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RONY

MA,

AND

THNO<!APHI
DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS Durham and London 1996 THE THIRD EYE

Unce, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle

hitimah Tobing Rony


C/U-

V'/i/.s- houk ;,s dedicated tu iny nircnls.


Mi A lulnl Kohiir Kony and Mrs. Minar Tobing Rony,
i i i n l ni i lie iiu'inory <>f my Ompung, Mrs. H. L. Tobing,
iinil niv hite nele, Mi. R. A. P. L. Tobing
. C

An earlier versin of a section of the conclusin originally appeared


in "Victor Masayesva, Jr. and the Politics of Imagining Indians," Film
Quarterly 48, no. 2, copyright 1994 by the Regents of the University of
California. An earlier versin of sections of chapters i and 2 originally
appeared in "Those Who Sit and Those Who Squat: The 1895 Films of
Felix-Louis Regnault," Camera Obscura 28 (1992). "The Venus Hotten-
tot" from The Venus Hottentot, by Elizabeth Alcxander (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1990). Used with permission of the Univer-
sity Press of Virginia.

1996 Duke University Press. All rights rescrved. Printed in the United
States of America on acid-frec paper . Typesct in Trump Mediaeval by
Keystonc Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data appcar on the last printed page of this book.
CONTENTS

\.i^\ Illustrations ix
A( knowledgments xi
I n l loduction. The ThirdEye 3

I. INSCRIPTION

i Sreing Anthropology:
I c l i x Louis Regnault, the Narrative of Race, and
i lie I Vrformers at the Ethnographic Exposition 21
/ I 'he Writing of Race in Film:
I V l i x - l . o u i s Regnault and the Ideology of
i lu- li hnographic Film Archive 45

II. TAXIDERMY

i (rstures of Self-Protection:
I lu- l'icturesque and the Travelogue 77
I I .ixidermy and Romantic Ethnography:
Uohcrt Flaherty's Nanook ofthe North 99

III. TERATOLOCY

s l i m e and Redemption in the "Racial Film" of


i l u - i i>2,os and 19305 129
(>. Kinx mu t h c Monster in
c Cinema i S7
Conclusin. Passion of Remcmbrance: L I S T O F ILLUSTRATION5
Facing the Camera/Grabbing the Camera 193
Notes 219
Bibliography 265
Index 289

S t i l l from KingKongiig?,?,}. 2
I )a y a k f amily group, Smithsonian Institution. 11
( Miarles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Negress walking
with a light weight on her head" (1895). 22
l'rinted illustration in Flix-Louis Regnault's "De la
lonction prhensile du pied." 31
l'rintcd illustration in Flix-Louis Regnault's "Les
dcformations crniennes dans l'art antique." 34
l'rinted illustration in Flix-Louis Regnault's "Exposition
Ethnographique de l'Afrique Occidentale au Champs-de-
Mars a Paris: Sngal et Soudan Francais." 37
Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Jump by three
Ncgroes" (1895). 50
K. Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Walk" (1895). 50
Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Run" (1895). 51
Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Run" (1895). 52
C "liarles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Three clothed
nien walk" 1895). 53
Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Negress walks"
55
i i l'liotographic reproduction, "Malagasy carrying a palanqun
on their shoulders" (1895). 56
i .| l'rinted illustration of Colonel Gillon carried in a palanqun
by four Malagasy men. s7
i s l'rinted illustration of Commandant de Raoul walking en
lcxion. 6o
i (. l'rinted illustration of diagrams depicting Commandant de
Raoul walking and running en flexin. 6o
i / . "Doctor Regnault walks," Institu de physiologie. 6o
i,H. l.oi n.i Siinpson, l;,<ixy for Who lo Stiy (1989).
i y. Len Busy, "Village performcrs Ha-noi Tonkin" (1916). 81
20. Still from Burton Holmes's Sights of Suva (1918). 86
21. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Still from Gastn Mlis's Captured by Aborigines (1913). 87
22,. Osa Johnson and unidentificd actors on location in Osa and
Martin Johnson 's Carimbis ofthe South Seas (1917).
23. Still from Osa and Martin Johnson's Simba (1928).
89
24. Edward Sheriff Curts, "Bridal group" (1914).
96
25. Edward Sheriff Curts, "Masked dancers in canoes" (1914).
97
26. Still from Nanook ofthe North (1922). 103
27. Elisha Kent Kane, Joe, and Hanna, Smithsonian Institution
life group (1873). 106 M.iny pcoplc have contributed to the completion of this book. My earliest
28. Still hom Nanook ofthe North (1922). 112 <lrht s are to Angela Dalle Vacche and David Rodowick for their crucial
29. Original drawing on paper, most likely by Wetalltok, from
rni miiagement and assistance at all stages of this project. I would also
the Belcher Islands, 1916, of Flaherty and Inuit camera crew. 119 h k r lo t h a n k Esther da Costa Meyer and Mary Miller who provided much
(o.. S t i l l from (Jtifwii/The Gathering Place (1989). 125 iin-iled f ritical advice.
l i . S t i l l Ironi (,'fY/\.s ( I 9 i s ) .
( |, S u l l I rom ('litiiig ( 1927).
134 I would like to thank the following people and institutions in North
U S t i l l I rom Moiiiin ( i y ).(>).
136 A m n ica for their kind assistance in facilitating my research: Marta Braun,
l . | . S t i l l l i o i n '/'/ir Sili'iil lini'iny ( 1930).
139 I - m i l ir de Brigard, Samba Diop, and Faye Ginsburg; Hazel V. Carby, Anne
142 i ( i l l i n I lanson, Brigitte Peucker, and Sara Suleri at Yale University; Elaine
i s .Snll I m m Whili' Sluilow^ in tlie South Seas (1929).
l<. l'liotogiaph Irom Margaret Mead's book Balinese Character
145 i h.n nov, Joel D. Sweimler, and David Wells at the American Museum of
N.u mal History; Paul Spehr, Arlene Balkansky, Cooper Graham, Patrick
(1942).
( / . S t i l l from (loona Goona (1932).
147 Loughney, Madeline Matz, and David Parker at the Library of Congress;
149 Wciuly Shay, fake Homiak, and Pam Wintle at the Human Studies Film
;,x. S t i l l from Tab (1931).
150 A n h i v e s ; Mary Corliss, Terry Geesken, and Charles Silver at the Museum
39. Still from Tab (1931).
152 ni Modcrn Art; the National Archives; Christraud Geary at the National
40. Photograph of Ota Benga (1904).
41. Still from Island ofLost Souls (1933).
158 Mnseum of African Art; Paula Fleming at the National Museum of Natural
168 1 1 1 -,i i y ; Robert Fleegal at the National Geographic Society; Sterling Memo-
42. Still from Trader Horn (1931).
173 i i.il Library; Audrey Kupferberg, Sharon Della Camera, and Michael Kerbel
43. Still from Blonde Venus (1932).
174 .ii t h e Yale Film Studies Center; Barbara Adams, Mary Carrano, Susan
44. Still from King Kong (1933).
183 I inc son, Rose Gibbons, and Marie Kuntz at the History of Art department
45.
185 .u Yale; Joanasie Kanawuk at the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation; and
46 . Still from King Kong (1933).
187 i h . n l i e Adams of Taqramiut Nipingat, Incorporated, Inukjuak, Nunavut.
47. Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gmez-Pea in "The Couple in
I n Trance I received generous aid and advice from Jean Rouch. I would also
theCage" (1992). 190 h k r lo thank Nolle Giret, Vincent Pinel, Alain Marchand, and the late
48. Still from Zou Zou (1932).
2OI ( i h v i e r Meston of the Cinmathque frangaise; Eric Vivi for graciously
49. Still from Zora Neale Hurston's films of 1928-29.
205 .illowing me to view his collection of films from the Marey Institute at the
50. Still from Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1985).
214 A i f h i ves du film,- Michelle Aubert, Andrei Dyja, and Eric Le Roy at the Ar-
i l n v f s du film,- Frangoise Foucault, Jean famin, Michelle Fontan, P. Pitoeff,
.nul Christiane Rageau at the Muse de l'homme; Jean-Dominique Lajoux
at CNKS; Ji-anne Mcausolcil, N a l h a l i c Bonnet, and Mane ( ' < i i i u - l i > i i | i .it : A l u v N a h a l a m h a aml Mu.uli Mnkengc; Donna Iones,
the Collection Alhcrt Kalni; Christine Delangle at the Collgc de 1 ranee; I i hd r.noi-x, and Imogeiic Moncnd; Joas Admassu, Casclinc Kunene, Ter-
Aieha Khcrroubi at the Muse d'Orsay,- Jean-Michel Bouhours o the Centre I C I H T Kose, and Hridget Tcboh; and Maxine I larris at Bunche Hall. I would
Georges Pompidoii; and Emmanuelle Toulet at the Bibliothque de l'ars- ilso l i k e to t h a n k Don Nakanishi, Enrique dla Cruz, Catherine Castor,
nale. I would also like to thank Claude Blanckaert, Amy and Robert Fienga, M.n u ). Ventura, and Christine Wang of the UCLA Asian American Studies
Richard Leacock, Valrie Lalonde, Philippe Lourdou, Marc Piault, Chantal i V n t e r lor their support.
Riss, and Vittorio Tos. Research was also conducted at the Bibliothque Veiy speeial thanks go to Csar Jos Alvarez, Lisa Cartwright, Alian de-
nationale in Paris. Smi.-i, Jodi Hauptman, Kellie Jones, Ming Yuen-S. Ma, Yong Soon Min,
Those in the United Kingdom, I would like to thank include Penny Bate- i 'aml Ockman, Dawn Suggs, William Valerio, and Clyde Woods for their
man and Ben Burt at the Museum of Man, and Elaine Burrows and Jackie Intellectual enthusiasm and extraordinary concern. I am also grateful to
Morris at the National Film Archive of the British Film Institute. I am K i - i i Wissoker at Duke University Press for his careful guidance and atten-
grateful to Hoos Blotkamp, Rogier Schmeele, and Maryke von Kester at the t i o n at eachstep. I would like to express my gratitude to Joseph H. Saunders
Nederlands Filmmuseum in Holland. In Germany, Dr. Dolezel and Dr. who edited several full drafts, provided invaluable comments, and contrib-
Franz Simn at the Institut fr den Wissenschaftlichen Film, Dr. Markus u ed countless hours of his time. To hirn I give my deepest thanks for his
Schindlbeck at the Museum fr Vlkerkunde in Berlin, the Museum fr ( i u ical engagement in this project.
Vlkerkunde in Hamburg, and the Staatliches Museum fr Vlkerkunde in I .ast, I can never thank my parents Mr. Abdul Kohar Rony and Mrs. Minar
Munich all guided me to important research materials. I ohing Rony enough for their unconditional support and intellectual suste-
Research for the book was made possible by grants from the Council for n.mee. I give thanks to the beloved dead as well as the living: the late Mrs.
European Studies, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Yale Center for I I I . . Tobing, the late Mr. R. A. P. L. Tobing, Mr. Ismail Rony, Mrs. Chadid-
International rea Studies, the History of Art department at Yale, and the i.ili Rony, Dorothy Fujita Rony who sustained me with her brilliant sisterly
American Association of University Women. I would like to thank M. Eric w i t , and Elice Loembantobing who kept on insisting that this book be fin-
Vivi, the Archives du film du centre national de la cinmatographie, and ished dengan kepuasan hati, and the rest of my family who are scattered
the Cinmathque francaise for permission to reproduce images. .icross several continents and archipelagos all over the globe. Horas!
I would also like to extend my thanks to those who invited me to give My views may diverge from those who have helped me; I take full respon-
talks on various sections of my book, thus providing me with the invaluable s i h i l i t y for all errors. Note also that all translations are mine unless stated
feedback needed to conduct revisions: John Hanhardt at the Whitney Mu- Otherwise.
seum of American Art; Karen Newman and Elizabeth Weed at the Pem-
broke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University;
Youssef El-Ftouh and the Institut du monde rabe in Paris,- Edward Bra-
nigan, Constance Penley, and Charles Wolfe at the University of California,
Santa Barbara; Vicente Rafael at the University of California, San Diego;
Susan Douglas, Jacqueline Hayden, and Sherry Milner at Hampshire Col-
lege; and Margaret Daniels, David Eng, Peter Feng, Marina Heung, Trang
Kim-T. Tranh, Sandra Liu, and Michelle Materre.
I am indebted to the University of California President's Postdoctoral
Fellowship program for providing me the support needed to complete the
book. I especially want to thank Valrie Smith and Raymond Paredes, and
the UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center, in particular its direc-
tor Edmond J. Keller. Teshome Gabriel and Billy Woodberry provided inval-
uable advice and insightful comments. I also thank the professional staff at
l'iin-fl luniks ii-ll i/,s ilmi ihi' tliinx la iln is mirad the attention of the
iiiiiin i n i i l v hy /ring u shol. Clnudc Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Trapiques
JI955)

/'i a i-vcrv nal iva of every place is a potential touiist, and every tourist
r, </ niiiivc al somewhere. . . . But some nativesmost nativesin the
\\nilil < iinnot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go
iiuvwlicrc. They are toopoor to escape the reality o/ their lives and
iln-y uic i DO poor to Uve properly in theplace where they Uve, which is
11 u' \'i'iv place you, the tourist, want togoso when the natives see
vini. ilic lourist, theyenvyyou, they envy your ability to leave your
n\vn linniility and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own
l'iiiiiilny tmd boredom into a source of peosme for yomself.
|.minien Kincnid, A Small Place (1988)

Hu vtni cannot possibly know what I have done or why I have done it
I MU iliink of me as a savage. Jnmes Bnldwin, A Rap on Race(i97i)
INTRODUCTION

lili IHIRD EYE

Iln\v I Ih''time a Savage: SeeingAnthropology


.Smiiriimcs, there are moments in watching a film when the illusion of
e n i r n n g another space, another time, another experience is shattered. A
i M piral island. A prehistoric land. Fay Wray. Island Savages. King Kong.
I lie Savages are speaking my language. Tidak. Bisa. Kau. Like King Kong
.mil i he Islanders, I was born n two places, Sumatra and the United States:
i lie il.iughter of a Batak mother from North Sumatra, and a father from
l'.ilrmbang, in South Sumatra. I am watching myself being pictured as a
'..iv.ij'.r. I am the Bride of Kong.
Several years after seeing King Kong for the first time, I had another
ni e.ision to be reminded of my Savagery. One gray rainy afternoon in Pars, I
..u w i i h eold feet conducting research in a deep cavern of a library with tall
.tone re i lings and coughing tweed-clad scholars at long tables. I was reading
i. StilJ from King Kong (1933). i lie wi i i ings of a certain doctor in Pars who was interested in pathological
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) .in.iioiiiy and movement; that is, the anatomy of criminis, circus freaks,
.ind penple of color. Savages squat whereas Civilized people sit, explained
i lie (locior: a Batak, because of this, is akn toamonkey.11 come across ths
pussage:
AII savage peoples make recourse to gesture to express themselves,-
ilicir language is so poor it does not suffice to make them understood:
plunged n darkness, two savages, as travelers who often witness this
l.ici affirm, can communicate theirthoughts, coarseandlimitedthough
iliey are.
With primitive man, gesture precedes speech....
The gestures that savages make are in general the same everywhere,
hee.iusc these movements are natural reflexes rather than conventions
l i k e language.2
4 Introduction Introduction 5

According to the doctor, a Batak from North Sumatra would be able to speak experience when he writes, "I cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I
to a Wolof, an Inuit, an Igorot, through the language of gesture. w.ni lor me. In the interval, just before the film starts, I wait for me. The
The doctor, Flix-Louis Regnault, went on to make what have been con- people in the theater are watching me, examining me, waiting for me. A
sidered the first ethnographic "films."3 Regnault believed not only that film Negro groom is going to appear. My heart makes my head swim."6 Born in
could furnish documents for the study of race, but also that by capturing the M.n t ique of African descent, Fann writes eloquently of the humiliation
physical form in motion, film could serve as an unimpeachable scientific o I i ng forced to identify with images of blacks on the screen as servile and
ndex of race. Under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, that supreme symbol of u l t e r i o r : in Black Skin, White Masks he explodes at his objectification,
progress, Regnault filmed West African performers at an 1895 Ethnographic l i x e t l as if by a dye under the gaze of commercial cinema and the white
Exposition in Paris. As in other "native village" displays at world's fairs, ludicnce.
these West African performers who danced, and conducted animal sacri- Hu i hcre is yet another form of identification which Fann describes. A
fices and other rituals for coin-throwing French spectators, were inscribed lil.irk schoolboy, he writes, deluged by Tarzan stories and other such adven-
in film in order to study the language of gesture, the language of race. I M I C na ira ti ves, "identifies himself with theexplorer, the bringer of civiliza-
Thinking back on it now, I believe that the doctor may have been correct. i , 11 u- white man who carries truth to savagesan all-white truth."7 How
Perhaps we Savages, plunged in darkness, do understand each other. What i .in u he (itherwise ? How can any viewer identify with the "savage," a being
we sharc is the ability tosee with the "thirdeye."Inconventional terms, the u piesenied as having scarcely a shred of subjectivity? Indeed, in the Tar-
i l i i n l cye relers to the cxperiencc one has when, during an argument with ,in liierature, jungle animis at times receive more sympathetic treatment
IIMC'S lovri, lor examplc, one has the feeling that a third eye has floated out i l i . m i h e African "native." If the "Negro groom" is a straitjacketing image
ni one's I x x l y .ind is observing the altercation with the dispassionate air of i','111111)', I rom white racism, the "native" is even more Otherrepresented as
.1 . ( x i l ( i i ; i N i e . x a n i m i i i g .1 specimcn. "I am watching myself and my lover n.ippcd in some deep frozen past, inarticulate, not yet evolved, seen as
. K i mil .1 ( ( i i i v c i i i i o n . i l lovcr's quarrel." Or, "I've heard those words before, l'i n u i l i ve, and yes, Savage.
i h r v ' i r inv mol hei '." Mosi cveryhody has had this experience of the third I 111.-, hook has two primary objectives. First, I offer a sustained critique of
eye. un lu .1 pe son o i olorgrowing up in the United States, the experience i l n pe v.isive form of objectification of indigenous peoples which I somc-
o v i e w i n g onesell as an objcci is profoundly formative. Reflecting on an u l u lendentiously, though with clear purpose, will label Ethnographic. I
mdelible chlldhood mcmory, W. E. B. Dubois describes the double con- u i h io subjcct representations of the "Native" to the kind of critical anal-
sciousncss that a young person of color is forced to develop. Dubois explains \. i l i . i t l'.dward Saidhas applied to representations of the "Oriental."
that one day, a young white girl gave him a glance, and in that glance he Ai piesent, i silence surrounds the stereotype of non-white indigenous
recognized that he was marked as an Other. As Dubois describes it, the in- PI nple-, Lindscaped as part of the jungle mise-en-scne, or viewed as the
ternalization of this recognition gives one the "sense of always looking at i ni M u Man Friday to a white Robinson Crusoe, orperhapsromnticizedas
one's self through the eyes of others,"4 or of seeing "darkly as through a i l n Nohle Savage struggling to survive in the wild, the individual "native"
veil."5 The experience of the third eye suggests that Dubois's insight can be i . i . l i e n noi even "seen" by the viewer but is taken for real: as when the
taken one step furtherthe racially charged glance can also induce one to t i : i i l < r i ouisidc the fair tent calis potential spectators to come in and "see
see the very process which creates the internal splitting, to witness the con- u il Imli.ms," or the excitement over Kevin Costner's recent Dances with
ditions which give rise to the double consciousness described by Dubois. u , ' / ( , , ( i . j i j i ) as a film cmploying "real Lakota Indians." It is as if the
The veil allows for clarity of visin even as it marks the site of socially i l i ' i t . i i u e heiween the signifier and the referent in the construction of native
mcdiated self-alienation. pi npl". i oll.ipses. In Tristes Trapiques (1955), Claude Lvi-Strauss muses
The movie screen is another veil. We turn to the movies to find images of i l i . i i i sploieis, anthropologists, and tourists voyage to foreign places in
ourselves and find ourselves reflected in the eyes of others. The intended .1 in 11 ni i lie novel, the nndiscovered. What they find, he tellsus, apartfrom
audience for dominant Hollywood cinema was, of course, the "American," I | M u own n.isli t h r o w n back in their faces, is what they already knew they
white and middle-class. Not Hopi, Sumatran, or Dahomeyan, or evcn Afri- u i m l i l M i i d , muges predigested by certain "platitudesandcommonplaces." 8
can American, but "American."ThusFrantz Fann is describinga third eye h i i l u - , iinpossihle to view the "native" with fresh eyes. Lvi-Strauss
hiinsclt cxplains that part of thc motivation for his voyagc lo mec ilie Tupi lile oylo, oconomics, huid lonurc, social organization of the village
of thc Hrazilian Amazon was toreenact thc 1560 mecting bctween the Tupi notables as opposed to thc various classos. In the appendix you would
and Montaigne.9 Similarly, when the average museum goer views a life l > u i .1 soolion on folk tales. For the most part, there would be no inves-
group of Hopi dancis handling snakes, or a display of Wolof pottery, or an iij',.iiion o individual livcs. . . . The traditional model would be to
ethnographic film about trance and dance in Bali, he or she does not see the onoodo tho account so that it is implicit that you have been there,
images for the first time. The exotic is always already known. w i i l i o u i actually statingit.10
My first objective is thus to begin to uncover the conditions of possibility
I he cncyclopedic coverage of the written ethnography occurs also in cin-
of this conventional framing of ethnographic visualization and to analyze
i in.i In tho popular imagination an "ethnographic film" is akin to a Na-
the forms it took in cinema prior to World War II.
i i i ni.11 (,'cographic special which purports to portray whole cultures within
The second objective of the book, which intersects with but ultimately
i l n '.juoc of an hour or two. The viewer is presented with an array of sub-
moves away from the ideological critique of representations of the Ethno-
ir.irnoo aotivities, kinship, religin, myth, ceremonial ritual, music and
graphic, is to use the experience of the third eye to address the dilemma so
i L i i n o, .ind in what may be takenas thegenre's defining tropesome form
eloquently outlined by Fann: although the non-white child nourished on
ni nimal sacrifico. Like a classic ethnography which encapsulates a culture
stories of Tarzan cannot grow up f orever identifying with the white explorer,
ni one volnmo, an "ethnographic film" becomes a metonym for an entire
what does one become when one sees that one is not fully recognized as Self
I lili I I I C
by the wider society but cannot fully identify as Other? I believe that under-
A', h i s t o r i a n of anthropology George W. Stocking Jr. explains, anthropol-
standing how the "native" is represented infilmhowethnographic cinema
II);v'-. histrica] unity lies in its subject matter: dark-skinned people known
forces us to "see" anthropologyis crucial to people of color currently en-
.i'i '..iv.iy.cs" or "primitives."11 Visual anthropologist Jay Ruby also points
gaged in developing ncw modcs of self-representation. I am speaking not
i.ii olbnographic film is most often defined by subjoct matter. He
only of artists and filmmakers in major metropolitan cities of the West,
,, "Ta- vast majority of films describedas ethnographic aro concerned
bul also of thosc who are creating national cinemas in formerly colonized
unli i'\oi 10, non-Western people."12 The boundaries of anthropology havo
0011 nt ros, as well as o minority groups who are producingindependent film
l u i i l - c n ilown reccntly, perhaps in response to the fact that descendants o
.un i n,-u ni,lin i ni', ndigo noiis broadcastingcorporations. Themodes of repre-
MU i .illoil l'nmitives are doing ethnography, and the fact that the European
seiii.ii ion o oihnogiaphic oinonia, of coursc, need not be and often are not
m \i o l i i s t contact can no longer be sustained in a postcolonial world.
.ilw.iv. ic|cetcd in (lien o n i i i e t y : ideas from anthropology and modes of
I oiiiuled in i lio late nineteenth century, the discipline of anthropology has
K ( M I -soni.n ion i.ikon (rom olbnographic cinema can be appropriated by peo-
i i i u l i t);i n - .1 series of transformations and is now more self-reflexive about
|)|o o i oloi MI man y dillercnt ways, both conservativo and oppositional. It is
iln < ilin'..111(1 politicsof itsown"customsandmanners."
onlv l>v undentflndlng what othnographic cinema is, and how it works, that
f li vei i holcss, the category of "ethnographic film," at least in the popular
11 u- p o w o r f u l polontial of thc third eye can be more fully realized.
un ir i u.u ion, is still by and large racially defined. The people depictedinan
. i l u . i);i.ipliie film" are meant to be seen as exotic, as people who until only
"lilliiioxraphic ('nema"Defined i i e n t l y wore categorized by science as Savage and Primitive, of an
i n l i i i evolulionary stagein theoverallhistory of hurnankind: people with-
"l'.ihnography" is, in the first place, aninvention of anthropology, its defn-
n i i i l i r . i o i y , without writing, without civilization, without technology,
ing practice. In cultural anthropology, ethnography refers both to the actual
i i i l m n i .n oh i vos. In other words, people considered "ethnographiable," in
process of fieldwork and to the final product, the written ethnography. An-
i l n l i i j n > l . i i sohoma articulated by Claude Lvi-Strauss, as opposed to people
thropologist Susan Slyomovics explains:
i 11 . . i l i n l ,is "lustorifiable," the posited audience of the ethnographic film,
The classic ethnography by a social anthropologist trained va Mali- i In i H i ousideod to have written archives and thus a history proper. The
nowski, Lvi-Strauss, would be a work in which the life of a tribe would lii . L U . n i Miohclc Duchet has explained that Enlightenment thinkers Jo-
be encapsulated into a volume, divided very clearly into certain topics: .i i ' l i I I . I I K . O I S l.afitau, Comte Buffon, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau located
8 Introduction Introduction 9

