The Death of Ethnographic Film

Jay Ruby
This talk is a condensed version of a book in which I argue that ethnographic film is only marginally related to anthropology and constitutes an impediment to the development of an anthropological cinema. Those films most often associated with the term ethnographic are sometimes produced without any input by anthropologists and those productions that do involve an anthropologist follow the conventions of documentary realism without any apparent consideration of the propriety of these devices. The result is a body of work better described as being documentary films about various cultures rather than a pictorial expression of anthropologically constructed knowledge. While potentially useful for teaching, these films remain outside any critical anthropological discourse. Ethnographic film is as disassociated from anthropology as psychological film from psychology or historical film from history. Anthropologists interested in utilizing the medium of film to communicate the results of their field research and their analytic insights must look outside the conventions of ethnographic and documentary film for models to discover a form appropriate for their purposes that will convey anthropology pictorially. Ethnographic film is a most perplexing form of cinema occupying a position equally marginal to documentary film and cultural anthropology. It seems to defy easy categorization causing interminable debates about its parameters. Anthropologists started making motion pictures as soon as the technology existed. And yet ethnographic film remains a minor pursuit of the few, and a pedagogical device used in a relatively uncritical manner by most teachers of culture. It is a genre constrained by marketplace rather than considerations and dominated by filmmakers with no training or apparent interest in ethnography. Ethnographic film is undertheorized and underanalyzed. Anthropologists tend not to be very knowledgeable about film, semiotic, or communication theory, as witness the writings of Heider and Loizois. While film scholars who write about the genre lack an adequate understanding of anthropology as can be seen in the writings of Bill Nichols, Fatimah Rony, and Trinh T. Minhha. Recently some visual anthropologists have voiced a concern with becoming engaged in finding solutions to the so-called "crisis of representation." Since pictorial media are logically at the center of any debate about representation, it may be possible to bring ethnographic film into the midst of anthropological concerns. To do so means creating a critical approach that borrows selectively from film, communication, media and cultural studies. The promise is the construction of a theory and practice of ethnographic film that challenges the logocentric basis of anthropological theorizing, while at the same time making a clear demarcation between ethnographic film and other pictorial attempts to represent culture. As a step in that direction, this talk presents an argument for a narrowly conceived and restrictive conceptualization of ethnographic film and a radical departure from current production practices. It is an expansion of a position I first articulated in 1974. The thesis of this talk is that the term, ethnographic, should be confined to those works in which the maker has formal training in ethnography, intended to produce an ethnography, employed ethnographic field practices, and sought validation among those competent to judge the work as an ethnography. The goal of an ethnographic film should be similar to the goal of a written ethnography - to contribute to an anthropological discourse about culture. As this view flies in the face of common usage, an alternative solution and one that I am increasingly leaning toward, is to accept that the term, ethnographic film, has found a particular niche in popular parlance and that it is simply easier to abandon the term altogether and describe filmic work produced by anthropologists with a more accurate phrase - anthropologically intended films.

