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This polemic/critique will only make sense if you have read Bill Nichols' article, "The Ethnographer's Tale" first. It first appeared in 1991 in Visual Anthropology Review and was reprinted, with no revisions, as a chapter in Nichols, Blurred Boundaries (1994 Indiana University press). Page numbers in this piece refers to the Blurred Boundaries version.
INTRODUCTION
Of all those who write about ethnographic film, Bill Nichols is among the most widely known. Among film scholars, he has been instrumental initiating a sophisticated dialogue about documentary/ethnographic film. In the Tale, he attempts a radical dismantling of the ethnographic film which deserve a point by point reading and critique. I find his work frustrating because his arguments suffer from a lack of knowledge about anthropology. I believe it is virtually impossible to sustain a reasoned argument about ethnographic film without an in-depth knowledge of anthropology that can only be obtained in a Ph.D. program of studies and sustained by having an appointment in an anthropology department. I know this point of view will cause some to regard me as conservative and provincial. So be it! Autodidacts and amateurs seldom make significant contributions to Anthropology any more - that era is over.
Nichols, like others who write about ethnographic film (Ginsburg and Ruby, for example), believe that the genre is in trouble and in desperate need of revamping. Few seriously interested in this field would disagree. Nichols asserts that this "crisis of representation" is a threat to the"...once secure ethnographic film tradition..." (Nichols 1994:xi). While I agree that ethnographic film is in need of some fundamental changes, I disagree about its status. Within anthropology, ethnographic film has never been very secure. Since the institutionalization of the Society for Visual Anthropology as a section of the American Anthropological Association, there is every indication that it has become more accepted by the anthropological mainstream as a pedagogical device. The positioning of film in this minor role is a significant impediment to the development of any critical dialogue - teaching with film is hardly a profound topic for intellectual discussion. Many visual anthropologists seem quite content with allowing ethnographic film to define the field and for these films to remain a minor form of the documentary useable only for teaching.
This somewhat rambling piece is a critique of Bill Nichols' essay, An Ethnographers' Tale. I selected this essay of Nichols because it represents his most elaborate critique of ethnographic film. It deals with the crisis of representation in ethnographic film and the challenge represented by films made by "women/other/natives" (a phrase he borrows from Trinh T. Minh-ha and certain "new" paradigms to what Nichols perceives to be "mainstream" ethnographic film practice. Nichols selectively presents a portion of the world of ethnographic film that is in opposition to his premises while systematically ignoring work from within anthropology that somewhat parallels his position. Among those missing from Nichols' essay are Sol Worth, Eric Michaels, Faye Ginsburg, Terry Turner, and myself - to mention only a few. I'm certain that Nichols is aware of this literature located in such journals as Studies in Visual Communication, Visual Anthropology and Visual Anthropology Review but they are also never mentioned. I also must admit to much frustration with his misreading of my own work. This annoyance should be kept in mind when reading this polemic/critique. I'm certain it gives an edge to my critique.
Why does Nichols systematically ignore the work of people within anthropology who are supportive of his point of view? One can only speculate. By not including any mention of this literature it appears that anthropologists in general and those involved in ethnographic film in particular are not concerned with these problems, thereby making Nichols' position appear to be more unique than it is. Nichols constructs a series of straw men - of "bad science," "bad anthropology" and "bad ethnographic film/visual anthropology." He fails to properly acknowledge that paradigms in opposition to these "bad" versions already exist within science and anthropology. A kind reading of his position is that he simply does not know much about the history of science, anthropology or visual anthropology and the lack of discussion is a consequence of his lack of knowledge. A less kind reading suggests that he does know this literature and chooses to ignore it in order to make it appear that his position is unique rather than one among several.