the study of non-Western indigenous peoples as a subfield of natural his- i i s lorms. My particular interest, of course, is that cinema has been a pri-
tory, a discipline which, Duchet explains, was essentially descriptive. Phys- in.uy means through which race and gender are visualized as natural catego-
ical and cultural anthropology were born out of this eighteenth-century i es, cinema has been the site of intersection between anthropology, popular
refusal to regard indigenous peoples as "histoiifiable."13 c u l i u r c , and the constructions of nation and empire.
The term "ethnographic" literally comes from "timos," a people, and
"graphos," the describing or writing. The term, however, although at times
l:iiM-n>itingCannibalism: History, Cinema, and Race
used by anthropologists as a synonym for the objective description of a
people, instead is a category which describes a relationship between a spec- l ' l n l Rosen brilliantly delinales how, in the nineteenth century in Europe
tator posited as Western, white, and urbanized, and a subject people por- .un North America, history was enshrined as the "sovereign science of
trayed as being somewhere nearer to the beginning on the spectrum of 111.1111< 111 d " and an explicitly historical consciousness carne to pervade every-
human evolution. Although there is no English word which fully captures il.i v lili-." This was the century of Leopold von Ranke and Tules Michelet, of
the notion of the ethnographiable, even the seemingly innocent word "eth- i l u - f'.mwth of museums, of architectural and artistic revivis, and of the
nographic" has resonances of the ethnographiable/historifiable dichotomy. m v c i i i m n of archeology and anthropology. Our present century reverber-
I assume those resonances in my use of the word "ethnographic." i i i f . w i t l i the resultant discourses. If the nineteenth century is the century
Let me be clear that when I rcfer in this way to the "ethnographic" in ni lusiory, however, the twentieth century is the century of the image, of
cinema, I do not mean to implicate all of what others cali ethnographic film. i iiirm.i The twentieth century is characterized by the accessibility, circu-
Some may challenge my definition of the "ethnographic" as anachronis- liii ii iii, and popularization of mechanically reproduced imagcs. If the ninc
tic.14 U.S. visual anthropologist Paye Ginsburg defines ethnographic film as i r r u li century was obsessed with the past, the twentieth century is, in thc
a mdium "intended to communicate something about that social or collec- w n i i l - , o Walter Benjamin, characterized by "the desire . . . to bring things
tive identity we cali 'culture/ in order to mediate (one hopes) across gaps of i l i i M - r spatially and humanly . . . overcoming the uniquencss o evcry
space, time, knowledge, and prejudice."15 Ethnographic filmmakers like u , i h i v l>y .iccepting its reproduction."18
Jean Rouch and David and Judith Macdougall have made increasingly re- i nimia appears to bring the past and that which is culturally distant
flexive and collaborative cinema in an effort to get beyond scientific voyeur- i l i r . i - i , likewise, anthropology, which posits that indigenous peoples are
ism. Their use of handheld cameras, direct address, and elicitation of the i i.mis o earlier ages, has been largely concerned with the description
participation of the peoples filmed expresses a modernist sensibility toward (lu |>rrscrvation or reconstruction of the spatially and historically distant.
the precarious statuses of truth and realism. I am not concerned here with M i r . r n contends that classical Hollywood cinema is superior to photogra-
how best to envision an ideal of ethnographic cinema of the kind that Gins- j i h v .! .1 iiii-ans of controlling and managing time and the past. Using Ro-
burg, Rouch, and others are pursuing. Instead, I seek to explain what I see as l . i i n l li.n i IH-S'S notion of thepunctumthe potentially threatening and hal-
the pervasive "racialization" of indigenous peoples in both popular and tra- IIH I I I . M I P I V di-tail in the photographRosen explains that photography's
ditional scientific cinema.161 thus use the term "ethnographic cinema" to t i . n i r . lis document, its particular subjective nature, disrupts realism; but
describe the broad and variegated field of cinema which sitales indigenous i l n l i i . n l in cinema, subjugated to diegesis, more easily results in socially
peoples in a displaced temporal realm. I include within the category works l u i r i l incanings. 1 9 The shared experience of viewing a film allows for a
now elevated to the status of "art," scientific research films, educational l u l i Ji c.icc o ideological controlcinema is after all an industrywhereas
films used in schools, colonial propaganda films, and commercial entertain- 1111 r. i. 11 > 11 v c 11 e i t s a more solipsistic engagement between viewer and pho-
ment films. Ethnographic cinema so defined, I would contend, has pro ved i " i ' i . i p l i , .111 engagement which leaves open the possibility of unconven-
staunchly resilient. i i m i . i l n .nlni)',s Karly-twenticth-century cinema is thus a privileged locus
Finally let me emphasize that I couple "ethnographic" with the word lu i l u nivesiigaiion oi the coming together of the nineteenth-century ob-
"cinema" rather than with "footage" or "films" because I wish to stress thc "' H U w i i l i Mu- p;ist, and the twcntieth-century desire to make visibly
institutional matrix in which the images are embedded. Cinema s not only i niMpn lirnsililr ilic dillcrcnce of cultural "others."
a technology, it is a social practice with conven! ions i h.it profoundly shapc \ v V Mmliinbe explains, in anthropology's construction of the Savage,
io Introduction Introduction 11

"an explicit poltica! power presumes the authority of a scientific knowl-


edge and vice versa."20 In such diverse genres as colonial propaganda film,
Tarzan movies, and scientific films seen as positivist recordings, ethno-
graphic cinema is often harnessed to ideologies of nationalism and imperi-
alism; it has been an instrument of surveillance as well as entertainment,
linked like the written ethnographies of cultural anthropology to a dis-
course of power, knowledge, and pleasure.
It is impossible to speak of the ethnographic without speaking of race.
"Race" as we now know itthe general color-coded configuration of
"white," "red," "black," and "yellow"was an invention of the nineteenth
century and became the defining problem for early anthropology.21 In evolu-
tionary terms, "race" consciously or unconsciously implies a competition
involving time, and both cinema and anthropology enabled the viewer to
travel through dimensions of space, time, and status.22 Johannes Fabin
explains that anthropology is premised on notions of time which deny the
contemporaneitywhat he calis coevalnessof the anthropologist and the
people that he or she studies. Anthropology, asserts Fabin, is a time ma-
chine.23 At the height of the age of imperialism during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century in the United States and Europe, there was a
tremendous proliferation of new popular science entertainments visualiz-
ing the "ethnographic," such as the dioramas and bone collections of the
natural history museum, the exhibited "native villages" of the world's fair
and the zoo, printed representations such as the postcard and stereograph or
caite de visite, popular science journals such as National Geographic, and, > I ' i v . i l . l . i m i l y roup, Smithsonian Institution. (Smithsonian Institution photo
of course, photography and cinema. These entertainments too were time H" > '< i.. i , uscil hy permission of the Smithsonian Institution, National Anthropo-
machines: to see the subjects portrayed was to see a nexus between race and l r i i J Archives)
a past of origins. Even Walter Benjamin's insight that the appeal of media
like photography stemmed from the masses' desire to bring distant things A1111. mi'Ji i-t hnographic film is often seen as a subgenre of scientific film
closer does not adequately capture the masses' voracious appetite for the "! l i ' - n t i- is .issumed to be inherently dry, boring, and uninteresting-there
images of peoples of color which these entertainments made possible. In u. .u l.-.isi i h r c c reasons why such film, and the broader field in which I
order to understand the early history of how indigenous peoples of color Illimti u , ili-serve cise scrutiny. First, such a study reveis how inextrica-
were represented in film, it is necessary to examine the obsession with and l ' l \ .u I v . mema is linked to discourses of race. In the historiography of
anxiety about race manifested in both science and popular culture. no u , i I > w. l l r i f f i t h ' s The Birth of a Nation (1915) is hailed as an early
The obsessive consumption of images of a racialized Other known as the HliMimm-Ml (.! dominant Hollywood film; its equivalent in status for docu-
Primitive is usefully labeled fascinating cannibalism.24 By "fascinating v - m ( l i-ilinographic film is Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North
cannibalism" I mean to draw attention to the mixture of fascination and |lU"l l - i l n i h i s i o r i a n s cali the formal aesthetic qualities of both films
horror that the "ethnographic" occasions: the "cannibalism" is not that of i. i l i i n . . u . n v , yrt boih f i l m s focus upon the racialized body, an Other
the people who are labeled Savages, but that of the consumers of the images l i " . i " . p,.m i m i i K - d i a t c m a r k c r o f a problematic differencewhetherit
of the bodiesas well as actual bodies on displayof native peoples offered I" ' . i i l h i l i \i p o r i r a y a l o t h e African American in the post-Civil War
up by popular media and scic-nce. ' " " i i l . MI I l . i l u - n v ' s p o r t r a y a l o tln- I n u i t hcro Nanook as a kind of arche-
12, [ntroduction Intzoduction
typal "natural" and Primitive Everyman.26 Grffith's film celebratcs the lelfhood was not problematic. Some would evcn arge that the Western
birth of History, whereas Flaherty's film extols the birth of Ethnography. nvilizcd sell was constitutcd in part through this confrontation with
The two films, hardly ever compared, were made only seven years apart; aiul picturing of the savage or primitive other. Even when anthropology
they both impose a stereotyped visin of the meaning of the past, and both is in crisis, as many would arge it is today, and even when the focus
smooth over anxieties about difference through ideologies of race. The dom- o t h a t crisis is precisely the self/other problem, as it is in reflexve
inant subject position of the spectator, the ideal viewer of the filmswhite, antbropology and the new ethnography, the divide tends to remain
masculine, the bearer of Historyis alternately frightened and soothed by iiiK)ucstioncd. M
the narratives of the Ku Klux Klan as saviors of the nation, and of the Inuit
( )nc icsult of this ever present divisin between Historical Same Western
hunter as raw-flesh-eating but smiling Savage.
Mil)|ivtivity and Primitive Other is a speaking for and thus a silencing of
Second, the will to perceive ethnographic cinema as scientific and objec-
i he peoples depicted in ethnographic cinema, an assumption of voice made
tively voyeuristica common trope of early ethnographic cinema is that
-.prcially dangerous because of the perception that film is a window onto
the peoples who were filmed were ignorant of film technologyis in need of
i r . i h i y . In this setting, the critic may become the unwitting propagator of a
interrogation. It is not only that film is seen as a positivist tool for recording
i n - w postcolonial form of fascinating cannibalism, a reification that further
reality,- it is also that indigenous peoples are seen as natural, more authentic
M i i r n r h c s the categories of Same and Other, Western and Indigenous. I
humanity. Just as mainstream Hollywood cinema depicts Western peoples
,n ! n< >wlcdgc the precariousness of my position. Against this danger, how-
in obviously scripted narrative films, the Primitive is constructed in a genre
r v i - i , .un in an attempt to negotiate new ways of thinking about the rela-
o l i l n i akin lo the nature film. Film studies has begun to examine the
i i . n i ' . l i i p hetween the camera and the peoples filmed in ethnographic cin-
c onsiiuciion o race in classical Hollywood cinema, but has largely ignored
i in. i, I i ni n at various points in the text to reflections on how the people o
.iny l i l m associatcd witb science, including the body of work convention-
1 1 >l( n who performed and acted in these films experienced the process. The
. i l l y lahrlrd "cihnographic." The current scholarship on and criticism of
v uli ni c suggcsts that many of them also saw with a "third eye." Although
sin I) l i h n s is scarce, and is compriscd of mostly self-reflexive accounts by
m v . lloiis are tentative, I believe that approaching the images with this
visual anthropologistscagereithertofindfof0m:'Cmcesors 2 7 ortoslayand
Untlnslanding produces a new way of looking at the images, one that can
dc-iiouncc the colonial complicity of Oedipal fathers (and, when Margaret
I" i'.m to hring the people who inhabit them out of their bondage of silcnce
Mead is the targct, mothers). Many anthropologists, although acknowledg-
un I m o i l u - present, one that acknowledges performance rather than em-
ing particular ethnocentric biases of the filmmakers, still do not dispute
l ' i n i . i l l v irpresentedPrimitivesin timeless picturesques.
the status of ethnographic film as empirical record. It is astonishing how
often the constructed nature of the ethnographic film is ignored; yet, just as
The Birth of a Nation reveis mainstream fears of miscegenation and thus /.', r n . n / / / . Nanookof the North, KingKong:
weaves a web of myths around race, ethnographic film reveis an obsession '.. i. u, ,- liiMltriny, and the Monster
with race and racial categorization in the construction of peoples always
I In , I u.ol< docs not purport to offer a comprehensive survey of early film
already Primitive. Of equal significance, scholars have largely overlooked
> " i - i l l y laheled ethnographic or, indeed, of the broader field I have
the ways in which standard ethnographic film is linked to popular media
l,il.. I. .1 vi liiioj'.raphic cinema." It is structured as a triptych, each part dedi-
entertainments and Hollywood spectacle.
i .U' .1 in .1 ( l i s i i i u - l modality in early ethnographic cinema: (i) the positivist
Finally, a study of ethnographic cinema is crucial to understanding issues
ni..I. ..I i l i r sciriitific research film, represented here by the 1895 chro-
of identity. The anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod describes how even today
H , , , , / , , . ( M I ; , , / / > / ; ; , or i une motion studies of Flix-Louis Regnault; (2) the taxi-
the Self/Other opposition is integral to anthropology:
'!' """ l l r nl I ' H - lyrical ethnographic film, represented here by Robert
Anthropological discourse, with its roots in the exploration and colon i- I L i l i . H \. i . ) i > Nunook of the North; and (3) the postmodern mode of the
zation of the rest of the world by the West, is the discourse of the self. 11 ' " t i l n , i , ul n i i r i t a i n n i e n t film, represented here by Mcrian Cooper and
defines itself primarily as the study of the other, which means that its I MI. ,| '.i lior.l',.ick's i in
r S

I havc choscn Regnault's work and Flaherty's Nanook beCAUSC t h c y havc i lime, t h e i); loo was .1 sel, eii ' I he "cthnographic" is reconstructcd toappear
hccn dcscribcd by historians of visual anthropology as two momcnts of i e.11 lo i lie anticipated audiencc, and (he (iction sustained is that film does
origin of ethnographic film. Regnault's time motion studies or chronopho- m i l .ihei . i n y i h i n g . This ideology undcrgirds the use of cinema in the sal-
tographie of West African performers in the Paris Ethnographic Exposition v.if.c ethnography of "vanishing races." Later film theorists like Andr Ba-
of 1895 represents the supposed moment of origin of a particular type of i i i , Id);, u Morin, and Le de Heusch have exalted Flaherty as a poet who
ethnographic film: the scientific research film. Regnault believed that by IIK'.eiiicd m Nanook not the reality of science, but the reality of "a higher
filming the movementswalking, running, climbing, jumpingof West Af- ( m i l i , " dial of art. The strategies for encoding authenticity and the Primi-
ricans, and comparing them with films of the movements of Europeans, one i ive m N'inook inspired other kinds of documentary cinema, but Nanook's
could establish an evolutionary typology of the races. Human history could i n i r . i i n i n i e d i a t c legacy is the scripted films of the period including Fla-
be read in locomotion. The peoples filmed were perceived as raw data, and lin i v's Momni: A Romance ofthe GoldenAge (1926), andF. W. Murnau and
the films were meant to be studied both in themselves and to aid compara- I l.iheiiv's 'lahu: A Story of the South Seas (1931), as well as later ethno-
tive studies of the physiologies of different races, much the way the micro- i!i.iphie f i l m like Robert Gaidnei's Dead Birds (1962).
scope was used by other scientists. As people pictured as "ethnographic," A'i ll.mn points out, the taxidermic specimen, created when the bound-
the West African performers who Regnault filmed were literally written i i i i r - i < l i he real are transgressed by repainting the dead as lifelike, is closely
into film as racialized bodies, transformed into a kind of racially signifying u l.neil lo the monster, "the composite, incongruous beast which . . . simu-
bieroglyph. Regnault also wrote about the need to establish an archive or hiied ihe seamless integrity of organic life."30 The final part of my triptych
imisciim o (ilms and phonographic recordings of so-called vanishing peo- I I H h i t les.i study ofthe "racial films" made before I933,andculminateswith
ples. IU-i r ,n.mlt'.s p o s i t i v i s t lcgacy--his belief in film as a scientific instru- ii i In'.e .iiialysisof KingKong. I have chosen to analyze King Kong i or several
m en t, .111 i m p o ved cyc much l i k e that of a microscope, and his promotion u ,1'nins King Kong is the ironic moment in ethnographic cinema. On first
o! i he ethnographic l i l m archive lor anthropological researchwas inher- n i c, 111, 11 H' f i l m appears to be a pur fantasy. As I hope to establish, however,
iied Iw .mi hiopoliii'.isis suel as Maree I Criaule, Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, ihi'. f i l m isone more manifestation of fascinating cannibalism: it explicitly
< . i c i ' n i v B.iieson, .un cvcn Alan Lomax, in his choreometric dance project n i .ills ihe historicalpractice of exhibitinghumans at ethnographic exposi-
iinii',, .un partakes of many of the defining traits of the "racial film" genre
I use K o h e i i I l . i h e i i y ' s N/inook of the North as the paradigm of romantic, u hn h llourished in the wake of Nanook of the North. Unlike Regnault's
Ivne.il eihiiogiaphy, the film of art, which hnges upon a nostalgic recon- i hionophotography and Nanook, which are represented in the histories of
s i i i u 11 ni i o a more authentic humanity. In the second part of the triptych, I i ihiidf.i.iphic film as points of origin, King Kong is part of a long line of
begm hy describing travel films made before 1922, includingEdward Sheriff l l h i i ' . icpiescnting the person of African, Asian, or Pacific Islander descent
Curtis's /;; the Lana of the Headhunters (1914). I then offer an in-depth .1'i ,ni .1 pe monster. In its construction of the ethnographiable monster, King
study of Nanook of the North. In 1922, the anthropologist Sir James G. I-. inr da ws on discourses which equate the native with the pathological, as
Fraser observed that the ethnography of the younger Bronislaw Malinowski u . II ,i-, (in discoursesmainly nativiston the fear of the hybrid as mon-
sees the native "in the round and not in the flat," praising his The Argonauts iii i kuiy, Kong summons a notion of time that feeds into ideologies of
of the Western Pacific as "one of the completest and most scientific ac- M U v i v.11 o t he fittest, and of the indigenous body as the site of a colusin be-
counts ever given of a savage people."29 Fraser's comment applies equally to HVI i n p.isi and present, Ethnographic and Historical, Primitive and Mod-
Flaherty: if Regnault had portrayed natives in the flat, almost as ciphers, i ni t dope and Schoedsack had previously made films now considered
Flaherty portrayed natives in the round, in the mode of taxidermy. As Ste- . 11 r.i.iphic" like Grass (1925), Chang{i^2j], and Rango (1931), but King
phen Bann points out in his study of French and British historiography, the I mu: r. .1 pastiche film about the making of an ethnographic film and henee
taxidermist uses artfice and reconstruction in order to make the dead look nll. i'. .1 incta-commentary on "seeing anthropology," one which, I will ar-
alive. Similarly, Flaherty himself emphasized that Nanook was made more i in li'iesh.idows the fear of the postcolonial Other as monster.
authentic by the use of simulation: the Inuit actors were dressed in cos- l'i y.iuiili 's chronophotographie of 1895, Nanook ofthe North (1922), and
16 Introduction Introduction 17

King Kong (1933) may seem to reveal a developmentary sequence, espe- With another eye I see how I am pictured as a landscape, a museum display,
cially since Regnault's films are really "proto-cinema," meant to be seen ;m ethnographic spectacle, an exotic. Across geographies and across histo-
without projection, Nanook is a silent film, and King Kong is a sound film. ries, plunged in the darkness of watching King Kong, I wasn't the only one
Fierre Leprohon in his book L'exotisme et cinema and Andr Bazin in his witnessing the encounter between the white Explorer and the islander Sav-
essay "The Cinema of Exploration" have already suggcstcd that ethno- .ige. In a film clamoring with the din of roaring monsters, screaming fe-
graphic cinema emerged in 1922 with Nanook, only to be replaced in the males, and howling Sumatran Islanders, there is one person who remains
19305 by pastiche exotic films like King Kong. Although I will try to show (iliservantly silent. The Bride of Kong sits in her grass skirt staring mutely at
the development of each paradigm, I do not mean to suggest that they repre- 11 u- spectacle of the white filmmakers trying to talk to her people. I would
sent three modalities which evolved over time, one leading to the other. h k e to imagine that with another eye she scrutinized this encounter be-
Rather, each work has been chosen for cise analysis in order to shed light I ween the Island Chief/Medicine Man and the white Filmmaker/Ship Cap-
on three distinct themes of ethnographic cinema. Although the focus of this i .u n, and read how they had made her into a spectacle. If only she had looked
book will be the three bodies of work just described, a discussion of each siraight into the camera, and thus at me, a far-flung Sumatran. I wanted
film's relationship to other films, and its historical, political, cultural, and lo cover the Bride of Kong, to unravel the weaving of this narrative, this
anthropological context, will inform the analysis. I could have chosen one M icento pierce through the veil of the imagination of whiteness.
paradigm and provided a survey of a subgenre within ethnographic film, but lUit the problem lies in hearing what the Bride was saying, and what all
I wanted to show how "ethnographic film" moves across genres, how it is i lie other Brides, displayed for ethnographic spectacle, were saying: Saartje
defined by an incessant movement between science and art, reality and Ki.ittmann, the Khoi-San woman, known as the Hottentot Venus, whose
fantasy. Although Regnault's films are intrascientific, meant to be studied I n u l y in the i/oos was exhibited in London and Paris, only to end up dis-
by anthropologists, Regnault filmed people in popular ethnographic exhibi- )< icd by the scientist Georges Cuvier who was fascinated by her genitalia,-
tions which can accurately be described as human zoos; although faulted as cu i he countless unnamedperformers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
a film which uses costumes and props, Nanook has been represented as an "II.K i ve villages" in world's fairs and zoos who later died from flu or other
authentic ethnographic film about Inuit culture and is used in classes of ilhii-ssesMinik Wallace, Ishi, OtaBenga.
cultural anthropology; and although King Kong is a film completely within I liiw stories are told and whether to tell them is related to how history is
the realm of popular culture, it was made by filmmakers whose previous I 1 ild Throughout the book I look at gaps and disturbances in the narrative
works are considered ethnographic. I will thus attempt to show how these "I cvolutionary imaging, particularly within the realm of performance, as
films explode the seemingly mutually exclusive boundaries of science, art, manifestad in such performance strategies as open resistance, recontextual-
and entertainment. i . i l i o n , parody, and even simple restraint. In addition, I draw upon the
Works of artists and writers like Lorna Simpson, Ousmane Sembne, Zacha-
M.!. K u i H i k , Elizabeth Alexander, Frantz Fann, and James Baldwin, who
The Thiid Eye i m p l i r i t I y and explicitly comment on and unveil the language of racializa-
Sealed into that crushing objecthood, I turnea beseechingly to otheis. i H U NI ethnographic cinema in complex ways. In my conclusin I return to
Theii attention was a liberation, running over my body suddenly i l n predicament described by Frantz Fann of the viewer who, recognizing
abraded into nonbeing, endovring me once more with an agility that I t h . u lu- ni she is racially aligned with the ethnographic Other yet unable to
had thought lost, and by taking me out of the world, restoring me to it. i > l i ni i l v l u l l y with the image, is left in uncomfortable suspensin. I discuss
But just aslreached the other side, I stumbled, and the movements, i ii I v ex.imples of ethnographic cinema that, although informed by or situ-
the altitudes, the glances of the other ftxed me there, in the sense in i t i 'I w i i l n n i he ethnographic context I have just described, incorprate ele-
which a chemical solution is ftxed by a dye. I was indignant; I de- M I I n i ' , o " i l i i n l eye" perception: the ethnographic spectacle of Josephine
manded an explanation. Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the It i l ri 's l i l m e d performances, and the films and work of Zora Neale Hurs-
fragments have been put together again by another se//.-" i " i i I he boimdarics h l n r as i lise w i t h a third eye attempt to put together
Frantz Fann, Black Skin, White Maxks ( i i l l tnc dispcrsed fragments o identity into other never seamlessselves.
1 SEEIN6 ANTHROPOLO6Y

I i ' l i \ Regnault, ilic Narrativeof Race, andthe

l'i'i/m iiii'is u ilic Ethnographic Exposition

I \i'li>t<-i\ ntit rcveal otherness. They comment upon "anthropol-


.'.'i ilnii is. ihc (listtmceseparatingsavageryfrom civilization on the
,li,i, tiianif linc of progress. V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of frica
ll'lMtl)1

I1 MI i ,111 divide humanity into those who squat andthose whosit.


