I have chosen as a final film to discuss (at least for a while) Old Believers, a lesser known documentary about a sect of religous believers. In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers became separated after 1666-1667 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon. Old Believers continue liturgical practices which the Russian Orthodox Church maintained before the implementation of these reforms.
What struck me most about this film was its stylistic qualities. It was as though the style represented to me more about what the filmmaker was trying to accomplish with the film than the content itself. It is all black and white, and often employs long shots or pans of the nature surrounding the village. The music is hypnotic,especially when the church bells ring. The geographical terrain presented always has white clouds or mist. There are no wide shots or "set up" shots and the foggy atmosphere creates soft but finite edges. As though the village was its own little world, that nothing existed beyond the mist.
It truly is a world that exists outside the rest of the world, the subjects of the film never mention "others." They are autonomous, they are isolated, both seemingly by terrain as the filmmaker would have you believe, but also by their beliefs. I believe the film is a juxtaposition of God and Nature... as the old anthropological dichotomy goes Culture vs Nature, even as Culture/Church "controls" nature, it is also bounded by it (literally surrounded by it). "Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly, but out of, and because of, tension" (Dewey, 13). This is really the heart of the film, these Old Believers are in contension with the rest of the world, exiled because of a break with the Church. There is an unspoken sadness there, an undertone of sympathy for these believers because of their isolation. "Emotion is the conscious sign of a break, actual or impending. The discord is the ocasion that induces reflection... with the realization, material of reflection is incorporated into objects as their meaning" (Dewey 14). This sympathetic gaze is the meaning of the art "object," in this case, the otherworldly stylized film.
cheers
Dewey, John. 2005. Art as Experience. Perigee.
Old Believers (Jana Sevciková, 2001)
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Les Maitres Fous
Catherine Russell frequently describes possession ritual films as a mise en abyme of representation, or “placing into the abyss”. When discussing film, it refers to a scene dealing with unconsciousness or surrealism, like a dream within a dream. This is an excellent way to describe something that is captured on film, but not really seen. When a person goes into trance we can see everything that physically happens to them, but we can’t see what they’re seeing. Even if a revived individual has picture perfect memory of what was happening while he or she was in trance, which most do not, the description would not suffice. I believe Jean Rouch, above any other ethnographic filmmaker, has not just an overt fascination with such phenomena but also most vigorously attempted to (re)present it on film. In fact, I think he would argue film to be the only appropriate medium to express possession rituals, as the mediation of a camera from life to film embodies the essence of possession. In fact, it was Rouch who appropriated the term cine-trance.
Ethnographic film is a form of cultural communication, to document the extent and variation of human behavior and cultural imagination. When encountering a behavior that is contrary to the normative, such as possession rituals, anthropologists find the need to rigorously analyze them in order to contextualize the spectacular behavior as an expression of some universal trait. This, of course, has not always been the case. Anthropology has its dark past, including ties with colonialism and imperialistic behavior. At that time the possession ritual was observed as a spectacle, highly romanticized to feed a fantasy of the “other”, or used to justify exploitation. With regards to subjectivity, Russell says it best as, “If the possession ritual represents the most “savage” and “crazed” figure of the Other, it also represents a subjectivity that remains uncolonized. The ritual in Les Matres Fous is transcendental and sublime. The truth-value is the subjectivity of decolonizationary thought, and it infects the “real” of ethnographic film.
Jean Rouch’s Les Maitres Fous is a very powerful, provocative ethnographic film. The approach Rouch took on the structure of the film made it, for me, the most memorable ethnographic film I’ve ever seen. In fact, I have had to be reflexive about this film in order to “lay my feelings aside” and think critically about its content. Once I was able to except my own consternation and revulsion to the graphic-ness of the film (I have a problem watching animal sacrifices), I was able to move on and deconstruct it for the brilliance that this film is. Contextualizing a possession ritual with in a modern ordinary existence was as effectively stimulating as the organization of the film. The primary role of the film “demands a decolonization of thought” (Russell, 221). The Dogon enact this ritual as a way of sticking it to the man, reappropriating historical atrocities to strengthen their cultural convictions. It is paradoxically an escapism and confrontation, ironically, spirit possession is a way of dealing with the "reality" of their past.
