MATTERS OF DIFFERENCE,

DIFFERENCES THAT MATTER

by Rogie Nepomuceno

Offhand, and with all references shunted aside for the moment, I would tend to
think of the differences between the social documentary and the ethnographic film
as one that observed the dividing lines between objective and subjective or
involved reportage; this of course has been proved to be a highly problematic
distinction in terms of evaluating works that purport to be one or the other, but
it may still be applied (although with highly circumscribed benefits) to the
question of the filmmaker(s)'s intentions. In short, as per this kind of
perception, those who set out to perform documentation of social phenomena without
any avowed theoretical framework can be said to be attempting social documentary,
while those who do the same thing with a preconceived and/or evolving framework may
be engaged in ethnographic film practice.

The fissure in this obviously forced distinction lies in the manner by which
the film process is accomplished. No film would ever be finished if it were not
provided with any form of presentational purpose; even the supposedly unedited
avant-garde screenings of Andy Warhol (on, say, a sleeping man or the Empire State
Building) can be said to have been organized by the sheer decision to shoot their
subjects and present these in the order of the consumption of film footage.
Organization, in short, preempts all forms of filmmaking activity even before
footage itself is accumulated; the mere act of setting out and deciding on the
what, when, where, and how (even consciously leaving out the why) to shoot--whether
or not what will be shot will be presented or even organized later--always already
(pace Saussure) implies the existence of something that the filmmaker intends to go
by on.

The in-class references display an awareness of this need to grapple with the
issue of how film can be made to serve the purposes of both its users' best
intentions, as well as its subjects' most urgent interests. Social anthropology
happens to be the area where the departure of one side from the other becomes
readily, sometimes even literally (in audio and/or visual terms) apparent, in a
manner that the economically implicated dynamics of industrial production--further
distantiated from overt anthropological concerns by the demand for fiction--would
be hard-put to yield. Barnouw appears to constitute a throwback to this
distinction between objective documentation and conclusive presentation by
juxtaposing six types of pioneer documentarians in two separate chapters--one
containing an explorer, reporter, and painter (under "Images at Work") and another
an advocate, bugler, and prosecutor (under "Sound and Fury"). But a closer reading
of the contrast between the first personages under each chapter reveals that the
aforementioned issues cannot be too soundly glossed over anymore, given the
advantages of hindsight that construct both Robert Flaherty and John Grierson as
almost "pure" subjects of history.

De Brigard, although undertaking a less informational historical account than

Barnouw, assumes (or perhaps builds up to) this perspective in his laying emphasis
on the "reinterpretation of 'ethnographic film' as a process of communication
between filmers and filmed" as well as on the process of production itself, thus

1
enlarging the issue of documentary beyond the filmmakers' personae. In a logical
expansion on this type of approach, whatever the practitioner's original concerns,
she or he would need to be inspected against the socio-economic forces that made
the project possible, as well as the consequences of her or his product on the
subjects portrayed therein.

Heider and Nichols reflect the same difference of approach that Barnouw and
De Brigand manifest, in the sense that Heider, like Barnouw, starts out with a
recognition of what he termed a paradox between cinematic purpose and ethnographic
validity, while Nichols proceeds with the assumption that these differences would
be useful only for certain basic activities such as classification. I find
Heider's assertion that good filmmaking equals good documentation provocative but
still calling for further clarifications, especially on the questions of why this
needs to be the case, how (in certain practicable terms) this can be possible, and,
to echo the impossible-to-answer auteurist controversy, what person or institution
should pass judgment on what a good film and/or documentary would be.

Nichols' elision of the traditional qualities associated with either factual

or fictional filmmaking leads to challenging insights analogous to the manner in
which "new" journalism claimed to draw from fiction writing. In particular, his
suggestion that "evidentiary editing" be appropriated to advance the logic of
documentary presentation (just as it served to advance character in feature films)
may in fact be descriptive of certain postmodern texts that draw from various real
sources and blended one with the others, or with those drawn from unreal sources;
it would also be possible to say that these were principles initiated in silent
film practice, especially in the theorizing and production of Russian montage.
Nichols' categorization of documentaries under four representational modes
valorizes ethnographic film over social documentary as originally defined,
providing only one mode, the observational, as the closest to an objective
presentation as may be possible; the three others--expository, interactive, and
reflexive--fall squarely on the side of purposeful, if not interpretive, film
activity.

Most significant for what I could use in responding to Nanook of the North,
however, is Nichols' provision of active agency to the spectator (redolent of De
Brigand), specifically in his enumeration of various types of motivation including
realism, function, intertextuality, and formal appreciation. My take on Nanook
would draw from the class debate about Flaherty's original intention vis-a-vis the
deleterious impact his film would have on a presumably more politically aware
contemporary audience. Utilizing Nichols' premise, it would then become necessary
to raise the issue of why Flaherty was largely appreciated by the same type of
audience then that would express reservations on Nanook today. I would venture to
speculate, pending confirmations via published or interview statements, that the
film was perceived as benign within the liberal concerns of the time, and perhaps
even threatening to conservative elements--possibly the same forces that made it
difficult for Flaherty, despite the wide acclaim of Nanook, to repeat, if not
exceed, his initial success. None of this would certainly be evident in the visual
text of the film, since the medium's historical limits were entirely foregrounded
by its own nature: its expensiveness, bulkiness, and slowness in responding to
light made it most appropriate to the types who could deal with it--i.e., those who

2
were respectively rich, physically massive, and fair-skinned. In being all three
(as were the medium's inventors), Flaherty may have been hoping for a favorable
historical judgment by training the medium on less fair-complexioned types, but
assuming the ideological complexion of what was then an imperialistically
unchallenged and culturally dominant white American culture.

Hence Nanook as constituted by Flaherty for his specific era may not exactly
have been an attempt to portray for spectatorial satisfaction the pathetic
situation of non-whites, but, as evident in the intertitular closure of his
argument, the image of what "man" may have been before "he" succeeded in taming the
environment. This takes central concern in the most ambiguous and humanistically
designed intertitle--that which celebrates the "melancholy of the North" as both
bringing out the best in primitive peoples (including a state of innocence) as well
as hope on the part of the more privileged civilizations, presumably including the
original viewers of Nanook, that other such nations could be brought to the
comforts of modern industrialized existence, just as such modern nations could be
reminded of the virtues of simple lifestyles and harmonious interpersonal
relations. Where these desiderata have brought us today, developed and
underdeveloped peoples alike, is of course part of the far-from-resolved concern of
ethnographic film.

WORKS CITED

Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: a History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford
UP, 1983.

Heider, Karl G. Ethnographic Film. Austin: U of Texas P, 1982.

De Brigard, Emilie. "A History of Ethnographic Film." In Principles of Visual

Anthropology. New York: Aldine, 1975.

Nichols, Bill. Ideology and the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and
Other Media. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1981.

---. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington:

Indiana UP, 1991.