M u el Miiiiss, "Les techniques du corps" (i934) 2

I 1 1 Vim ,nr i Wolof woman from Senegal. You have come to Pars in 1895
u i i h viiin hushand as a performer in the Exposition Ethnographique de
I A1111111( ()ccidcntale (Senegal and French Sudan) because of the promise of
MI H iiI |>.iv. You have been positioned in front of the camera, and you are
i l i n i l > me, .ihout how cold it is: you can't believe that you have to live here in
ilici icciinstruction of a West African village, crowded with these other
VVi 'ii A11 ic;in people, some of whom don't even speak Wolof. Every day the
t v l i i h propio come to stare at you as you make your pottery. You make fun
n i " i ni ilicm out loud in Wolof, which they don't understand. Youunder-
"i i MI I -.mi u- of their French; after all, you are from the port where therehave
I u i n I icnch traders for as long as you can remember. Two men with cam-
i i , i > i km- lu'cn filming you and others making pottery, grinding grain, and
t* i!! me, Kight now, you have been told to walk straight ahead carrying a
i ,il ih.r.li mi your head.
I O \<n\o the French physician Flix-Louis Regnault, and you are be-
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 r i , 111 u- ra. Both you and your colleague Charles Comte are using the
i ln<nit>itli<>i(>xr(iphe, the camera inventedby the physiologist Etienne-Jules
M-ni \ uiioiided forfast serial photography. Fascinated by pathological and
I 1 M I I I I I il .in.iiomy and the new field called anthropology, you are delighted
lu i l n . i'ihnographic exposition at the Champs de Mars. Finally you can
i t n , l \n inovements of African people in the fleshpeople you and other
Anthr

inthropologists cat.ilog as "savagrs" msicad o gctting mere ilcsc ipi IOMS


ni i l i c i i movcmcnts from written nccounts, photography, and a r f . 1 Yon aic
i ( i n v i i H -ce! tliat tbese chronophotographic documents will elvale ihc ncw
di', i iplmc o anthropology to the rcalm of science.
In i lie si-diario just dcscribcd, the divide between observer and ohsc ved
,i|i|-.iis el cari y marked. The exchange of looks in the chronophotography
l ' i i n l i u cd by Regnault, however, belies any simple polarity of suhjeci aiul
ci|i|i-( ( Thcre is, for example, a Frenchman, dressed in a eity suil and li.n,
who arcompanies the woman as she walks, never taking his cycs ol hci
I le. w.ilk, nieant to represent the urban walk, is thcre as coni paral ivr poini
ul iclciciux- to what Regnault terms the woman's "savagc locomol ion."' 1 In
.iddiiinn, lie aets as an in-frame surrogate for the Wcsiern m.ilc i',.i,v o ilie
'u u ni ist. There are also twootherperformers visible at f r a n i e l e l , w.iic Innj;
lln- I lendiman watch the woman. Finally, a little girl, also Wrsi A l m .in
Mimes .ilicrnately at the group being filmed and thcscicntist and liisuimeni
'Jii .ipprars to break a cnematic code already cstablishctl in lin de MI-I h
l l i i n - mol ion studies: she looks at the camera. In I his sceii.ino ul i oni|>.n,i
1 1 vi- I.H i,i I physiology, the little girl has not learned how pmpnlv io-.ei m I
m i n Al ilie nexus of this exchange of looks is tlu- Wulul wum.in .'.lie,
I m u e v e i, is not the agent of a look. Renderednameless and lceles-,, n e, l i e i
limlv wlnel is deemed the most significant datum: she is donbly in.ii.i'.in
,ili i il .is hoth female and African.
I IH-. description of the chain of looks is taken from chronophotography
In i lie pliysician Flix-Louis Regnault. I will referi the chronophotography
ni l'i >;n.iiili as "film," even though they were not meant to be projected.5
Invi n i i -d by Etienne-JulesMarey in 1882, chronophotography was aform of
( i H i i i i mema which used cameras with oscillating shutters, so that precise
i i i h t v . ils ul movement could be distributed over one fixed pate. Although
Mi c.n.mli's iniages have been largely ignored by film historians, visual an-
i!nii|iuluj'.isis eager to establish a lineage for their endeavors now claim
M i c.n. m i l s work as a precursor. Moreover, in the historiography of eth-
H I ' , ' I , I | I | I U l i l i l , Regnault is significant not only for his proto-cinema, but
tl-ni lu IMS l)ody of theory on film as ethnographic tool.6 His conception of
1 1 1 MI pf.i.iplne f i l m as positivist record to be stored in archives and examined
u (u i i c dlv, lame by frame, forms thebasisfor dominant conceptions of the
lilil i o|i< ilgica I research film.
3. Charles Comte and Fclix-Louis Regnault, "Negress walking with a light weight on 1 1 n n .ne i wo principal reasons why I wanted to show the chain of looks
her head" (1895). (Modern print from original glass pate chronophotographic nega- IM i lie. MI es ul iniages. The first rcason I begin with the idea of a chain of
tive, cat. no. Hn4/, courtesy of the Collection of the Cinmathque frangaise) l i m l ' - . ni who's vicwing who is that I would like to begin to pose the
(MI . I I I I M o wbal ii means to xee ethnographic film as performer, film-
24 Inscription Seeing Anthropology 25

maker, and audience. In The Invention of frica, V. Y. Mudimbe describes confronted with images of people who are not meant to be seen as individ-
a fundamental paradigm of the type of knowledgehis term is gnosis uis, but as specimens of race and culture, specimens which provide the
determined and made possible by anthropological, colonial, and historical viewer with a visualization of the evolutionary past. Like much of what is
discourses on frica as one which opposes tradition and modernity, a binary now termed early "ethnographic" cinema, Regnault's films appear to have
opposition also manifested as savagery versus civilization, and pathology no narrative. I contend, however, that there is a narrative implicit in these
versus normality. Mudimbe shows that the categories used to classify "na- I i Ims, a narrative implicit, in fact, in all ethnographic film. The narrative is
tives" in the i6oos such as physical description, trade, arts, moris, cus- t l i a t of evolution. Although the Wolof woman and the Frenchman walk
toms, language, government, and religin continued to be used in the twen- w i i h i n the same space in the above example, they are made distant from
tieth century: what changed was not the sophistication of the tools of c.idi other both spatially and temporally by science and by popular culture.
knowledge but the system of vales concerning otherness.7 The fundamen-
tal paradigm opposing tradition and modernity remained. Thus explorers
llistory as Race: Anthropology/Medicine/Imperialism
and one should include in that category many anthropologistsdo not re-
veal otherness, they comment upon "anthropology." Who was Flix-Louis Regnault? Not a founding father of French anthropol-
The second reason for the chain of looks is to underline the point that the i >j;v 11 ke Paul Broca, or an inventing pioneer of cinema and physiology like
West Africans and Malagasy filmed were performers, and not just bodies. IIP. i eachcr Marey, or a flamboyant social hygienist like the Turin criminal
These performers were people who returned gazes and who spoke, people inthropologist Cesare Lombroso, Regnault would seem to deserve his ob-
who in many ways also were seeing anthropology. Of course, since we have ii n 111 y. Yet he is precisely the sort of historical figure about whom people
no written record of the thoughts of these particular individuis, and of l i l ' r lo say that if he had not existed, he would have been invented. For
many of the other indigenous peoples who were made the object of written N i n i . m l t was an astonishing figure: his films from 1895 and his huge output
and filmic forms of ethnography, I agree with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ni w n i i n g s revealmost of the nineteenth-century scientific obsessions that
that there is no simple way of recovering their subjectivity, of hearing them lu ir.nl un the body. Using medicine, anthropology, prehistory, sociology,
speak.8 Yet, at the same time an exclusive focus which critiques the white v, /oology, and psychology, Regnault wrote about the human body
anthropologist, writer, or artist all too often leaves in place the process by i .m evolutionary conception of history. Although there is little evi-
which indigenous people continu to be reified as specimens, metonyms for il< in i i l i . i t Regnault continued to make time motion studies after 1895, he
an entire culture, race, or monolithic condition known as "Primitiveness." ni.i.li l A i m s i v e use of museums, collections of skulls, photography, and
The problem is compounded by the renewed reproduction of images which ni . u n hr lohbied for the creation of museums of films of "ethnographic
feed "ascinating cannibalism."9 The chain of looks shows that more than lili, n - , l

one subjectivity surveyed the scene. II.u n m i Hd i, Regnault carne from a bourgeois family from the provinces
In order to show how the emergence of cinema is critically linked to the In M I I P . l . i i l i i - r was a professor of mathematics.11 As an adolescent, Re-
emergence of anthropology and its visualizing discourse of evolution, ail ( j u i n l i I M i;.m wli.it was to becomc a lifetime passion for prehistory: later in
equally importantly, to describe the historical conditions under which l i l i I n . n i ni > M to 1918, he was the president of the Socit prhistorique
indigenous peoples increasingly confronted the image-hungry West, this I I . H I I . - I I - . i I Ir l l m s h e d a medical degree in 1888, but up to the time of his
chapter f ocuses on the historical and intellectual context in which Regnau 11 ili - i i l i i n i ' i |.'<, he was helter known as avid amateur prehistorian, anthro-
worked. As I hope to show, the imbricated networks of science, spectacli-, jinlii|.i'ii i i ,11 l i n , a c t i v e medical journalist, and editor, than as physician.
and seeing in popular culture, early anthropology and film brought i n t o I I il " > n m e M - v r r a l hooks on such varied topics as hypnotism, religin,
viewby this examination underlie all of "ethnographic cinema." In chapn I I I M i u n i i. m , le c a i l n u e, aiul, o course, human locomotion. 12
2 I move from an analysis of the historical and intellectual context to a tl< A.. i - n l \. i.'i'M, R e g i i a u l t siudied w i t h Marcy a t t h e Station physiologi-
tailed visual analysis of Regnault's f i l m s thcmsclvcs. I examine Regnault '. i|iu n M . . i i l n r , i i i , I i . n i i r J 1 Thc work o Marey, who invented chronopho-
conccption of film as the ideal positivist icientiflc lool lor record i ng movr I i | i l i \ . t u i l i n l i he i no ve m e n t o h u m a ns and animis, together with
ment. In Rcgnaull's f i l m s , as m ethnogrtphic l i l m genenly, llie v i r w r i Ll ..i I I.|\ . n < l M u v l ' i uli'.c, who pmduccil i he l i i s t serial photography, is
).<* In

o i cu roii.sii Inri I ID i n. 11 k i l i c l i r g m n i n g <il cinema. Marey's films of humans


OCUSed mi i he n IOVTI i K M i 1 , ni 111.1 le lii copean athletes, highlighting muscles Seeing Anthropology 27
aml teiulons, o l i c n in M i i M i i o n s w i l l i stcong homocrotic overtones,- Muy-
A positivist zeal for the physical description, measurement, and classi-
bridge f i l i n e d limo A i i i e n e . m mcii aiul women performing simple gender- fication of racially defined bodies was the driving forc of anthropology at
spccific m o v e m c n i s . 1 1 Ke.i;ii.mli oii i lie otlicchand was interested in filming
the Socit. Since it was thought that brain weight correlated with intel-
thc movcnicnis o peoples liom arcas in frica which were recently colo- ligence, and since it was often impossible to study the human brain itself,
nized: West f r i c a and McdglSCAT. I lis films, of which there are some i runiology, the study of cranial measurements, carne to be consdered the
scvcnty-ivc existmg cx.miplcs, can he divided into those recording the most important tool of racial studies.21 One racial category seen as scien-
movements of West Afric.in.s aml Malagasy performers from expositons t i/ic was the capacity oa race to become civlized, its "degree of perfectibil-
ethnographiijues and tho.se rccording the locomotion of French soldiers.
n v." Broca wrote, "What vares above all is the degree of activity of intel-
Regnault's interest in the hody clearly stemmedfromhisfascination with I c v l u a l functions, the predominance of this or that group of faculties, the
anthropology, an emerging discipline of the nineteenth century, a discipline (levelopment of the social state and perfectibility, that is to say the aptitude
which took race as its defining problcm. i s Just as the nation-state, to use lo i onceive orrecei ve progress."22 As George W. Stockingjr. writes, physical
Benedict Anderson's phrasing, is an "imaginad political community/' race linm.in variety was interpreted "in regular rectilinear terms as the result of
was not only the guiding construct of early evolutionist thinking, it formed ilillecential progress up a ladder of cultural stages (savagery, barbarism, civi-
the basis oan imagined biological community.16 The desire to demrcate I I . . H I O I I ) accompanied by a parallel transformation of particular cultural
difference and the quest to describe pur racial types coincded with the rise l i i i m s (polythesm/monotheism; polygamy/monogamy."23 The polygenist
of imperialism and nationalism: the discourses of race, nation, and imperi- i lu l i m e of Socit anthropology conceived of the races as being almost
alism were intimately linked. 17 Indeed, the concept of "nation" became ijiei es like, revealing a fear of mixture and hybridity: Broca, for example,
common at around the same time as the concepts "race" and "volk," and ! n l n -ved i h a t interracial children were likely to be sterle.24 The impulse to
these terms in the beginning of the century were fluidly intertwined: in the i I M I . I I ferize most non-European groups as havng all the features that the
late eighteenth century, the word "race" appears in the work of natural VVi',1 Ion i id nndesirable and morally reprehensible was clearly one means of
historians but is used interchangeably with "nation" and "people."18 The i n .un); .1 hroad Western subjectivity that reached beyond the nation. An-
present-day breakdown of anthropology nto physical anthropology and cul-
A(lii
i l io|
i i nlologisis took Primitive (Savage) society as their special subject, but, as
Kupe explains,
tural anthropology (ethnography being the principal tool of the latter) did
not emerge until the mid-twenteth century: in the nineteenth century,
racial heredity was believed to determine culture.19 In pi.ictice primitive society proved to be their own society (as they
In France, the most important anthropological organization was the Soci iindeiMood it) seen in a distortingmirror. For them modern society was
t d'anthropologie de Pars, of which Regnault was a member. Founded in ,li liied a/iove aJl by the territorial state, the monogamous family and
1859 by the biologist Paul Broca in the same year that Darwin's The Origin |n i v . i t e propecty. Prmitive society therefore must have been nomadic,
ofSpecies was published, the Socitpromoted a form of Lamarckian evoln o i i l e i c d by blood ties, sexualypromiscuousandcommunist. There had
tionism called transformisme, which emphasized theimportance of milien ,il-.n lieen a pcogression in mentality. Primitive man was illogical and
or environment and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Darwin's )',n i n io ni.igie. In time he had developed more sophisticated religious
conception that evolution was arboreal, involvng chance, was not readilv lid >-. Modein man, however, had invented scipn<-<s T-'-
(i l l i i u v e eontempocac^ '"
accepted by late-nineteenth-century anthropologsts, many of whom con
ceived of human history as a linear evolution. Transformisme became i IK
French alternative to Darwin: it allowed for both a linear evolutionary his
tory and sudden leaps n the form of spontancous generation. It accomnn >
dated French positivist ideas concerning progress as a proeess gudcd In
natural laws.20
28 Inscription Seeing Anthropology 29
the chief medical officer of Senegal, wrote that it appeared to be more natu- who saw the criminal as a biological degenerate,- the antisemitic Mont-
ral for Wolof women to walk on all fours due to the angle of their pelvic pcllier school of George Vacher de Lapouge that decried interbreeding as
bones and spine. He also believed that the big toes of Africans were large and K-ading to degeneracy,- and the studies of Gustave le Bon, who used cranial
more capable of independent movement, as did Regnault.27 If one relates mcasurements to prove the inferiority of the masses and of women.31 As
such ideas about the "animality" of West African movement to Regnault's suggested above, Regnault was fascinated with applied anthropology, and
chronophotography, one can begin to place Regnault's work in the context wiote over one hundred articles and a number of books on the prehistoric,
of a knowledge system whose paradigm was relentlessly comparative. In ilii- criminal, the pathological, and the "savage," including studies on deca-
1880, Socit d'anthropologie de Paris member Charles Letourneau wrote, ilcnce, how to improve the training of nurses, venereal disease and prostitu-
"In spite of its imperfections, its weaknesses and vices, the white race, i u ni, and geniuses and strongmen. In later years he wrote extensively on the
semitic and indo-european holds, certainly for the present the head in the OVcrrefinement of the afftn (the urban European), whom he juxtaposed
'steeplechase' (sic) of human groups."28 w i l l i the rustique (a category comprised of those he called Savages, together
The "steeplechase" is an important metaphor. History was a race: those w i i h rural folk and the working class).32
who did not vanquish would vanish. It is significant, therefore, that Reg- Anthropology legitimized imperialism through its "scientific" findings
nault would use film to record the movements of the performers he ob- th.u indigenous non-European peoples were inferior and at the bottom of
served at the ethnographic exposition: film would inscribe race through the i l u i'volutionary ladder of history.33 The link between anthropology and
body (human diff erence) and would be evidence of history (which was also a Impmalism was strengthened by anthropology's voraciousness for data.
race). Time was thus conceived in evolutionary terms, with race as the key I l u 11 i vii, with the founding of the Institut d'anthropologie under Marcel
factor, and the body as the marker of racial and thus temporal diff erence. Miinv., anthropologists were not required to have actually gone to the field
The question of why anthropology had such a voracious appetite for the i i i n l "bren there." These "armchair anthropologists" depended upon the
Primitive body may be answered in part by looking at anthropological dis- u | i n i i ' , ul missionaries, travelers, and colonial physicians, as well as mu-
course in relation to the construction of the Social and/or National body. "i M U ,iml Icarned societies' collections of skulls, maps, and photographs.
The 18903 was a period of great concern with modern urban change: theo- I rii'.i i in.icquiremorestandardizeddatainordertolegitimizeitself asatrue
ries of degeneration, a belief that the overstimulated modern urban citizen i h MI r, i lie Socit d'anthropologie de Paris published a manual to be used
had become nervous and weakened, were prevalent. Max Nordau's Degen- In i i i l i i m . i l olficersand travelers for measuringcraniaandreportinganthro-
eration (1893), for example, was a popular treatise. City Ufe, Nordau be- | n i | i i | ' i i il dcscriptions. 34
lieved, led to degeneration and to the effeminization of "man," understood I M i l i r . Socictc manual, Broca made an analogy between the anthropologi-
to mean white man.29 Consistent with this theme, early chronophotogra- i .il > i n l i | r i i .n! the sick patient: "Just as the best description of a malady is
phers took hysteria and neurasthenia as subjects, as Charcot's Nouvellc i I I H \n li tests on a series of observations taken singly and writtenby the
iconographie de la Salpetrire attests, and Regnault centered his researchcs In il "I i Mck man, so the best description of a race rests on a series of
on the "ethnographic" body, seeking in part to gain insights for use in ame- I M . I M i i l n . 1 1 dcscriptions, written at the time of meeting, in thepresence of a
liorating the condition of the urban French body.30 The "ethnographic" nli|i i i u I H H I I mu- is observing without any preconception to investigate
Other was thus not just "savage" and pathological, but was also physically Mili (' II I H l l l . l l I . I C t ."' '

closer to the genuine and authentic in man. I In li ir, w l i i c h anthropology focused on colonial subjects was thus pro-
After Paul Broca died in 1880, the applied anthropology of the prehis IM l l \u ,il .md purported to be objective. The average member of the
torian Gabriel de Mortillet carne to dominate the Socit d'anthropologie Niii h i i .1 , m i l i t < > p < > l < ) i ; e de Paris after al] was, like Regnault, a physician.
de Paris. Some anthropologists, including Regnault, began to apply then l l i i I I I I M \, i h . i i ihosc sccking to cxplain the "normal" needed the patho-
methods on internal "others," such as women, criminis, and prchistom |M|(|I il I l i e n - w.is i l m s .ID i n t m a l e conneclion between the object of the
remains. Applied anthropology and racial politics were conjoined, as cvi |I|M-II MU ' n i i i n v i he pathological and the object of thc anthropolo-
denced most blatantly by thc c r i m i n a l anthropology o ('i-san.- l.ombrosn, '*' "
3O Inscription Seeing Anthropology 31

The concept of "race" was never scientifically validated. Even though


Regnault and other anthropologists energetically sought out the perfect in-
dex to measure and classify race, prominent anthropologists James Prichard
and Paul Broca both admitted to the constructed nature of race, as did their
predecessor, Count Buffon. After thousands of skulls had been measured
and endless statistical analyses performed, no one could agree on what race
was or how to measure it. If "race" could not be scientifically proven, how-
ever, the narrative of racial difference with its evolutionary premise proved
ideologically powerful. The narrative was repeated and consumed in a del-
uge of late-nineteenth-century visual technologies displaying the body of
the "Primitive," in the form of museum collections of skulls, dioramas with
wax or plaster figures, photography, expositions, and film. Both anthropol-
ogy, infused with the taxonomic imagination of natural history, and popular
culture, as I will show later, incessantly visualized race. In this regard,
Regnault is exemplary: he saw evidence of race and the pathological in all
visual data relating to the body, including skulls, art, photography, popular
fairs, and finally film.37 The visual emphasis in Regnault's work is not for-
I l'i intixl illustration in Flix-Louis Regnault's "De la fonction
tuitous. As Johannes Fabin has argued convincingly, anthropology is prem-
I M I hcnsilcdupied."(Laj22tizreno. 1058, 9 September 1893)
ised upon naturalized and evolutionary time,- moreover, anthropology has
an inherent visualist bias, categorizing indigenous peoples by way of tax-
onomic tableaus.38 This obsession with visualism, the "cultural, ideological n, one will thus eliminate a factor which it is necessary above all
bias toward visin as the 'noblest sense,'" is at the core of the modernist i u I i iul a means to eliminate in science: 'the personal factor.' "41
project.39 Not only does modernity involve the extensin of human powers Regnault's stance is thus that of observateur, but one whose visin is
of observation through the agency of technologies such as photography and |'i..l,,imdly medical. Throughout his career Regnault wrote about idiots,
film, but also, as Jonathan Crary has pointed out, it involves the collapse of '"''plialics, hydrocephalics, and rickets patients, and he often brought
classical models of visin. Reification in the form of "seeing anthropology," l ' . i i i r i i i s lo Socit meetings to illustrate his findings on pathology.42 Re-
in other words, is not only an aspect of the colonizing gaze but is part of the i'.n.mli -ven speculated in his writings that some groups of people afflicted
primacy given to the optical in the twentieth century.40 It is Regnault's u 1 1 1 1 1 ..i 11 u>| ( )jr jes constituted seprate races: he makes this suggestion in his
obsession with the visual history of humankind to which I now turn my '" ' "" Icpers in France, and in his studies of polydactilism (those with
attention. INI tu I M K C I S or toes) and teratology (the study of human "monsters").43
11" m u I .uropean was also represented as pathological. Writing for med-
11 !l1 i '' l l s ;'s wcll as popular science journals such as La nature, Regnault
Regnault and the Body: The Search for Unmediated Descrption
in Craniology, the Freak Show, Art, and Photography lv ' '""* "I articles and books throughout his ufe on race, anatomy, and
1 " M i . M i i i r i K . I k- saw race as immutable, and measured itintermsof physi-
The primary object of Regnault's beginning research was the physical anal 1 1 ) 1 '" 'V, simlying race as an empirical category of classification for
omy of the body. At first, Regnault embraced craniology as the supremely I ' 1 " I ' l i m n . m and a n i m a l species as wcll as prehistoric creatures.44 Many
objective method to understand the body. In his thesis of 1888 on cranial ni I li N hv Kcv.nault concerned the physical characteristics of the "savage"
deformations in rickets patients, Regnault praised Broca's method of era .un ni, lude disciissioiis o sc-arilication, weak color pcrception, "monkey-
niology for its mathematical exactitude: "I low mu h more- accurate is it lo M" I r r l l i , M r . i t o p y K y o largc huliocks, and "prchc-nsilc" fecl. 4S A slrong
measure, lo express in figures liavini; .111 .ilisoluic v a l u , i simple visual I "'' ' "I ""/"'" "i i - n v i m n m i ' i i i as an i m p o r t a n ! inlueiice on race, he
32, Inscription Seeing Anthropology 3 3
.
claimed in one 1895 article that blacks were born light-skinned but become vulgar phenomenons that one sees in fairs. Ours have been admired by
dark on contact with light, heat, and humidity.46 Just as he had studied scholars all over the world. They have been taken to laboratories in the great
crania as well as living patients for his studies of pathological anatomy, capitals,- they have been measured from all angles and photographed." But
Regnault also studied skulls of non-Europeans in his pursuit of race: in a what Regnault saw when he entered the tent was "in fact these primitives
visit to India in iSpr, he stole nineteen skulls from a Bengali cemetery were nothing more than unfortunate degenerates, microcephalics."50 In
in the ame of the science of anthropology and presented them to the general, however, as discussed in detail later in this chapter, Regnault was
Socit.47 .in enthusiastic fair and exposition visitor.
Significantly, in his report on his visit to India, Regnault described gather- Regnault also conducted research in physiology and was especially inter-
ings of Indian pilgrims as "real museums of the pathological where lepers, rsted in comparative racial locomotion studies. He turned to art, found in
those with elephantiasis, microcephalics, and the deformed of all kinds museums and other collections, for empirical data concerning the body. Art
happen to find themselves assembled together."48 The world was thus seen history, anthropology, and medicine intersected in a unique way in the
as a visual array of pathology, race, and evolutionthat is, as a museum. woik of Regnault and his older colleagues Paul Richer and Jean-Martin
Regnault's metaphor of a museum of pathology was not fortuitous: at the ('harcot. All three doctors used art as historical evidence of medical pa-
turn of the century, major hospitals had their own museums of pathology, iliologies, and practiced photography and chronophotography in their re-
as evidenced by the Salpetrire hospital in which Charcot was both director n 1 .lidies. Richer, for example, used his work on anatomy and photography
and curator of its collections of aberrant human specimens. The fascination lo write manuals for artists. Both Charcot and Richer wrote about defor-
and search for what the French Marxist philosopher Etienne Balibar bril- n n i es in art, as did Regnault.51 What is curious about Regnault's studies is
liantly terms "bodily stigmata" was indeed essential to the project of early lus msistcnce on the indexical nature of art. According to Regnault, artists
anthropology. Balibar writes, i u.iv rxaggcrate, but they always represent the body that they see. Therefore
Theories of academic racism mimic scientific discursivity by basing .u i, especially Indian, Greek, Japanese, Egyptian, and Italian sculpture, may
themselves upon visible "evidence" (whence the essential importance In iiM-d as evidence that certain pathologiessuch as cranial deformations,
111 l'.ris, and cven hysteriaexisted in the past.52
of the stigmata of race and in particular of bodily stigmata), or, more
exactly, they mimic the way in which scientific discursivity articlales Hi i iles Lising works of art as documents for the historical study of pathol-
"visible facts" to "hidden causes" and thus connect up with a spontane- ni',v, Kr^nault used art as evidence of evolutionary mental development.53
ous process of theorization inherent in the racism of the masses. I shall l i n l r r i l , Regnault's interest in art as record of body posture (in turn reflecting
therefore venture the idea that the racist complex inextricably com- i l i l l i I C I H V S in class, race, and gender) is essential to comprehending his use
bines a crucial function of misiecognition (without which the violencc ul I l l i n '' I lis evolutionary scheme for the history of body posture, which
would not be tolerable to the very people engaging in it) and a "will to In w m i l i l later cali anthropographie or physiologie ethniques compares,
know," a violent desire foi immediate knowledge of social relations.1" t i . i i ni m . m k i n d from the Savage who crouches and kneels, to the Civilized
u l u ,!!, in chairs. 3 5 Eachrace, he wrote, has a predominant and characteris-
The desire to see "difference," and to establish iconographies for recogniz- i d i'U'.imr.''' Regnault produccd an evolutionary hypothesis to explain dif-
ing difference instantaneously, was thus a defining feature of early anthro- d i i ni modrs o walking, running, and carrying loads, one he would later
pological science. ii ni MI lus chronophotography. 57
The assumption that the Primitive and the Pathological were linked was l ' i r . i u u l i also consulted photographs to study body posture and gesture.
also manifested in popular culture displays. Regnault's writings show t h a i ln ( .n ,n Itn la i n, t h e plice began to use photographs for criminal identifica-
he made frequent forays into mass entertainments like fairs in his search I o l( i . n I v .is ( h e iK/ios; anthropologists like Cesare Lombroso usedpho-
bodies to study. As a scientist, however, Regnault could be disappoiniril i n i ' M | i l i v ! < > i i l i r n stuilies o prostitutes.'" H Photography was used in both
with the show. At one popular fair, Regnault quotcs the barker's i n v i t a c i n m i l i i i i | M > l i > ) ' , K al .mil gcographical learned societies, especially in construct-
to passersby to look at cclcbrated specimens o science: "Thcse are not i l u (MI i u i J i v p r s , phoiographcd in l e l t and right prolile ail head-on. Many
Seeing Anthropology 35

