Tim Asch is a well-known photographer, filmmaker, ethnographer, and a visual anthropologist. The main purpose of Tim Asch’s anthropological work was to “teach cultural anthropology to university undergraduates and to make the filmic materials accessible so that other scholars and teachers could make use of them in ways not imagined by him” (Ruby 1975, 115). With that being said, Asch was determined to do fieldwork (the process of living with people being studied, asking them questions, and surveying their environments and material possessions), and share his ideas, in order to develop the minds of future anthropologists and scholars. Throughout the years of his career, Asch “collaborated with anthropologists to produce more than 70 films that …show more content…
Immediately, as an anthropology major, I was able to tell that the intended audience for this film are students and scholars. Furthermore, I also had the opportunity of watching the film without the use of narration and for a moment I was confused and I was not really sure what Rouch was explaining. For this reason, Asch “never subscribed to the orthodoxy of ‘no narration.’ Before many ethnographic filmmakers had even embraced observational style, Asch realized that the problem with narrationless observational films about cultural behavior exotic to Western audiences was that viewers simply lacked the knowledge necessary to understand what they were seeing and. Without some assistance, were more likely to employ racist stereotypes” (Ruby 1975, 119). Therefore, both visual routine and the narrative, go hand in hand with helping the audience to understand what is happening in the film. Without the narration, audience members are quick to judge and become more ethnocentric. While viewing, Jean Rouch’s Les Maitres Fous (1955), I was also able to learn that Accra is a British colony, due to the displays of union jackets and the color of the flags held by the Army. The music in the film was also traditional and played a vital role throughout the film. As an anthropology major, one is being taught that films are used to communicate cultural ideas and perceptions. With regards to this, one has to become aware of the context and content being presented in a film, by analyzing and being observant of the filmmaker’s ideology, audience, and intent. In addition, the background of the filmmaker, ethics,
Film Noir, as Paul Schrader integrates in his essay ‘Notes on Film Noir,’ reflects a marked phase in the history of films denoting a peculiar style observed during that period. More specifically, Film Noir is defined by intricate qualities like tone and mood, rather than generic compositions, settings and presentation. Just as ‘genre’ categorizes films on the basis of common occurrences of iconographic elements in a certain way, ‘style’ acts as the paradox that exemplifies the generality and singularity at the same time, in Film Noir, through the notion of morality. In other words, Film Noir is a genre that exquisitely entwines theme and style, and henceforth sheds light on individual difference in perception of a common phenomenon. Pertaining
This is revealed in Mahoney’s Go Back To Where You Came From in which the central characters are forced to reassess their prejudices as they are exposed to new truths and insights on the harsh realities surrounding the experiences of refugees. In the opening introductory montage of the text, the protagonists, Raquel and Raye refer to African people as “bastards” and unnecessarily highlight their “blackness.” This derogatory language dehumanises African people and reflects a common Australian left-hand view of the time. Raye is initially intolerant of refugees when she antagonistically comments that she could have “shot the lot of them”. However, this perception later shows signs of gradual transformation, replaced by newfound cultural empathy with insight into the plight of refugees. This is evidenced in the scene where Raquel and Raye react to the violent imagery of anarchy, rape and death in Congo from the matriarch of the Masudi family, Maisara. Their reaction is captured with a medium shot that emphasises Raquel and Raye’s body language and close ups of Raye’s horrified, incredulous facial expression, portraying their shock and distress. Her proceeding statement ‘I had no idea it was so bad”, along with the reflective melodic music and her tears, work in conjunction with the camerawork to indicate that Raye was deeply moved by this discovery which provoked her sympathise
The film illuminates the life of the Wampanoag language and cultural meanings. How there had been threats posed to both since the times of European colonization, when the Wampanoag people had put up little resistance. The film is not a recap of the Wampanoag
Banning, L. (Producer), Milos, F. (Director) (1996). Research Methods for the Social Sciences. [Film]. (Available from Horizon Film and Video, Austin, TX)
The 52 minutes documentary of Haitian Vodou ceremony reflects her interest is anthropology. The film captures the rituals of Rada, Petro and Congo cults, in which the deities known as Ioa, take possession of their devotees. The use of fade-in transition between scenes, slow-motion editing, as well as panning and close-up following the dancer’s movement in hand-held camera, emphasizes the mystique
The story "Maus" is written in a rather unconventional way because it is written in a graphical novel format. This format tends to grasp the attention of those from a younger audience. However, since the story is about the Holocaust many critics think that it may have not been written in the right format. The author Art Spiegelman wrote it in this form not to make light of the situation but also not to make it seem like any other kind of Holocaust format. Which is sometimes considered boring and the viewers it draws attention too are those of an older age.
Indeed, much of Malidoma’s purpose is to allow the audience to enter temporarily the realm of his culture in order to educate any outsider, specifically the Westerner, of the importance in the preservation of his culture as well as all indigenous cultures. He accomplishes this task by trying to note the oppression he felt in a Jesuit missionary and reveal aspects of his tribal life by delving into his emotions during initiation, in a captivating story and a warm voice.