THE STRAW MAN OF BAD SCIENCE
Here and in other essays, Nichols presents a view of science that is overly narrow, old-fashioned and sufficiently out of favor as to make an easy target. For Nichols, science consists solely of a nineteenth century positivist paradigm in which scientists search for the laws of the universe. They do so employing quantitative methods that allow them to be objective, permitting science to dwell outside of ethical or political concerns. Scientific research is assumed to produce objective knowledge that is "the truth." This is an accurate portrayal of science until the 1930s and of some scientists today and of the popular conception of what science does. However, since Heisenberg, Stent, Kuhn, etc. there are alternative paradigms, philosophically closer to Nichols' point of view that he never refers to. Why this selective blindness to a science striving to deal with fragmentary knowledge, imprecision, the political and ethical dimensions of research, and the possibility that qualitative knowledge can be part of scientific studies? By ignoring the humanistic and anti-positivist movement within science in general and, more to the point, the social sciences, Nichols has an easy target. What is most perplexing about this is that in his 1981 book Ideology and the Image he discusses these matters with some authority. Why continue to associate ethnographic film with this outmoded version of science?
THE STRAW MAN OF BAD ANTHROPOLOGY
Nichols argues that his challenge to ethnographic film is a part of a general attack on traditional anthropological paradigms initiated by cultural studies and literary criticism. As a consequence of these forces from outside the field, a shift has occurred "from a social science model to a cultural studies and textual analysis paradigm" (1994:78). Certainly he is correct that anthropology has been severely criticized for its colonialist, racist, positivist history but he gives too much credit for these critiques and for the creation of alternative paradigms to the relatively recent "ethnography as text" movement articulated by Marcus, Fischer and Clifford. The postmodern "ethnography as text" movement is part of a long history of oppositional traditions within anthropology that have been at odds with the colonialist, positivist, scientizing forces that once dominated anthropology. Long before cultural studies was even known in the U.S., Stanley Diamond was editing Dialectical Anthropology, which was filled with articles denouncing the ethics, politics, and intellectual assumptions of mainstream anthropology. In 1976, Dell Hymes edited Reinventing Anthropology in which these matters were also discussed. The list of oppositional work is long and easy to compile. Within the field of ethnographic film, for example, as Stoller points out in his book on Rouch, this anthropological filmmaker should be viewed as a premature Postmodernist because of his film experiments in the 1960s.
Nichols' discussion of "Anthropology: Behind the Scenes" (page 65ff) attempts to explore the need for a more reflexively self-conscious anthropology. He does so without any reference to the huge literature within anthropology about this subject. Kluckholm, Bateson, Mead, Scholte, and a book I edited in 1982 entitled A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology are systematically ignored. Again the impression is that it is necessary for people outside anthropology like Nichols or Trinh T. Minh-ha to make us aware of this need. The fact is that there is a 75 year old anthropological tradition of dealing with these issues that these critics ignore.
It is the intellectual ferment of academic Marxism, feminism, humanism, and the much discussed need for a reflexive and openly interpretative anthropology that provided the underpinning for the creation of the multiplicity of paradigms which characterizes contemporary anthropology not cultural studies or literary criticism.
If one is looking for models to radically alter ethnographic film they have been available for some time within anthropology. Nichols is correct that many anthropologists involved with ethnographic film seem oblivious to these ideas and continue to espouse discredited and outmoded notions of objectivity, reality, blindly believing in the scientific merit of realist documentary conventions like observational cinema, and false dichotomies between art and science. But theirs is not the only point of view being expressed from within ethnographic film and he knows that.
What is perplexing is that Nichols admits that a tradition exists "already represented, though often neglected, within sociology and anthropology that offers something of a bridge from paradigms lost to paradigms regained" yet he cites no one nor does he use these traditions to shore up his arguments. For example, why Nichols does not explore the films of Jean Rouch is perplexing. Rouch has been a pioneer in reflexive cinema and in the move toward "shared" anthropology and indigenous media. These are ideas central to Nichols' argument. The body of Rouch's work alone denies the uniqueness of most of Nichols' arguments.
Nichols gives no indication that he is aware of the history of ethnography outside of anthropology, e.g., the community studies of the Lynds or any of the Chicago School sociological ethnographers like Whyte or Becker or the speech communication ethnographers like Tom Benson. By locating ethnography solely within anthropology he limits the possibility of finding examples that defy his caricature.