.iiirmpts were made in the i86os and iS/os to use photogTAphy anthropo-
nieiiically: henee the grids and rulers one often sees in thcse kinds of pho-
tographs.59 Regnault certainly consulted photographs for evidence of the
In u!v, Inii he found that there was one essential ingredient missing, and that
H'.IS movement. In one telling statement, Regnault wrote that a cadver
i oiild uoi showunconscious movement:
Sinely it is true that the artistic anatomy, the dissection of the ca-
il.i ver, is not a sufficient reproduction, since it is necessary to see again
i he lendons and the muscles, flaccid when studied under the scalpel,
llcxing and releasing through action; not through an action that is by
chance, or artificial, or studied, as in a model in a studio, but through an
unconscious action, done byhabit by a workerof aprofession.60
I lie Mirgical eye could dissect the corpse but could not understand how
i lie In xly liad moved through space. Regnault's interest in film derived from
lii-i .c.iich for a mdium which could capture movement. In searchingfor an
imli v lu racethe unfashioned clueRegnault privleged movement, be-
i ,nr,c u is "in between" culture and nature, acting and being,- movement is
I'ln-M .il and objective, yet variable.
I lie medical eye of Regnault was forever searching for and diagnosing
i \e ni an attempt toestablish the boundares between truth and fraud,
n iiln \ antasy.61 For Regnault every referent had a meaning, every
liuilv u.s diagnosis. Cario Ginzburg has explained that the disciplines in-
i n l \ il in (onjccturingabout historical developmentincluding anthropol-
tifiv w i i l i iis desire to conjure up a hstory of mankind by making the Primi-
ih i ilie pircursor to Civilized manwere intimately linked with a tight
c *y.;.; *Mh IMIWCI detennined to find identity in physical traits which could not
In niiiinpiilaii'd by saboteurs.62 Thus Ginzburg compares the invention of
!\VxV^v
1 !* *. , ^ ' T> " tln llui'.c ipi mi as a mcchanism for criminal identification, one superior to
ili.ii ni (lie wniien signature, to the technique developed by Morelli, the
n i II I. i n i w i i .ni eonnoisseur, of using the painted ear to distinguish the
.iMih< ni u work o/ the masters from works by their students or lesser art-
li i ' '.iiiiil.uly, anthropology grew as the science of reading the human
IIM.II vvli.ii disiingiiished anthropology from the other historical disci-
|iliiii -i linvveve, was ihat it includcd the study of people said to be without
-iiiiiir, u iilioiii signature. The anthropologist was the seated observer of
5. Printed illustraton in Flix-Louis Regnault's "Les dformations lii|>li \\-lin (KMichcd. The unfashioned clue, the ndex for measuring race,
crniennes dans l'art antique." (La natuie no. 1105, 4August 1894) M .1 Kei'.n.iiili's eycs, niovenieni and posture, the supreme and uncon-
l'liMi'i iinlii .Km o evohilionary develo/iment.
36 Inscription Seeing Anthropology 37

Spectacular Anthropology: The Ethnographic Exposition


and Popular Representations of Race
The public ends up ignoring wiitten accounts ofpurely intuitive doc-
trines, theyprefer studies which are well documented, even if these
studies do not end with a precise conclusin. Flix-Louis Regnault,
L'volution de la prostitution (1907)

In his search for ways to capture movement it is not surprising that Re-
gnault, like other anthropologists, frequented popular entertainments such
as fairs, museums, and zoos where native peoples performed at the turn of
the century. These popular entertainments were not only sites of spectacle
but laboratories for anthropological investigation. In 1895 Regnault wrote
an ecstatic account of what he saw at the Exposition Ethnographique de
l'Afrique Occidentale located at the Champs de Mars, Pars:
I am aware that I could not observe everything. A thousand details, a
thousand particularities would require a volume. 6. Printed illustration in
Flix-Louis Regnault's
Yes, this is the truc ethnographic exposition. No one has adorned
"Exposition Ethno-
savages with ridiculous costumes, and no one has taught them a role in
graphique de l'Afrique
advance. These negros live as they do in their country, and their cus- Occidentale au Champs-
toms are faithfully respected, easy to see. de-Mars Paris: Senegal
May this exposition serve as a model for fu ture expositions!64 et Soudan francais." [La
"A thousand details/' Regnault exclaimed. And, indeed, the expositions nature 1159, 17 August
1895)
were full of details: at the 1895 exposition great lengths were made to re-
crate the imagined environment of Senegal and the Sudan. There were 350
African performers living on a set made to look like a Sudanese village with i l n n.u ural history museum, the caite de visite, the colonial postcard, and
thick walls, dirt walled houses, and straw huts. People worked as tanners, i v i i i i lu- zoothat exhibited humans, reaffirming the reality of the Savage,
weavers, potters, and pipemakers; others were musicians,- and families sit- i vi n .is u reassured the public that Western science had the Savage under
ting in front of their houses cooked in the open air.65 Events like religious i mi According to Paul Greenhalgh, the genre of the French "native
ritual performances, sheep sacrifices, and a human birth and a marriagc > 111 .!).(" was i n vented by the anthropological community in the 18705 at the
were advertised in the newspapers.66 I i i i l i n d'acclimation as a means of studying "ethnographic" bodies. The
A honor vacui was revealed at the exposition: every space was crammed I < | > i r , i i i i i n Universelle merely took the genre to a much larger scale.68 In
with costume, animis, vegetation, and architecture. At the same time that i l i . i t | i o s i i i v i s ( age, it was felt that bodies could teach the masses about
the exposition was a site of excess, it was also a place of spectacle where c i i i | n i r , ,( icnce, technology, and nation, as well as about family and racial
detail was ordered, classified, and rationalized. The ethnographic exposi- lu i in IHCS It was no coincidenee that the most popular of all the "native
tion framed the reading of race in what was above all a reconstruction: the l i l i l ." i n the i88osand 18908, the period of great imperial French expan-
different ethnic groups at the fair were architecturally divided in an en >ii n Scnegamhia, western Sudan, and the west coast of frica south from
cyclopedic fashion, and there was a tendency to group the "villagers" in '.i I M r..il to ( iahon, were the reeonstructed villages of the Dahomeyans and
nuclear family units, Noah's Ark-style/' 7 'n in (.ilrsc "" l'art h u m a n zoo, part performance circus, part laboratory for
The "native village" was one o t h e i i i . i n v v i s n . i l Uvhnologies i i i c l u d i n g |iln .u . i l .inthiopology, elhnographic expositions were meaning machines
w h i c h helped d e f i n e w h a l it mcant to be Prend ;is wi II .1-, w l i . n i t me.mt lo ed al the f a i r e n t a i l f d more I lian s a l i s l y i n g t h e seopic g r a t i f i c a ! ion of
be West Afriean in the late nincteenth century/" v i M i n i s t o t h e " n a t i v e v i l l a g e . " ' " A t l l i e world's l a n , people (rom a l l corners
The word "ethnography" was first used in the 1820* in conjunetion with ul l l i e world lived and perloi ined in l e c o n s t i n c t c d habitis. The "native vil-
geography and denoted the study of peoples and their relation to the en- l.i)',e," however, was i i n i j u e in t h a t llie locus was on the exolic and bizarre.
vironment, thus embodying the idea that one could map human groups just l i u l e e i l , the impresarios who managed the "villages" were even known as
as one maps mountains and rivers.71 Another early use of the word "eth- l i i i i n i i i i i x , a tem w h i c h reveis the circus-like exploitation which the per-
nographic" was made by Edm-Francois Jomard, the libraran of the Biblio- l i u i n e i s had to endure.
thque royale, who conceived the idea of an ethnographic museum. To In h i s review of the 1895 ethnographic exposition, Regnault begins by
Jomard, ethnography meant the collection of artifacts of "savage" peoples p . i m s t . i k i n g l y deseribing the different physical and cultural delails of the
which would explain the history of race.72 By the late nineteenth century, v . 1 1 1 ( i i is et hnic groups at the fair. At points he likens some of them to bronze
the word "ethnographic" had taken on the connotation of "exotic" and "pic- n i . u n e s , not surprising since he had previously analyzed race ihrough art.
turesque." In art, the "ethnographic" manifested itself in a genre called "la I n i n e d i a t e l y following this lengthy description of ethnic differences, how-
peinture ethnographique," which referred to painting which was so detailed r v e , Kegnault again invokes ihe idea of race: he calis all the performers
that it seemed cise to science in its observation of "exotic" customs. Jean- "nebes." Difference is articulated, only tobe erasedby use of the flattening
Lon Grme, with his use of photographic-like detailexemplified in his l i i l u - l " i legre." Just as he had claimed in an earlier review of an ethnographic
slave market and snake charmer sceneswas a master of this genre.73 That Lu i li.it eolonialism would be a benevolenl forc for the Dahomey because
Regnault should seize on the superabundan! detail of the ethnographic ex- ' l l i e I t r a i n of the Negro is a wax upon which nothingis written," Regnault
position as its most salient feature is thus no accident. In both science and i l . i u n e d i ha t the performers in the 1895 fair were akin to big children.77
art, the "ethnographic" evoked the image of an encyclopedic tablean vivant l l i e way in which Regnault distances himself from the performers when
depicting the life of indigenous peoples. In invokes the anthropological rhetoric of race indicates an extraordinary
Ethnographic detail coalesced in the popular spectacle of the exposition. l u ni o "LIS versus them" mentalily. This mentality was reinforced at the
Detail is meant here in three senses. The first is detail as document: Re- i Hpusition in the form of voyeurism, and sanctioned simultaneously by
gnault used the "detail" of the exposition as fodder for his scientific re- MI l e n i i l i c knowledge, by the evolutionary paradigm of history, and by the
search. The second sense is detail as ornament. A good example of this use M n p e i . i l i s t imperative to civilize. The visitor was in a sense invited to act
is evident in Adolf Loos's "Ornament as Crime": exotic, ornamental detail it-i ,i 'u lentist and colonist, to acquire knowledge by looking at the body and
was aligned with decadence, femininity, the criminal element, and the Sav- id h . i h i t a t . He was also invited to engage in sexual voyeurism: the exhibi-
age.74 The third sense is detail as ndex: the anatomical and physiological i ii n i w.is t h e site for what should ordinarily go unseen. Regnault, for exam-
details on which the visitor's eyes were trained were keyed to a classifica- |ili , deseribed the Dahomeyan women at the 1893 exposition as seductive:
tory ndex of race. In i l i e n youlh, ihey are somelimes seductive with their soft, timid, and
The "native village" or ethnographic exposition was popular in North l i H O ' l i i n g physiognomy."78 frica and other colonized lands were often por-
American and European cosmopolitan cities other than Paris, but the Pari- i i . i v e d as Woman in imperialist discourse, and, in his commenl, Regnault
sian expositions were especially praised for their emphasis on the display i n r i i II eonsciously betrays the links between eroticism, imperialism, and
of ethnic groups in their purported habitis. As Paul Greenhalgh has ex- iinilnnpology. 7 9
plained, the encyclopedic dimensions of the fair encompassed geography II i h e hoLindary between science and popular culture was permeable at
and ethnography. At the Exposition Universelle of 1878, the fair in which 11 n 1.111, so too was the boundary between the observer and the observed,
the Palais de Trocadro was built, there was a "ru des nations" along which v i ' H i i u .un exposition performer. On the one hand, a railing separated the
all participating nations built representative architectural structures. Therc IM 11 iers from the visitors, and this railing probably went around ihe
was an Algerian village and bazaar, a "ru de Caire," as well as an exhibit of > ill.i)'.es," allowing ihe crowds lo galher for special performances. How-
French ethnic history.75 The "ru de Caire," it should be noted, became an i \'i i , i h e exposilion layout also included a mosque (where all Muslims, but
infamous prostitution venue, revealing that the labor of women of color i ni I v Muslims, could enter) and abrasserie (where visilors could mixfreely
4O Inscription
SeeingAnthropology 41
with performers).80 At these locations, the boundaries were permeable and
interaction was allowed. The voyeurism of the exposition was thus imper- that resemble bronze objects, suck happily on sticks of barley sugar
fect: spectators could be made aware that the performers had eyes and that some ladies present to them. But what impression on their igno-
voices too, and performers were made aware of the spectacle of the visitors rant souls is produced of the curiosity of which they are the object?
ogling. Does the spectacle of ourselves that we offer them amuse them just as
In his review of the 1895 exhibition, Regnault reveis that there was we are amused by what they offer us? Perhaps they are delighted to be
another form of interaction at the fair: spectators threw money to the per- present for free at an exposition of Parisians.84
formers. This was a common practice at the "native villages," and perform- Visitors to the fair were meant to "see anthropology," but what they were
ers were known to demand such payment. Although some reports show seeing was not often comfortable: the gaze returned. Perhaps with a third
that the performers were paid before the show, one assumes that the wages eye, the performers at the fair were aware of being viewed as objects of
fell short of the performers' needs. But the very fact that the performers ci hnographic spectacle, and resisted this status by subverting the illusion of
demanded money would seem to destroy the illusion of distance.81 A reveal- i leiHific voyeurism. The demand for money, rather than being "a natural
ing tensin is revealed in Regnault's description of the "villagers": llimg," threatens to turn purportedly authentic daily activity into staged
In the village animation and gaiety reigns. Everywhere the Negro char- peilormance. The pointed mirroring back of a question at the brasserie
acter, the good child, is evident all over. He'll come shake your hand, ihrctcns to upset the schema in which assertions of racially determined
make friends with you, and ask for some change with a laughing tone as n.ii i vi- ignorance led naturally to justifications of French colonial power.
if it's a natural thing. Only the marabout conserves a fierce and rescrved The interactions available at the brasserie and the performers' practice of
disposition. One sees him surrounded by children whom he has recite 'mili i i m g money suggest what I believe is a more general theme: part of the
verses of the Qur'an printed on large boards.82 lint 11 i.ii ion that the public had for the fair was the play with boundaries that
n .(.u i l i t a t e d . First, even as the exposition strived to construct and address
Regnault predictably reads the laugh of the villager as evidence of the child- i Ir.u suhjectivities, and even as the "picturesque," the "ethnographic," and
like "Negro character." But is it not possible that the laugh marked out a iln "ileail" reigned in the arena of spectacle, there were marginal spaces at
space of ironic resistance? Performance at the fair was not a simply visual l l u I . M I whcre one could "straddle the fence": the viewed could also remark
objectification by a flattening male gaze. Performance also invites a com- i i j i i ni i hr l'rench body, there were places where the "specimens" could not
posing of self for spectacle, a frank gaze returned, a mocking laugh, or a I u viewed at all (the mosques), and the very act of voyeurism was under-
haughtiness such as in the case of the marabout who refused to return the i i i i i n il l>v t lie constant haranguing by the performers for "un sou."85Second,
visitors' curious looks. I I H r i mistriictions of the Ethnographic or Savage embodied all that was
A rare example of a recorded verbal interaction is found in a review of thi 1 i,iln n i i u Westcrn societynakedness, polygamy, fetishism, and cannibal-
1893 Dahomeyan Ethnographic Exposition in which Regnault recalled ask Imn w l n i r visitors could view at the fair all that was forbidden, flirting
ing a performer why there were different shades of skin color among the \i i l n Ixmndaries of the "historical" Self and the "ethnographic" Other
Dahomeyans. The answer he received was a question: "Why... are some o l u l i .u i lir saine time maintaining a distance. The fence at the fair pro-
you brunettes, others blond, still others redheads?"83 The answer Regnauli ( i i h .1 i'liv.u al reassurancc; the structuring of racial visualization ensured
received is like a relection in a mirror, revealing that the purported objccis I lili l i l i l lllSl.llK'C.

of studythe Dahomeyan performerswere also observers of the Prend I In u . n i . i i i ve o evolution which slots humans in a hierarchy of color-
Indeed, the idea that the French visitors might be a spectacle for the pe i i i i d .1 i . i i r j ; < u es and places the white race at the apex was scientiflcally
formers is commented on in an account which appeared in the j o u r n . i l l l l i i ' i i M i r c l i l i n i i i i ; ! ) i he live, dead, and skeletal bodies of indigenous non-
L'illustration: I i i i i ' | . i in . ilisplayed ai fairs ail miiseiims. History is obfuscated in these
Aphrase that practically all know, men, wonu-n, and childrcn, is " ( i i v i i l l l ' l n . i l i r i i . i l i v c is shown as being w i t h o u t history, and is describcd in
me some change!" Tin- l i t l l e oncs, so l i m n v w i i h t h e i r shaved hr.nl 1 . l i - i i n i l n i i n i v v r i l l i c i i n y.oology. Tlie h i s i o r y t i l ( h e circulation o f African
l<nili i . nr.l.ivcd pe i si >MS .un i he histories o llie en t w i nenien t of French
,| > InsiTipl ion

and West Alrican politics and economicss erased, replaced by another


Seeing Anthropology 43
(orm of circulation, that of anthropological spectacle.
Yct the fairs also manifested fear of degeneration, fear that the white man reflects, "I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done
it solely to avoid looking a fool."88
had reached the pinnacle and had nowhere to go but down. The native was
perceived by science and by popular culture as authentic man, closer to It is the returned gaze of the colonized Native and the possibility of rdi-
na ture. As I explain in the next chapter, Regnault made his films of West cule which so rattles the British officer. Likewise, the ethnographic specta-
Africans, who were seen as hardier and more age, not only to confirm cle of the fair mandated a circle of looks. The visitor to the exhibition, in his
.u-1 of studiously looking, was also composing himself into a seemingly
notions of Western superiority, but in an effort to improve the French mili-
tary march. The Ethnographic was both biological threat and example of prcdestined "mask"
1111 o the flneur at theorfair.
"conventionalized figure," into a colonial tableau,
authentic humanity: both aspects would be essental to cinema's form of
visualizing anthropology.86 (j'nema offers a potent way of vcariously circumscribing the threat of
i lie return gaze. When the exhibiting of "native villages" was discontinued
The remark made by the French journalist that the Parisian visitors
<luc' to prohibitive cost, world wars, and the end of imperialism, cinema
might also be a source of entertainment for the African performers reveis ..^*pcizaiism, cinem
the uneasy self-consciousness that resulted when the colonist found him- iiiok overmany7 of >JL its
iis ideologicalfunctions.
lueoiogcal functions. Cinema, afterall,
after all, isamuchless
s a much less
xpcnsive way
r.\|H'nsive way ofof circulating
circulating non-Western
non-Western bodies
bodies "i" <^"" iL
"in situ" than is circulat-
or herself the object of spectacle, an experence brilliantly illustrated by reconsrnirf<^ "-.-"
mj; i econstructed "villages." Early cinema showed a fascnation for the sub-
George Orwell in his essay "Shooting an Elephant." The narrator, a British
colonial officer in Burma, is asked to shoot a ravaging elephant who has icci of indgenous, non-European peoples in its proliferation of travelogues,
n icntific research films, safari films, scripted narrative films, and colonial
killed a coolie, an act he performs reluctantly and maladroitly under the
l'iopaganda films. Like ethnography, cinema is also a topos for the meeting
gaze of a "sea of yellow faces." His reflections perfectly describe the politics
of colonial performance: ni M-icnce andfantasy. Cinema, however, eliminated the potentially threat-
r i n n i ; return look of the performer present in the exposition, thus offering
Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the un- m u i r pcrfect scientific voyeurism. Films about the "customs and manners
armed native crowdseemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in i il i lie peoples of X" emphasized the family unit and habitat, as the fair did.
reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of 11 u It-nce of the fair was now themovie screen, and the subjectpositioning
those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the ul i l n - liropean viewer was reaffirmed. Finally, cultures were presented as
white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He u npsulated "villages" on film, making ethnographic film, like the eth-
becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure ni i/;i .iph ic fair, a superb time machine, inviting the viewer to travel spatially
of a sahib. For it s the condtion of his rule that he shall spend his lif e in - u n icniporally, back in evolutionary time to the "childhood" of modern
tryng to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do u l u e man, constructing the native body as hieroglyphs of a language of
what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows i!i .me oras frozen ethnographic tableaus.89
to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant.... To come all that way, rifle in
hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trai 1
feebly away, having done nothingno, that was impossible. The crowd
would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's lfe in the
East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.87

Orwell ends his essay by describing the many discussions centered arouml
the shooting of the elephant. Among the Europeans, "the younger men sanl
it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for k i l l i n g a coolie, because an
elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhec coolie." The narraloi
2 THE WRITINC OF RACE IN FILM

I:clix-Louis Regnault and the Ideology of the

l'.llinographic Film Archive

l'lif xurgeon ai the decisive moment abstains /rom facing


llii' palient man to man; rather, it is thwugh the opeation that
/ir pt-netrates into him.Walter Benjamn, "The Work of Art
In ( l i e Age of Mechanical Reproduction"1

"x icntists use inscriptions as evidence in a twofold mode of representation,


1111 11 ni i ng to historian of science Bruno Latour. The first form of representa-
i ion is the inscription itself, made by a device which Latour defines as "any
NI i up, no matter what its size, nature and cost, that provides a visual dis-
|>l.iv o any sort ina scientific text." Latour gives the example of the use oa
Ki-M'b in a scientific article: the graph allows the reader to believe in the
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 of the article with his or her "own eyes." The inscription is to be taken
lu n-.il. The import of the inscription, however, is not left to the interpreta-
i i u i i ni the reader; its significance is described in an accompanying com-
nii i i i . i i y provided by the scientist. This is the second form of representa-
i ii n i i he scientist always speaks for what is inscribed.2
1 1 h x Louis Regnault claimed that film was true scientific inscription.
I ni Krgnault, the authenticity of the Exposition Ethnographique de l'Airi-
ijni ( >i t identale of 1895, despite its Parisian location and its nature as pub-
l i i .|irrt;ide, was beyond doubt, and this certainly in large part reflects his
i n i l i i r . i . i s i n ovcr finding an excellent source of African people to observe
i i i n l iir.i libe onto film for future readers. As Latour suggests, Regnault's
iii'H i i | i i i o i i works in two ways: the visual inscription is there to be read as
i v i i l r i i i - r o the real, but Regnault's verbal commentary speaks for the in-
HI n | ' i mu .iiul i luis constrains its interpretation. This chapter will examine
ni i l r t . n l lU'gnault's ethnographic inscription- what I term Regnault's writ-
tni' ul i.uc mi l i l n i . I disc'iiss Regnault's theoriesof f i l m , his chronophotogra-
|iliv . i i u l i he Icgacy i h . i t Regnault left for the use o research film in anthro-
46 Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 47
pology, a legacy that contines to inform prevalent assumptions about the I hat film could assist him in the study of movementbut a mdium which
evidentiary valu of ethnographic film. was also by its nature indexical: like a footprint, film s a document, testify-
ing that the person filmed had passed in front of the camera lens. To quote
Regnault's Views on Anthiopological Research Film Koland Barthes, film contains "an emanation of the referent."6 Regnault
pioclaimed cinema the ultmate apparatus for positivist science:
Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instru-
ment allowing the operator to pentrate the body of the subject while, para- It provides exact andpermanent documents to those who study move-
doxically, maintaining his or her distance. Benjamin compared the film- ments. The film of a movement is better for research than the simple
maker with the surgeon, and the painter with the magician: "Magician and viewng of movement; it is superior, even if the movement is slow.
surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his Fi Im decomposes movement in a series of images that one can examine
work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrales deeply into at leisure while slowing the movement at will, while stopping it as
necessary. Thus it eliminates the personal factor, whereas a movement,
its web."3
The anthropologist who looks to the camera as a superior recording de- once it is finished, cannot be recalled except by memory, and this, even
vice is proof of the appropriateness of Benjamin's association of filmmaker put in sequence, is not faithful. All in all, a film is superior to the best
1 'ptions.7
and surgeon: he or she delights in film's penetration of the human body and
its dissection of human movement. This association, moreover, resonates li IN astonishing how similar this description of film is to Regnault's 1888
with the themes discussed in the preceding chapter: anthropologists of Re- llfNcription of craniology which I discussed in the first chapter. Both tech-
gnault's generation and beyond observed the indigenous person as a patient, iiuliiV.H's are precise and scientific, and elimnate subjective factors. But
often as pathological and near death (if not already dead). Anthropology was I l l i n is superior even to craniology: it captures movement.8 Regnault de-
a science strewn with corpses, one obsessed with origins, death, and degen- MI nlird i wo distinct kinds of cinema, the first being the cinmatographe
eration. It was a science in which scientists even dissected themselves: i l n c i i u - m a of scienceand the second the cinmatoscopethe cinema
the Socit d'autopsie mutuelle, part of the Socit d'anthropologie de ni riiiritainment. 9 That scientific cinema involves graphie (writing and
Pars, consisted of anthropologists who agreed to dissect each other after ih MI i i p i i o n ) is significant: like Marey's early medical engineering inven-
death.4 No body was immune from the surgical gaze of science in the age of i d m-. i lie sphygmograph and the kymograph, the chronophotograph was
anthropometry. t i i - i l lo record and inscribe movement for the new science of physiology.
The distance maintained by both cameraman and surgeon, alluded to by M . i M - v scholar Marta Braun explains the heralding of inscription devices by
Benjamin, was reflected in Regnault's conception of the advantagcs of film (iliViiologists:
technology. Regnault valued film because it enabled researchers to observe
those he called "savages" without having to leave their laboratories. As I he rarliest attempts to construct machines that would convert mo-
such, Regnault was convinced that film was destined to become the ideal 111 u i i n t o graphs and numbers were synonymous with attempts to forge
positivist, scientific mdium for the study of race. If the fair was the site fot ,i in w science: physiology. It began in Germany where agroup of young
regimenting proliferating ethnographic detail, film was the site wherc e t l i M u n i i s t s , including Helmholtz, Ludwig, and Du Bois Reymond, set
nographic detail could be recorded, magnified, dissected, and replayed (o i 11 .ii mid-century to crate a kind of organic physics, a new physiology
postenty. Regnault declared, "Cinema expands our visin in time as t h < li.i'.ril ( n i quantitative and experimental analyses. In their theoretical
microscope has expanded it in space. It permits us to see facts which escapr I i.i me work, organic functions were reducible to physics and chemistry,
our senses because they pass too quickly. It will become the instrumenl ni i n . I .is physics and chemistry they could be transformed into visual and
the physiologist as the microscope has become that of the anatomist. l i m , i i l i r i n . i i i r . i l ilata. Such a transformation required that a mechanical
, i | i | i . n , n ns br substituted for the senses of the observer.10
importance is as great."s
For Regnault, film offered not only an improvcd nu-.ins of getting to ,m M e i n u v r i , .is demonstrated by the passagc (rom Regnault quoted above,
ndexhe thought that tlie r.ircs ivvcal lliemselves m movcmcnt, and I r l i IM v h n li he cm|ihasi/,cd ( l i e "dccomposition" o movcmcnt niaile possible
48 Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 49