Anthropology is the study of the development of humankind within their different cultures. When one looks inside a culture, they can see the true aspects and meanings behind a societies behavior and traits. By following the principle that is cultural relativism, one can also determine that no culture truly surpasses another culture, and that each society has key differences that are important to its culture and location. This is a method that can also be seen in many intriguing films from this semester, one in particular being The Emerald Forest. Throughout this essay, this film will be analyzed around one character who greatly represents what it means to truly immerse oneself into a different culture to gain a new perspective, and many key terms in anthropology will be explored through 4 different films from the semester.
Hewitt, Leah D. “Salubrious Scandals/Effective Provocations: Identity Politics Surrounding Lacombe Lucien,” South Central Review, Vol. 17, No. 3, Cinema Engage: Activist Filmmaking in French and Francophone Contexts, John Hopkins University Press, (Autumn 2000), pp. 71-85
It is evident that Western Cultural values are diffused worldwide through the movie industry. The films are controlled by western funding and reflect Western perspectives vividly. Between the lines in the scripts, filmgoers are urged to link the Western culture and “whiteness” with positive-hence legitimate-values and accept whites dominant position. Film is a powerful medium, thus movies were created with emotional designs on the individual audience in order to control his or her mind hence Hollywood serve as the functional means for establishing the concept of white supremacy. Hollywood movies are therefore the main instruments for establishing the whit supremacy mind-set that automatically triggers the message that whites are far superior than any other race. Ideological hegemony theorizes the way in which relationships of domination and exploitation are embedded in the dominant ideas of society. To the extent that dominant ideas are internalized, they induce consent to these relationships on the part of the dominated and exploited. Blood Diamond and In the Heat of the Night are two distinct movies where the movie makers present us with two different ideological concepts, Both films portrayed the white and non white consciousness. Blood Diamond they attacked their own race as In the Heat of the Night the whites attacked the non whites . Blood Diamond showed this in a more violent way then In the Heat of the Night did. The conscious of both films were power and authority. The blacks in each of these films are seen as secondary characters which is usually a way of promoting the supremacy of whites . The movie Blood Diamond discusses the complexity of conflicts with bringing western group intt Sierra Leone. This concept also trie...
The genius of the film is that it synthesizes a multitude of cultural and musical elements and still manages to function rhetorically on separate but parallel levels of communication. The fundamental message for Jamaican audiences was to document, authenticate, and value the Jamaican reality. As Henzel notes in his running commentary, a special feature of the DVD, Jamaicans cheered the film's opening scenes wildly, simply because they recognized themselves and their world in a powerful global medium that had paid them no mind until then. "There is no thrill in moviedom like people seeing themselves on the screen for the first time." The experience and the legacy of colonialism accustoms people who suffer it to literature and film that depicts the lives and perspectives of the colonizers, not the colonized. As Jamaica Kincaid explains in a memoir of a Carribean childhood, all of her reading was from books set in England. Her land and its people were not worthy of literary attention. While finally getting such cinematic attention is a joyful, liberating, and affirming interaction for the Jamaican audience, it has an ironic dimension too in that the downpressed are joyous because at last they see themselves if not through the downpressor's lens, at least on his screen.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon looks at the effects of both racism and the process of colonization on the colonized. Even though Fanon’s work targets a French audience, it holds a universal message which is significant to anyone who is exposed to racism and/or colonialism whether they are the oppressor or the oppressed. While Black Skins, White Masks was written over half a century ago, is Fanon’s work still relevant today? In this short paper I will look at some of the themes of racism, colonization and the complex relationships they create among various groups as well as the inner turmoil which may be created within the subjugated group.
In the French film entitled Lumumba, director Raoul Peck recreates the revolutionary struggle of Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected Prime Minister of The Congolese Republic. In the movie, we do not see much of the independence struggle against the Belgian government, but we begin to see the reconstruction of the African state in African hands. While no one ever claimed that decolonization was easy, maybe this particular example can best be explained by Fanon’s simplified little quip “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. ” In this paper, I will seek to locate where this post-colonial violence is located in discourses regarding race, class and gender. Particularly, I will look at the representations of race and class, and the lack of the representation of gender, in order to draw conclusions about the nature of representation and the effects this has on anti-colonial film.
This essay will analyze and critique Michel Foucault’s (1984) essay The Use of Pleasure in order to reveal certain internal weaknesses it contains and propose modifications that would strengthen his reading of sexuality as a domain of moral self-formation. In order to do so, it will present a threefold critique of his work. Firstly, it will argue that that his focus on solely the metric of pleasure divorced from its political manifestations underemphasizes state power as a structuring principle of sexuality. Secondly, it will posit that his attention to classical morality privileges written works by male elites and fails to account for the subtexts that would demonstrate other forms of morality. Finally, it will argue that the nature of actors’ resistance to moral codes, explicated through Butler’s concept of iterability and signification, is an important factor that should also be considered. As a result of this critique, this essay