Film as Cultural Artifact

Religious Criticism of World Cinema

Mathew P. John, Matthew John, Gundelina Velazco

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781506421698
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506421704
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Histoire et critique du cinéma

Film is popularly described as a mirror of culture. It plays a pivotal role in facilitating intercultural dialogue in our global village. World cinema helps us understand and appreciate each others cultural identity, and promotes harmony across different cultures in our pluralistic society. It introduces us to the life of the other in an entertaining yet engaging fashion, creating cultural bridges that foster a sense of unity in the midst of our diversity.

This book argues that cultural anthropology and theology offer two distinct, yet intrinsically connected theoretical frameworks to formulate a more holistic reading of religion from world cinema. It proposes an integrated methodology for religious criticism of film in which we look at religion as a subsystem of culture and observe how religious experiences depicted on the screen are mediated through the personal bias of the auteur and the context in which the film is produced. It thus creates a renewed appreciation for the religious diversity in our world by providing a new way of observing and interpreting ethnographic information from world cinema.

1

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Ethnographic Films

It is generally believed that an aboriginal kangaroo dance and rain ceremony, shot by Baldwin Spencer on April 2, 1901, was the first ethnographic film ever recorded. However, the art of ethnographic filmmaking was first celebrated when Robert Flaherty released Nanook of the North in 1922. This feature-length documentary portrayed the life of an individual, Nanook, in his cultural setting, where the ethnographic knowledge unfolded through a dramatic narrative. Ironically, many scenes that were considered to be authentic cultural depictions were staged for the camera and shot on the set because of the practical difficulties in shooting on location. The film was widely discussed for “its authenticity, its fakery, its romanticism” (MacDougall 1998: 103).

Ethnographers tend to prefer the apparent realism of documentary films to the “fictitious” narratives constructed by feature films. The world represented by a documentary film is presumably the “real world” around us, though the overlap of the real and fictive might be stronger than suggested. In documentary films, reality is a mechanical reproduction of the real world, where the subjects and their cultural behavior are depicted as they are. It has to be recognized, however, that any effort to create an ethnographic present is fictional and often pretentious, according to the postulates of postmodern anthropology. “Documentary film cannot help participating in the codes and conventions of fictional cinema, even as it signals its genre differences,” note Devereaux and Hillman. “Documentary film takes place within the (maternal) body of fictional cinema, which is itself involved in a dance with European conventions of how to tell stories and what stories are there to tell” (Devereaux and Hillman 1995: 330).

Peter Crawford (1992) suggests “observational cinema,” a blend of documentary and fictional cinema, as a better reflection of ethnographic film, on account of its emphasis on objectivity, neutrality, and transparency. In the “observational” style of filmmaking, the filmmakers make themselves socially invisible to attribute ethnographic authority to the narrative. The subjects assume a noninteractive stance with the viewers or the filmmakers. The style observes “life as it is and leaves the interpretation of its codes open to the viewers.” Based on this definition, films such as The Box (2004), Schoolscapes (2007), Sheep Rushes (2007), and High Trail (2007) are considered “ethnographic” by virtue of their subject matter. Heider in the same vein identifies Satyajit Ray’s narrative feature-film series the Apu Trilogy—Pather Panjali (1955), The Unvanquished (1956), and The World of Apu (1959)—as “masterpieces of what might be called ethnographic fiction” (2006: 27).

The role of narrative feature film as a medium of cultural representation has been a highly stigmatized and controversial topic in the field of visual anthropology. Heider writes that “in some sense one could argue that all films are ‘ethnographic’: they are about people” (2006: 4). Jay Ruby, in contrast, vehemently opposed “the tendency on the part of some anthropologists to equate virtually any film about people with ethnography,” and considered it “a serious impediment to the development of a social scientific means of visual communication” (1975: 105). At the same time, he also believes that film “as a medium and technology of communication has the potential for the communication of scientific statements.” The filmmaker’s objective is to present a believable cultural framework for the diegetic world of the film, whereas an anthropologist focuses on exploration of the world through the camera. Though “all films may be potentially useful to anthropologists,” not all of them can be considered ethnographic in the traditional sense. An ethnographic film should be subjected to the same criteria for scientific examination that are applied to other ethnographic documentations, and the filmmakers are obliged to maintain anthropological precision in the production process.

According to Ruby (1975), for an ethnographic film to be considered an authentic form of cultural representation, it must meet the following criteria:

• The primary concern of the work should be the description of a whole culture or some definable element of a culture. So the exclusive purpose of an ethnographic film is the generation of ethnographic knowledge, not an artistic exploration of the culture.
• An ethnographic work must be informed by “an implicit or explicit theory of culture, which causes the statements within the work to be organized in a particular way” (Ruby 1975: 107). The selection of events for filming, the method of filming, and the editing of the images will reflect the theory adopted by the filmmaker.
• An ethnographic film must also reveal the methodology used in collecting, analyzing, and organizing the data. The methodology of the filmmaker marks an important difference between film as an artistic medium to explore culture and film as a scientific tool for the study of culture.
• Any ethnographic work must employ a distinctive lexicon, which Ruby describes as an “anthropological argot.” Anthropologists are trained to employ the linguistic codes of the observed culture, which enables them to distinguish between works of ethnography and works with ethnographic intent.

