ANTH 233 Ethnographic Studies
Winter 2019
I acknowledge that St FX is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
Feb. 25, 28, Mar. 4, 7: Ways of seeing: Still and moving ethnographic representations, reflexivity, debate and voice
Case study of “First Contact”
What
are the good and bad aspects of the film? How are viewers manipulated
by various techniques? What is the debate between Jay Ruby, James Roy
MacBean and Bob Connolly about? What do we learn about the film, and
about the difficulties of ethically making films, from the article by
Henry and Vávrová?
WATCH: Connolly, Bob and Robin Anderson. 1983. First Contact. Documentary Educational Resources, DVD.
READ: MacBean, James Roy. 1994. “Degrees of
Otherness: A Close Reading of First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbors and
Black Harvest.” Visual Anthropology Review 10(2): 55-70. Anthrosource.
Concentrate on the review of First Contact, pp. 55-61.
Ruby, Jay. 1995. “Letter to the Editor.” Visual Anthropology Review.11(1): 143.
MacBean, James Roy. 1995. “Ongoing Contact: A Reply to Jay Ruby. Visual Anthropology Review 11(2): 114-116.
Connolly, Bob. 1995. “Reply to James Roy Macbean and Jay Ruby.” Visual Anthropology Review. 12(1): 98-101.
Henry, Rosita and Daniela Vávrová. 2016. “An Extraordinary
Wedding: Some Reflections on the Ethics and Aesthetics of Authorial
Strategies in Ethnographic Filmmaking.” Anthrovision, Vaneasa
Online Journal. 4(1)
https://journals.openedition.org/anthrovision/2237.
Watch First Contact
- make a note of scenes you found striking; think about the ideas
about photographs that we discussed with respect to the Lutz and
Collins article, as well as the ideas about ethnography that we have
been thinking about through the course.
How are videos constructed and how are they received?
- MacBean and Ruby comment on how First Contact was put together as a film
- MacBean focuses on missing information and
is concerned about how this, along with a focus on the impact of the
Leahy’s technology, may send a racist message
- Ruby is concerned about how the viewer is manipulated by certain filmic techniques
- focusing on how the video was put together
by the film makers, think about what messages you think they were
trying to send
- Connolly describes certain
filmic techniques that he felt were necessary to create a narrative
that an audience could understand; he draws distinctions between the
book he and Anderson wrote, and the films they made.
- who are the intended viewers of First Contact?
- do we need to understand (and critique) the process by which a film was made in order to understand the message responsibly?
- how much responsibility belongs to the film maker, and how much to the audience?
Henry and Vavrova
- what do we learn from this about the pressures and techniques of taking footage?
- where the camera is located
- how many people are involved in filming and sound
- how many cameras, to get different angles
- proficiency of filmographer
- what do we learn about the pressures and techniques of editing footage into a film?
- who is the audience (and therefore what do they know, what do they want to see)
- how is the message/narrative developed? -
from the subjects? From the footage? From a prior script?
- what is cinéma vérité and who is Jean Rouch?
- how does their description of how the film came to be shot and
edited relate to the ideas of ethnography presented at the beginning of
the course?