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Television and Anthropology and the Anthropology of Television 5th International Festival of Ethnographic Film University of Kent 1996 The Challenge of Television for Anthropology Jean Lydall In this talk I want to address the question of how I, as an anthropologist, responded to the challenge of making an anthropological film for television. As I experienced it, television presents anthropologists with a double challenge. Firstly, the challenge of film itself which demands that anthropologists find ways other than writing and lecturing for transmitting anthropological knowledge. Secondly, the challenge of how to make this knowledge interesting, attention holding, and understandable for a general, non-anthropological audience. Hamar in Southern Ethiopia has been my field of research since 1970, and it was here in 1989 that Joanna Head and I made our first film together, "The Women Who Smile". In 1990, we made a second film, "Two Girls Go Hunting", about the weddings of two girls featured in the first film. And in 1993 we produced a third film, "Our Way of Loving", about the subsequent lives of one of these two girls, her husband and mother-in-law. When we came to make the first of these films, Joanna and I were both novices in the sense that, although we had both been involved in the making of other people's films, neither of us had been fully responsible for making her own film before. Joanna, having worked in television for eight years, was acquainted with various documentary film styles, especially that of Chris Curling with whom she had worked extensively. For my part, I had helped my husband, Ivo Strecker, make films in Hamar in 1982/83, and was strongly influenced by that experience and by Ivo's approach. I was happy to work in collaboration with Joanna. I could rely on her expertise as a documentary filmmaker, just as she relied on mine as an anthropologist who had done extensive field work in Hamar. The films were a product not only of Joanna and my collaboration, but also that of the film crew and editor, and most of all that of the people of Dambaiti who allowed us to film them. I will not attempt to disentangle our different contributions to the films but will concentrate on clarifying my own approach to making the films. When, in 1988, Chris Curling invited me to make a film on Hamar women, I was already familiar with other anthropological films dealing with the Hamar and neighbouring peoples. To begin with, I knew the film "Rivers of Sand" which Robert Gardner had filmed in Hamar in 1971, after Ivo Strecker and I had completed our first seven months fieldwork there. For this film Ivo helped Gardner during the filming, and I helped afterwards by doing translations. Both Ivo and I were very dissatisfied with the film Gardner later produced. Although it was constructed around an interview that Ivo had arranged with a Hamar woman, the film was edited in such a way as to trivialize Hamar gender relations, presenting men as vain indolent oppressors and women as meek overworked servants. Now I had been invited to make a film, I took this as an opportunity to redress Gardner’s presentation of Hamar women and Hamar gender relations. But how was I going to do this? What kind of knowledge and understanding, 1 by means of what format, could be transmitted to a TV audience? How had other anthropologists responded to such questions? One solution I was acquainted with was the "lecture style" typical of the "Disappearing World Series" and exemplified above all in the Mursi and Kwegu films, made by David Turton and Leslie Woodhead. This solution involved using a great deal of "off camera" commentary to explain the scenes and events filmed. Turton provided a running anthropological analysis while another commentator provided additional factual information. The films were rather like illustrated lectures, the anthropological knowledge and understanding of the anthropologist being transmitted by way of the commentary. What I appreciated about this lecture style was the recognition of the intelligence of the TV viewers; David Turton explained complex social processes, as he would have done to his university students, except that he avoided any jargon which only anthropology students could be expected to understand. I found it difficult, however, to view the films from any other point of view than that offered by Turton. I decided I didn't want to give a lecture when I had the opportunity of having the subjects of my film explain things themselves in their own way. One of the great things about sync sound film is that it lets the viewers get to know others whom they could otherwise never meet, and get to hear what they think and feel. Ivo and I had invited our great Hamar friend and teacher, Baldambe, to accompany us to Addis Ababa and Europe on several occasions. A few other Hamar men also came with us to Addis. Our friends and colleagues enjoyed meeting these men and talking with them about Hamar. Ivo and I were kept busy relaying questions and translating responses. But it was never feasible to invite any of my women friends to visit Europe or even Addis Ababa because they were always too tied up at home with their children and fields. Now, I had the rare chance of introducing my Hamar women friends to a non-Hamar audience and have them speak about themselves and their lives, much in the way Baldambe and the other Hamar men had done. In contrast to the lecture style was that adopted by David and Judith