THE STRAW MAN OF BAD VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The remainder of this piece explores Nichols' essay in a more or less chronological manner. On page 63 Nichols defines ethnographic film as "exploring other cultures on film..." and says it means one of three things: 1. analyzing fictional works by non-Western film makers like Ozu or Ray, 2. viewing political documentaries about national liberation, and 3. studying film "considered" ethnographic accounts of other cultures. This is a strange set of verbs "analyzing," "viewing," and "studying." Why numbers 1 and 2 are somehow ethnographic is not discussed nor is there any further mention of these categories. The problem with his notion is that many fiction films "explore other cultures." We are not told who decides which films belong in category 3. What Nichols fails to do is generate a theory of ethnography that would encompass these three categories. Like many other writers, Nichols' definition is so inclusive as to encompass most documentaries and many feature length fiction films. This is not a well thought out definition.
On page 64 Nichols begins talking about visual anthropology instead of ethnographic film. While some do use the two terms interchangeably most see ethnographic film as a subset of visual anthropology along with photography, movement and spatial analysis, etc. While it is a minor point, Nichols should have avoided the broader term unless he was going to broaden his discussion which he does not. I think this is yet another example of the shallowness of his knowledge of this field.
Nichols suggests that the genre should include "...films that are extra-institutional, that address an audience larger than anthropologists per se (1994: 66), that may be made by individuals more trained in filmmaking than in anthropology, and that accept as a primary task the representation, or self-representation, of one culture for another" (1994:66). He is talking about films made by independent documentary filmmakers. The assumption is that the discipline of anthropology and the institution of the academy are hindrances to the development of ethnographic film. I dispute this assertion on two fronts. First, as stated above, Nichols' critique of anthropology as an institutions and its limitations is out-of-date and inadequate. Secondly, the marketplace limitations imposed on independent filmmakers, that is, the need to make a living from their films almost certainly insures that they will be unable to employ the practice of ethnography - that is, that they will be able to spend extended periods of time in the field. Moreover, marketplace realities cause filmmaking to be an inherently conservative force. Making a living by making films virtually insures that these works will follow the dictates of the major outlet for ethnofilm, television - a medium not known for its tolerance of experimentation. Having to fit your work into the mold of PBS' Nova or the Discovery channel will not aid in the development of new and "better" forms of ethnofilm.
Nichols' need to expand the limits of the genre to include work by people with no knowledge of anthropology is based upon his assumption that ethnographic film will never realize its potential if it is confined with the bounds of anthropology and judged by the scientific standards of academic anthropology. "If ethnographic film is measured against a context of justification developed in anthropology that these films may, arguably, overthrow by offering in Feyerabend's terms, a dream world from which we may discover features of the real (scientific) world we think we inhabit, then the possibility that we also need to discover a new context of justification must be entertained" (from The Ideology and The Image - 1981:250).
On page 65 Nichols invokes Heider's dubious notion that long takes and minimal editing makes a film more scientific as if anyone within anthropology took this suggestion to heart. I don't think Nichols realizes that while Heider along with Collier, Hockings and Rollwagon may be popularly read, there are a fair number of visual anthropologists who find the works positively embarrassing. Nichols uses them to characterize the field of ethnographic film perhaps because they are so easy to refute or because he is unaware of the work of their critics. All one has to do is browse articles in Visual Anthropology or Visual Anthropology Review to discover how infrequently these people are cited.
On page 66, Nichols states that one of his purposes is to discover whether or not ethnographic film can "withstand the fundamental challenge of usefulness..." On page 67 he argues that anthropology like other "discourses of sobriety...can and should alter the world itself." Ethnofilms not useful in the sense that little anthropological knowledge has any effect that can be measured. If one were to apply this challenge to documentary film or film studies, I think a similar conclusion would be reached. If one wants tangible results then making films, studying and writing about them hardly seems a reasonable choice. The documentary/ethnographic world of production and discussion is a tiny self-enclosed one consisting mainly of upper middle-class filmmakers and academics. Nichols betrays one of the underlying fallacies of academic leftists - the fantasy that being a radical scholar has some sort of real world consequence.
