I'm writing this as a response to bell hooks essay, which raises some important issues that pertain not only to literary discourse but to other media as well, of which i have an invested interest.
At the core of documentary film studies is the debate on how to move past the inherent problems that constitute the filmed ethnography, primarily the opposition between Self (the transference of the filmmaker's vision to the viewer) and Other (the subject). This debate has been informing documentary techniques for the past one hundred years. In response, some filmmakers have adopted a much more personal/reflexive approach. With Cinéma Verité, the director goes beyond mere observation to interact with her/his subject, exposing the limitations of the subjective eye/I. Recent "performative documentaries" (the central subject of Bill Nichols "Blurred Boundaries" or "Introduction to Documentary") have turned the lens inward to the actual performance of the filmmaker's own identity. In auto-ethnographies the subject is given the camera in order to record their own experience, however, the filmmaker still claims authorship through editing and presentation.
I agree with hooks that Cultural Studies is key to moving beyond these issues. Half the work of the text is executed by author and the other by the reader/viewer. The solution is to remove any and all "blindspots" so that the intentions behind the ethnographic text can be questioned less as a point of unfamiliar interest (gawking rather than seeing) and more of a harmonious engagement.
[see Agnés Varda's The Gleaners and I, a film that I believe is on the right path.)
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Any and all blindspots? Is this possible? I agree with your point about achieving some kind of mutual exchange between filmmaker and viewer (writer & reader, etc.), for most projects. Occasionally, an artists wants to create total chaos and confusion, but I suspect most documentary filmmakers hope for more direct communication. Right? Dr. L
I specialize in Blindspots : ) If I get nothing else out of a documentary I WILL get the opportunity to think of ways the "subject" has been sort of cropped for the picture. I think the question "What's missing from this picture?" says more about a group or a filmmaker than what is included.
I can't remember the film now, but I once saw a documentary on a small mining town. The camera might as well have been a supreme court judge and the audience its jury. The "mountain people" were gawked at as being sub-standard. Later, Stranger With a Camera (I can't figure out HTML tags, but italicize here!) tried to undo what the other documentaries had done, but it too seemed bias, only more positively so.
I wonder if a "decentered" ethnography could be legitimate to its purpose? Could something like Covino's "philosophy of composition" be beneficial to the field of ethnography? The way we see the world is after all entirely ambiguous. Who's idea was it to have filmmakers "interpret" other cultures for us? I think the auto-enthnographies that you mention Sean could be a great way to see "dialectic" in film. Having filmmakers, subjects, and audiences all circle around their own conclusions. The filmmaker seems to acknowledge 'I can't possibly film from their perspective' when he hands the camera over. The subjects seem to acknowledge 'I am only a PART of this culture' by their filming themselves and those around them. And the audience is able to see how complicated all these relationships can be while drawing conclusions from the film. Having all these components attempting to locate and relocate themselves seems to me a great way not to REMOVE blindspots, but to openly acknowledge their existence and their essential quality in society.
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