Rouch’s concept of cine-trance can be expanded over to those who are watching the film. When I saw Les Maitres Fous, I sat with my mouth open, dazed, and physically ill, and I remember thinking it was at least an hour-long film. In reality, it’s only twenty minutes of footage. My sense of time and space was altered, how better to describe that state then an extension of cine-trance?
cheers
Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography. Duke University Press.
Les Matres Fous (Jean Rouch, 1955)
Lunch Break
I would call myself an appreciator of art in all its capacities; I consider myself to be a fan and a practitioner, way before I am a critic. Even when "critiquing," I'm not one to find faults, per se, I'm more keen on what we all do with everything in ordinary life: try to ascribe meaning to and glean meaning from the symbolic world around us. "For the doctrine did not signify that art was a literal copying of objects, but that it reflected the emotions and ideas that are associated with the chief institutions of social life" (Dewey, 6). Even art for art's sake has meaning, even if it's a non-meaning. I am finding it hard to get to my point here...
I recently went to a "theatrical screening" of Sharon Lockheart's film, Lunch Break. The film was shot in a factory somewhere in Maine. The entire film is one shot. 80 minutes, one shot. Which sounds like one hell of an accomplishment, really. However, this one shot consisted of a super-slow motion dead-pan down one corridor of the factory during the worker "lunch break." Sitting in a crowded theater, watching this film had to be one of the hardest 80 consecutive minutes of my life. You cannot even tell, at first, if the shot is moving, it is going so slow.
After the first 5 minutes, when the lady sitting on the bench's hand finally reaches her mouth, I thought to myself, "cool, I get it." This is the "American working (wo)man," a majority of people in the country, yet completely and utterly overlooked, unseen, and unappreciated. Bravo Sharon, thank you for forcing me to look at this woman, not just to look at her, but to really fucking soak her in. In the time of glamorization of celebrities and the utter fascination with the bourgeoisie, she is a modern example of an American proletariat; this calling attention to her is almost a revolutionary act.
Once we reach her, and the film goes on, I start to move around in my seat a bit, I'm looking at the hallway, and its long, and I'm finally realizing, "you know what... this is what the whole film is going to be." 80 minutes, trapped, with the filmmaker and her cohort in the theatre with me. After 20 minutes, I began to play a game, I would pick a point in the middle of the screen, and once it had reached the foreground, I would draw little circles on my arm for a minute. I would spend the rest of the hour doing this to myself:
I walked out of the theater with a forearm cheetah sleeve. This film, is not for theatrical viewing. It would make an excellent installation piece, where a viewer would have the ability to walk away from it. Subjecting an audience to a theatrical screening of this film was borderline torture. It was rude. I kept thinking to myself, somebody say something! Do something! Walk out, laugh, scream, say "are you Fucking kidding me?" And then I realized what was going on. I was right in the middle of a group of proponents for what I call the "new avant garde." Avant garde used to be about pushing the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or staus quo, primarily in the cultural realm. It was often pretentious, inflated, grandiloquent, but always exciting to observe. The "new avant garde" seems to be about whether or not a viewer can stick it out. Being "hard" to take, hard to watch. As though, if you did get through it, you get it. You, my friend, are an artist. Well, I refuse to be a part of the self-congratulatory league (my colleague aptly entitled circle-jerk) going on in the art world; hey emperor, put some clothes on.
The ironic thing here, and I think most important to remember, is that the subjects of the film, these "research participants" (don't get me started on the fury that comes with the knowledge that 2 years of ethnographic research went into the making of this film, along with a hefty endowment) would never sacrifice 80 minutes of their life to watch a film like this. I'm willing to stake money I don't have on it. Not just these subjects, but the entire group of marginalized blue collar workers in this country that they represent, would never choose to watch this film over spending quality time with their families.
cheers
Dewey, John. 2005. Art as Experience. Perigee.
Lunch Break (Sharon Lockheart, 2008)
I recently went to a "theatrical screening" of Sharon Lockheart's film, Lunch Break. The film was shot in a factory somewhere in Maine. The entire film is one shot. 80 minutes, one shot. Which sounds like one hell of an accomplishment, really. However, this one shot consisted of a super-slow motion dead-pan down one corridor of the factory during the worker "lunch break." Sitting in a crowded theater, watching this film had to be one of the hardest 80 consecutive minutes of my life. You cannot even tell, at first, if the shot is moving, it is going so slow.