by the camera, Regnault believed that film's scientific nature also lay in its In Regnault's films, bodies are made abstract and mechanized. No detail,
ability to capture rapid movements which the eye cannot see, like the beat- ilc-clared Regnault, is overlooked by film.14 Yet detail mus be ordered and
ing of a bird's wing. The power of the anthropologist lies in his or her ability i.ilionalized, and the sense that one gets is of meticulous management of
to thwart death and time: he or she can record vanishing ways of life and iletail: performers enter the frame at right and exit at left, often with a
store them in his drawer until such time as he needs to study them. If chronometer in front and a white screcn in the back. The fact that Regnault
history is a race, and if race reveis history, trien the anthropologist can use 111 med movements from different perspectivesthe subject is seen from the
film to control time: i igl, then left, and then backreflects the codes of anthropometric photog-
i.iphy that were already well established in the late nineteenth century. For
Only cinema pro vides objective documents in abundance; thanks to
I l l i n s of walking and running, Regnault and his colleague Charles Comte
cinema, the anthropologist can, today, collect the life of all peoples; he
i il i en used a chronometer and a painted scale on the ground to measure the
will possess in his drawers all the special acts of different races. He will
ilmation of the subject's step. Diagrams translating the movements into
be able to thus have contact at the same time with a great number of
IIM illating curves were used to test the efficacy of the marche en flexin, a
peoples. He will study, when it picases him, the series of movements
(Vi 11 m which the subject ran or walked with knees sharply bent, the body
that man executes for squatting, climbing trees, seizing and handling
ItMiiing forward in "la marche primitive de l'humanit."15 The use of the
objects with his feet, etc. He will be present at fests, at battles, at
i liionometer, the painted scale at the bottom of the film, and the tightly
religious and civil ceremonies, at different ways of trading, eating,
i u i i i i o l l e d entrance and exit of each moving subject attests to Regnault's
relaxing.11 lie lid ihat chronophotography was a mathematical and scientific means of
To Regnault, film was better than the referent. n t i i t l y n g movement. The camera maintains a distance, and yet observes
Regnault was thus one of the first to envision an ever growing archive o I I I I I M . i l l ingles.
ethnographic images: cinema would provide unmediated records of as much In his review of the ethnographic exposition, Regnault had revealed a
of the world as possible for present and future scientific consumption. Re den n i . i l i o n for all movements which involve interactions with objects,
gnault's model for the archive, however, was not the all-encompassing, al- mu h .is j;rain-pounding, child-carrying, tree-climbing, and dancing; these
phabetically organized encyclopedia, but the topically organized museum.'' un i v T I i i c n t s allowed Regnault to draw conclusions about those he classified
Like the ethnographic exhibition which presented peoples in orderly recon itM "'..iv.iv.i'." Even within the frames of single film sequences Regnault's
structed village tableaus, Regnault conceived the ethnographic film archive 11111 11 . i m tlie comparative study of movement is often betrayed. For exam-
as a visualizing technology for the taxonomic ranking of peoples. |ih t i n - i i o different ethnic groups are shown squatting for a comparative
n i n i l s ' "Threc Negros squat: a Wolof, a Peul, a Diola." Similarly, how the
Mih|i 1 1 w.-ilked and moved in clothing clearly was of interest to the anthro-
Le langage par gestes: Regnault's Chronophotogiaphy |inliii',i'.i lU'gnault filmed Tijaan men dressed in grand boubou-style pray-
at the i#95 Exposition !ni< i l i r s.ilam"as well as walking.16
All savage peoples make receirse to gesture to express themselves; M i i ' M . i n l i wrote in detail about the West African technique for climbing
their language is so poor it does not suffice to make them understood. tu i n .1 lu ni o climbing which interestingly was foregrounded in many
Flix-Louis Regnault, "Le langage p ai gestes" (iSgS) 13 |.i(i i i i l i i n i j ; i . i | > h i c films. 1 7 Like squatting, this manner of climbing was seen
MU un mi rv h k c .mil deemed characteristic of those Regnault called Savage.
In 1895 Regnault, with his colleague Charles Comte, filmed West A f r i r . m
Iti .1 i|unuT, .1 man, described by Regnault as "a Negro of the country of
and Malagasy men, women, and children from ethnographic expositioir.
M h h u .," !, shown climbing from various points of view, without a chro-
usually alone and in profile, walking, running, jumping, pounding gi.im
IIMIIII . ( i c e n in ihe background. 18 Another film strip shows a white
cooking, carrying children on their backs, and climbing trees. The t a h K . m
Itfii i Imihm.r, .1 i iee as II a t t c m p t i n g to climb in the West African way: we
of the fair and Regnault's own lascination w i t h movcmcnt are i n s c n l n . 1
M I H I I I miii'.i'.mj; l o M h c camera as II to underline the ludicrous nature of a
into film, representing the k i m l s o srriu-s w h i c h w o u l t l breme :\r m ! n in 11 i n.ii i r l i m h i n j ' , as a West AI rica n docs. 1 "
later ethnographic l i l m
5 o Inscription
The Writing of Race in Film

JL., ,_J2.i3-

* !' i' '"/'I t l i . n l r s C.'omtc and Fclix-Louis Rcgnault, "Jump by three Negroes"
{ I K n . i i M m l i i n p i i i u I rom original glass pate chronophotographic negative, cat. no.
MI'11 i i M i i i r - . v ni i l u - i Ollcctionof theCinmathquefrancaise) 8. (bottom) Charles
I I H I I I I n i . I h l i \ ( m i s Kcgnault, "Wnlk" ( i 8 y s ) . (Modern print from original glass
A
.,M... ...Z\
f lli ' li |'lniior,i.i|i|]ir ni'galivi 1 , cat. u. Un, courtcsy of thc Collection of the
(lito i i l i . . | i i . 11.1 ni,, i I N C ] u. (dliovc] ("liarles Comtc and Fclix-Louis Regnault, "Run"
j l i t u i M i l i i n I M mi I n ni 1 1 ingina I glass pate chronophotographic ncgativc, cat. no.
|||l i i . \i 11 u ( nuc i u n o i lie ( incniathcciue I ranea i se)
5 2 Inscription
The Writing of Race in Film
53

l i i l u i l i " . t i i n i i c .niel Flix-Louis Regnault, "Three clothed men walk" (1895).


(Muid ni i ' i m i lioni original glass pate chronophotographic negative, cat. no. Hnio,
f i n i i 11 > \i i ( u - 1 'u I le-1 ion of thc Cinema thcque frangai,
aise
i o. Charles Comte and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Run"(i89s). (Moclern print Iroin I
nal glass pate chronophotographic negative, cat. no. Hn24, conrtesy o tlu 1 ( ni I . .
tion of the Cinmathque francaisc)
54 Inscription
The Writing of Race in Film
In Regnault's films, women are shown almost exclusively carrying loads
or performing tasks at the fair. Indeed Regnault's first article on chronopho-
tography is one concerning a film he made with Charles Comte of a Wolof
woman making a pot at the Exposition Ethnographique in 189 5. Filming the
movements of a West African performing a tasksuch as making pottery
allowed the scientist, according to Regnault, to trace the evolutionary
origin of pottery.20 The trope of the woman pounding grain, and engaging in
other "subsistence activities" (implicitly in opposition to the industrial ac-
tivities of the West), would remain an essential part of ethnographic cin-
ema.21 Like the men and boys in Regnault's locomotion studies, the women
do not usually look at the camera. Unlike the men, the women are always in
full dress and are usually carrying babies on their backs or containers on
their heads: woman is coded as nurturer, as mother, as sturdy laborer.22 In
one intriguing example that suggests the West African performers were
directed to act in the films, we see a young woman looking directly at us,
but then, after several frames, she looks down as if directed from someone
off-screen not to look directly at the camera. In a sequence which presents
her other profile, she never looks up at the camera, seemingly cowed.23 In
another film strip, a smiling woman is shown grinding grain, her hands
clapping. She appears to be laughing: is her hilarity a reflection of her per-
ception of the ridiculousness of the camcraman's attentions? a mask for
feelings of anxiety? or a product of sheer joy? In the context of early anthro
pology, in which it is the actual motion that she performs and not her
cmotions or opinions which are considered, these questions remain un
asked, unanswered. But the woman's laugh represents a possible site o
subversin: she looks away but is not cowed, her laugh is strong. In thr
chronophotography of children, movement was less regulated: laughin)1,,
scampering children run in front of the camera helter-skelter, often cim ' ' ' ''." I- C-mmc and Flix-Louis Regnault, "Negress walks" ( l 8 9 5 ). (Modernprint
ously and brazenly returning the camera's gaze. Perhaps for this reason '>'" <" jv.'-M K ass pate chronophotographic negative, cat. no. Hn24, courtesy of the
Regnault never reproduced stills from these sequences for his articles <>n """ cl1 (ll ^Cinemathcquefrancaise)
ethnographic film.
In most of the films of West Africans, however, and in all of the om-.
which Regnault reproduced in articles, the bodies are rendered as shadow l,
l,y ,. d,,ssed m a suit and beret, and 1S shown runmng with large stcps,-
Wearing tight long johns, French bathing shorts, Peul-type pantaln hul
fon or just ngebu (shorts), these men do not look up and acknowledge i In ,; '......"I' l)U ; ly ' ;li;d ^ are d^'y ^^- * costme is more substan-
J ;<* "ul there is les* of an emphasis on bare flesh or muscle
presence of the camera: they are often filmed in such a way that thcy .m
turnedinto ciphers, their faces indistinct. Althougli the performers w a l t m
the foreground, they often appear to be behind a scrcun, like shadow | u i | > """''"'''""V-alsos.gnifiedbywhogazesatwhom.Performersdonot
""'' " ''" "mera, hu, the gaze ,,f che scientist is often acknowle
pets. If wc compare these films o West Alricans lo nuc o :\h man mu
ning, we sce that the costiimc ail inisi- i-n SITIH- .nv dillerent: the I i < n. I.
l " o r t N W a l k s f r < ) m r i h t tlet,buthisbody88odark(probablydue
The Writing of Race in Film 57

13. Photographic reproduc-


tion, "Malagasy carrying a
palanqun on their shoul-
ders" (189 5). The man
seated in the palanqun is
14. Printed illustration of
Regnault. (From "Le role du
Colonel Gillon carried in a
cinema en ethnographie,"
palanquin by four Malagasy
Flix-Louis Regnault,
men. (From L'Illustration
La natuie 1866, i Octo-
2732, 6July 1895)
ber 1931)

nh .ni '.piilu- dirough the body in what he called le langage par gestes. The
to the fact that white flesh tones were a standard in cinema photochemis litMc.n.if.c i hat film could inscribe was therefore the language of the body:
try) it becomes a silhouette.25 On closer examination, however, one scrs .1
man in a suit, possibly Regnault or an assistant, behind the screen whu h li .ippe.ns, moreover, unusual to affirm that there exists a science of
serves as the backdrop. The Western reader of the film is thus provided w 111 > c.i '.11111- as interesting as that of language. However, all savage peoples
a mirror image: he or she is also in the position of the scientist.26 i n . J . < irrourse to gesture to express themselves; their language is so
In another example, Regnault himself waves at the camera as he is carril < I I I I M H u docs not sufficc tomake them understood: plunged in darkness,
in a palanquin by four Malagasy rnen. The image of the French colonizo i 11 i i i u u ..iv.i.i'.cs, as travelers who often witness this fact affirm, can com-
palanqun was a common one, especially in 1895 with the recent colon i | i m u ,nc i l u - i r thoughts, coarse and limited though they are.
tion of Madagascar by the French. Regnault the scientist tips his hat u > i l i W i i h pi i mi t i ve man, gesture precedes speech....
camera, and to the viewer: he tips his hat to his own power to record i In M I he ).!. i u es I hat savages make are in general the same everywhere,
movernents of recently colonized people on film, while the mcn w l m < i iic.i- i hese movements are natural reflexcs rather than conventions
I lll)',ll.I)',!'.''
movements are filmed do not look into the camera. The filmmaker is U - i l
colonizerand researcher. Loomingabove the sccne o the iair was the l i l i . p i i 1 1 des speei-h. 'I'lius h u m a n i t y was divided into not only those
Tower, the u l t m a t e sign o l ; ieneh technology, progress, and powei. !i u n i h n ' . i - w h n sqnat, h u t ihose who llave language and those who
Rev'jiaull believed lh.il ihose lu- e.illed S.w.i.r.e liad no language, a i n l n
r
5 8 Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 5 9

gesticulate. In many films, the subjects are rendered as mere silhouettes, ant streetvendor of the boulevards to the dandy in the foyer of the
pictographs of the langage par gestes. Their faces are unimportant: it is the opera-house, there was not a figure of Paris life that was not sketched by
body that provides the necessary data. And thus, Regnault writes, the "sav- a physiologue. . . . After the types had been covered, the physiology of
age" has no real language: the scientist will inscribe his languagea lan- the city had its turn. . . . When this vein, too, was exhausted, a "phys-
gage pai gestes common to all "savages"into film. They become hiero- iologie" of the nations was attempted. or was the "physiologie" of the
glyphs for the language of science: race is written into film. animis neglected. For animis have always been an innocuous subject.
Innocuousness was of the essence.32
Improving the French Body: The marche en flexin I lie obscrvation of the Ethnographic and the spectacle of the ethnographic
rx positura was another instance of this marketplace of modernity. The in-
When the whites feel that they have become too mechanized, they
iii H i lousness of Doctor Regnault waving at the camera and the urban glance
turn to the men of color and ask them for a little human sustenance.
w h i c h the French citadin aims at the West African woman reveis that the
Frantz Fann, Black Skin, White Masks (ipy) 2 8
ni ii-nt ist also posed as flneur, the distant nonchalant observer. The look of
As described in the last chapter, late-nineteenth-century French anthropol- llii- llimeur was both part of urban spectacle (that is, meant tobe sean) anda
ogists were interested in applying their techniques not only to categorize hu ik in control: the anxiety of difference and of being seen, as I described in
non-Western peoples of color, but also to improve the European body. The l l n l.ist chapter, is smoothed over by the performance of the idle stroller.
obsession with evolutionary typologies was perversely double-edged: the I IR- flneur, however, was also viewed as a figure verging toward deca-
Ethnographic Other was pathological, but in some ways more genuinc; ilriK e, and the affinity noted here between scientific filmmaker and flneur
the Historical Same was normative, but possibly also decadent. Lurking (luis .ilso suggests that the scientist's focus on the body was a focus on
behind the desire to classify the "savage" was the desire to ameliorate the hlinse11, betraying his fear of becoming suraffin. The fear of overmechani-
"civilized." Indeed, in his later writings, Regnault wrote repeatedly of the i i i i m i is expressed by Regnault's teacher Marey in his preface to Regnault
danger that the urban European was becoming suraffin (overrefined, over iiml de Raoul's 1897 book, Comment on marche. Marey wrote that man
civilized): too pal, too blond, too weak.29 He and his colleague de Raoul (ii'iid the urban European) had become a slave to aesthetic convention in
complained that the European city dweller lacked grace when he walkecl: linw he walks. 33 He suggested that physiology and chronophotography,
"In our day, the civilized man no longer knows how to walk well."30 Look lliiiiii)',h researches such as that of Regnault on how humans walk, would
ing for clues, Regnault compared his films of West Africans walking to films i i i n i i i h u t c to perfecting the national body:
of French men walking.
( Inonophotography . . . is, in this manner, the educator of our move-
There is an aspect of the turn-of-the-century flneur in certain of Re
i n r i i i s , it makes us aware of the ideal perfection that we must attain,
gnault's images. In the chronophotography with which I began the firsi
.ind makes us observe the incorrectness of our movements or the prog-
chapter (see illustration 3) in which a West African woman is filmed walk
iess we realize.
ing with a Frenchman, only the French man is actively looking; her head i s
Thanks to theprogress of the graphic method, the mechanical acts of
down, her look averted. Robert L. Herbert defines the flneur as one with a 11
liinimotion can be translated into geometric graphs in which all is
active, naturalist gaze, one who, although engaged in "apparently idle strol I
me.isurnhlc with a precisin that observation alone couldnot achieve.34
ing," is observing with the intensity of a plice detective. Like the detective,
the flneur was a reader of detailsboth of the human subject and of loca NlKHiflcantly, one of Regnault's principal reasons for filming the loco-
tion.31 It is interesting that, as Walter Benjamin pointed out, the literatura < >! Mini mu ni West Africans and French soldiers was to prove his theory that
the flneur in the 18405 was called the physiologie, akin to the dioram.i l l n I u in 11 m i l i t a ry walk con Id he ameliorated through adoption of the en
Benjamin writes, lli MI iii i ' . i i i , a liighly (lexed walk in which the knces were greatly bent and
l l n inr.u l u - n i lorward, said to be the natural walk of "savages" as well as of
[The literature of the physologis] investigatcd lypc's t h a t might be en
J I M l i r . i o n r m a n . In i Sg6 Marey piesented Regnault and Charles Comte's
countered by a pcrson t a k i n g a look al t i u-111.11 kri pl.n e. l'ioin the il i m i
The Writing of Race in Film 61

lindings on the marche en flexin to the Acadmie des sciences. Chrono-


photography, they claimed, had proven that the marche en flexin was more
clficient and less shocking to the body than the normal military walk.35 As
carly as the 18708, de Raoul, a French military commander, had prometed
lilis type of gait for the French army, but it was Regnault who claimed to
liavc scientifically proven its efficacy via film.36 The Franco-Prussian War
scems to have been an important mpetus behind the promotion of this
w.il k. Regnault asserted that the Germn goose step turned soldiers into au-
11 miatons because it was too fatiguing: the marche en flexin was less tiring,
.un henee allowed the soldier to think clearly. This example again shows
relentlessly comparative nature of Regnault's work: here, the walk of
C crinan soldier, France's military rival, serves as a counterpoint.37
In the film entitled "Docteur Regnault marche" (Doctor Regnault walks),
wcver, we see a rather unassuming man, head down, wearing a body suit,
wlmsc features are as hard to identify as those of any of the West African
inli|ivts. Cinematically there is little difference between this example, and
lliiii o a West African man walking: the scientist himself has become a
|>r< iiiH'n. The ideological difference of course is that we know Regnault's
.mil biography; he is not rendered into a nameless specimen of some
(hllimpological category known as the Negro or the Savage.38 Thus the
li 11 u.il ai-.companiment of the film is absolutely essential to the interpreta-
ni |.r, wcrc explanatory intertitles, and the authoritative voiceover in later
>).!.iphic film). Although anthropology clearly involves visinthe an-
||IIII|MI|I>)',ISI observes tbe cultures of indigenous peoplesit is above all a
)', practice accompanied by words and narrative strategies to con-
lu i i lu- ic.iderof its ethnographic authority. Images are slippery: although
llu un.i)'.f nuist contain visual signifiers of authenticity, captions are still
nlii u in i dcd io explain, convince, and keep order.39 Consequently, detail is
M i MI I v i .1 n u-d cinematically, but textually as well. It should not be surpris-
u i l i . i i lU-gnault wroteat lengthabouthisfilms, reflectingthesecond
I|B|II i i I I . i i o u i ' s insight into how inscription works as representation: the

I'u mec i I I u s t r a t i o n o f Commandant de Raoul walking en flexin. (From


i ' . n . i i i v e e n t r e hi mcthode do marche et de course dte de flexin et les
.un>.," An-hivcs di- phyftiologie nrmale et pathologique, April 1896)
n / i i ) l ' i m t e d illustrntion of diagrams depicting Commandant de Raoul
- u n n i n i i i i i . r , en f l e x i n , (l'rom "Linde comparative entre la mthode de
i i l < i I I I M M i l i i e de l l e x i o n et les alhires ordinaires," Archiven dephysiologie
i / " i ' ' i " ' ' : ' < / " < ' , A p u l i,Hi)6) 17. (<)/>/></'/e ngAt) "Doctor Regnault walks,"
i ' l i v . n i l u j ' . i e ((- c MU I es y o t h e t 'olleft ion |e;in Vivie)
62 Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 63

scientist speaks foi the actors in the text accompanying his inscriptions. Kcgnault's conception of a comprehensive archive of scientific research
The image is always possibly threatening, more so than other scientific I I l u i s is rarely considered. Regnault, however, was one of the first to artic-
inscriptions such as the graph: it has an iconic presence which must be l a l e t h e desire for an archive of humanity, one later openly embraced by a
regimented through verbal description. In the case of Regnault, this textual mimber of other anthropologists and implicit in the work of nearly all who
description portrayed the Ethnographic Body as a hieroglyph to be made in,uk- and studied anthropological research film in the following decades.
sense of by scientists able to find the key to the langage par gestes. < inc need not posit a direct causal relationship between Regnault's theories
Mary Ann Doane explains in her essay on the representation of feminin- u 1 1 i I m and the anthropological research film which followed in order to use
ity in cinema that the image of woman in film is akin to the hieroglyph, the i lie ligure of "Regnault" to draw attention to the central themes which were
most readable yet the most mysterious of signs. The hieroglyph is a compo- in eonstitute the ideological underpinnings of ethnographic film: (i) its
nent in an iconic system of representation in which the sign and the referent inieisecting discourse of science and spectacle, manifested, for example, in
remain suffocatingly cise, since the sign directly mimics the physical form Itty.nault's enthusiasm for the ethnographic exposition; (2) its faith in cin-
of the referent. As a hieroglyph in Regnault's posited langage par gestes, the rin.i as an objective positivist recording tool; and (3) the ever present, if
Ethnographic Body is always in a contradictory position, both "real" and I m p l i e i t , ideal of an archive of ethnographic filmwhat Regnault called a
sign.40 While cinema makes the white woman into an imageDoane speaks i n i i s e n m of filmwhich would allow for the cross-checking of detail and
of "a certain imbrication of the cinematic image and the representation o) llir piescrvation of "vanishing races" in cinematic form. Regnault, as we
the woman"41cinema makes the native person, man or woman, into un- liiivi- seen, combned these elements in his belief that the ethnographic
mediated referent. Whereas the female spectator, according to Doane, has inii'.eiim/archive could be elevated to the status of the scientific laboratory
difficulty establishing a distance from the image of the woman in cinema, llimiiyji the use of explanatory film and phonographs.
the spectator of ethnographic cinema has no difficulty in establishing a I l u 11 the 19205, anthropology in Europe and the United States was still
distance, since the posited viewers are by definition not the filmed subjects |i I ni the museum. That is, anthropologists did not often go into "the
themselves but a Euro-American public. l l i l t l " .ind take down ethnographic observations, but relied on second-hand
m M i n e s such as explorer, traveler, missionary, and colonial accounts. In-
The Legacy of Regnault ili cil, anthropological books were coined as the "Amongtha" genre by the
|ti M i s l i anthropologist E. B. Tylor, due to the ubiquity of titles such as
As late as 1931 Regnault continued to trumpet the importance of ethno A n u i l ij; the Watchandis of Australia .. ." or "Among the Esquimaux .. .,"
graphic expositions and ethnographic films.42 In an issue on colonialism fm .un .1 s i m i l a r "boxed-set" mentality also characterized early commercial
the Journal La nature, Regnault exulted, "Thanks to the Colonial Exposi l i i i v i loj'.ues (described in the next chapter).45 Even those colleagues of Tylor
tion [of 19 31 ], the ethnographer, who studies the behavior of peoples, is t h i u n Kej'.nanlt who didgo into "the field" were often trained first in physiol-
man of the day. We are avid to know this science which reveis the mltiple n(',v .MU! i h e natural sciences. (The use of the word "field" was borrowed
ways of human thinking."43 Cinema and sound recording could unite the h ' i m n a t u r a l science terminology.) As historian of anthropology Martin
various disciplines which study humankind: I . H I H ). w i i t e s , the anthropologists who followed Regnault's lead accepted
Thanks to [films and phonographs], the psychologist, the ethnographei, l i i - i ule.i t h . i t film provides objective documents and his goal ofbuildingan
the sociologist, the linguist, and the folklorist will collect in their labo MU I n v e ni ethnographic film. Taureg states that the body of theory justify-
ratories all the manners of numerous ethnicities and will be ablc to c a l i iiii' i i lmoj',raphic film devcloped from biases in physiology and the natural
up life at their will. In analyzing, in measuring these objective docu u i es lemaincd unquestioned for a long time.46 Henee the first anthro-
ments, in comparing them, in organizing them, they will fix the met li |Mi|,.)T.i\n used film "in the field" studied humans rather as zoological
ij'i < i i l i r n s
ods which make up their science, and know the laws of human mental
ity. The ethnographic museum w i t h its collections o objects, films, I i l i n U'fhnology during Regnault's time developed quickly. Contempo-
and phonographic records w i l l hecome om laboratory and our centei ni i H u , ni Uej;naiilt wenl on tn use motion picturc cameras, and to actually do
i l n u l i l i m n r , ni ( l i e "UeKI": the liritish anlhropologist Allred C'ort Haddon
64 Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 65

