Epistemology and Ethnographic Reality: A Trobriand Island Case Study

According to the French film critic, Andre Bazin, the invention of cinema, as well as other recording instruments such as the phonograph, perpetuated the 19th-century "myth" that reality the events of the world around us-could be captured and reproduced by means of a mechanical device. In fact, the history of film technology can be viewed as a continuous effort to make this original "myth" an actuality. In the study of film esthetics (by critics such as Bazin and Christian Metz) can be seen, however, the equally continuous struggle to come to terms with the possible distortions created by the camera lens. The tradition of realism in cinema throughout the 20th century has emerged time and again, taking many different forms. But each reemergence has been associated with specific theoretical premises concerning the mode and meaning of filmic representations. Curiously, yet understandably, ethnographic films have not been subject to the same philosophical and methodological scrutiny with respect to the representation and/or the construction of reality. The very premises of the ethnographic method appear to obviate the problem of representing and/or constructing filmic reality. Too often, however, these assumptions reduce reality to something like getting the "correct" ethnographic facts and focusing the camera in the "right" place. In many cases when these two criteria are fulfilled, the narration in the film then imposes an interpretation which has the authority of "truth," but which in fact may be the filmmaker's perception of "truth." Such interpretations can be found in classic films, such as the "survival" theme in The Hunters (John Marshall 1956) and the "death" theme in Dead Birds (Robert Gardner 1961). Both Gardner and Marshall, each in his own way, created a theme and used it as the central focus of his film, In The Hunters, the commentary and the editing present the Bushmen as victims of a barren, harsh physical environment (see Heider's discussion 1976:31-32). The narration continually tells the audience what the hunters are thinking as they track a giraffe (whose own thoug ts are also conveyed to the audience). The troubled thoughts of hunters and hunted reenforce the already overstated emphasis on hardship and the never-ending search for food. (The more recent ethnographic work of Richard Lee and others effectively destroys the "survival" theme.) Similarly, Gardner organized his film on the Dani of West Irian around a Dani myth which in the film functions as the significant principle in the Dani cosmology. According to Heider (1972; 1976:33), however (who was part of the original film expedition), the Dani do not perceive death in the philosophical way presented in the film. The major themes in both films are the result of the filmmakers' perceptions of reality, but they exist in the films as ethnographic "truth." Through a commentary that "speaks" for the subjects, or in the process of editing, or simply by focusing the camera in a particular way, a filmmaker's assumptions of reality become incorporated into the finished presentation. Obviously the problem of reality is not new to ethnographic films. But too often questions of reality are debated around the issue of the reliability or unreliability of ethnographic facts (see, e.g., Heider 1976:11-15). The problem, I suggest, is much broader and demands the recognition that theories of filmic reality are not only the concern of cinema filmmakers and critics. I argue that ethnographic filmmakers must consider seriously their own epistemologies regarding filmic reality. Epistemologies, either explicitly or implicitly defined, exist in ethnographic films just as particular epistemologies underlie the structure of written ethnographic texts. In written texts, however, we have syntactical conventions that cue the reader into observing the author's formulations as apart from other realities. Further, we write within a historical tradition of epistemologically constructed models. In the conventions of filmmak-