After the first 5 minutes, when the lady sitting on the bench's hand finally reaches her mouth, I thought to myself, "cool, I get it." This is the "American working (wo)man," a majority of people in the country, yet completely and utterly overlooked, unseen, and unappreciated. Bravo Sharon, thank you for forcing me to look at this woman, not just to look at her, but to really fucking soak her in. In the time of glamorization of celebrities and the utter fascination with the bourgeoisie, she is a modern example of an American proletariat; this calling attention to her is almost a revolutionary act.
Once we reach her, and the film goes on, I start to move around in my seat a bit, I'm looking at the hallway, and its long, and I'm finally realizing, "you know what... this is what the whole film is going to be." 80 minutes, trapped, with the filmmaker and her cohort in the theatre with me. After 20 minutes, I began to play a game, I would pick a point in the middle of the screen, and once it had reached the foreground, I would draw little circles on my arm for a minute. I would spend the rest of the hour doing this to myself:
I walked out of the theater with a forearm cheetah sleeve. This film, is not for theatrical viewing. It would make an excellent installation piece, where a viewer would have the ability to walk away from it. Subjecting an audience to a theatrical screening of this film was borderline torture. It was rude. I kept thinking to myself, somebody say something! Do something! Walk out, laugh, scream, say "are you Fucking kidding me?" And then I realized what was going on. I was right in the middle of a group of proponents for what I call the "new avant garde." Avant garde used to be about pushing the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or staus quo, primarily in the cultural realm. It was often pretentious, inflated, grandiloquent, but always exciting to observe. The "new avant garde" seems to be about whether or not a viewer can stick it out. Being "hard" to take, hard to watch. As though, if you did get through it, you get it. You, my friend, are an artist. Well, I refuse to be a part of the self-congratulatory league (my colleague aptly entitled circle-jerk) going on in the art world; hey emperor, put some clothes on.
The ironic thing here, and I think most important to remember, is that the subjects of the film, these "research participants" (don't get me started on the fury that comes with the knowledge that 2 years of ethnographic research went into the making of this film, along with a hefty endowment) would never sacrifice 80 minutes of their life to watch a film like this. I'm willing to stake money I don't have on it. Not just these subjects, but the entire group of marginalized blue collar workers in this country that they represent, would never choose to watch this film over spending quality time with their families.
cheers
Dewey, John. 2005. Art as Experience. Perigee.
Lunch Break (Sharon Lockheart, 2008)
Thursday, April 8, 2010
The Good Woman of Bangkok
The film's beginning is highly stylized, like a fiction film, or even more specifically, like a soap opera. It is melodramatic and contrived. Come to find out by the end of the film, soap operas are kind of an analogy for this woman's story. Throughout she experiences and recalls tragedy, drama, deceit, betrayal etc. etc. The "good woman" is not actually from Bangkok, but from a village near by. She is forced into prostitution by a series of male oriented bad happenstances, including her husband's abuse and eventual jilting of her, and her father's gambling. The two main men in her life have broken her in a way that has made her extremely depressed and even suicidal. Ironically, she is "forced" into the sex industry where she must cater to men. She despises men, after all, they are the source of all her misery.
She despises all men, and the filmmaker is a man. This is what gives this film depth. Aoi is a prostitute, forced into the industry because of the male ineptitude in her life, a tragic tale, but a common and familiar tale nonetheless. It is the construct of the film that separates it from its pervasiveness. This male filmmaker comes into Aoi's life, presumably as a john, and asks more from her than just sex (though the subject is never directly addressed, one can assume he engaged in a sexual relationship with her at least to start). She agrees to let him film her life, and he promises to compensate her.
Now, because of documentary film's subjective nature (beyond just a cinematic object) it is, "less a thing than an experience"(Sobcheck). An audience might not be able to identify with Aoi on an emotional recall level, but the combination of the pervasiveness of her story, coupled with the knowledge we all have of betrayal and of the importance of assessing new relationships allows a more empathetic understanding of Aoi's personal story through the film experience. At the same time we are learning through interviews about her past, we are learning about her cinematic presence. Who is Dennis O'Rourke (the filmmaker), what does he want from her? Although he starts off by stating, in text, what he is looking for "love to be both banal and profound," by the end of the film he has passed judgment on her lifestyle, constantly saying to Aoi he wants her to get out of the business. He even buys her a rice farm (the thing she said she would need to be able to quit). In the end, the film still seems exploitative, has remnants of unintentional post-colonialism, and is brimming with naivete. Just when one thinks there might be a happy ending to the story, there is a sort of afterword where by O'Rourke tells the audience that even though he bought her a rice farm, a year later (after he LEFT her) he finds her working in a dingy sex shop again.
