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.