REVIEW
ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM by Karl Heider.
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1976, $9.75, 198 pages.
Reviewed by Jay Ruby
Department of Anthropology
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
This is a book which purports to deal with the history, theory and practice of ethnographic film. While ethnographic film is a somewhat specialized field, the use of the motion picture camera to portray the everyday lives of ordinary people is as old as cinema itself. Additionally, the problem of generating a film style which is somehow appropriate for the communication of anthropology is directly related to the more general communication problem of how anyone infuses pictures with meaning for any purpose. Therefore, by studying the ways that anthropologists attempt to solve their particular problems with film we could become enlightened about the general processes of film as communication.
Ethnographic film, like the related fields of Visual Anthropology and the Anthropology of Visual Communication (Worth 1975), has a rather sparse literature. The book under review represents one of the few attempts to articulate a theory and history of ethnographic film (de Heusch (1962) being the only other attempt). It is, therefore, unfortunate that Heider's book suffers from so many problems.
This review will be a very partisan one which, however, comes from and perhaps is caused by, a long term involvement with the author's ideas. I first heard Heider discuss his thoughts on film in 1972 at the Summer Institute in Visual Anthropology. Later I reviewed the manuscript for a university press (not his present publisher) and concluded that the press should not publish the book. Finally, in a 1975 publication I criticized some of the ideas presented in this book. Like the manuscript reviewed, I find this book to be filled with errors of fact, errors of omission, an appalling lack of knowledge and some impenetrable gibberish.
It is often difficult to bridge the gap between two fields. Heider has tried to bring together two rather complex phenomena -film and anthropology - in order to explore in what ways anthropologists might use film as a means of communicating ethnography. He unfortunately tends to see each of these areas as being an undifferentiated mass - something that he simply refers to as film and anthropology. At that level of specificity the concepts are too amorphous to be understood.
I will argue that the book suffers from an inadequate conceptualization of ethnography, a naive end discredited idea of the nature of film, a rather limited knowledge of documentary film and its literature and most surprising of all, an apparent lack of knowledge about the literature on ethnographic film.
The field of ethnographic film has not produced a very large body of written works. Therefore, one could reasonably expect Heider to cite most of it and comment on the scholarship in the field. He does not. To say that he fails to cite my work is perhaps immodest but accurate (Ruby 1969, 1971, 1975).
In the chapter, "A History of Ethnographic Film," Heider begins with Santayana's dictum, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (page 16). He then proceeds to say that "The history of ethnographic film is one part of the history of cinematography (I assume he means cinema since he is not discussing camera work) itself and more particularly of documentary or nonfiction." (page 16). I would heartily agree and assume therefore that one should situate ethnographic film at least within the historical tradition of the documentary if not of film itself. Heider never pursues this idea; never even cites any of the standard histories of documentary film such as Jacobs (1971) or Barnouw (1974); what is even stranger is that be fails to cite or comment upon the three earlier attempts to deal historically and theoretically with ethnographic film - Michaelis (1955), de Heusch (1962) and de Brigard (1971 and 1975). Given the lack of knowledge or an unexplored bias that he displays in his brief history, it may be that Heider is unaware of these works. If he does know them, I find it inexplicable that he doesn't at least cite them. I would have liked to see a scholarly work on Ethnographic Film not only cite but comment upon and use previous work.
In 1973 an International Conference of Visual Anthropology was held in conjunction with the International Congress on Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences. It was the first attempt to bring together an international body of scholars to discuss visual anthropolo-gy. The proceedings were edited by Paul Hockings, the conference organizer, and have been published as The Principles of Visual Anthropology (1975). Regardless of the quality of this work (I have strongly criticized the book elsewhere - Ruby 1977a), it is the first of its kind and must be dealt with by anyone possessing an interest in or pretensions about being a scholar of ethnographic film. Heider says that he finished his book in the fall of 1975. The Congress occurred in 1973 and immediately afterwards the majority of the papers were available in preprint form. Heider obviously knew of the Conference and had the opportunity to obtain the papers. Instead, he choose to ignore the Conference and its proceedings. As a matter of fact Heider has chosen to ignore anything written after 1974 - his bibliography contains no entries after that date.
His criticism of a historical treatment of any subject has to deal first with a critique of the author's conceptualization and definition of the subject. Heider makes this task difficult since he refuses to render a definition and his conceptualization of ethnographic film seems primarily based upon his theory of film.