What responsibility do documentary filmmakers have to their subjects? In an interview with Sergei Dvortsevoy he says, "documentary film, at least the kind of creative documentary that I make, is a strange genre, one that doesn’t help people much. When I make a film I don’t make it to help people. I help them while I am shooting, but the film itself cannot help them, and in fact sometimes it harms them, makes the situation even worse. Making a film about someone doesn’t necessarily bring them happiness." Something to at least think about.
cheers
The Good Woman of Bangkok (Dennis O'Rourke, 1992)
Sobcheck, Vivian. "Toward a Phenomenology of Nonfictional Film Experience." ed. Gaines, Jane, and Michael Renov. 1999. Collecting visible evidence. U of Minnesota Press, July.
Interview by Andrea Slovakova and Bara Stefanova.
She despises all men, and the filmmaker is a man. This is what gives this film depth. Aoi is a prostitute, forced into the industry because of the male ineptitude in her life, a tragic tale, but a common and familiar tale nonetheless. It is the construct of the film that separates it from its pervasiveness. This male filmmaker comes into Aoi's life, presumably as a john, and asks more from her than just sex (though the subject is never directly addressed, one can assume he engaged in a sexual relationship with her at least to start). She agrees to let him film her life, and he promises to compensate her.
Now, because of documentary film's subjective nature (beyond just a cinematic object) it is, "less a thing than an experience"(Sobcheck). An audience might not be able to identify with Aoi on an emotional recall level, but the combination of the pervasiveness of her story, coupled with the knowledge we all have of betrayal and of the importance of assessing new relationships allows a more empathetic understanding of Aoi's personal story through the film experience. At the same time we are learning through interviews about her past, we are learning about her cinematic presence. Who is Dennis O'Rourke (the filmmaker), what does he want from her? Although he starts off by stating, in text, what he is looking for "love to be both banal and profound," by the end of the film he has passed judgment on her lifestyle, constantly saying to Aoi he wants her to get out of the business. He even buys her a rice farm (the thing she said she would need to be able to quit). In the end, the film still seems exploitative, has remnants of unintentional post-colonialism, and is brimming with naivete. Just when one thinks there might be a happy ending to the story, there is a sort of afterword where by O'Rourke tells the audience that even though he bought her a rice farm, a year later (after he LEFT her) he finds her working in a dingy sex shop again.
What responsibility do documentary filmmakers have to their subjects? In an interview with Sergei Dvortsevoy he says, "documentary film, at least the kind of creative documentary that I make, is a strange genre, one that doesn’t help people much. When I make a film I don’t make it to help people. I help them while I am shooting, but the film itself cannot help them, and in fact sometimes it harms them, makes the situation even worse. Making a film about someone doesn’t necessarily bring them happiness." Something to at least think about.
cheers
The Good Woman of Bangkok (Dennis O'Rourke, 1992)
Sobcheck, Vivian. "Toward a Phenomenology of Nonfictional Film Experience." ed. Gaines, Jane, and Michael Renov. 1999. Collecting visible evidence. U of Minnesota Press, July.
Interview by Andrea Slovakova and Bara Stefanova.
A Joking Relationship
A very short film worth mentioning on this blog is John Marshall and Tim Asche's A Joking Relationship. It is a very simple format; 13 minutes of observational film. The two characters are N!ai, the young woman who is the "star" of Marshall's !Kung series, and her great-uncle /Ti!kay. Though, without the contextual knowledge of who these characters are, the film still has surprising amount of charged subjective quality, enabling a viewer to catch a glimpse of an intimate relationship, fostering an amount of cultural understanding. The observational style creates at first an objective perspective then an experiential sense of "being there." This movement from invisibilty to visibilty is creatively done in the editing of the film (as well as the way it was shot). It begins with extreme close ups of their faces, creating a sense of ulterior space, one never really gets to be that close with someone without knowing them intimately. But we do, we are privileged to be this close, it simultaneously evokes a level of voyeurism and comfort. The shots go from extreme close up of faces to hands and different parts of the body, all the while the two are carrying on a casual dialogue which subtitles allow us to follow. These scenes convey a genuine moment, they are being playful with each other, joking.