No one has articulated a theory of ethnographic film adequate to the task. In 1974 Heider wrote "It is probably best not to try to define ethnographic films. In the broadest sense, most films are ethnographic - that is, if we take 'ethnographic' to mean 'about people'. And even those that are about, say, clouds or lizards or gravity are made by people and therefore say something about the culture of the individuals who made them (and use them)." His inclusive approach seems to still represent the most popular view even though it is hard to imagine which films he would regard as not being ethnographic. The dilemma is an canonical one. If ethnographic film is supposed to have something to do with ethnography then where do films produced by non-ethnographers fit? The majority of the films commonly labeled ethnographic are made by people with little or no anthropological training and no apparent interest in anthropological theory building. Excluding Robert Flaherty, John Marshall, and Robert Gardner from a discussion of ethnographic film seems altogether absurd but then so does calling all films that deal with culture ethnographic. If the genre is confined to films made only by trained ethnographers, an tiny field results. If it is opened up to any film that makes a sophisticated statement about culture, the definition implies that one need not know anything about ethnography or anthropology to produce an acceptable ethnographic film. Either way seems inadequate and frustrating. Perhaps anthropological filmmakers need to disassociate themselves from ethnographic film if they are to effectively use the medium to do anthropology. There is a general tendency to be overly generous in the use of the term ethnographic. Some characterizations are merely faddish and can be offhandedly dismissed. When it is applied to anything related to the exotic other as in "ethnographic" art, "ethnographic" ceremonies, or an "ethnographic" subject, it is merely another manifestation of orientalism commonly found in popular parlance. Most people - in and out of anthropology - regard ethnographic film as simply a subgenre of the documentary that concentrates on the representation of cultures exotic to the West. In this instance, ethnographic becomes synonymous with a cultural study of the other. This usage is reflective of a superficial understanding of the nature of ethnography and the general inflation of the term. I not only dispute this usage but contend it is a deterrent to the development of film as ethnography. While an ethnography is a study of culture, it is a very particular variety - with specific intentions, purposes, techniques, practices and, at least, in written form, a distinctive presentational form that clearly separates it from other forms of inquiry and dissemination. In other words, while all ethnographies are cultural studies, all cultural studies are not ethnographies. Among anthropologists, the error of being overly inclusive results partially from the fact that teachers do not distinguish between the films they find useful to teach about culture and those films intended to communicate ethnographic knowledge. Once properly contextualized, any documentary film can be an invaluable aid for the teaching of anthropology. That is an insufficient reason for calling a film ethnographic. The future of ethnographic film as a significant contributor to anthropological discourse about the human condition lies in the development of critical expectations about how ethnographic knowledge can be transmitted pictorially. To explore this possibility, anthropologists must understand of current thinking about the visible and pictorial world - both inside and outside of anthropology and examine, critique, and borrow elements deemed usable in the creation of a theory and practice of film as ethnography. And most importantly they need to gain control over the production of these works by acquiring a rudimentary understanding of video production and editing. The technology is relatively easy to master and inexpensive - everything necessary to record in the field costs less than the average computer. Simple editing facilities are becoming less and less expensive and more accessible. In this manner, field workers can have a camera available throughout their field work. They can

grapple with questions about which aspects of culture are visible and how they might convey that knowledge and other fundamental questions about doing ethnography with camera. How does one translate experience into images? Do images merely illustrate ideas or are there "pictorial" ideas? Can you actually explore and discover with a camera or must you wait until you know in order to film? When you are dealing with people whose sense of space, place, body movement, and event are different from your own, how do you know what you are looking at and when to turn the camera on or off? It is only possible to explore these questions in the field when the ethnographer is freed from the economic restraints of professional filmmaking and the need to produce a marketable product. This approach does not have the burden of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, of transporting costly and delicate equipment and of getting a crew used to the field situation, a particularly difficult task when they are seldom professionally trained or even committed to living through culture shock in order to accomplish their goals. The professional needs of a filmmaker and the demands of public television for certain production values will not have to be a factor. Such a method would enable the anthropologist to show us what he/she "sees" and to edit the work as he/she sees fit regardless of the market potential of the final product. Having access to the technology throughout the period of their field work, anthropologists will be able to show the images they create to the people portrayed enabling those depicted to actively engaged in the creation of their image. They can develop their own critical relationship to the way in which they are represented, thus adding another layer of reflexivity to the work. In situations where people wish to produce their own videotapes, it might be possible for multiple versions of the same event to appear in the same work, thus raising new questions about collaboration and multiple versions of actuality. A final product could be designed for a tiny audience of specialists without violating funders' expectation or harming a filmmaker's reputation. It should be self-evident that this activity would not be very economically rewarding. These "$1.98" videos will have little commercial potential and lack the production values PBS deems necessary for broadcast. One cannot make a living from the kind of films I envision but then anthropologists don't make a living from their writings why should they from their film work. The need to produce revenue from these activities inhibits the exploration of form that is essential. As the cost of producing such work is minimal, once the anthropologist has secured funding for their field work, the tapes could be sold at very modest prices. No distribution company currently in existence would probably be able to accommodate this form of dissemination. Some sort of alternate distribution would have to be instituted. For film to be truly important as the written word, the cost of acquiring a tape has to be comparable to that of a book. While I do not have the time to fully explicate it, Temple's graduate program in the anthropology of visual communication is currently exploring these ideas in a number of works produced by Bapa Jhala in consort with several of our graduate students. Ethnographic film has been too long dominated by technical specialists and cinematic artists whose knowledge of the topic of their films is often limited to a few months of reading and scattered days of consulting with subject matter specialists. To borrow a military clich, ethnographic film is too serious a thing to be left to filmmakers.
(This paper was presented at a panel at the American Anthropological Association meetings, December 2, 1998 in Philadelphia entitled Seeing Culture: The Anthropology of Visual Communication at Temple University. Do not cite without author's permission.)