Macdougall Excerpts...

My brain doesn’t seem to be working too well with me, and even after reading the selections twice over, I’m still a bit hazy on it all, but I’m going to do my best to answer these questions…

What does it mean to create a film intended to be read like a text?
What are the strengths/weaknesses of this approach to filmmaking?
What is an alternative that MacDougall describes?

As for the first questions, I think, as far as ethnographic films go, to create a film intended to be read like a text, is to make a film good enough that those viewing it could study it as they would study a chapter from a text book. I think it needs to be almost multi-layered so that it can be dissected and looked at from all angles. The answers should not just be thrown into your face; there should be some thinking that follows watching the film. I get this feeling because on page 193, I found this quote “…in the work of such filmmakers as Godard, Makavejev, and Glauber Rocha have filmmakers attempted to create objects that exist as ‘texts’ to be plumbed by the viewer.” At first it made no sense to me until I found out the word plumbed according to dictionary.com can mean to examine closely or probe. I believe that’s what they mean with creating a film to be read like a text.

There are quite a few strengths and weaknesses that can go along with this approach to filmmaking. As far as strengths go, this allows “text” to be more accessible to others outside of the anthropological community. Movies have a way of reaching more people than books do; of course, this is probably because most of us have become too lazy to read a book, or when we do, too lazy to look up words we may not understand. With film, viewing something is a like a language we all understand. For the most part, we will see the same thing happening on the screen. With a film as text, it’s also much easier to go back and see if we have missed anything that may be important to whatever aspect we are studying. Having something on film also allows for easier comparisons between other films or even writings, it takes less time to watch a film than read an entire novel or someone’s findings allowing for more time for comparison. It also allows us to almost view something firsthand, or as close to firsthand as we can get without actually being there.

Of course, if used incorrectly, this approach can be very weak. If a video is edited incorrectly, someone may pick up the wrong idea from the “text”. Also, if there is someone speaking over the sounds coming from the film, you could miss something important or something can get translated wrong and give someone the wrong idea or impression about what is going on in a certain scene. We also need to realize we only see what the camera sees and do not get the entire picture of whatever is being studied. We also lose something by not actually being there, perhaps missing out on certain emotions, certain thoughts, or certain ideas that may occur while being right in the middle of whatever is being filmed.

I still however cannot find what MacDougall offers as an alternative. I think a lot of his excerpts here focus on subjectivity and different ways of filming documentaries. If anyone can help me find this, I’d be so happy. I did notice one thing though. He does however say that film will not replace the written word within anthropology. He says that it may help fill some of the blind spots, so perhaps his alternative was to use both, one as a main text and film as supportive.