The film is the text

Caninbal Tours was the best film I watched in my Visual Anthropology and in my Anthroplogy Through the Lens classes. The author Nancy Christine Lutkehaus in her article, "Excuse Me, Everything Is Not All Right": On Ethnography, Film, and Representation: An Interview with Filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke, touches upon its importance in the study of anthropological films by saying, that is a “visual exegesis of a topic rife with implications whose different levels of meaning touch on issues that are of central concern to anthropology” (Lutkehaus 1989:425). In Cannibal Tours, there is a give and take between O’Rourke and the subject of his film, be they the tourists or be they the locals. (Lutkehaus 1989:426). His form of reflexivity constantly makes the viewer “conscious of the constructed or "filmed" nature of the images and of the control the filmmaker has over this process” (Lutkehaus 1989:426). As we edit our film there has been much discussion on whether or not, how much and how often, should we leave our questions in so that the viewer is aware of US. I think on that I am being overruled.  

Mariagiulia Grassilli has a quote from the notes of the director of the film, she reviews in the essay, Anthropology and Cinema: Visual Representations of Human Rights, Displacement and Resistance in Come Back Africa, by Lionel Rogosin, where the actors become informants on the reality of the culture he is portraying in his film.  “[The actors] told me that my idea of it was much too mild and the police were much rougher” (Grassilli 2007:229). Like Flaherty he allowed the actors to be involved in their representation. I appreciated the distinction of staging being a place where “reality is captured through situations” (Grassilli 2007:230).

Grassilli, Mariagiulia (2007)'Anthropology and Cinema: Visual Representations of Human Rights, Displacement and Resistance in Come Back Africa, by Lionel Rogosin', Visual Anthropology, 20: 2, 221 — 232.

Nancy Christine Lutkehaus; Dennis O'Rourke (1989) "Excuse Me, Everything Is Not All Right": On Ethnography, Film, and Representation: An Interview with Filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 4. (Nov.,1989),pp. 422-437.

In and out of love with Jay

This piece from Ruby was a twisty turny road that for me started off in one direction and then changed completely, for me it has been the least straightforward of what I have read from him. Usually I agree with Ruby from the beginning to the end. When he speaks of documentaries as “a social service and a political act” that presumes to give "voice to the voiceless," I am totally in his corner. He is expressing what I want to do. (Ruby 1991:50) However he next brings me to a halt by questioning not only how documentaries are done but also the impact of documentaries, “socially concerned and politically committed documentarians erroneously assume that a compelling documentary automatically produces a desired political action”(Ruby 1991:51). I began at once to marshal my defenses. I remember the “war on poverty” and I am a firm believer in the efficacy of the visual image. It was those documentaries that spurred and brought into being my interest in the plight of others than myself. They also showed me that the problems of the poor were not because they did not pull themselves up by their boot straps. They also connected for me US government’s corporate policies with real people. Whenever I bought Minute Maid products after that I could see in my mind the houses, one step up from slave quarters, the workers lived in. Those documentaries indicted me in the welfare of many people in ways that I would not have thought of. Ruby is wrong about the power of documentaries!!! I am proof.

But who should represent who? After more reading I began to see where he was taking me. Ruby quotes from John Grierson interview where Grierson is discussing film with Elizabeth Sussex , “local film people making films to state their case politically or otherwise, to express themselves whether it's in journalistic or other terms"(Ruby1991:51). That just makes sense.

He next talks about author-ship of documentaries. And once again I am thrown for a loop. He states that a documentarian is “someone wishing other people to infer meaning in a specified way”( Ruby 1991:53). That seems like what an anthropologist does kind of. Of course as I finish the reading I see that Ruby is talking about taking responsibility for being the subjective beings that we are. He is speaking on reflexivity as the method of ownership of a view or position. He is talking about being honest about where the author of the piece is coming from, and not trying to present your view as the honest objective truth.

Loving him again

Ruby, Jay (1991) Speaking For, Speaking About, Speaking With, or Speaking Alongside—An Anthropological and Documentary Dilemma. Visual Anthropology Review 7(2):50-67.