Later the shots move to medium, now we can see the space around the two bodies. A giant rock and some trees, savannah grass in the distance. The teasing persists, N!ia tells her uncle, "My neighbor's a snake in a tree" and her Uncle replies, "I have a lion at my fire." Both cultural idioms, expressive of a world view. A world we are now serendipitously more aware of as the shots begin to move further away. Once we are at a wide shot, the subject matter of the discussion moves from teasing each other, to talking about the filmmaker. They discuss what they think "he wants" them to do. This moment the filmmaker/film-making goes from strictly observational, to participant observational. It changes the whole ethos of the film. It forces an audience to reflect upon the happenings on screen, are these characters indeed engaging in these casual moment of intimacy because John Marshall is filming them, or would it all have taken place regardless? Even if we had not had a sense of being a part of the !Kung culture up to this point, surely "overhearing" their diatribe regarding the filmmaker gives us a phenomenological tickle as to what it might have been like to be there, filming from that spot in the universe.
The final shot is an extreme wide, hinting that the filmmaker had been faraway all along. Had N!ia and her Uncle known just how closely they were being observed? Had they known their voices were being picked up from that far away? Probably not, making this exchange of teasing, comforting and joking an almost private affair. As though they were posing for still photographs as a part of the environment, and maintaining a casual conversation to pass the time.
cheers
A Joking Relationship (John Marshall and Timothy Asche, 1962)
Later the shots move to medium, now we can see the space around the two bodies. A giant rock and some trees, savannah grass in the distance. The teasing persists, N!ia tells her uncle, "My neighbor's a snake in a tree" and her Uncle replies, "I have a lion at my fire." Both cultural idioms, expressive of a world view. A world we are now serendipitously more aware of as the shots begin to move further away. Once we are at a wide shot, the subject matter of the discussion moves from teasing each other, to talking about the filmmaker. They discuss what they think "he wants" them to do. This moment the filmmaker/film-making goes from strictly observational, to participant observational. It changes the whole ethos of the film. It forces an audience to reflect upon the happenings on screen, are these characters indeed engaging in these casual moment of intimacy because John Marshall is filming them, or would it all have taken place regardless? Even if we had not had a sense of being a part of the !Kung culture up to this point, surely "overhearing" their diatribe regarding the filmmaker gives us a phenomenological tickle as to what it might have been like to be there, filming from that spot in the universe.
The final shot is an extreme wide, hinting that the filmmaker had been faraway all along. Had N!ia and her Uncle known just how closely they were being observed? Had they known their voices were being picked up from that far away? Probably not, making this exchange of teasing, comforting and joking an almost private affair. As though they were posing for still photographs as a part of the environment, and maintaining a casual conversation to pass the time.
cheers
A Joking Relationship (John Marshall and Timothy Asche, 1962)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Good Hair
Again, another non-ethnographic film. Good Hair is more of a "social documentary" than anything else. I'm including Good Hair in my blog specifically because of my experience, academically, in the subject matter. I have had the privilege of having a professor for both my undergraduate and my graduate experience whose dissertation and subsequent first book were on the topic of African-American hair. She is one of the most inspiring women I know, and I am compelled to review the film for the sake of my gratitude to her for her wisdom, her guidance, and of course, her friendship. Although I am not African-American, I do feel like the years in her presence have priviliged me somewhat in having an opinion on the film.
Bluntly, I think the filmmaker, Chris Rock, had good intentions on making this film. Right from the outset, he recalls the story of his little daughter asking him one day, "Daddy, why don't I have "good hair?" Compelling, sentimental and even heartbreaking as this moment must have been for a father, Chris Rock, the comedian, opens his film about a very controversial topic clearly outlining his good intentions. Unfortunately, as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with them...