MacDougall in their Jie and Turkana films. In these films the MacDougalls deliberately did not use "off camera" commentary. In stead any commentary they had was provided "on camera" by the subjects of the film. In conversation with Anna Grimshaw and Nikos Papastergiadis, David commented that "A Wife Among Wives is driven by our enquiry, so we're more in control from the start. We're trying to explore certain abstract concepts of polygamy and how co-wives relate to each other, and we can more or less lead that process. In The Wedding Camels something was happening and it would go on without us. We had to do the best we could to make sense of it." (p.37 of Conversations with anthropological filmmakers: David, produced by Anna Grimshaw and Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Manchester, Prickly Pear Press, 1995) Crucial to the 'unprivileged‘ camera style' adopted by the MacDougalls was that the filmmakers were also the researchers and the film crew all in one. Thus they could film the scenes, persons and events in such a way as to make it clear that the film was the result of an encounter between film maker and subject, and that in this encounter the film makers' knowledge was circumscribed. The films bring the viewers very close to people, scenes and events, and allow them considerable room to make their own discoveries and reach their own conclusions. However, the viewers have to be highly motivated and pay close attention to what they see and hear. The MacDougalls did not make their films for a TV audience, and as far as I know only a few TV stations have broadcast them, probably because the films require more effort on the part of the viewers than normally expected. 2 A style of film that falls between the lecture style and the unprivileged camera style, is that adopted by Chris Curling and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies in "Maasai Women" (1974) and "Maasai Manhood" (1975). Unlike the MacDougalls, the film crew and director were not one and the same as the researcher. In these films, the anthropologist, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, provided a moderate amount of "off camera" commentary, while "on camera" she elicited reflective commentaries from the subjects of the films. These commentaries were used to explain filmed scenes and events, as well as exploring other topics not seen on film. The interviews were very personal and allowed the viewer to get to know individuals in an engaging way. In 1982/83 I helped Ivo Strecker make two films in Hamar for German TV, "The Father of the Goats" (1984) and "The Song of the Hamar Herdsman" (1986) Like the MacDougalls Ivo and I were not only the film makers but also the researchers and camera crew all in one. Because he had very little film material, Ivo could not afford to film exploratory dialogues from which to then select suitable excerpts for the final film. As a result the dialogues he filmed were more in the nature of testimonies than reflective commentaries. Unfortunately, the German TV station for which the films were made, were not prepared to use subtitles, and "voice over" translations of the dialogues had to be used in stead. Unlike British TV, German TV had yet to recognize the competence of its viewers to learn to read subtitles, and was still unwilling to leave them much room to make their own discoveries and draw their own conclusions. Fortunately, thanks to Brian Moser, the use of subtitles in anthropological documentaries has long been standard practice in British TV. In the early eighties, Melissa Llewelyn-Davies, this time working as her own director, went on to make further Maasai films; "Diary of a Maasai Village"(1984) and "The Woman's Olamal"(1985). "The Woman's Olamal", like the MacDougalls' "Wedding Camels", followed a major public event through from beginning to end, rather than gathering bits and pieces of various scenes and events. As in her earlier films, Melissa's anthropological knowledge and understanding of Maasai was clearly reflected in the kind of commentaries she elicited from her subjects. I think the fact that Melissa was separate from the film crew, and that the film crew was not acquainted with the subjects prior to filming, had a distinct influence on the kind of dialogue elicited. When, as in the MacDougalls' case and Ivo's and my case, the camera crew and researchers are one and the same, the unknown audience for whom the films are being made is difficult to imagine because it is not in evidence during filming. In the case where the anthropologist is separate from the film crew whose members know nothing about the subjects of the film, the unknown audience is represented by the film crew during filming. Both the anthropologist and the subjects of the film can therefore better address themselves to the unknown audience by orienting themselves towards the film crew who represents it. I decided that Melissa's style of eliciting reflective commentary was what suited me best. It provided a way of putting my anthropological knowledge and understanding of Hamar to use without imposing an "off camera" lecture onto the film. It was also a good way of getting the sympathy and engagement of the audience by allowing them to get to know persons in an individual and intimate way. One of my main ambitions was to break down clichés such as those Gardner had promoted, and indicate the variety and complexity of women's lives. To this end, I decided to feature several women, each at a different stage in the life