Ethnography and Ethnographic Film: From Flaherty to Asch and After

Writing Media Culture: Representation and Experience in Media Ethnography

“…Interestingly, as Marks (1995) has pointed out, during the same years (1913–1922) that anthropology was uncomfortably but nevertheless productively transmutating from a “branch of the natural sciences” into “a humanistic practice that attempted to understand unfamiliar societies by discovering and representing the principles on which they were organized” (p. 340), documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty was working with the Inuit on Nanook of the North . Marks asserts that “(i)n its intent, its methodology, and its rhetorical conventions, Flaherty’s film was a counterpart to Malinowski’s principle” (p. 340).…”

“…Within this genre of nonfiction film, the collaborations of Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch are of special interest. Of Asch’s work, Marks (1995) writes, “Like Flaherty’s Nanook of the North in its time, Timothy Asch’s film The Ax Fight stands Janus‐like between these periods, simultaneously embodying the legacy of Flaherty while prefiguring the more self‐conscious and experimental modes of ethnographic filmmaking to come.” (p. 339). However, although Asch was commissioned by anthropologist Chagnon to serve as his filmmaker/data collector, and Asch did operate the camera for and edited The Ax Fight , the film is most often associated with Chagnon’s vision of the Yanomamo, not Asch’s.…”

“…Indeed, even if the storyteller role was veiled in much early ethnography due to the absence of anthropologists in their own monographs, the release of Malinowski's (1967) diary served to punctuate this point, sweeping aside once and for all the notion that the cool observer of cultural practice and objective collector of data could unproblematically articulate ''the native's point of view.'' Interestingly, as Marks (1995) has pointed out, during the same years (1913)(1914)(1915)(1916)(1917)(1918)(1919)(1920)(1921)(1922) that anthropology was uncomfortably but nevertheless productively transmutating from a ''branch of the natural sciences'' into ''a humanistic practice that attempted to understand unfamiliar societies by discovering and representing the principles on which they were organized'' (p. 340), documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty was working with the Inuit on Nanook of the North. Marks asserts that ''(i)n its intent, its methodology, and its rhetorical conventions, Flaherty's film was a counterpart to Malinowski's principle'' (p. 340).…”

“…Within this genre of nonfiction film, the collaborations of Napoleon Chagnon and Timothy Asch are of special interest. Of Asch's work, Marks (1995) writes, ''Like Flaherty's Nanook of the North in its time, Timothy Asch's film The Ax Fight stands Janus-like between these periods, simultaneously embodying the legacy of Flaherty while prefiguring the more self-conscious and experimental modes of ethnographic filmmaking to come.'' (p. 339).…”

An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object

“…In fact, visual technologies were given an important role in ethnographic research from quite early on (Marks 1995;Rony 1996). Just as the Lumière brothers unveiled their crowd-pleasing filmic invention in the 1890s, scientists and naturalists (protoanthropologists) were using that same equipment on ethnographic excursions to Europe's Oceanic "other" as well as in internationally attended exhibits of Europe's African "others" presented right in the middle of Paris-and all before the 20th century (Grimshaw 2001).…”