Now, it is not as bad as all that. One must keep in mind the filmmaker is a comedian, not a social scientist, and thus cannot be held accountable for the often times severe crises of representation going on throughout the documentary. The main point of the film is correct; the notion that "black" textured hair is "bad" and that "white" textured hair is "good," basically enforcing a hegemonic ideal of beauty. However, the concept is problematized in a self-deprecating, almost stereotypically self-fulfilling prophetic way. What should be an eye-opening confrontation of the facts, tends to be more of a display of the wackiness of "Black" hair shows, and an exploitation of Black hair product consumers, not by "white people" but by the few African American run Black hair care businesses.
For me, the most brilliant part of the film is when Rock asks people about "relaxer," the hair product that turns "bad hair" to "good hair." He sardonically points out that although the term denotes the "relaxing" of the hair itself, the connotation could really be read as a social lubricant, to, "make white people relax" when confronted with difference. This critique into the constructs of the everyday language used to describe Black hair is what most closely resembles a critical analysis in the significance of the "social" part of the documentary. It is along this linguistic theme, as displayed in the film's title, that the investigation of this "study" most closely resembles the culturally responsible work of my professor, "My overarching goals for this book were to present situated and 'lived' accounts of the role of hair and language in the formation of Black women's identities... I likewise sought to illuminate how, when, and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences and how it is they work out, either by themselves or with others, when exactly 'hair is just hair' and, alternatively, 'hair is not just hair' " (Jacobs-Huey 129). My advice to Rock would be to have read Jacobs-Huey's book, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care before setting out to represent the counter-hegemonic goals of Good Hair.
A good test would have been, as I believe comedian Dave Chappelle is utterly aware of, when dealing with race, are you seeking to get an audience to laugh with, or at your subjects/research participants?
cheers
Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care. Oxford University Press.
Good Hair (Jeff Stilson 2009)
Bluntly, I think the filmmaker, Chris Rock, had good intentions on making this film. Right from the outset, he recalls the story of his little daughter asking him one day, "Daddy, why don't I have "good hair?" Compelling, sentimental and even heartbreaking as this moment must have been for a father, Chris Rock, the comedian, opens his film about a very controversial topic clearly outlining his good intentions. Unfortunately, as the proverb goes, the road to hell is paved with them...
Now, it is not as bad as all that. One must keep in mind the filmmaker is a comedian, not a social scientist, and thus cannot be held accountable for the often times severe crises of representation going on throughout the documentary. The main point of the film is correct; the notion that "black" textured hair is "bad" and that "white" textured hair is "good," basically enforcing a hegemonic ideal of beauty. However, the concept is problematized in a self-deprecating, almost stereotypically self-fulfilling prophetic way. What should be an eye-opening confrontation of the facts, tends to be more of a display of the wackiness of "Black" hair shows, and an exploitation of Black hair product consumers, not by "white people" but by the few African American run Black hair care businesses.
For me, the most brilliant part of the film is when Rock asks people about "relaxer," the hair product that turns "bad hair" to "good hair." He sardonically points out that although the term denotes the "relaxing" of the hair itself, the connotation could really be read as a social lubricant, to, "make white people relax" when confronted with difference. This critique into the constructs of the everyday language used to describe Black hair is what most closely resembles a critical analysis in the significance of the "social" part of the documentary. It is along this linguistic theme, as displayed in the film's title, that the investigation of this "study" most closely resembles the culturally responsible work of my professor, "My overarching goals for this book were to present situated and 'lived' accounts of the role of hair and language in the formation of Black women's identities... I likewise sought to illuminate how, when, and why hair matters in African American women's day-to-day experiences and how it is they work out, either by themselves or with others, when exactly 'hair is just hair' and, alternatively, 'hair is not just hair' " (Jacobs-Huey 129). My advice to Rock would be to have read Jacobs-Huey's book, From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care before setting out to represent the counter-hegemonic goals of Good Hair.
A good test would have been, as I believe comedian Dave Chappelle is utterly aware of, when dealing with race, are you seeking to get an audience to laugh with, or at your subjects/research participants?
cheers
Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 2006. From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women's Hair Care. Oxford University Press.