cycle. In my film proposal I suggested that the women would speak more freely and confidently about themselves and their lives if the film crew were kept small and consisted of women only. This is why Chris Curling introduced me to Joanna Head, and why she in turn sought out a small all-women film crew. Working for TV meant, in our case, having a film crew in the field at a 3 prearranged time for a fixed length of time. Joanna succeeded in bargaining for six weeks filming time, two weeks more than most films in the same series. Even so, this was not long enough for us to wait for unforeseen events around which to construct the film, nor for the film crew to become acquainted with the Hamar before filming. I proposed that the filming take place after the main harvest because then people would have enough to eat and being in good spirits would be agreeable to have us film them, and because at this time people would certainly engage in ceremonial activities which are good to film. Beforehand, however, I insisted on spending two and a half months in Hamar to prepare for the film, deciding on which women we should film, the kinds of scenes and events we could surely film and the kind of topics I would ask the women to reflect on. In some respects my task was easier because the people of Dambaiti were already familiar with film making from the times when Ivo and I had filmed before. I still, however, had to prepare myself. Whenever I had returned to Hamar before, I always came with questions that had occurred to me while cogitating over previous fieldwork data. The difference now was that I had to put all my knowledge and understanding about Hamar women and Hamar gender relations to the test. I spent my time with women discussing issues such as birth control, acquisition and control of property, marriage, relations between husband and wife, mother-inlaw and daughter-in-law, mother and children, and so on, to see whether I understood things properly. I found this focusing of my research very activating, and having a TV audience in mind forced me to clarify things in my own mind in common sense terms. By the time Joanna came with the film crew, I felt I had a better understanding of things. Also, my women friends were more used to explaining themselves and their customs to me in a reflective way and in terms that I could understand. They realized that Hamar ways could not be taken for granted and could possibly be explained in terms other than simply saying, "that's the custom". Joanna was as keen as myself to have the women talk about their selves at length, and she allocated a great deal of film footage to interviews. As it turned out, there was no major event around which we could construct the film. Such an event was to happen six months later when two girls got married and we were able to return to Hamar and make the second film, "Two Girls Go Hunting". For this first film, "The Women Who Smile", we concentrated on portraying several women by way of their own reflective commentaries and showing them participate in typical scenes and events. When the women were being filmed and their commentaries were being recorded, they focused their attention on the topics under consideration, and brought to bear all their knowledge and understanding. I had discussed many things with them before, but our discussions had always been casual, being conducted while the women were busy doing other jobs such as grinding or weeding. I thought the women would explain things more or less as I had come to understand them, but again and again, I was taken by surprise, and their explanations were far more interesting than I could ever have imagined. Take for example, an interview with Baldambe's daughter, Duka. I had shared the same house with Duka for the two and half months prior to filming, and she well understood that I wanted her to explain things and not simply describe them. In the interview I barely had to ask her anything, I just indicated the topics I wanted her to talk about. Jean: Dukamai! Duka: Yes. Jean: Now give us a talk on girlhood. Duka: Should I make you a speech on girlhood? Jean: Mmmm. Duka: Its goodness... Jean: Its goodness and ... 4 Duka: and the work you used to do, while a girl, and everything you did? Jean: and marriage... Duka: and marriage... Jean: like that. Duka went on to give a long speech. She gave an analytical description of childhood, how a girl is taught to do things by her mother, how she has girl friends with whom she likes to do certain tasks such as fetching green leaves for the kid goats, how she learns from older girls to do things like preparing a skin skirt, how she likes to go dancing with her age mates and then how her marriage is arranged by her parents without consulting her, and how she only finds out about it when a girl friend tells her. Duka then considered the question of how a girl accepts the fait accompli of her marriage, and it was an excerpt from this reflection that we included in the film: But you, you haven't heard anything. You are getting green leaves; you are sweeping up the dung. Then one of your friends hears (about it) over there. "Algono, you've been given.” That’s how she tells you. So you hear about it and then your heart changes. "For my father, I've been getting green leaves and sweeping up the dung. I've been a girl, and been called a child. I've been smoking the milk containers. My father's cattle at the water hole over there, I've taken a bowl and gone down to the water hole (to water them). I've been