The creators of ethnographic films, in Ruby’s opinion, have so far not developed a method for presenting images in the framework of a code or argot. Until they develop these codes, their products can be considered films about anthropology, not “anthropological films.” That being said, Ruby agrees to the idea that an anthropologist has the liberty to examine any film for ethnographic information, assuming that it preserves information of the past from historical events or changing social conditions of the present. A strong caution should be exercised against the blind acceptance of feature films as a means for communicating ethnography, of course, but all films have research utility in anthropological education.

MacDougall, in the same vein, describes “modern” ethnographic films as open-ended “texts” in that they incorporate and juxtapose multiple perspectives of the researcher, informants, and subjects (MacDougall 1998). Therefore researchers must possess the aesthetic sensibilities of a filmmaker and the scientific mind of an anthropologist. They should be disciplined to think within the bounds of a theoretical framework while also allowing a free flow of creative imagination to construct the diegetic world.

Carl Heider, in his classic book Ethnographic Film, lists sixteen qualitative scales to measure the “ethnographicness” of a film (Heider 2006):

1. Appropriateness of sound. The sound track may involve music, natural sound, narration, etc., but should be used only to reinforce the information provided by the visual.
2. Narration. Narration should not be used to carry a story line; rather it should be sparse and closely related to the visual.
3. Ethnographic basis. The film should be a product of scientific ethnographic research, which calls for the active involvement of an ethnographer.
4. Explicit theory. The film should incorporate anthropological theories in the analysis of social organization.
5. Relation to printed materials. The film should be supplemented with written ethnographic materials.
6. Voice. Though many points of view may be used to analyze the situation, it should remain as objective as possible.
7. Behavioral contextualism. The audience may pick up what they choose from the visuals and interpret that information their own way. So there should be a great emphasis on the context of behavior to exploit the capacity of film to picture the whole.
8. Physical contextualization. The film should depict where the action really takes place.
9. Reflexivity. The film should acknowledge the presence of the ethnographers and filmmakers in the scene.
10. Whole acts. Selection of shots should be done so as to present the important features of an act, i.e., beginning, middle, and climax.
11. Narrative stories. The film should maintain continuity for the shots, following its storyline.
12. Whole bodies. Though focusing on specific part of the body can intensify the purpose, the use of close-ups should be generally avoided.
13. Whole interactions. Personal interactions in ethnographic films are generally low, and the emphasis should be more on people doing physical activities.
14. Whole people. It is recommended to focus on whole people (individuals) rather than faceless masses.
15. Distortion in the filmmaking process. It has to be recognized that the film is a subjective medium, and it distorts, alters or select images of reality in many ways. A distortion of behavior could be inadvertent, where the presence of a camera makes a natural difference in the response of the people or intentional distortion of behavior that involves triggering or staging a behavior or interrupting a behavior for a better camera shot.
16. Culture change made explicit. An effort to create an ethnographic “present” in a film is purely fictional, because culture is evolving continuously.

Today postmodern theoreticians have opened up new ways of looking at ethnography as a “thick description” of culture, guided by the implicit narrative structure of a story. A narrative feature film, therefore, can function as a cultural document that provides valuable ethnographic information of its context. In other words, all films can be considered a “datum of culture” from which ethnographic data can be extracted and analyzed, even when the film in itself may not be categorized as an ethnographic film.

2

Appendix 2

Appendix 2

Christ Figures in Film

A Christ figure is essentially an “allegory [that] follows the main thread of the Christ story, while disguising it through a surface narrative. . . . The figure is strong enough to exist by itself, but points to a meaning far beyond this existence for its ultimate truth” (Holloway 1977: 187). Christ figures can be disguised as women, clowns, or even animals (Au Hazard Balthazar 1966). They need not always be religious themselves, yet they draw on the “universal cultural symbolic value of the Jesus persona” (Hurley 1982:66).

Baugh (1997) describes Christ figures as “cinematographic foils of Jesus,” which can be unearthed by reading the “sacred subtexts” embedded within a film narrative. Most recognizable Christ figures sacrifice themselves in order to save others. Two readily recognizable Christ figures are John Coffey in Green Mile (1999) and Babette in Babette’s Feast (1987). John Coffey is an innocent prisoner on death row, convicted of a crime he did not commit. He heals the sick, awakens the dead, and even shares Jesus Christ’s initials (JC). Babette demonstrates how renunciation and indulgence can coexist in our lives, as in the life of Jesus, a Nazirite monk who was often accused of being a winebibber. She is the epitome of sacrificial giving that gives till the giver becomes exhausted and extinguished. Other commonly cited examples of films with Christ figures are Shane (1953), Dead Man Walking (1995), Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

Baugh even pushes the argument further and attributes revelatory powers to Christ figures. “The person and the situation of the Christ figure can provide new understanding of who and how Christ is,” argues Baugh. “Jesus himself is revealed anew in the Christ figure” (1997: 112). Whatever we learn from the Christ figure in a film is considered a new revelation of Christ.

The search for Christ figures has been criticized as showing “either the banality of the category itself or the desperation of theologians to find connections with modern culture” (Pope 2005: 174). According to Marsh, “The quest for Christ figures in literature and film is a tired (and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Seeing the Unseen
• Theological Criticism of Film
• Cultural Exegesis of Film
• The World of World Cinema
• The Elements Trilogy
• Gallery
• Touching the Screen
• Crisis of Faith
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Film Index