In an attempt to avoid explicit definitions, Heider states "In some sense we could say that all films are `ethnographic': they are about people. Even films which only show clouds or lizards have been made by people and therefore say something about the culture of the individuals who made them and who use them." (page 5). I have already disputed this idea when it appeared in 1974. "Apparently Heider feels that because human beings make films that act - all by itself - is somehow to be considered ethnographic. By the same logic, one could argue that all writing (from novels and poems to love letters), painting (from Miro to Norman Rockwell; and composing (from Bach to Rand Newman) are also equally ethnographic . . . to broaden the connotation of ethnography to the extent that Heider suggests causes it to lose all significant meaning and implies that anyone, regardless of their training or intent, can do ethnography. What in such a definition would be non-ethnographic - a description of atomic particles?" (Ruby 1975:106).
In spite of a denial of a formal definition, Heider, through his selection of films for discussion and other clues employs an implicit one. For him ethnographic films - as far as I can understand without explicit definition - are documentaries about exotic peoples. This underlying idea is clearly demonstrated when Heider reacts to Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer, a film about Parisians in 1960 by saying, "Rouch himself made a dozen other more obviously ethnographic films." (page 40)
Heider begins his book by stating his assumption that film, regardless of the intended meaning, is art and ethnography is science. (There are obvious counter arguments for both assertations which I won't articulate now.) He then proceeds to make an argument for an inherent tension or conflict between them. He argues that the resolution of the conflict into an ethnographic film can occur only if "ethnography takes precedence over cinematography." (p. 4) (Again I assume that he is referring to the entire cinematic process and not simply the camera work.)
Heider devotes about one third of his book to an explication of the attributes which he feels films should display if they are to be regarded as being ethnographic. The more a film displays these attributes the more ethnographic it is. Of the sixteen described only two deal directly with ethnographic qualities -"Ethnographic Basis" simply means that the film is made in collaboration with someone who knows the ethnography of the people being filmed; "Ethnographic Pres-ence" means that the ethnographer/filmmaker should reveal his methodology - a task often neglected (Cf. Ruby 1977b for further discussion of this point).
The remaining fourteen appear to be based on Heider's unspoken assumption that the current conventions of documentary realism are by definition more scientific and more ethnographic than other cinematic conventions. While I cannot discuss all fourteen attributes - three of them are centrally important to Heider's thesis and should be examined. Further, an analysis of the underlying assumptions of these attributes reveals what I believe to be the fundamental weaknesses of Heider's point of view.
Heider states that all ethnographic films should contain "Whole Acts," "Whole Bodies" and "Whole People." "Whole Bodies" is simply an admonition against close-ups. Heider feels that medium and long shots allow audiences to understand behavior in some sort of context. He has mistakenly assumed that one can directly translate the anthropological necessity of understanding behavior in a cultural context into a need for medium and long shots (Cf. Feld and Williams (1974) for elaboration).
"Whole Acts" is a bit more difficult to understand. In fact, Heider himself seems rather confused. "The criterion that whole acts are desirable refers to the selective use of structural features of the act. . . . The criterion of whole acts demands that the selection be done so as to present the important features of an act. Just as there are many different legitimate ethnographic approaches, so the selection may bring out different aspects of an act. It is not good to be dogmatic at thus point. . . . The whole act must be adequately repre-sented by selective elements. And, in this context, where we are speaking of the ethnographicness of film, we can say without hesitation that the selection should be done on the basis of some ethnographic understanding, and the adequacy of the whole act can be judged ethnographically." (page 83). Perhaps it is possible to understand what he is trying to say here. I cannot.
Finally, "Whole People" is also confusingly discussed. On the one hand, Heider says "There is no single ethnographic standard" (page 89) and on the other he says ". . . I think that we can argue, as much on filmic grounds as on ethnographic grounds, for whole people rather than faceless masses" (page 90). Apparently he is referring to the development of characters in a film. What he does not discuss, let alone resolve is the apparent conflict between the development of people as characters which causes them to emerge as individuals and the anthropological need to make statements about culture - a concept which emphasizes the collective or the social rather than the individual.