sweeping up the dung of my father's livestock, and taking their bowl, I've gone down to the water hole. That's how I've been, like a male. What's this now (i.e. having to become a wife)? Oh, my (best friend), so-and-so has gone. Before, she was sweeping up the dung and getting green leaves, then her father gave her away. Now becoming a bride and tying on a (married woman's) skin skirt, she has given birth to a child. It's like this for everyone. In the case of a boy child, if he hasn't been given one, a gun is bought for him. Now, for you, iron bracelets are bought, they're your gun. An iron necklace is bought for you; it's your gun. Aluminium coil is bought for you; it's your gun. While you are a girl your father slaughters (goats) for your rear skirt, saying: "My daughter has fetched green leaves. She has swept up the dung." Now these things have been done for me. I didn't have to buy them. I didn't buy the iron bracelets myself. All the dung I've swept up, all the green leaves I've fetched, and all the milk containers I've smoked, for all I've been rewarded by these things. Why should I complain?" Then you're just given to your father-inlaw. Duka went on to tell how a grown up girl alleviates her mother of grinding and cooking just as a youth alleviates his father of herding. Finally she tells of how when a married woman she visits her parents' home, no one yells at her to do things because now she has become someone else's wife. Duka's commentary was reflective in the sense of being subjective and thoughtful, and it was reflexive in the sense of being adapted to what she thought I was interested in and would understand. Anne Salmond talks of 'the process of reflexive interpretation...’ that, she says, 'is an attempt to bring about a "merging of horizons", so that the viewpoints of self and other progressively overlap and understanding is achieved...' (1982 p. 74). This is an apt description of what Duka and I were involved in. Duka did far more than simply describe custom; she also analysed and evaluated it, doing so in terms of her own common sense. Couldn't the knowledge and understanding which Duka incorporated in her 'speech', be described as anthropological? Although I had talked with Duka about childhood and marriage many a time, she had never made a speech about them, and formulated her ideas 5 in such a comprehensive way. It took the importance of the filming situation to bring this about. I was particularly intrigued by how Duka brought the two topics of childhood and marriage together. Up till then, I had never seen arranged marriage in this light, that of a girl's father having the right to give his daughter away in marriage because he has rewarded her for all the work she has done in caring for his livestock. This view led me on to reflect on the relationship between a man and his son. Could it be that, likewise, a man doesn't complain that his father controls his initiation and marriage because his father rewards him with a gun and in other ways for the work he does looking after and defending the livestock? The excerpt from Duka's speech, which I just quoted, is but one example from the hours and hours of dialogue we collected for "The Women Who Smile". We only used a small fraction of this material for the film, selecting only those commentaries which could be readily understood by a non-Hamar non-specialized audience without extra "off camera" commentary. Other criteria for selecting interview excerpts were how they fitted in with, complemented or contrasted with filmed scenes and events, and how comments of different subjects complemented or contrasted with each other. In writing the sub-titles, I kept the audience in mind and accordingly made translations that were easy to read but still transmitted the main gist of the commentaries. Since I found it impossible to make a word for word translation, Hamar and English being so different from one another, the translations were any way my interpretation of what I understood to have been said. After making "The Women Who Smile", Joanna and I went on to make "Two Girls Go Hunting". In contrast to "The Women Who Smile" where our main concern was to present women speaking about themselves and their lives, in "Two Girls Go Hunting" we were concerned with the weddings of two girls, and what it was like for them getting married to men they didn't know. In "The Women Who Smile", the scenes and events we filmed were used to illustrate or complement the things talked about by the women. In "Two Girls Go Hunting", the balance was the other way round, and the reflective commentaries were used to reveal the subjects' thoughts and feelings about the major events, which we were filming. I elicited reflective commentaries from the main protagonists in the two marriages: the girls, their fiancé, their parents and parents-in-law, to find out what they felt and thought about the marriage process in which they were involved. I hoped in this way that the weddings would take on greater depth of meaning for the audience rather than seeming to be purely exotic events. The weddings entailed major changes in the lives of all involved so I did not need to ask people to reflect on remote events, but rather to express what was any way foremost in their hearts and minds. Take for example the comments made by the young girl Gardi while her aunt trims her hair in preparation for her last night at home when all her friends and neighbours will come to be with her and sing until dawn. Gardi explains to me, "I've put a