(trained in zoology) went to New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands in Special Commissioner for Aborigines,49 used film as well as lantern sudes
1898-99 on the Cambridge Anthropological Expeditions, and the Anglo- .md phonographic records for his very popular public lectures.50 Visual me-
Australian anthropologist Walter Baldwin Spencer made films in 1901 in dia presented to the public could turn aboriginal culture into Savage specta-
Central and Northern Australia. Rudolf Pch, an Austrian, made films in clc. In his lectures on aboriginal rituals, Spencer called the Arunta "children
New Guinea in 1904-6, and a number of other German-speaking anthro- o darkness," and described the Arunta as "weird," "savage," and "disgust-
pologists went to South America and frica with cameras before 1915. ing." He said of the people in his films: "They were in a condition in which
All these anthropologists used their cameras much as Regnault used his: o u ancestors were in past ages, and through them we learned something of
the camera is static, the subject entering and leaving the field of visin i he original conditions in which our ancestors lived."51
of the camera. The people portrayed in these films, like the West Afri- Th o anthropologist's frequent inclusin of scenes of indigenous dance, a
cans in Regnault's films, are treated as specimens both textually and cin- Ic.K ure already present in the films of Spencer and Haddon, contributed to
I lie spcctacle. Spencer's Austrian colleague Rudolf Poch explained, "Dances
ematographically.
Ethnographic footage purportedly obtained for research purposes was of- iiii- i lie simplest and most effective subjects for cinematography and the
ten used as entertainment (with an educational veneer) for mass audiences: licsi means for practising the mdium since they enable one to record what
the authoritative lecturer, the use of intertitles, and, later, the voice-over i'i most visual and effective when reproduced."52 Dance was almost always
were different means used to control the interpretation of the films. Indeed, icpicsented as spectacle: to be watched at a distance. The public as well as
the figure of the anthropologist often appeared within the film, attesting to NI i c u i i s t s were fascinated by the bodies of indigenous peoples, and dance
its legitimacy and serving as an intended entertaining contrast. Early film I l l i u si 10wedhowthose bodies moved, how masks were worn. Moreover, an
by anthropologists did not always announce itself as intended for science or li nnoj;raphy is formed: the nativeas we have seen in Regnault's concep-
for popular spectacle; the two domains were intertwined. Just as Regnauli iion o tlie langage par gestesisidentified with the body. Dances by indige-
made his films for science at a popular fair, scientists and natural history M I n i - , peoples were projected as wild, "savage," frenzied movements by peo-
museum curators often used ethnographic film both for research purposes |l l.icking rationality: an image which became a popular stereotype in
and for commercial spectacle. Turn-of-the-century anthropologist Baldwin i ummcrcial film.
Spencer, for example, renowned for his books on cultural anthropology, A l i hoiigh museum expeditions almost always brought along cameramen
used film in popular lectures in a sensationalist fashion. One of the firsi |iinlli icni in photography and film, the actual use of films for research was
ethnographies to depart from the "Amongtha" mode was Spencer's Tin- Mir, I.u more often, the footage was used for public entertainment, or in
Native Trbes of Central Australia (1912), a work which attempted an am mime i .ises, to help construct museum dioramas. Anthropologists like Re-
bitious, far-reaching analysis of Australian cultures.47 In the same year that Hii.iuh, l'och, and Spencer, to ame only a few early ethnographic film-
the book was published, however, Spencer cautioned a popular audieno iii.il'i !, lidievod m the necessity of ethnographic film archives, but film
against the power of words to mask the true "savage" nature of the Aust i .1 Wiin i n i i .1 l.ivored mdium of presentation within the academy. Film was
i n )> .1 lool lor inscription, much in the way that the photograph, phono-
lian aborigine:
DHl'li .iiid calipers were, rather than as a mdium for "writing" ethnogra-
It is extremely difficult to convey in words a true idea of many o i l n |I!M ' I I K in.i, intended for scientific research purposes, was instead used for
native ceremonies. Any such description is apt to give the imprcssiun f i i i l i l i i '.pe-lacle, as a sensational means for attracting viewers and thus
of a much higher degree of civilization, or, at least, of greater elaboi .n i |iinlli I lie liomularies between the cinema of science (cinmatographe) and
ness than is really the case. It must always be remembered that thonr.li Mil' m.i "I c n i T i a i n m c n t (cinmatoscope) were never clearly drawn.
the native ceremonies reveal, to a certain extent, what has becn <l<
scribed as an "elabrate ritual," they are emnently crudo and sav.ip
( l i d 1 1 1 , 1 / 1 n'iill'llli Nales
They are performed by naked, howling savages. m
It is no wonder then that Spcnccr ( i K 6 o u)?,g), c h n i r o biology ai i l n M'"l*' n .mi lnopoloi'.y, k u d o l l l'ocli obscrved, would no longerbc conducted
University o Melboume, director o tlu 1 Victon.i N a t i o n a l Muscum, .m, 11'i i .1 nuicliook, .1 pcn, and mea sin ing instruments, but would roquire
66 Inscrption
The Writing of Race in Film 67
use of a motion picture camera and a phonograph. For P6ch; the advantage
of film is that it allows for true voyeurism because images could be captured ords. In 1930, Boas even shot some film himself of dances, craft-making,
for future study without the native's awareness. Poch advocated setting up and games of the Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw) of the Northwest Coast. Ira
the camera in a public place and just letting the film roll, complaining only Jacknis arges that Boas was interested in "relatively discrete behavioral
that the camera could not capture all of a scene because it can point in only sequences of a 'traditional' nature, especially motor patterns and material
culture." 60 He writes,
one direction at a time.53 Working in 1904-6 in Germn, British, and Dutch
New Guinea and in New South Wales, Pch filmed activities including For Boas, a culture was imprinted on the very movements of a person,
dance, women carrying water, and a man being shaved.54 His assertion that which would be expressed apart from his or her surroundings. Thus, in
indigenous people were ignorant of the technology and that his own films spite of his belief in cultural wholes, Boas tended to think of culture as
were not choreographed, however, is belied by his own photography and embedded in isolable actions, so that one could, at least for the pur-
films. In many films, the figure of Poch is painfully conspicuous. In one poses of documentation, record only this behavior fragment, apart from
scene, wearing a white pith helmet on his head, a rifle in one hand, and what the complex social matrix of which it was usually a part.61
appears to be a pole in the other, he stands among a group of Melanesian
people (in New Guinea?) who pose for the camera.55 The film footage is not Thus, like Regnault, Boas's interest in film stemmed from a concern with
candid but is staged, and the performers appear to recognize that they are llie body, and with the ability of the camera to record "isolable actions."
part of a performance. Still, the notion of voyeurism, that the presence o M.my of Boas's students went on to use film to aid their research: Melville
the filmmaker did not disturb the scene, endured in ethnographic film unti I I le skovits, who later encouraged Katherine Dunham to make films, filmed
well after World War II.56 m I >.ihomey (nowBenin)in 1931 and inHaitiin 1934,- Zora Neale Hurston
It is striking how much early ethnographic film borrowed from the ico lllmcd in Florida in 1928-29; and Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson
nography of anthropological photography and the construction of "anthn Illmed in Baliin 1936-39.62Mead, Boas's most famous student andprobably
pological types." Filming natives as "types" in profile and frontal shots and i l n ' most enthusiastic and well-known U.S. anthropologst/filmmaker, ar-
walking or standing in formation were important staples of the genrc. In in-il well into the 19705 that film would elimnate much of the ambiguity
one sequence filmed by Haddon in the Torres Straits, the camera, which i% ul i lie written ethnography. She believed that long takes and an immobile
stationary, films several men who, in dancing, pass the camera one by < > n < i iimri.i could study nonverbal behavior objectively. Like Regnault, Mead
in a line, only to disappear briefly offscreen before entering the carne ni'-, lliniif'Jii t h a t film could provide an important record of the ways of life of
field of visin again from the other side.57 In a sequence by Poch, womrn v M 111 ! 111 ij; races,- she also endorsed the idea that by collecting and examining
walk one behind the other in profile, turn around, and then walk han- iin r i i i n m o t i s amount of film material, the anthropologist could make an-
breasted with their hands up in the air.58 In this last image, anthropomel i n I lin i| u ili ij;y ;\6-3 This shift from an interest in the body as inscription
imagery combines with the clear tendency in both research and enteri.ini ( n i l i i hdtly inscribedin apictorial "whole" will be discussed in thefollow-
liiil i h.ipicr.
ment film to portray the indigenous female body in titillating voyeui isi n
ways.
Significantly, even those who f elt that film could not achieve true voy i 111 llii 1,1,'oloy.v oftheArchive
ism believed that film could serve as a faithful record of dances and ivn
I ttiiiil . in , in,'111(1, the anthropologist can, today, collect the life of all
monies. In the 19605, anthropologist Andr Leroi-Gourhan stated th:ii i l n
j4fn/'/i , In- u-////w.sie.s'.si in his drawers all the special acts of diffeient
function of film was to act as "cinematographic notes," as a m d i u m l"i
IHI i- II, u /// /*< ahlc (o //;/;.s' hivc. contad at the same time with a
recording movements, dances, and ceremonies, even if staged, that w n n M
l-iii i i n i i i l ' i ' i <>/ i>t'<>i)/cs. I r l i x Louis Regnault, "Films and Eth-
subsequently serve as records for verifica!ion.' 1 ''
||M|it(i|'lni Mnsfiiiii.s" (1i;?, i)'"'
Franz Boas, the most prominent anthropologist in the United St.id m
the early twenticth c e n t u r y and the l o u n d r o the sdiool o A n n - m < |t<li>iiiii> . I . i l u . i n notes ( h a l .mlhropological d a t a b a n k s are not just innocent
cultural ism, wrote ahout t h e i ipo rt anee o l i l m Inproviding ohjc-ci i v > i < i ^ I I M ' . H M M , . h u "are i n s i i i u t i o n s which make possible the (politically
68 Inscription
The Writing of Race in Film 69
charged] circulation of information."65 In other words, while the ethno-
graphic film archive purports to be nothing more than a collection of visual 10 film the "daily lives" of people and to capture the historical forces of
documents from a diverse array of culturesthe anthropologist-filmmaker evolution at work. I will discuss Kahn's archive in the next chapter; what is
merely goes out into the world, objectively captures life on celluloid, and i mportant at present is to recognize that the archive of ethnographic film
brings it home for storagethe world is not being structured in a value-free was a shared ideal. Margaret Mead explained Boas's conception of the ar-
manner. On the contrary, the circulation of images presupposed by the ehive as follows: "[Boas] wanted a real corpus of materials to work on, large
archive implicates social, historical, and political relations of dominance. bodies of materials which would make possible the cross-checking of each
James Clifford's statement that collecting in the West "has long been a detail and would provide a basis for making certain kinds of negative state-
strategy for the deployment of a possessive self, culture, and authenticity" inents." 69 Both Regnault and Boas thus believed that an archive of eth-
nographic film should be created as a repository for permanent documents
casts a revealing light on the proliferation in the late nineteenth century of
new forms of public collections such as the zoo, the museum, and the which would enable the scientist to examine detail, verify hypotheses, and
|i>>; his or her memory.70
ethnographic exposition. The ordered plurality of forms itself suggests a
desire to stem or otherwise control the inevitable march of historical time I )ifferent national anthropological traditions had different theories about
by preserving objects, artifacts, animis, and cultures. Clifford goes on to i he use of ethnographic film, and yet the basic tenets which Regnault set
explain that with the emergence of modern classic anthropology, "cultures" l u i i h underpinned popular and scientific notions of the genre across na-
carne to be represented in collections as the embodiment of that which is i u mal boundaries. In France, anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in his essay "Les
pur and authentic. Even today, these collected "cultures" are nearly always le -hinques du corps" (1934), took up questions that Regnault had raised and
ili-( lared the body to be the first instrument of man. Mauss saw film as
represented in the "ethnographic present": they are explained in the present
tense but conceived as remnants of the human past, and thus are repre- ii jnivileged means of obtaining records of the use of that instrument. 71
M.IIISS'S best-known student, Marcel Griaule, used film to document his
sented as timeless, without history. Clifford explains that "both collector K l u d y ofDogon ritual.72
and salvage ethnographer would claim to be the last to rescue 'the real
thing.' Authenticity . . . is produced by removing objects and customs from 11 was German-speaking anthropology, however, that most fully em-
luiit ed Regnault's ideal of a scientific archive of ethnographic film. In 1950
their current historical situationa present-becoming-future."66 Ethno-
graphic cinema takes this process one step further,- it takes you "there." In ( l i e I ncyclopaedia Cinematographica at the Institu fr den wissenschaft-
film, the time travel is immediate: you "enter" the ethnographic present o |h lien l-'ilm (IWF) was established for the collection of research films. The
Bali, or Samoa, or the Northern Quebec Arctic. IWI spccifically invokes Regnault, and views its task as collecting vi-
Mn,il eihnographic records, to facilitate future cross-cultural comparison by
The ethnographic archive necessitated the production of visual records.1''
l i i i i n e d anthropologists. Like Regnault's films, the films of the Encyclopae-
Many anthropologists, however, considered film technology too difficult
and bothersome to learn. To maximize time and energy, cameramen wer ili.i t incmatographica emphasize movement and ndigenous technology.73
often hired to accompany ethnographic expeditions. One of the earlicsi A I W I director Gnther Spannaus declared, film was a "non-corruptible
ilin i u nen i" which allowedfor "direct andunbiasedobservation."74
mentions of using film for collecting anthropological records is the BURMII
of American Ethnology report of 1902. In this report, acertainO. P. Phillip 1 , I In ( . c r i n a n emphasis on "material culture" may explain why ethno-
is mentioned, a filmmaker employed to make films "representing the in H M p l i u l i l n i has been so relatively important to Germn anthropology and
vhv M i i i i s h social anthropology, lacking the material cultural emphasis,
dustries, amusements, and ceremonies of the Pueblo Indians and otlu-i
h.i ve -i liad much interest in film. 7S Film, however, also appealed to those
tribes in New Mxico and Arizona. The object of the work was to obiam
w-lin I u hevcd culture could be classified through study of the body, through
absolutely trustworthy records of aboriginal activities for the use of f u t i m
pin-'ii'r.iiomy -'111(1 pliysiology, and Germn anthropology was a leader in
students, as well as for the vcrification of current notes on fiducial dam < .
and other ceremonies.'"'8 (iliviii .il .inihropology (a body of research exploited by the Nazi regime to
l i j i l i mn.-e i.u i . i l e x t e r m i n a ! ion and imperialism). 7 6 These contrasts do not
Albert Kahn, thefirst to make a sustained eflort toconstruct an archive "I
research film, also hired camera operalors, and si-ni iln-ni a round tlie wm M li II i l n l i l e story, however. In Grcat H r i t a i n , although the "tradition" of
r i l i i i i i | ; i . i p l i i ( lilil as research tool tur anlhmpology is c n m p a r a t i v e l y weak,
yo Inscription The Writing of Race in Film 71

ethnographic film remains a popular staple of televisin programming, as Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson have been edited to produce ethno-
evidenced, for example, by the success of the Disappearing World series.77 graphic films now often used in undergraduate anthropology classes, the as
If "scientific" ethnographic film has had a wide, if disparate, impact yet unviewed boxes of their film sitting in museums and librarles attest to
among anthropologists, it has clearly failed to live up to the expectations of I he fact that the use and study of film never became a central method of
visionaries like Regnault and Poch. One often overlooked explanation may academic anthropology.81 As anthropology shifted its domain from the mu-
be that people do not readily perform their "daily lives" on cue for the se um to the university, writing ethnography rather trian filming ethnogra-
camera. Anthropologists M. W. Hilton-Simpson and J. A. Haeseler sought to phy remained the mdium for advancement in the social sciences. Despite
film "only what the natives do for themselves," but there is the problem of l'och's turn-of-the-century prediction that the tools of modern anthropol-
the camera's conspicuousness, as Haeseler explains, "No matter where in i >>;y would no longer be the notebook and pen, but the film camera, anthro-
the world one sets up a cinema camera, one becomes a centre of interest and pology in the United States and Europe has remained a "writing" discourse.
attracts a crowd that soon runs into scores. Managing these is a task for two I'he profilmicwhat occurs in front of the film camerais not as easily
or three vociferous native assistants, and on market days or during cere- nianaged as writing, as Anthony Michaelis's and M. W. Hilton-Simpson and
monies the conditions are particularly trying."78 I A. Haeseler's telling descriptions of the problems of anthropological film-
Anthony Michaelis's enthusiastic explanation of how to film "native" inakng attest. Photographs and films were thus used as evidence of having
peoples also establishes the need to hire "native plice": "hcen there," rather than as media to be studied in themselves.
Mut what is a more powerful legacy of Regnault and the conception of film
Before departure, the anthropologist can easily obtain a few feet of id .111 ethnographic tool is how it teaches spectators to see native peoples in
3 5 -mm film from a commercial production company; for this purpose t i l n and televisin as the Ethnographic. The iconography of race in films
unwanted cuts from newsreels should prove highly suitable. They could used lor popular audiences will be discussed in the following chapters.
show Europeans whose film images made them important-looking per- Muieover, the anthropologist himself or herself often became a popular
sonages, and they could be shown to natives as proof that the recording i i i i i horitative figure such as we have seen in the case of Baldwin Spencer or
of images does not produce any harm; in case of continued distrust these M.uj'.aret Mead.
cuts might be given as hostages.. . . The unwanted cuts, might also be
off ered to natives as reward for letting themselves be filmed. Instead of a
reluctance to be filmed, precisely the opposite may occur, and an all-toc > n- l.iiii^uage of Racialization
eager crowd of natives may cluster around and prevent the working o y.aii hy showing how the "ethnographic" in film works to deny the voice
the cinematographer. The only solution is to engage some reliablc na .l nulividuality of the indigenous subject. The performers in Regnault's
tives as a "plice" forc to perform the same duties as their white ie meant to represent not only a typical West African body, but a
colleagues have to undertake in a similar situation at home.79 | v i v pical of what anthropology called Primitive. Their ames and his-
Michaelis's recommendations for how to "capture" the native on film i< ii y .ne not given: the fact that they are performers from a fair, the colonial
reveal that Regnault's ideal of the unfettered anthropologist filmmaker w.r. n- ni hance's relation to West frica, etc. Emptied of history, their
far from reality. In the U.S. Southwest, for example, Native Americans wci e -, .ni- racialized. The racialized body in cinema is a construction deny-
known to jump in front of the camera, throw sand or rocks, and even brcak ini' -nple o color histrica! agency and psychological complexity. Individ-
cameras to prevent filming. Acts of resistance were not always so obvious .iie iead as mctonyms for an cntire category of people, whether it be
rituals could be performed in a false manner, without the anthropolo.i r ,r.i i f.itinp, race, or Savage/Primitive/Third World. Regnault is both in-
even knowing. Famed photographer Edward Sheriff Curts made a film m ied liy a inl i nlorms the scientific and popular circulation of the imageof
1904 of a Navajo Yeibichai ceremony ; some have argued that the N a v a "el Imut'.iapliic." Thus scientific cinema teaches us how to read bodies:
performing the ceremony did it i n t e n t i o n a l l y backwards.8" The world w.r. i i l i m >)',i, i plne" squals, el i ni lis t i ees c l i l l e i e n t l y , carries the colonialist in
not a perfect laboratory; f i l m was raro I y peilcel voycui ism. i . i l . i i u | i m i , p c i l o i m s a n i m a l s.ienliees, and goes ahont her affairs bare-
A l t l i o u g l i son ir o I lie loolagc I rom I he l l i o i i s a i u l s o I ce I o l i l i l made l i v .i-.ied A s m i l . u leonoi'.iapliv o i . u e is .11 w o i k m (he eonstruction
72 Inscription

The Writing of Race in Film 73


lirailleurs returning home to frica depicted in Sembne Ousmane's film
('iimp de Thiwye (1987). In Camp de Thiaroye, as in Regnault's films,
ilmost all the principal characters are West African. Unlike the performers
ni Regnault's films, however, they are given ames, history, psychological
i nmplexity, andagency. These soldiers, likecolonizedpeoplesinotherparts
~yN-2Y!'"Z'Z] ni i he world, return from World War II battles and concentration camps
li.iving learned one very important lesson: how small France is. Their pro-
18. Lorna Simpson, Easyfor Who to Say (1989). le iiiiul consciousness that "a white corpse, a black corpse, it's aJl the same"
(Courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery)
Ir.ids lo their explosin aganst their oppression as colonial subjects. It is
i Ir.u i herefore that what distinguishes the genre of the "ethnographic film"
111 mi .1 (ihn like Camp de Thiaroye is not the color of the people fmed, but
of Hollywood cinema stereotypes like the black Mammy or the Chnese
IIHW iliey are racializedhow, in other words, the viewer is made to see
dragn lady, but the racialization which occurs in ethnographic film is p.n "MI 111111 >p< ilogy" rather than history.
ticularly pernicious because it is "scientifically" legitimized, and the sul>
jects of the film are tied to the evolutionary past. Wlicn Regnault diedin 1938 noneof his obituariesmentionedhisinterest
In I l l i n I lis writings on cinema were dscovered only later by ethnographic
But racialization is not necessarily the product of contempt. Notions < > l
lllnim.ikcrs like Jean Rouch eager to establish their ethnographic film lin-
the native as pathological and savage often coexist with images of the " i u >
'ti|i '" II llin did not prove to be the positivist tool of science Regnault
ble savage": Regnault himself believed Europeans to be in danger of beomi
t di) un 1111 was, perhaps thisis because, though people may want to inscribe
ing surafftn, too refined, and he used his films of West Africans to supp< H i
Milu ci ,r. I ihnographc, those others are not easiy constrained in the po-
his theory that the marche en flexin was more natural, a healthier w:i v i
IIMini
Hli 'ni nlijtris of scrutiny. The chain of looks was and is never entirely
'dilril
walk. Whether portrayed as savage, noble, or simply authentic, how< \ i
the "ethnographic" is a product of the taxonomic imagination of b o t l i .m
thropology and cinema. It is to the legacy of this kind of media can n i h 1 1 1 -1 > .
that Lorna Simpson's recent work, Easy for Who to Say (1989), an.'.ui i
directly. In Simpson's piece, faces are emptied and filled with the le 11 i )
vowels, and the resonating words underneath the faces speak to t l u - t l < m i l
of history so many people of color have faced: Amnesia, Error, Ind 111 r i . i > . .
Omission, Uncivil.82
What lends ethnographic film its aura of truth is thus the Ethnor.i n > l i i .
body, coded since Regnault's time as authentic. Moreover, these I i 1111 >
not only be used for research into race and evolution, but also to i 1111 > i >
productive body of the capitalist and imperialist European w o i l d \d above, Regnault used films of West Africans to improve 11 n i "

military walk. One use-value of Regnault's work was thus war. In


twist, beginning in World War I, many West African men were rer i I
the French army to serve as the now-famous tirailleurs, t h e i r l > < > i l i > u
this time as infantry for French battles. Aeeordingly, I woulil hl" t"
elude by going from one campthe i K y s F.xposition l c ',thno;r;ipln<|m \ i
Regnault made his films t o a n o t h c r c a m p i h c t i . m s i l camp I o ',< nt'it 1
>!
X
3 GE5TURE5 OF SELF-PROTEOTION

'/'/;< l'icturesque and the Travelogue

11ii'y tlid not likeme, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was mo-
nii-iiiiinly worth watching.George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"

In 11)22 the anthropologist Flix-Louis Regnault described seeing a beauti-


lul l i l m in Paris on the Ufe of the Eskimo. One would surmise that he was
irlriring to Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty's popular film about a
Niiiibern Quebec Inuit hunter's struggle for survival in the Arctic. Whai is
I n i i g u i n g is that Regnault's comments are not about the film's aesthelic
t|ii,ilities or its realism, but about how the film illustrated Regnatilt's own
ilirory that the "Savage" walked en flexin: "(The Inuit people in the film)
w.ilkcd and ran on the ice with a very accentuated flexed gait. This fact
ilrmonstrates how exact is the documentation furnished by the film."2 For
Miy.n.iult, the body in motion verifies the authenticity of the film. Re-
Uii.mlt's reading of the film is still wthin the realm of the body as hiero-
nlv|>li, an inscriptionof race, adocument forscientists whostudy evolution.
Niinook of the North, made not by an anthropologist but by a mining
|ini',|Hvtor, was not intended as a scientific research film. However, even
(lilhiopologist Franz Boas praised Nanook. Often referred to as the founder
ni i nli ural anthropology in the United States and a proponent of the use of
Illin Ini recording "isolable actions" of the body, Boas tried to encourage
lilm i (illaborations between anthropologists and Hollywood on "the primi-
HM i.u es," a collaboration made all but imperative in his view in light of
u I M I I I - , o "the complete breakdown, from a pictorial point of view,"3 of
i M i i v i - cultures. Footage could be used and recycled for films intended for
ni ii n i i l i c and cducational as well as entertainment purposes. In a letter to
W i l l I l.iys, president of the Motion Picture Produccrs and Distributers of
Aun i u , i , Boas cxplamcd tliat commercial films like Nanook would have
lu i n I'i i l r i 11 a liaincd anthropologist liad bccn on site togive cxpcrt advice:
78 Taxidermy