The section of the essay starting on page 69 - "Talking Heads..." suggests a dichotomy between the word oriented "scientific" producers of impersonal knowledge and the embodied personal "body" knowledge that he argues is somehow better. Nichols juxtaposes the overly intellectualized disembodied knowledge produced by anthropology with the implicitly superior embodied work of feminists, natives and the mysterious "other." Apparently Nichols thinks that anthropologists still present their work as "the official truth" and these alternative constructions are therefore in competition. I suppose that some older and conservative anthropologists still make these claims but it hardly represents the field of contemporary anthropology. The fallacy of Nichols' position is that it presents the films by women, natives, and others as an alternative to the old fashioned variety of ethnographic film. Why not simply recognize that representing other cultures can be accomplished in a variety of ways - the more approaches available the more complex the picture. Surely autobiographical or autoethnographic films are wonderful opportunities to see the "native's" world through her/his eyes. But why argue that they should replace the view of the outsider or that the outsider's view has no merit?
Nichols' disputes my argument about the role of the amateur anthropologist in ethnographic film [page 69 and also footnote 19]. He also disagrees with Rollwagon's notion that anthropology is the only academic discipline that provides an adequate framework for cross-cultural understanding. This is not the place to deal with this issue in detail. My argument is simply this if one is making an "ethnographic" film then it seems reasonable to ask that the maker know something about ethnography and anthropology.
A minor point - p. 70 Nichols uses a quote from Trinh T. Minh-ha that essentializes "other cultures" by suggesting that there are story-telling traditions somewhere that are experimental, and embodied. By not providing a concrete example of a culture in which this occurs, the statement is plain silly and impossible to refute or support.
Nichols' suggestion in "the Master's Narrative " [p. 71ff] about the need for an analysis of the conventions of representation, type, etc. of ethnographic film is a position I certainly support. I hope he actually undertakes such a study. I think that most ethnographic filmmakers slavish and unselfconsciously appropriate the conventions of documentary realism. In fact, ethnofilms' long term association with the documentary has severely limited filmmakers' ability of explore film's potentials for conveying ethnographic knowledge.
Nichols critiques the failure of ethnographic film to deal with "knowledge from the belly, from experience, and the body." I think he is correct but then ethnography is an intellectual pursuit that has all of those limitations. Did it ever claim to be anything else? Stoller and others are trying to develop and anthropology of the senses. I'm not convinced it will amount to very much. I'm more content with acknowledging the limits of ethnographic knowledge. Why does ethnography have to be all inclusive? I do not understand why Nichols feels ethnography should change to include this kind of knowledge. What will be gained?
On page 75 Nichols states that "Rather than dismissing ethnographic film for failing to fulfill (generally unspecified) criteria of anthropological validation based on a conception of anthropology as science and professional discipline, we might push forward, as Williams does, toward an ethnotopia that will not abolish experience, the body and knowledge from the belly but affirm it." This sentence contains the core of his argument in this essay and all of its flaws. He never explains who it is who is dismissing ethnographic film so I am at a loss to know the argument he implies but it sounds very much like a misreading of some of my early work. I have repeatedly critiqued ethnographic films for the failure to develop a theory, method, and practice of pictorial ethnography that would qualify a film to be seriously regarded as an ethnography. To me it seems a reasonable requirement of a film that is labeled ethnographic. Regarding the next phrase, if anthropology is not a kind of (a social) science then what is it? Nichols does not offer an alternative construction. Anthropology is a professional discipline like film studies or philosophy. So what? Again if anthropology should be considered something else other than a professional discipline Nichols should specify the alternative. He does not. He clearly means this characterization to be seen as negative attributes based partially upon his very limited conception of science and I guess his notion that these other filmmakers, that is, "women/other/natives" are somehow free of the restrictions of a "professional discipline" and can therefore produced something new and more worthwhile. The phrase "push forward" is a clear indication that Nichols subscribes to some sort of progressive notion that I find unconvincing. On page 76 he states that "Sometimes bodily experience exceeds intellectual understanding." When? Why? How can you possibly determine that? Why such an anti-intellectual stance? On the next page [77] Nichols cites Mulvey and how an eroticized world can support the subject's self image and "make a mockery of empirical objectivity." I thought objectivity was so discredited so long ago that it was hardly worth discussing. Again additional evidence of Nichols' outmoded conception of science.