stone in my heart, but my heart still aches. Later I will feel even worse." Gardi's aunt adds, "Now she's calm, tonight she'll weep." And Gardi continues, "Before it seemed like a game, but now my leaving home has become real. Now as the sun is setting it's all become clear to me." Although these words indicated Gardi's feelings, much of what she felt was also communicated nonverbally. As usual, Duka provided great insights into things. For example, when Duka and Gardi are relaxing with their girl friends after weeding, I ask them about their prospective marriages. Duka explains, "We girls grow up and are given to our husbands. That man becomes our father and our older brother, even our mother. Then you are forgotten. Who remembers you?" "So marriage is bad?" I ask, and Duka responds "But what can we do? You, our mothers, tell us it's bad and scare us. But we only say it's bad while we are 6 still girls. That's all. When we've left, we say, "What's so special about my father's home? What's so special about it?" Then you think your new home is better than theirs. They raised you, and then you snub them." Three years after Duka's marriage, I proposed making a third film to find out what life was like and how it had changed for Duka, her husband and mother-in-law. In particular, I was interested in exploring the relationships between Duka, Sago and his mother. While spending two months in the field preparing for the film, I realized that it would be very difficult to film the relationship between Duka and her husband since it was one of avoidance and indirect communication. I was also struck by how reserved Duka had become. Previously she lived in the home of her father, Baldambe, and when he was absent, which he frequently was, she used to entertain her friends in the evening and would chat and talk most volubly. Now she was rarely alone, either her husband or her mother-in-law was present and they always dominated the conversation while she remained quiet, speaking only when spoken to. Only when both her husband and her mother-in-law were away did Duka revert to her old self and talk at ease with me. As a young wife and daughter-in-law she had become muted, and yet inwardly she was teeming with thoughts and feelings. It was clear to me that we would have to arrange a special session with Duka on her own if we were to have her express her inner feelings and ideas about her change in status and her relationship to her husband and motherin-law. In the event Duka was quite candid about her relationship to her husband. For example, when I asked her if she could go places now she was married she answered, "I can't go places. I'm tied up with the goats. My husband says, "Work for my mother, do what she says." If I went off and left things, he'd come after me and beat me." Because Duka, Sago and his mother were, by now, used to responding to my questions, I was able to elicit commentaries from them even when they were in action or shortly there after, and this gave added dynamism and imperativeness to the film. Take for example, Duka's commentary when winnowing the grain. I asked her "Is that all the grain you have?" and she answered, "That's all we have." "Is it enough?" "How can it be enough? Last year we had a big harvest. We stacked it here and there. We had a lot. When it's like that the granaries fill up. But how can this be enough? It's only one sack full." We structured the film around a number of scenes and events in which the three characters were involved either separately or together. Some of these events were foreseen, like the film show that we arranged so that Duka and her husband could see their wedding film, and the initiation rite of Duka's cousin, which his parents arranged. Other events were unforeseen, like when the in-laws came to demand bride wealth, or the sudden death and burial of Sago's grandmother. These unforeseen events gave the film an urgency and tempo that I had not imagined beforehand. I had thought we would be filming quieter domestic scenes with more interaction with the children. For this, however, I will have to go back and make another film. In response to the challenge of making an anthropological film for television I chose to make use of the personal dimension of television. Television is a very personal medium being seen by individuals in their own homes. What better way is there to rouse the viewers' interest and gain their attention, than by introducing them to individuals in a personal and intimate way, and what better way is there to transmit knowledge and understanding about the subjects of 7 the film than by showing these individuals in action and eliciting from them reflective commentaries about what they think and feel about themselves, their relationships and their lives? My concentration on eliciting reflective commentary was partly a result of my being an anthropologist working with a film crew and director who were not well acquainted with the Hamar. In Paul Henley's message in Anthropology Today, he points out that "Anthropological filmmaking is at a crossroads." and goes on to say that "the trend towards international co production means that all sorts of compromises have to be made to meet the expectations of several different kinds of TV viewer." I think it is wrong to consider making compromises, we should rather see the expectations of different viewers as a challenge to respond to, because only then will we find ways to uphold our standards of honesty and respect for the subjects of our films. 8