, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and so on, which stretch across apparent boundaries of time, space, gender, religion, kinship. To try and capture such data in writing needs great skill and an intensity of description that only the truly devoted reader could bear. Film, on the other hand, is a medium almost ideally suited for such ethnographic reportage. I would not claim that film produces better ethnography, merely that it produces a different ethnography. Thus my argument is that by producing and analyzing a film about a society and people I thought I knew well, I found not merely extra detail but a whole new perspective. It is my hope that such a new perspective may also be communicated to the audience; a phenomenological reading is obviously possible with all films, but the likelihood of such a (pre-theoretical) reading for an audience is enhanced if a filmmaker deliberately sets out to indicate that such a reading is intended - for example, by denying the audience an 'authoritative commentary. Doubtless such a change of perspective for the analyst can come about in other ways but it seems that film could act as a particular stimulus. While I cannot speak for anyone else, I know that my involvement with film has changed my outlook and theoretical perspective - for example, when I now analyze data that I gathered by the more conventional methods of participant-observation. If, as producers and presenters of ethnographic film, we are ever to gain the respect of our more traditionally-minded colleagues, we are going to have to demonstrate the intellectual basis of the medium in which we work.

Notes 1. This paper was originally presented at the 1989 Amsterdam visual sociology and visual anthropology conference, "Eyes Across the Water". 2. Throughout this paper my unstated reference is always to the British anthropological scene. I believe academic anthropology and (the study of) ethnographic film are closer in some other countries - the United States, for example. Nevertheless, I believe a greater rapprochement would be of benefit in all countries. 3. Others would hood that decoding is not possible within the film at all and must be spelled out in accompanying written texts.

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4. Munn 1990. This paper builds upon many of the ideas contained in Munn 1986.

References Andrew, J. Dudley 1976 The Major Film Theories. London: Oxford University Press. Bazin, Andr 1967 (1946) 'The myth of total cinema." Andr Bazin, What is Cinema, Vol I [selected and translated by Hugh Grey]. Berkeley: University of California Press. Downloaded by [University College London] at 06:39 25 October 2012 1971 (1949) "Bicycle Thief." Andr Bazin, What is Cinema? Vol II [selected and translated by Hugh Grey]. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heider, Karl 1976 Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press. Hockings, Paul 1988 "Ethnographic filming and thedevelopment of anthropological theory." Paul Hockings and Yasuhiro Omori (eds.) Cinematographic Theory and New Dimensions in Ethnographic Film [Senri Ethnological Studies 24]. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.

Marcus, George and Michael Fischer 1986 Anthropology as Cultural Critique: an Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Munn, Nancy 1986 The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (New Guinea) Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990 "Constructing regional worlds in experience: kula exchange, witchcraft and gawan local events." Man 25.1117. Schutz, Alfred 1967 (1932) The Phenomenology of the Social World. London: Heonneman Educational Books.

Filmography Banks, Marcus 1988 Raju and his Friends. London: RAI/NFTS. De Sica, Vittorio 1948 Ladridi Biciclette [Bicycle Thief]. London: Contemporary Film (UK). MacDougall, David and Judith MacDougall

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