Heider is attempting to base these dictums on his ideas of the nature of ethnography and film. He suggests that ethnography is a holistic description and analysis of human behavior which relates observed behavior to cultural norms in an attempt to realize a goal of truth (I am condensing the argument presented on pages 6 and 7). I would assume that most anthropologists would agree with most of this definition. However, it begins and ends with two very problematic notions - wholeness and truth. I will avoid discussion of the latter.
I do not believe that the concept of wholeness whether applied to film or ethnography is very useful. In fact, it is actually misleading. It is based upon the mistaken assumption that it is possible to develop a descriptive system which would be universally exhaustive, that is, describe everything within -particular universe. Systems of description are by definition selective (Cody 1967). They are decidedly not holistic nor are they even intended to be. Their validity rests on the strength of the epistemological system which underlies the description and not on its ability to be holistic. I would argue that Heider's notion that ethnography can and should employ a holistic system of description is mistaken and virtually without support from his anthropological peers.
Secondly, the application of this concept of wholeness to film causes one to plunge into the kind of gibberish quoted above where one finds the bizarre notion of "selective wholeness" being proposed. The inadequacy of the idea, I feel, speaks for itself.
To exhaustively critique this book would virtually lead me to write a book length rebuttal. Let me therefore conclude this review by sketchi-ly proposing an alternate point of view.
I wish to make the following assumption - ethnographies are articulated statements about cultures which are based upon notions of: 1) the concept of culture; 2) the nature of evidence which would support the statements; and 3) the ability of anthropologists to translate the cultural reality of one group of people into a form understandable to the anthropologist's culture. As such, ethnographies have the potential of being expressed in a variety of communicative forms.
The difficulties most anthropologists have had when trying to make ethnographic movies revolves around our cultural ideas that film is either an aesthetic conveyer of emotions or a neutral observer which has the capacity to record reality. Neither of these "folk models" is particularly useful for the visual anthropologist. As anthropology contains a particular way of looking at the world it seems logical that ethnographic films should help audiences to perceive anthropologically and that ethnographic filmmakers should seek to find ways of infusing their films with that implication.
What is needed now is a critical history of the anthropological uses of film. Once achieved it could provide a solid base for the development of a theory of film as a means of communicating ethnography. Unfortunately Heider's book will not assist us in this task.
REFERENCES CITED
Barnouw, Eric
1974 Documentary: A History of Non-Fiction Film. Oxford University Press,
N.Y.
Brigard, Emile de
1971 History of Ethnographic Film. Unpublished Masters' Thesis, University
of California, Los Angeles, Department of Theatre Arts.
1975 The History of Ethnographic Film. In Principles of Visual Anthropology, Paul Hockings (editor). Mouton, The Hague: 13-44.
Cody, A. B.
1967 Can a single action have many different descriptions? Inquiry,
Vol. 10, No. 2.
Feld, Steve and Williams, Carroll
1974 Towards a Researchable Film Language . Studies in The Anthropology
of Visual Communication, Vol. 2, No. 1:25-32.
Heusch, Luc de
1962 The Cinema and the Social Sciences: A Survey of Ethnographic and
Sociological Films. UNESCO Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences, No.
16, Paris.
Jacobs, Lewis
1971 The Documentary Tradition. Hopkinson and Blake, N.Y.
Michaelis, Anthony R.
1955 The Research Film in Biology, Anthropology, Psychology and Medicine.
Academic Press, N.Y.
Ruby, Jay
1969 Visual Anthropology, Journal of the University Film Association,
Vol. 21, No. 3:68-71.
1971 Towards an Anthropological Cinema. Film Comment, Vol. 7, No. 1:35-40.
1975 Is an Ethnographic Film a Filmic Ethnography? Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, Vol. 2, No. 2.
1977a Review of the Principles of Visual Anthropology. American Anthropologist, Vol. 79, No. 1.
1977b Exposing Yourself or the Rise of Self-Consciousness in Film
and Anthropology. Unpublished paper. [Later published in Semiotica,
3 [1-2]:153-179. [Also ranslated into Spanish in 1996 as Revelarse a sí
mismo: reflexividad, antropología y cine. In Imagen y Cultura:
Perspectivas del Cine Ethografico, Elisenda Ardévol y Luis Pérex
Tolon, eds. Granada: Diputacion de Granda, pg.s 161-202.]
A Draft of Review that appeared in Journal of Communication. The published
version was shorter.