Assuming . . . that a man who knows Eskimo life in and out, had been at Gestures of Self-Protection 79
hand to direct a film like NANOOK, many exceedingly picturesque and different kinds of visual representation of indigenous peoples: for example,
interesting features of native life might have been brought in which he made anthropological exhibits for the World's Columbian Exhibition in
would not only have improved the quality of the film but would have Chicago in 1893, asked explorer Robert Peary to bring back "an Eskimo" to
also made it more attractive to the general audiences. . . . Most of the be studied at the American Museum of Natural History (see chapter 4), and
material of this kind has to be collected now because each year sees
native cultures breaking down and disappearing under the onslaught of curatingatcollections.
worked the same museum making life groups (models) and dioramas and
White civilization.4
The first and second chapters described how the colonial encounter at the
At first glance, Regnault's anthropology with its stress on the physical ethnographic expostion with non-European peoples of color took the form
gait and language of gesture of indigenous peoples appears to be the antith- of detailed tableaus of performers photographed by anthropologists like Re-
esis to the anthropology of Boas, a scholar who set out to disprove evolu- gnault who believed they were inscribing the racial body onto films n the
tionary theories of the inherent inferiority of the non-European brain in his interests of evolutionary science. This chapter examines how these tab-
1911 study The Mnd of the Prmitive Man. Unlike Regnault, who was ob- leaus fused into a cinematic picturesque, creating a conceptual bridge be-
sessed with the body of the Inuit in Nanook, and who conceived of the body i ween racial "inscription" and what I will be calling the "taxdermic" mode
as a character in a langage par gestes, Boas was concerned with the insuffi- o ethnographic cinema. In early cinema, the picturesque is found in abun-
cient quantity of views of the picturesque in the film, and argued for the d.mce in the film archive of Albert Kahn, in commercial travelogue films,
representation of indigenous cultures in the mode of salvage ethnography, .nul in Edward Sheriff Curtis's "Art/Science" archive of "vanishing Indi-
that is to say, as he thought native peoples looked before they met the whitc .ins." The history of the appearance of the picturesque deserves a volume in
11 self; here I will only sketch its primary characteristics.
man. If he feared the "pictorial breakdown" of the Ethnographic, he chose to
defy its "death" through recording and reconstructing it in its diverse cu I
tural forms.5 And yet the complexity of Boas's relation to the production o /'/;< l'icturesque and the Archive
visual images of native peoples is exceedingly complex: the powerful ideol
ogy of evolution is inherent in Boas's conception that it was the anthropolc > I ven though Regnault's ideal of the scentific film archive never carne to
gist's task to record native cultures who were vanishing "from a pictori.il li mi ion, the archive continued to be, to paraphrase V. Y. Mudimbe again, a
point of view, " and in his desire to capture the "picturesque" ways of "pri n i 1 ( n i w c r f u l means of "seeing anthropology," an implicit ideolgica! context
tive peoples" those scenes of rituals, dance, food preparation, indigenoul w i i l i i n which films of indigenous people were viewed. Commercial films
technology (pottery-making, for example), and so on, all that is replete w i i h nh.ned the politics of visual domination from a distance inherent in the
"authentic" detail and without the influence of European culture. ,111 Inve, and gave expression to a passion for the picturesque. These two
Boas's notion of the picturesque went hand in hand with what Georgc W impulses created a genre in which the world becomes a body landscaped.
Stocking Jr. has described as the dehistoricization or"ethnographicizat io" I merging originally from a British upper-class appreciation for land-
of anthropology, in which the empiricism and epistemological underpiifl m ,i|iedsrcncry, the picturesque in poetry, painting, architecture, and theart
nings of anthropological notions of evolutionary time were overlaid wi 1 1 1 .1 ni i i . i v e l was conceptualized in the late eighteenth century as roughness,
increasingly romantic Rousseauesque study of "surviving primitivc pi K i i i l i l e n v.ui.ition, and irregularity in form, color, lighting, and even sound,-
pies" and historical analysis was elided.6 During this "classic pcriod" n i d i |'n imesque thus was defined in opposition to the sublime, the ideal,
modern anthropology, which Stocking claims lasted up until the i i K x r , i M i n l i l n l > e . m ( i / u l . Christopher Hussey explains that the picturesque was
the United States, the rising influence of Boas and the school of Aim-m . i un i i ved .rs .1 way to inspire the imagination "to form the habit of feeling
culturalism made ethnographic film and other visual media an i n c r c a s i n r l t l l i i i i i i r . l i i lie ey es."7 Hussey describes the picturesque from the point of view
ni i l n i l i l e i i . i n i e Hrilish squie, Richard Payne Knight:
important tool for asscmbling data lor dcscrlpton. Boas, consideied l > \y to be llie lalhei o visual anlhropolor.y, was involved w i l h n i . un
\ i ( l i e v e i y rel.ilinn lo p a i n l i n g , expressed by ihe word PiYturesquc,
i i n p l u ' d ,in .issoei.K ion ni ide.is on I he pan o a l l >;ni>- -
8o Taxidermy

For nobody could see picturesquely who had no recollection of pictures, CesturesofSelf-Protect ion 81
besides the power of abstract visin, to associate with objects per-
ceived. Apart from such colouring and lighting as gave abstract plea-
sure, the enjoyment derived from, for instance, ruins, laes, hovels,
and gipsies consisted entirely in their association with pictures in the
memory of the observer.8

The picturesque was thus powerfully associated with emotion and the sub-
jective, with memory and death. It evoked the passing of time and dis-
tancetaking as its subjects the remote and marginal. Sara Suleri has dis-
cussed the picturesque in relation to Anglo-Indian narrative, but Suleri's
discussion sheds light on early travelogue film as well. Suleri writes, "The
picturesque becomes synonymous with a desire to transfix a dynamic cul-
tural confrontation into a still life, converting a pictorial imperative into a
gesture of self-protection that allows the colonial gaze a license to convert
its ability not to see into studiously visual representations."9
From an accumulation of practices for imaging the exoticfrom la pein-
ture ethnographique, travel literature, the ethnographic exposition, travel
photography; from street scenes, panoramic landscapes, scenes of dance and
rituala genre is established. The picturesque is a shielding gesture: rea
_ __nnnMlHEBW:v>.^^.-^MMM>- - '. .4(45
tions of dominance are preserved in ideologies of death (the "vanishing
n> Len Busy, "Village performersHa-noiTonkin" (1916). (Original document:
races"), in the entertainment of relentless binarisms ("we do this, they do
Antochrome, courtesy of the Muse Albert Kahn-Dpartement des Hauts-de-Seine)
that"), and in the use of text or intertitles to wrest a narrative out of poten
tially disturbing images, mechanisms already present in the works of Re
gnault and other scientific filmmakers. The disturbing gaze of the Nativc rd ways of life that were vanishing quickly, Kahn felt that the forces of
described by Orwell, as I explained in chapter i, is tamed by visualizing thr rvolution could be captured by the camera. Another motivation for the
picturesque. The langage par gestes is actually a gesture of protection. .iichivc was to provide both scholars and adminstrators photographic and
The archive pro vides the perfect framework for the collection and displa v i mrmatic records of directly observed ways of life. The resulting archival
of the picturesque. One of the first archives of moving picture images was m.iicrial includes many exceedingly lovely autochromes whosepal colors
the Archives de la plante, an archive of autochromes, photographs, and li-nd l he images a ghostly, precous air. The tinted quality of the atmosphere
films collected by Albert Kahn, the French financier and patrn of the soru I IM i he photographs is heavy, almost gauzelike: in his autochromes, Kahn
sciences.10 This archive, begun in 1909 and directed by Jean Brunhes, t l > < ni,ule ihe planet into a series of snapshot jewels.
first Chair in Human Geography at the Collge de France, was intended i < > In romparison to the autochromes, the films in Kahn's archiveun-
arrest history as it happened and preserve on film customs and manners In i diicil, intended for use in lectures or for researchare less arresting. Lifein
fore they disappeared. Unlike early films by Edison and others, the Arch i vi. In mi o (he camera passes quickJy,- the films do not allow for meditation or
were not intended for the general public. Instead, films were screencd Im icmplation. They represent scenes similar to those portrayed in com-
selected meetings of intellectuals like Rabindranath Tagore, HenriBcrgsnn ( i n u i.il travelogues: mostly market and street scenes, views from a train or
and Auguste Rodin. Kahn's camera opcrators filmed not only in Europc, I m i .i i.nlio.id, and scenes of dances and rituals. Like the commcrcial travel-
also in many of the French colonics in Alnra, Asia, and thi- Middle Kasi, ai ni'.nr 1 , which I disctiss lielow, (he K a h n archive footage almost always in-
well as in China and lapan. Relioving t l i . i l cmrm.i and photography r m i l . l Imlcs p. i ora mic virws of (he la mise pe, ol cu from (he point of view of an
j', (ravcleron an incoming ship o ( r a i n . I hesi1 vii-"- '"' '
82 Taxidermy
GesturesofSelf-Protection
+ xv/tw^LlUll KI
^ \. As the travelogue

the representation of travel as penetration and discovery. Mary Louise


Pratt's analysis of the landscape in the written travelogue is applicable to
the panoramic landscape of early cinema. Pratt explains that such land- iravel is to possess the world."16 Edison's series of travelogues in the teens
was even called Conquest Pictures.
scape views suggest
Although so many travelogues were made between 1898 and 1922 thal it
the fantasy of dominance that is commonly built into this stance. The is difficult to generalize, most travelogues contained certain elements in
eye "commands" what falls within its gaze; the mountains "show common. They were short films, usually begnning and ending with pan-
themselves" or "present themselves"; the country "opens up" before oramic views of landscape, or of a harbor or town from the point of view of a
the European newcomer, as does the unclothed indigenous bodyscape. ship or train. The opening of the film with a map quickly became standard,
At the same time, this eye seems powerless to act or interact with this locating ihe speclalor and whal he or she will see in a nelwork of longitudi-
landscape. Unheroic, unparticularized, without ego, interesl, or desire nal and latitudinal grid lines. The sense of travel and exploration is high-
of its own, it seems able to do nothing but gaze from a periphery of its lidiied, the point of view often that of a bourgeois tourist. Finally, there is
own creation, like the self-effaced, noninterventionist eye that scans i.ircly any atlempt to construct the camera as a hidden voyeur: in early
the Other's body.11 11.1 velogues, people in markets and in the slreel openly slare al the camera.
Within the context of imperialism and entrepreneurial prospecting, pan- Like the early scientific research films of Pch, Spencer, and Haddon,
oramic views condition viewers to see other lands precisely as places to be i lese actualilies focused on the body moving through "cultural activites":
explored and inhabited by Europeans. dances and rituals seen as sacred and laboo were especially popular. In
That the body landscaped was not only racialized but gendered may be I ilison's Cuele Dance (1898), an unidenlfed group of Plains Indians per-
seen in an Archives de la plante film of a village festival in Tonkin (now li u in.s a round dance, probably inlended lo be danced al nighl.17 Films aboul
northern Vietnam) in which a young woman undresses and then dresses toi Indigenous peoples oflen focused on scenes right out of a "native village"
the camera. It is clear that the absolute voyeurism and scopic possession ni linm :\s fair exposition. The 1910 Gaumont film Sitien und Ge-
the native female body was palatable to a white audience,- if conducted on hiiiuchen am Senegal (Customs and Manners in Senegal) shows sequences
the white female body, the same technique would have been declared pm ul peoplc dancing, playing musical instrumenls, engaged in various hand-
nographic.12 The fact that the female native body is incessantly veiled a i n l li i . i l i s , and cooking: scenes reminiscenl of ihe visual lableaus thal Regnault
unveiled, however, reveis the simultaneous attraction and repulsin I di ilr-u iibcd in his reviews of ethnographic exhibilions. The camera is more
by the filmmaker for the perceived physicality of the native woman. n l i r i i (lian not afourlh wall, establishinga distant relationship belween the
npri 1.11 or and the subject filmed.
The desire to capture "vanishing" ways of life links the Kahn footagr i * >
the commercial travel genre, a genre which developed in step with i l n 1 1 ir "entcrtaining" narrative of evolution was emphasized by juxlaposing
burgeoning commerce of tourism.13 If the concept of the archive fram< i l n w l n i c tourisl with the peoples filmed: the Nalive versus ihe Civilized,
the Kahn footage, editing and intertitles frame the commercial travelogui ilu I ilinographic versus ihe Hislorical, the Colonized versus ihe Colonial-
Many short actuality films of the travel genre were made with tilles sud ti Int ( i n h k e most films made by anthropologisls, however, ihe presence of
"Among the X," and "Customs and Manners of Y," popular counterp > i n i . i n w l i i i i . in travelogues was an explicilly central focus of the genre. As film
what E. B. Tylor had earlier caricatured as the "Amongtha" literature i n .m l i i u i n i un ( ' l i a r l e s Musser explains, the audience ihat views the travel film
thropology.14 As the Lumires camera operator Flix Mesguich e x p l a u n 'I lili i i n l i r s w i i h what it sees on three levis: il idenlifies wilh ihe traveler
"My own ambition was to endose thc world in my cameras."15 Early ( mu i > |in M - n i c i l in the film, w i t h the cameraman, and with ihe showman who
mercial cinema of thc Lumires, Path Freres, Thomas Edison, and o i l n i li i mu-', mi siagc."1 In many travel films, the audience is presented wilh a
modeled itself on photographic travelogues and travel literature: t h e n u l l i n i i i l i | n i i c n i i.il locus o idcntificationthc colonialist. For example, in
was to go "Around the World in X Days" w i t h a camera, and m a n v l i l m A d i . / . / r . r . i ii Miiiuicrs and (.lusioinn of the Sakalava (Path Freres, 1910),
camera operators werc fortm-r s t i l l photOgnphera, The "archive" t l u i s m . n i |ln n .in i w i i seqnenccs w h i c h forcground colonial power and influence.
ifested itsclt in popular c i n e m a as I he desle lo pn ispee t thc world as ton II i I lin ul i l u M - I | I I I - I H -es, e n l i l l e d "A I V.isi I ).iy. The Na t i ves Bring Presents to
||n U l u l e M.in," shows whitcs in s i n i s and l i a t s d i s l r i l n i t i n g alcohol to
84 Taxidermy
Gestures of Self-Protection 85
Malagasy men and women. The second sequence reminds one of the scenes
Regnault described at the fair and is entitled "The Natives rush to pick up identify with the "fat tourist," whose imperialism and "civilization" has
eliminated cannibals.22
coppers." From a distance, the camera films Malagasy rushing in en masse
to pick up money thrown at them by Europeans.19 The travel film offered up the world as an "archive" of human variation,
Burton Holmes's travelogues were among the longest-running of the and allowed the viewer a way to travel without leaving home, just as the
genre, and, like many other travel films, promoted tourism as a natural research film enabled the anthropologist to remain in his armchair. It was
form of upper-middle-class enjoyment. As a travel lecturer, Holmes began also useful as colonial propaganda. All imperialist countries projected films
by projecting lantern slides; as a filmmaker, he coined the word "travel- of their colonies to an eager public at home: countries like Holland and
ogue" which he defined as "the gist of a journey ground fine by discrimina- Germany actually had government bureaus controlling and directing the
tion, leavened with information seasoned with humor, fashioned in literary output and distribution of colonial propaganda films.23
form and embellished by pictures that delight the eye, while the spoken Entertaining binarisms pcrvade another popular form which emerged
story charms the ear."20 The style of Holmes's films was that of a bemused from the early travel film: the so-called documentales romances (coined by
wealthy traveler, and his travelogues retained the didactic style of a worldly the anthropologist Patrick O'Reilly), which featured scripted fictionalized
lecturer. Like the carly films of the Lumires brothers and Edison, the sub- travelogues with white actors and indigenous extras.24 Many critics have
jects, especially crowds in the street or at the market, often gaze directly identified an early precursor of Flaherty in Gastn Mlis, who in 1912-13
into the camera. Beautiful Bermuda (1921) is a cinematic postcard collec- brought a cast and crew on location to Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia,
tion: it portrays Bermuda as, in effect, the ideal honeymoon site. Java, Cambodia, and Japan, making sixty-four films under the ame of
lokes at the expense of the dignity of people of color are prominent in "Round the World Films." Whereas the films of Gastn Mlis's more fa-
another Holmes travelogue, Sights of Suva (i9i8). 21 The focus is on na- mous brother Georges are said to represent the magical fantasy side of cin-
tive "types": "Fijians" are shown in both western and native dress, and ema,25 Gaston's films are curious hybrids of documentary and fantasy, shot
"Chinese" storeowners and "Indian" workers are also represented, often on location using nonprofessional native actors. For example, in "The Mis-
artificially posed next to portly British colonials in white hats. Racial con- fortunes of Mr. and Mrs. Mott on Their Trip to Tahiti," the Motts, a newly
trast was intended to startle and amuse, as in the spectacle of an English- rich American couple, encounter the god Neptune on their way from San
educated Fijian judge, or of a Fijian woman in native dress whose cigarette is Francisco to Papeete. Mr. Mott's flirtation with Tahitian women provides
picturesque "humor."26
lighted by a plump European man in a white suitan entertainment o
binarisms similar in effect to that produced by Regnault's chronophotogra- Mlis's humor is indicative of this genre: as in Holmes's films, "savages"
phy of the Parisian flneui walking with the West African woman (ser are made to seem silly and not really dangerous. In Captured by Aborigines
illustration 3) or of the non chalant scientist waving at the camera as he is (1913), another Mlis film, a Chief rescues an English explorer in Queens-
carried by four Malagasy men in a palanqun (see illustration 13). In thcn l.nul from beng eaten by "savages." The Chief, who has secretly lved with
relentless colonial contrasts, and their pejorative highlighting of the quaini white men and knows English, explains that he does not reveal his sophis-
and the remote, Holmes's films represented another form of the colonial l u . i t i o n to his villagers because he is unwilling to destroy their "primitive
picturesque; unlike Boas, however, whose visin of the picturesque was o 11 ( li.ippiness," an interesting comment given that Mlis himself complained
without any trace of Western culture, Holmes presented the panorama i li.n the indigenous peoples he encountered on his "Round the World" tour
landscape in order to suggest the possibility of colonizing and peopling .1 WITC not "savage" enough. 27 He created on film what he failed to find in
ic.ihty.
distant land. At the end of Sights of Suva, there is a view of a river ail .m
empty landscape from the point of view of a moving boat. It is a shot o I I M Indigenous peoples were often the target of humor in another form which
without Fijians. The title reads "No f u r t h c r fear of cannibalsEven the I.u ili vrlopcd oiit o the travelogue genre: the expedition and/or safari film.
and appetizing tourist may wandcr freely a i i y w h e r c in l ' i j i . . ." The jol I lie hinari.sm that was a forc in Holmes's filmscolonial gentleman juxta-
BDOUt cannibals again reveis the geslmv o srll p r n t r c l i o n u n d c r l y i n g i l i < l > i > M ' t l w i t l i n a t i v e "lype" is exploited to cvcn more dramatic effect in thcse
picturesque: dcSpitC tlic possihlc MCI vens l.iu.r.lilc, i h c aildiWlCC is n ira MI i U l i t i s .is ilii 1 biggame liimkT slumps his wav across lorcign c o n f i n c n t s . Mu-
M - I I I I I S i i l l i ' i i 11 sed exped! ion lilu"- ("' k l : - - '
Gestures of Self-Protection 87
86 Taxidermy
J

) i . Still from Gastn Mlis's Captured byAborigines (1913).


lo. Still from Burton Holmes's Sights of Suva (1918). (Reproduced (Kcproduced by permission from Mme. Madeleine Malthte-Mlis)
from the Collections of the Library of Congress)
l i i i n t i n g a big game animal and shooting a "native," an association I dis-
led by the American Museum of Natural History which funded severa 1
i iissed in chapter i using the example of George Orwell's "Shooting an
filmed expeditions featuring big game hunters. Teddy Roosevelt was per
l'.lcphant." The opinin of the younger European colonialists in Orwell's
haps the most famous of the museum's star hunters. In Cherry Kearton's
< 'is.iy that an elephant's Ufe is worth more than a native's is reflected in this
Roosevelt in frica (1910), the camera focuses on Roosevelt as the great ex
('.'un- in which the hunt for the big game animal is celebrated, and indige-
plorer, hunter, discoverer, and leader.28 African workers are his foils, eithei
i i i i u s peoples are no more than menial assistants. (This fascination with
as dangerous obstacles, trusty servants, or part of the picturesque scenery
l>i)'. v.ame hunting and murder is displayed in extreme form in Cooper and
In one scene, Roosevelt is filmed being carried, as Regnault had himsell
'.. hocdsack's The Most Dangerous Game [1932], a film discussedin chapter
filmed, on the shoulders of African men. The Great Hunt is represented as
f. 11 '.u I K. Akcley, taxidcrmist and photographer at the American Museum
an amusing party for whites in safari suits. Shots of Zul dancers are intei
i >l N,u mal History, was the screenwriter of a film directedby Paul J. Rainey,
cut with shots of Roosevelt watching the dances while admiring and aiminr,
Mi I it,ii v Drills of Kikuyu Tribe and Other Ceremonies (1914). The film,
with a large rifle: white superiority is established, as is the gun/camci.i
vvlm 11 11 u1 ludes many dances filmed in extreme long shot, feeding the West-
parallel, a ubiquitous reference linking film spectacle with death.29 Thcrc i-,
i MI l.is ination with the dancing native body, also includes big game hunt-
nothing to distinguish some of the dance sequences of Kearton's films from
iiif. .( ciirs, w i t h footage of the white hunters in their safari suits sitting
those in a scientific film, but the subtitles are more jokingly denigrating. 11 >
I d l v ol t h e i r horscs, African porters bringing up the rear. In one se-
one sequencc, for example, the camera first pans a circlc of barcbreasicd
i|in ni ( .1 Icopard is filmed as he waits ina tree. The leopard jumps down and
women and young girls with the intertitle "Zul Bellos," and then retn i r ,
in ' . I m i , h u ilu-n the film j u m p cuts to an African sitting in the same posi-
to offer a shot of the women with their backs to thc camera. ! "
i I I H i m .1 11 ce d r a w i n g t h e ohvious parallel. In Rainey's film, moreover, film
Another common i mago in the e x p l o r a t i o n / s a l a i i f i l m was the comp.n
loni.ir.r r, i u l e un w i i l i photographs, Lncludingone of a camera manaccom-
i son o the nal i ve lo the a n i m a l , w i i h t h e asNOCiatod i ni p lie i t comparison o
88 Taxidermy Gestures of Self-Protection

22. Osa Johnson and unidentified actors on location in Osa and Martin Johnson's 23. Still from Osa and Martin Johnson's Simba (1928).
Cannibals ofthe South Seas (1917). (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art)

panying a rifle-bearing hunter and several of the white hunters holding their Oneof the Johnsons' early films, Cannibals ofthe South Seas (1917), said to
guns, posing with their hunting dogs. Rainey's film is a striking hybrid have been filmed in Malekula, reveis how the Ethnographic picturesque
of photography and film. Upon seeing the photographs in Rainey's film could be almost entirely textual. The Malekulan actors hardly move for the
photographs of hunters who look the camera straight on, or of a dead leop- camera, but instead appear to be constantly posing, as if for a photograph.
ard stuffed in a hanging sackthe viewer is forced to contmplate a sense of Much in the way that a lecturer would concoct a lurid story out of a few
loss, a stopping of time, a death, Barthes's "that-has-been."31 The frozen anthropological photographs,34 however, the Johnsons use overly long inter-
images of the photographs are akin to cinematic taxidermy: the camera and titles to establish that they have been chased by cannibals. A man stares at
the hunt are again literally linked. (he camera in plan amricain with only his genitals covered; this repeated
Death becomes cartoonish in the jungle films of Osa and Martin Johnson, shot, reminiscent of anthropological photographs of a "native type," is the
whose Simba (1928) was produced and distributed by the American Mu p rtense for the narrative. Titles explain that he is Chief Nagapate, Can-
seum of Natural History.32 Part of the humor they employed was the juxta- il i bal King. Interspersed with shots of this man staring at the camera are
position of native people (especially men) with Martin Johnson's wife Osa, 111 les like "By this time we were literally scared stiff, and Nagapate's sarcas-
who, like the Germn actress Meg Gehrts in Hans Schomburgk's films, was ne laugh nearly paralyzed Mrs Johnson with fright," and "We packed our
portrayed alternately as intrepid hunter, scolding housewife, and beautiful cameras and prepared to leave when Nagapate signalled his men. Each of us
object of desire, a trope later used in 19303 jungle films like King Kong and w.i.s seized, Nagapate himself holding Mrs. Johnson, dislocating a wrist
Trader Hora.33 lionc as she struggled." In this film, a sensational narrative of cannibalism
When he was hired by the writer Jack London in 1908 as a still photogra .nul rape is spun out of a rather innocuous image of a man staring at the
pher for an expedition to the Solomon Islands, Martin Johnson met a group t .uera. There is n o t h i n g in the man's face or actions to suggest that he is a
of Pathc filmmakers who showed hiin how lo use- a f i l m camera, ail lu i . i n n i b a l : the spcctacle is constructed e n t i r e l y out of text. The Johnsons
embarked on a career filming in the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, and A l i u . i .pe.ik lor t h c n a t i v e s ' desire, but wliat is revealed is t h e i r own tear, their
yo Taxidcrmy

