Picturing Culture: Exploration of Film and Anthropology

Ruby, Jay. (2000). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Exposing Yourself: Reflexivity, Anthropology and Film (pp. 151-180).

Ruby states that reflexivity is a multifaceted concept that has been used in many ways for different purposes and to be reflexive in a work of anthropology is "to insist that anthropologists systematically and rigorously reveal their methods and themselves as the instrument of data generation and reflect upon how the medium through which they transmit their work predisposes readers/viewers to construct the meaning of the work in certain ways" (p. 152). Thus, to him, reflexivity means primarily revealing producer and process, whereby is explored strictly from an anthrologist's point of view.

While exploring reflexivity in anthropological cinema, Ruby points out Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch, 1961) and A Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov) as examples of anthropological cinema in that Chronicle combined personal and participatory concerns with revealing the process, which was an emphasis of A Man with a Movie Camera.

Reflexivity in Ruby's own term is a anthropologist's research practice framed in a new paradigm that explores knowledge production process. This perspective becomes explicit in his experience with Hubert Smith, a documentary filmmaker who attempted to make a reflexive documentary about Mayan culture. Ruby insisted on depicting the director's conversations with the anthropologist involved in the project as well as meetings with the consulting panel list.

Criticizing both art and science in that art (in this case, film) is perceived as an interpretation of reality and science as a mirror of reality, Ruby asks for a new theory of pictorial communication suitable for a visual anthrology. (This new theory could involve the researched's participation...I think.)

Ruby (Picturing Culture, p. 186): “Postmodern critics like George Marcus and James Clifford wish to add another goal—to make viewers aware of the constructed and tentative nature of anthropological knowledge. This admonition logically leads us into a discussion of reflexivity…Martinez (1992) has argued that these two goals should be linked. If a film is reflexively open, less authoritative, and multivocal, viewers may be more able to overcome their ethnocentric tendencies and gain some empathetic feelings for the people portrayed in the film.” –In this argument, an anthropoligist’s reflexivity reflected in an ethnographic film should achieve an ultimate goal of anthropology, which is overcoming ethnocentric tendencies among audiences and gaining empathy for people in the people.

Concerning cooperatively produced and subject-generated films, Ruby writes, “From an anthropological perspective, they offer the possibility of perceiving the world from the viewpoint of people who offer the possibility of perceiving the world from the viewpoint of people who lead lives that are different from those traditionally in control of the means of imaging the world. Subject-generated films are a tool used by some disenfranchised people in their efforts to negotiate a new cultural identity. For other indigenous and minority producers, among movies and television is a way into the profits and power of the established order. These films challenge some basic assumptions about the authorship of ethnographic films and potentially offer insight into the importance of culture in the construction of a film. This shift in authority has the potential to permanently alter ethnographic film practice” (p.196)

As examples of this practice, Ruby points out Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North and the cine-train project of Alexander Medvedkin, Dziga Vertov and others who produced films about local problems with the assistance of local political powers in the twenties and the early thirties in the Soviet Union. Another example mentioned by Ruby is the British film Housing Problems (1935, Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton), in which people speak for themselves on the screen. However, Ruby states that cooperative and subject-generated films were generally ignored until the 1960s.
As a limitation of cooperative filmmaking, Ruby argues that while a multivocal approach to the documentary empower subjects, the filmmaker still holds the ethical and intellectual responsibility for the film for reasons—lack of subjects’ editorial authorship and lack of an understanding of potential problems, etc.

As Ruby points out, a shared authority in cooperative, collaborative and community-based films brings the subject’s view of themselves to the surface and alienates the journalistic objectivity based on positivism. However, he takes a note from Sol Worth, who disputed the Challenge for Change program while writing an unpublished version of a review of You Are on Indian Land. Worth (1972, A Review of You Are on Indian Land, Draft of a review later published in a revised form in the American Anthropologist, 74 (4), 1029-31) writes, “Teaching others to make and use film was essentially teaching white middle-class values of how information films brought about gradual and democratic change. You Are on Indian Land is a perfect example of a professional white liberal film made in “consultation” with Indians.”—I AM NOT SURE AT THIS POINT ABOUT WHO MADE THE DOCUMENTARY.

Ruby asserts that sharing authority in filmmaking is difficult because collaboration requires the participants to have certain technical, intellectual and cultural parity. Thus he raises the question: if the participants are knowledgeable enough, why would they need outsiders to collaborate?