Beginning on page 78 Nichols makes an argument that there is a shift in ethnography "from a social science model to a cultural studies and textual analysis paradigm." I disagree. The shift into an anti-positivist anthropology which some would argue is simply the broadening of the parameters of social science started long before there was a cultural studies. By and large, the cultural studies efforts are unknown to anthropologists until quite recently. From an anthropological perspective the cultural studies folk particularly those coming out of literary studies and art criticism discovered what anthropologists knew for some time and therefore have little new to offer. Most of these folk have a less than adequate understanding of what constitutes an ethnography. The idea that ethnography is only now dealing with textual analysis is simply false and displays a profound lack of knowledge of the history of anthropology. Regarding culture or at least cultural artifacts as text has been a major part of anthropology for a least fifty years. Moreover, at least since Dell Hymes' work in socio-linguistics, the limitations of textual analysis has been known. See, for example, Hymes' the ethnography of communication or any of his many sociolinguistic writings in the late 1960s for a statement of this position. Within anthropology, understanding the assumption that the "text" needs to be understood within the socio-cultural contexts of his production and use is such a commonplace point of view as to border on a cliché.
On page 80 Nichols suggests that there should be "a visual anthropology devoted to the interpretation of texts" because it "might raise from the anthropological unconscious questions regarding viewer and viewer response." I certainly agree that more attention needs to be paid to the audience of all pictorial communications. Hafsteinsson and Crawford's book on reception and anthropology is a start in this direction. I hardly think that the unconscious is necessary, a straightforward acknowledgment that film is communication should suffice. I am perplexed by Nichols' notion that devoting oneself to "an interpretation of texts" will logically lead to viewers. On the contrary all of the textual analyses of film I have read ignore viewers or fantasize an ideal viewer. Nichols fails to acknowledge that if an understanding of viewers is really important then it is necessary to do an ethnography of viewing.
Finally at the end of this section Nichols admits that a tradition exists "already represented, though often neglected, within sociology and anthropology that offers something of a bridge from paradigms lost to paradigms regained." I cannot understand why Nichols prefers to construct these straw men of bad science, bad anthropology, and dumb visual anthropology rather than utilizing a tradition that he acknowledges parallels what he is arguing for. Since he mentions none of these people by name and fails to cite a single source, one can only fantasize about the extent of his knowledge.
The remainder of the essay he continues to beat on the "lame and the halt" within ethnographic film and anthropology and valorize cultural studies. "Cultural studies, phenomenology, and Tyler's particularly evocative description of a transformative ethnography conceived and practice with social use-value foremost in mind refute the self/other opposition and its inevitable slide toward hierarchy in the service of the 'production of knowledge." p. 83. Because Nichols provides no concrete examples, it is impossible to really know what it is talking about. The cultural studies literature I am familiar with does none of what he claims it does. The suggestion that these elitist works written in a dense impenetrable prose have a social use-value or that they somehow refute the self/other strikes me as just plain silly. As far as I know the opposition of self and other is a pretty fundamental part of human consciousness that hardly seems likely to go away. Nichols repeatedly castigates the term "production of knowledge." Since he cites my writings I assume that he is being critical of my idea. So let me try to explain what I was trying to say in the article he cites. I was simply trying to make the point that knowledge is a cultural construction it is not found it is produced. Ethnographers don't find facts they generate information and knowledge in the act of inquiry. Again the underlying assumption behind that statement is that anthropology argues that it knows the truth which it does not.
Nichols is unfortunately all too representative of a group of amateur critics of anthropology (Rony, Trinh T. Minh-ha, etc.) who do not bother making a through examination of the anthropological literature before they critique the profession for sins that anthropologists have been self-critical about for decades.