Good Hair (Jeff Stilson 2009)
Thursday, March 18, 2010
City of God
Inspired by my previous posting, I watched the commercial/narrative film City of God having heard so much about it being along the same vein as my interpretation of film being an avenue for impressionism. The film takes place in a shanty town called Cidade de Deus (city of god) just outside Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It is the first commercial film (that I have watched) to have serious contendership in being considered an "ethnographic film." Using the same tactics as Robert Gardner, the director constantly and colorfully displays swatches of everyday life, glimpses into the struggles and banalities of the comings and goings of the citizens of City of God. I use the term "swatches" purposefully, as they are made up of vibrant iconographic hues, splayed out and then focused on when the timing corresponds to the place in Rocket's story. The visuals include vast amounts of dust and smoke, serrated by the slowing down or the speeding up of time, gleaming beads of sweat highlighted by the sunshine, and a constant menagerie of citizens of all ages, exchanging gunfire with blood spatter. It is a dizzying array of sights and sounds that make you feel like you can smell the violence in the air. It is hyper phenomenological; Robert Gardner has no interest in the "unvarnished" reality of life, rather, "I have always been interested in indicating things by suggestion rather than direct statement... Perhaps my tendencies arise from an interest in, among other things, surrealism" (Barbash 94).
The film is narrated by Rocket, a slum child grown up in Cidade de Deus, an interesting character as he provides an "ethnographic" emic/etic perspective of life. He manages to be centrally located in the cast of widely varied characters, yet somehow remains peripheral and almost objective to the calamities of the narrative. The narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion, it is being thread together for us by Rocket, and moves according to his logic. Rocket is not without fault, he does drugs, is often motivated by sex and jealousy, however is the most clearly defined protagonist in the film. For an audience, Rocket's life is a vignette, a pinhole into the world in which he's enmeshed.
Coincidentally, I day or so after watching City of God, my friend insisted upon watching the Steve Martin film, L.A. Story. Having always been a Martin fan, and having grown up in Los Angeles, I agreed. Midway through the self-deprecating comedic romp, I made a joke about how L.A. Story matched up to City of God. I mean, Los Angeles is known as the "City of Angels" and both goals of the film were to give the impressions of the title city. After having a laugh about it, I recalled more parallels, including the structure of a first person narrative, "guiding" the audience asynchronously through their personal vignettes, and furthermore how the city had affected their journey's. The similarities of the structural tactics are uncanny, as each film seeks to highlight the most depraved behaviors, (stereo)typical to each place. The difference, of course, being that the situation in City of God is tragic, and includes life or death stakes, while Los Angeles might very well be tragically egocentric and shallow, the stakes involved are clearly non-mortality related.
cheers
Barbash, Ilisa. 2001. "Out of Words." ed. Taylor and Barbash. The Cinema of Robert Gardner. Berg:Oxford.
City of God, Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
L.A. Story (Mick Jackson, 1991)
The film is narrated by Rocket, a slum child grown up in Cidade de Deus, an interesting character as he provides an "ethnographic" emic/etic perspective of life. He manages to be centrally located in the cast of widely varied characters, yet somehow remains peripheral and almost objective to the calamities of the narrative. The narrative unfolds in a non-linear fashion, it is being thread together for us by Rocket, and moves according to his logic. Rocket is not without fault, he does drugs, is often motivated by sex and jealousy, however is the most clearly defined protagonist in the film. For an audience, Rocket's life is a vignette, a pinhole into the world in which he's enmeshed.
Coincidentally, I day or so after watching City of God, my friend insisted upon watching the Steve Martin film, L.A. Story. Having always been a Martin fan, and having grown up in Los Angeles, I agreed. Midway through the self-deprecating comedic romp, I made a joke about how L.A. Story matched up to City of God. I mean, Los Angeles is known as the "City of Angels" and both goals of the film were to give the impressions of the title city. After having a laugh about it, I recalled more parallels, including the structure of a first person narrative, "guiding" the audience asynchronously through their personal vignettes, and furthermore how the city had affected their journey's. The similarities of the structural tactics are uncanny, as each film seeks to highlight the most depraved behaviors, (stereo)typical to each place. The difference, of course, being that the situation in City of God is tragic, and includes life or death stakes, while Los Angeles might very well be tragically egocentric and shallow, the stakes involved are clearly non-mortality related.
cheers
Barbash, Ilisa. 2001. "Out of Words." ed. Taylor and Barbash. The Cinema of Robert Gardner. Berg:Oxford.
City of God, Cidade de Deus (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
L.A. Story (Mick Jackson, 1991)
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