own fascnating cannibalism, and conscquently the audience's fearful de- Gestures of Self-Protection 91
light in confrontng thcgazc of the "camiibal."
much of anthropology was that the native was always already vanishing,
The Johnsons' image of indigenons peoples as stereotyped protagonists
and the anthropologist could do nothing but record and reconstruct, racing
n "the age-old story of Man emerg ng from savagery" was unremittant.35
aganst the evolutionary clock. Often accompanying this premise, however,
In the Johnsons' Simba, The King of He.atitx, A Saga of the Afican Veldt
was "abstracted" guilt, as a nostalgia for lost origins, and as fearcontem-
(1928)"a dramatic record of shecr reality" filmed in East fricamuch of
plation of death in the abstract leading to contemplation of one's own death.
the action and adventure is in the very act of shooting with the camera. The
Colonialism in the Americas, Asia, frica, Melanesia, Micronesia, and
big game hunting film was a natural outlet for braggadoccio; the film itself
Polynesia did not, of course, destroy all indigenous peoples and their ways
was proof of the filmmakers' expertise and courage. Through intertitles, the
of life. Dsease brought by the colonizers wiped out many populations
Johnsons describe the Africans they encounter as monstrous and ridiculous;
some have suggested as much as half of the colonized worldand native
the women are alternately labeled sexually desirable and ugly, foils for Osa's
peoples were murdered, enslaved, and brutally exploited. Yet indigenous
plump white "showgirl" looks. The climax of Simba is a scene in which
cultures responded and survived. The representation of the "vanishing na-
Lumbwa men spear lions, but, even here, the focus is the daring of the
tive," however, which denied the coexistence of indigenous peoples and
Johnsons: at one point the lion is shown charging the camera, followed by a
turned a blind eye to how they were able to resist and survive European en-
reaction shot of Osa shooting it. Rosen's notion of the ability of cinema to
croachment and dispossesson, was an extremelypotent and popular image.
control meaning finds a perfect example in the cinema of the Johnsons. Osa
Curtis, like Regnault and Flaherty, s often cited as an early ethnographic
is sexualized, but never entirely in control at least in relation to the real
filmmaker. In his photographs and film, Curtis did much to promote the
hero established, her filmmaker/hunter husband Martin. Simba ends with
an aproned Osa smugly baking a pie. myth of the timeless "authenticity" of the Native American. In the myth-
ological archetype of the horse-riding Plains Indan warrior with feather
headdress, essential to the ideology of U.S. westward expansin, the Native
The Archive of Salvage Ethnography: Edward Sheriff Curts American was represented as dying, yet noble, a "last of the ..." phenome-
non. The complex ways that Native Americans have negotiated the pres-
The Johnsons were able to conjure ethnographic spectacle out of the gaze of
ence of whites in the Americas were never part of Curtis's mythology of the
Indian.
a Malekulan man staring at the camera. Commercial cinema like that of
showman Burton Holmes presented a travelogue collection from the point
The cinema of Curtis represents the beginnings of a genre of ethnographic
of view of the fat colonialist tourist; expedition films, like those of Cherry
cinema which emerged from the early travel film, and which offered a quali-
Kearton, were made from the point of view of the Great White Hunter. In
tatively different point of view on the "ethnographic." Curtis amed for the
the photographic "archive" of Edward Sheriff Curtis, author of the twenty-
clegiac and aesthetically beautiful: his object was to produce images of the
volume book of photography The North American Iridian, the point of view
noble, vanishing "savage," and, together with filmmakers like Flaherty, he
is markedly different. Curtis's films mythologize the "vanishing native,"
spectral yet proud. brcame the poetic and artistic accomplice of the academic purveyors of
s.ilvage ethnography. Salvage ethnography took as its central tenet that
As suggested above, the picturesque tableau was aligned with authen
( n t a i n peoples would soon be extinct, and influenced representations of
ticity through detail, conventionalized ethnographic detail serving to im
indigenous peoples both in the museum and in ethnographic film, whether
pose a unity on the inherent multiplicity of the "exotic." As a mask to hidc
"scicntific" or popular: cultural reconstruction eclipsed bodily inscription
colonial anxieties, the picturesque was a means to catalog the distant, in .1
in importance. Jacob W. Gruber explains how salvage ethnography neces-
discourse which Suleri describes as "an unhinged aesthcticism that vals ..mly produced a collection of dataan adhoc accumulation of detailand
and sequesters questions of colonial culpability, but in so doing, bccoincs .1 he .ngues that it was motivated by a valu system which conceived of the
casualty of its own abstracted guilt.""' In t h e "picturesque" cataloging o i ollivlions as evidence of iiihvrcntly pathologcalcultures:
peoples in Melanesia, the Americas, and su on, anilimpology providcd t l n
justification for what was ni m a n v c.iscs gcnocide: .1 (.'cutral prcmisc ni Sucli .in appioaeh COtlld lead only lo a collection of data rather than a
body o data. The very opera I ion o I he rollcction i t se 11 inlii.scd i' 1 ' ' -"
92 Taxidermy
with a sense of separateness, a notion of item discontinuity that en- (Yeibichai) ceremony, it had to be staged for daylight filming: it was appar-
couraged the use of an acontextual comparative method.... Moreover, ently legitimate to "stage" the visual representation of authenticity.41
the sense of salvage with its concern with loss and extinction, stressed Curtis, like Dixon, was determined to eliminate all signs of white culture
the disorganization in a social system at the expense of the sense of from his films and photographs of Indians. As Christopher Lyman has docu-
community; it stressed the pathology of cultural loss in the absence of mented, heads, torsos, and full-length bodies of Native Americans are shot
any real experience with the normally operating small community. in a dreamy pictorialist style, foregrounding the corporeal presence of the
The recognition of the pathology of that state provided the basis and sitters while denying their contemporary presence. The smoky ghostlike
rationale for the useful concept of the ethnographic present as the ideal backgrounds and the use of costumes which iconographically were seen as
of organizationbut it was an ideal whose reality, stability, and order more "authentic," but which were worn exclusively during the photogra-
were to be the source of a continuing skepticism. The fact was that the phy sessions, were major aspects of Curtis's oeuvre. The Indian is portrayed
very notion of salvage insisted on the investigation of those sociocul- as the romantic hero of a "vanishing race." The image that Curtis created for
tural systems already in a advanced state of destruction; as with the himself was of an explorer/photographer with a mission: to document Na-
development of medicine itself it was the abnormal that set the norm tive Americans who he claimed had adopted him and initiated him into
secret societies. Curtis even boasted that he had become a Hopi priest and
of investigation.37 that he participated in the Snake dance.42
The strange doubleness of the politics of authenticity meant that the Particularly significant among the earliest feature-length works of eth-
"vanishing native" was imagined as simultaneously pathological and gen- nographic cinema is Edward Sheriff Curtis's film In the Land of the Head-
uine. If salvage ethnography was a race against the perceived destruction of hunters (1914), a film which, like Nanook of the North, involves recon-
native life "from a pictorial point of view,"38 it was also a race backwards, to struction and salvage ethnographythe desire to "re-create" what native
a less cluttered, simpler past. Joseph K. Dixon, whose photographs of the life was like before European contact.43 A melodrama filmed in the Van-
noble Plains Indian warrior, like those of Curtis, would become the image of eouver Island rea about a young Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) man, the
native authenticity for white Americans, succinctly summed up the aes woman he falls in love with, and an evil sorcerer, the film also includes
thetic of salvage ethnography in his own photography: "Every effort was i n a n y scenes of war and ceremonial dances.44 In a brochure for the film,
exhausted to eliminate any hint of the white man's footthe spirit of the C !urtis wrote that because of the "historical and ethnological importance"
native environment dominated."39 I i muges of Indians, films like his would only increase in valu, and could
Impelled by similar motivations, Curtis became more famous tb.au he nsed by students, scientists, and the masses.45 In the Land of the Head-
Dixon, mainly because of the popularity of the photographs in his tweniy Inuiicrs was promoted as a authentic record of Kwakwaka'wakw life at
volume set The North American Indian. Funded by some of the very people i he lime, but it was clearly based on cultural reconstruction. The Kwak-
who were exploiting the land and thus changing Indian ways of lifenon 11 w.ika'wakw actors wore cedar bark costumes and wigs and were made to
eastern merchants and industrialists like Teddy Roosevelt and J. P. Morga i1 ih.ive off moustaches; building fronts were constructed and ttem poles
Curtis's collection of photographs was perhaps the largest visual contribu i ,11 ved tor the film. All traces of "the white man's foot," as Dixon put it,
tion to salvage ethnography by a non-anthropologist. Curtis himself labrl< < l w i - i c painstakingly erased.
his work "Art Science," conceiving of it as both art and ethnography.10 h.i lacknis has outlined some of the similarities between the salvage
In his lectures, Curtis capitalized on the public's hunger for imar.i. i i h i u ij',ra phy of Curtis and Boas. As Jacknis writes, "Given the popular insis-
using lantern slides and filmof sacred Indian dances, induding the pupu h in e lu a 'picturesque savage,' Boas and other photographers (Curtis even
lar Hopi Snake dance at Walpi, Arizona. With the opening of the Atchisnii i i so) were encouraged toarrange the 'reality' before thelens to depict as
Topeka and the Santa Fe RR in i 88o, the Southwest Ln the f ollowing decadl | i i i i n li o i he tradicional culuirc as possihle." Although Boas disapproved of
had become a mecen for wliite KocUk-tOtiHg t o u n s t s atlcnding dances U' t in i is's mode o representacin and even atCacked Curtis for manipulating
sides the Hopi Snake Dance, ( a n t i s m.nle ,i l i l i n in H)O,| o .1 N a v a j o i i i n . i l |lnilo)',i,iphic s t y l e in a Ictter todirtis's patrn Thcodorc Roosevelc in 1907,
Because the r i t u a l itsell look place din mj-, I he m u l l nif.ht o I he Niy.hl w . i \s of Self-Protection
hn.r. 93 ilul un d e s l a t e h n n s e l l lo n i . i n i p n l . i t e photographs lo remove SKIIS
'

94 Taxidermy Gestures of Self-Protection 95


of white presence.46 Both men were obsessed with the idea of vanishing the audience learns that, although necessary for the visin quest, the power
races and recording the "authentic"; both men made films of the Kwak- of fire and smoke can be misused, put to evil purposes.
waka'wakw and collaborated with George Hunt, an ethnographer of British The paradox of Curtis's image-making was its complicity with the indus-
and Tlingit descent.47 Although their styles of reconstruction differed, both trialization and colonization processes that were radically altering Indian
Boas and Curtis were satisfied that the representations they created were ways of life, even as it celebrated the eternal authentic. Perhaps it is more
authentic. than coincidental that fire and smoke, like photography and cinema, were
Boas was actively engaged in reconstruction not only in his photography both vision-makers and weapons of destruction.
but in his design of museum exhibits as well. At the American Museum of The strength of In the Land of the Headhunters lies in its spectacular
Natural History, Boas reconstructed scenes for his life groups and used pho- dance sequences. In one scene, three great war canoes are first seen from a
tographs based on reconstructions in museum dioramas (although he care- distance, then much closer: we see the magnificent figures of the Thunder-
fully labeled them as such). He spent much time collecting od artifacts and bird, the Wasp, and the Grizzly Bear dancing at the prows of the canoes.
eliciting memories of elderly informants on the ways that certain tems had George Hunt, who grew up among the Kwakwaka'wakw, helped Curtis
been used. As Jacknis points out, however, photography and reconstruction organize these scenes: they literally take the large, beautiful, striking masks
were problematic for Boashe felt they could deceive, and were thus a risky of these Northwest Coast Indians, so beloved by Boas and Lvi-Strauss, off
means of recording culture. For Boas, such media could never usurp the the museum wall and put them in their natural settings. Curtis was praised
place of the written ethnography.48 for making the pictorial scenes found in museums come to life:
Just as writing allowed Boas more control over the possible readings of his
ethnographic description, the intertitles of In the Land of the Headhunters It was thought to be a great educational advance when the American
were extremely important in guiding interpretation of Curtis's film. In Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian set up groups of In-
the film, the young warrior hero is embodied in the character of Motana. dians modeled in wax and clothed in their everyday or gala costumes.
Motana marries the maiden Naida, angering the jealous Sorcerer. The Sor- But now a further step of equal importance has been taken by Edward S.
cerer performs black magic against Motana, and Motana and his fellow vil- Curtis. . . . The masks and costumes of the eagle and the bear which
lagers respond by beheading the Sorcerer and several others. The Sorcerer's seemed merely grotesque when we saw them hung up in rows in the
brother Yaklus takes revenge by going on a headhunting raid himself: Yak- showcase at the museum become effective, even awe-inspiring, when
lus kidnaps Naida, but Motana eventually rescues her, and Yaklus and his seen on giant forms on the plow of a canoe filled with victorious
warriors.50
men drown in a gorge when their boat capsizes.
The narrative is labored: Curtis's film is really an excuse to string to- Curtis's camera for the most part keeps its distance, much as a visitor to
gether footage purporting to offer a view of the Kwakwaka'wakw way of lifc- an exposition performance or a viewer of a museum display must stand
before the nineteenth century. The dreamy quality of Curtis's photographs back to take in the spectacle. The function of the ceremonies is left unex-
is present in the film in his use of smoke, an element of the visin quest plained. With swirling black hair, women dance alongside dancers with
Smoke and fire are associated not just with dreams and spirituality, but also wonderful masks. In one scene, described as a Winter Ceremonial, a man
with evil, magic, and power.49 The figure of the Sorcerer is a popular stem > dances in the foreground while in the back a sheet is pulled down. The space
type in white films about American Indians: the Indian "Medicine Man" is immediately covered with moving, whirling masked dancers, and the
was deceitful, jealous, conniving, and a sham (in implied opposition to tln i .uera then cuts to an eagle dancer in a completely different, empty space,
white Physician or Scientist), and Curtis's characterization was no excrp .is it Curtis were attempting to isolate one movement from the whole.
tion. The Sorcerer is portraycd as lowly: the viewer first sees him on al I ( nnt inuity is not important: picturesque detail is. Vachel Lindsay wrote in
fours spying on the courtship of Motana and Naida, and later sitting w i i l i i <> i s that the Kwakiutl in Curtis's film looked like bronzes.51 Thus Curtis
his troll-likc cronies by a fire in a forest, a sccnr shot I rom a high canu-i.i lnoiight to life the type of scenes that might be found in a museum display
angle so that the viewer looks ilown al l u i n Tliiou;;h tlu- Sorcerer and I I P . l>v Hoas; he captured the motion which Boas had complained waslackingin
brother Yaklus, who usc-s liiv lo smoke oui ( l i r v i l l a g r r s in ihe raid scrix-, i he musi-iim lifegroup, w h i l e still managing to crate timeless "hronzes."S2
96 Taxidermy Gestures of Self-Protection 97

24. Edward Sheriff Curts, "Bridal group" (1914). 25. Edward Sheriff Curtis, "Masked dancers in canoes" (1914).
(North American Indian vol. 10, courtesy of the Library of Congress) (NoTth Amanean Indian vol. 10, courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Curtis's tale is convoluted and melodramatic, and only the intertitles skulls and is seen laying his head to sleep on them. The beheadings them-
carry forward the narrative. Curtis even allowed several different actors to selves, like Motana's hunting successes, are not portrayed.
play the same parts. Visually, however, the audience at times does see from Although the Kwakwaka'wakw performers in some scenes stand on
the point of view of the actors, as when the shore is filmed from the point o shore highlighted by the sun, appearing shadow-like, on the whole they are
view of Yaklus and his men as they move in to attack Motana's village, o not rendered hieroglyphs as were the West African performers in the Pars
when the seis are filmed from Motana's point of view as he stalks them Ethnographic Exposition filmed by Regnault. Instead, they are clearly ac-
True to the salvage ethnography mode, there are no tourists, no hunters, and I ors, playing roles in a dramatized narrative of Noble Savagery. If the goal of
no scientists in the filmno trace of the "white foot." i 'urtis was truth, however, he clearly failed: the superimposed melodrama,
Two aspects of the film were criticized by contemporary scientific re .un i he film's sensationalized versin of salvage ethnography, predominate.
viewers as highly inaccurate, not truc to Kwakwaka'wakw Ufe in 1914: t l u - I lie actual historical and political situation of the Kwakwaka'wakw, whose
visin quest and headhunting.53 But these two themes, essential to t l n I id i la (cb ceremonies, for example, had been forbidden by the Canadian gov-
narrative, also carry an important allegorical impact. The visin quest p.n i i n i n e n t , is nowhere addressed.
aliis Curtis's quest, and, while headhunting was seen by Western vicwcr. I ii ilic I,and of the Head Hunters leavesonestrangelyuntouched: Curtis's
as pathological and "savage," Curtis's own profession as a photograplu-i/ photography, with its topographic obsession with the surfaces of faces, is
filmmaker made him a hunter of Indian "heads." In several striking scciu,, I I H I I C powerfu] and has more presence. Indeed, the film was not a great
warriors stand at the prow of oncoming raimes, sliaking the heads they h.ivi MU rrss despite good reviews. The stillness of Curtis's photographs eerily
captured up and down as tlu-y appioai'h s l m i r . Mot.m.i h i m s e l l dances w i i l i Mimesis tle.ilh in a inanner t h a l his s t i l t e d fea ture film does not; Harthes's
98 Taxidermy

suggestion that photography can be mad whereas cinema is perhaps only


oneiric describes the difference between Curtis's photography at its best
and his film.54 Flaherty and his wife Francs, however, saw and appreciated
Curtis's film: they would go on to make films of salvage ethnography which 4 TAXIDERMY AND ROMANTIC
were not only more compelling, but which would come to define an entire
genre of ethnographic cinema.55 ETHNOGRAPHY

Roben Flaherty's Nanook of the North


Recontextualizing the Picturesque
The 1992, exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History "Chiefly
Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch," organized with the collaboration
of Kwakwaka'wakw curators including Gloria Cranmer Webster, was a
moving tribute to the fact that the Kwakwaka'wakw, one of the most popu- Nanook of the North (1922), a film which focuses on the daily activities of a
larly filmed native peoples, did not indeed vanish. Two community mu- family of Itivimuit, a group of Quebec Inuit, is considered by many to be one
seums, the U'mista Cultural Centre (Alert Bay on Cormorant Island) and of the great works of art of independen! cinema. It is seen as a point of ori-
the Quadra Island Kwagiulth Museum (off the east coast of Vancouver Is- gin: it has been called the first documentary film, the first ethnographic
land), attest to the importance of community representation and the re- film, as well as the first art film. The writings about Nanook are inextrica-
patriation of sacred objects forcibly appropriated by the white government bly wound up with the image of its director, Robert J. Flaherty. There is an
in the past. Significantly, although many Kwakwaka'wakw historians and aura around the Flaherty ame: he is praised as the father of documentary
activists describe In the Lana of the Head Hunters (1914) as a white man's and ethnographic cinema, as a great storyteller and humanitarian, and as
myth about vanishing races, footage of the sequence on war canoes was the first maverick independent artist uncorrupted by Hollywood. Unlike
used in the "Chiefly Feasts" exhibition, as a testament to the magnificence other white filmmakers of indigenous peoples, it is claimed that he never
of Kwakwaka'wakw culture. In the exhibition, the images are recovered exploited his subjects. Flaherty embronzed his own myth when he declared:
by descendants of the people represented in the film: the Kwakwaka'wakw "First I was an explorer,- then I was an artist."1
use of the war canoe footage thus can be thought of as the inverse of the Nanook is also an artifact of popular culture. When it was released and
cannibal-mongering overtextualization of the Johnsons. distributed by Path in 1922 in both the United States and Europe, it fed
The way in which photographic and filmic images are inscribed and con- Lipn an already established craze in those countries for the Inuit as a kind of
textualized conditions the ways in which they are understood. Even as trie cuddly "primitive" man. The writer Joseph E. Senungetuk, an Innupiat from
anthropological museum and early travelogue films were embronzing what Northwest Alaska, summarized this stereotype: "a people without technol-
they perceived as dead cultures into picturesque tableaus intended for whi i c ogy, without a culture, lacking intelligence, living in igloos, and at best,
spectators, Native American cultures like that of the Kwakwaka'wakw a sort of simplistic 'native boy' type of subhuman arctic being."2 Nanook
remained very much alive, adapting to the pressures of colonialization, was extremely popular when it was released worldwide, and spawned what
and fighting to preserve their own cultures and histories. The gesturc o ethnographic filmmaker Asen Balikci has called "Nanookmania."3 Many
the picturesque is unshielded; the Ethnographic detail is reclaimed a mi wriers consider Nanook as the high point of the age d'or of silent eth-
reconfigured. iiographic cinema, the period from 1922 to 1932 which also saw the relase
o rlaherty's Moana (1926) and his collaboration with F. W. Murnau, Tab
( i >M i ) . ' Revived on numerous occasions, Nanook remans a staple for hgh
srliool and univcrsity courses in anthropology and ethnographic film.
Thr acadcmic discourse on Nanook of /lie North centers on questions of
lUthenticity. Somehave argued t h a t luv.iuse the scenes of everyday Quebec
I n i i i l i l i - wcir reconstructcd i < > culi.incc t h r lilm's visual a n d narr.-uivr
zoo Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography
impact, it cannot be considered true science. Other anthropologists contend ence and popular culture, the hunt for cinematic imagcs of the Inuit for
that cinematic representation can never fully be objectivethus both Fla- film Nanook, and cinema's hunt for Flaherty as great artist and/or great
herty's innovative "low of life" style, as Siegfried Kracauer termed it, and
the purported participation of the Inuit people filmed are hailed as markers
of Flaherty's pioneering genius. Still others add that the documentary valu Taxidermy, Salvage Ethnography, and Slight Narrative
of the film lies in its portrayal of essential humanity. Ethnographic film- Nanook of the North is often seen as a film without a scripted narrative.
maker Le de Heusch is representative of this last school of thought. De Flaherty himself explained, he did not want to show the Inuit as they w er
Heusch exclaimed that Nanook was "a family portrait... the epic of a man, at the time of the making of the film, but as (he thought) they had be^
of a society frantically struggling to survive. . . . Family life, the human Filmed on location at Inukjuak (formerly Port Harrison), at the Inukju^a
condition, are conquests from which animis are excluded. Such, in es- River in Quebec, Canad, the family of Quebec Inuit represented in the fi J
sence, is the treme of the film. Nanook, the hero of the first ethnographic consists of the hunter Nanook the Bear (played by Allakariallak), the
film, is also the symbol of all civilization."5 and mother of his children Nyla (played by Alice (?) Nuvalinga) who
The focus of this chapter will be on an overlooked aspect of the film: what always shown caring for and carrying the baby Rainbow, another wom
the film and the discourse surrounding it can tell us about the nature of Cunayoo, and various children including Nanook's son Allegoo (played y
anthropological knowledge and the role of visual media in legitimating that Phillipoosie).6 The narrative of Flaherty's film seems to ramble: it begi;ns
knowledge and other regimes of truth. Nanook was praised as a film of with the introduction of the family, the repair of kayaks and making of fu^l.
universal human reality, and Flaherty was held up to be a "real" filmmaker, the family then trades furs at the trading post of the fur company; Nanook;
untainted by commercial concerns. Conversely the Oedipal slaying of this fishes and hunts walrus; the family builds an igloo and goes to sleep; th^y
great father figure in recent criticism has focused on Flaherty as forger of the then wake up and go off in their dogsleds, a scene culminating in the famoxas
reality of the Quebec Inuit. In both cases, what is ignored is how Nanook seal-hunting scene so beloved by film theorist Andr Bazin.7 The film encis
emerges from a web of discourses which constructed the Inuit as Primitive with the arrival of a storm and the family taking shelter in an abandonad
man, and which considered cinema, and particularly Flaherty's form of cin- igloo.
ema, to be a mode of representation which could only be truthful. The I cali the mode of representation of the "ethnographic" which emerged
concern here will not be with whether or not Flaherty was an artist or a liar, (rom this impulse taxidermy. Taxidermy seeks to make that which is dead
but with ethnographic "taxidermy," and how the discourse of authenticity look as if it were still living. In his study of the impact of the taxidermic
has created the film. impulse on the writing of history in the nineteenth century, Stephen Banrn
I take inspiration from the subtitle of Leprohon's fine book on the eth i|iiotes British taxidermist Charles Waterton who complained that the uix-
nographic cinema of travel and exploration, L'exotisme et le cinema: /rs .ulorned dead beast was "a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in this
"chasseurs d'images" ala conqute du monde (1945), and examine Nanook par, or too bloated in that; a mummy, a distortion, an hideous spectacle."
of the North as the product of a hunt for images, as a kind of taxidermic Watcrton explained that in order to reconstruct life, one must accept the
display. First, I examine the discourse around the Inuit, a discourse w h i r l i l.ict o dcath, and use art as well as artifice: "It now depends upon the skill
has been largely ignored: Nanookmania was preceded by a historical i;is .un anatmica! knowledge of the operator (perhaps I ought to cali him artist
cination for Inuit performers in exhibitions, zoos, fairs, museums, and cari y .u l i l i s stage of the process), to do such complete justice to the skin before
cinema. Second, I look closely at the film and show how the film represeiii s I n i i , that, when a visitor shall gaze upon it afterwards, he will exclaim,
a paradigm for a mode of representing indigenous peoples which parallcls ' I 'lu animal is alive!'" 8 As Bann comments, "The restoration of the life-
the romantic primitivism of modern anthropology. Finally, I examine t l u lil- is itself postulated as a responso to a sense of loss. In other words, the
discourse on Flaherty as explorer/artist, a discourse which has painted l i n n Miopa o life-like rcproduction depends upon, and reacts to, the fact of
as either the great artist, or, like the Wiznul o O/,, the (real Humbug "i ilc.iili It is a stronuous attcmpt to recover, by incans which must exceed
falsifier of reality. There are t h u s llmv h u i i i s (,nul therelorc threc n e i s di iliose ni i-oiwcntioii, ;i stale w h i c h is (and must he-) recognized as lost.'"'
t a x i d e r m y ) : the history o llu- l i u n l lu i r p M - s c n i . i t IDUS o the I n u i t loi si i IIv loss, hann w.is refcrring to tho sense o loss o l.irk o wholonoss t h a t
loo Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography i o i
impact, it cannot be considered true science. Other anthropologists contend ence and popular culture, the hunt for cinematic images of the Inuit for the
that cinematic representation can never fully be objectivethus both Fla- film Nanook, and cinema's hunt for Flaherty as great artist and/or great liar.
herty's innovative "flow of life" style, as Siegfried Kracauer termed it, and
the purported participation of the Inuit people filmed are hailed as markers
Taxidermy, Salvage Ethnography, and Slight Narrative
of Flaherty's pioneering genius. Still others add that the documentary valu
of the film lies in its portrayal of essential humanity. Ethnographic film- Nanook of the North s often seen as a film without a scripted narrative. As
maker Le de Heusch is representative of this last school of thought. De Flaherty himself explained, he did not want to show the Inuit as they were
Heusch exclaimed that Nanook was "a family portrait... the epic of a man, at the time of the making of the film, but as (he thought) they had been.
of a society frantically struggling to survive. . . . Family life, the human Filmed on location at Inukjuak (formerly Port Harrison), at the Inukjuak
condition, are conquests from which animis are excluded. Such, in es- River in Quebec, Canad, the family of Quebec Inuit represented in the film
sence, is the theme of the film. Nanook, the hero of the first ethnographic consists of the hunter Nanook the Bear (played by Allakariallak), the wife
film, is also the symbol of all civilization."5 and mother of his children Nyla (played by Alice (?) Nuvalinga) who is
The focus of this chapter will be on an overlooked aspect of the film: what always shown caring for and carrying the baby Rainbow, another woman
the film and the discourse surrounding it can tell us about the nature of Cunayoo, and various children including Nanook's son Allegoo (played by
anthropological knowledge and the role of visual media in legitimating that Phillipoosie).6 The narrative of Flaherty's film seems to ramble: it begins
knowledge and other regimes of truth. Nanook was praised as a film of with the introduction of the family, the repair of kayaks and making of fuel;
universal human reality, and Flaherty was held up to be a "real" filmmaker, the family then trades furs at the trading post of the fur company; Nanook
untainted by commercial concerns. Conversely the Oedipal slaying of this fishes and hunts walrus; the family builds an igloo and goes to sleep; they
great father figure in recent criticism has focused on Flaherty as forger of the then wake up and go off in their dogsleds, a scene culminating in the famous
reality of the Quebec Inuit. In both cases, what is ignored is how Nanook seal-hunting scene so beloved by film theorist Andr Bazin.7 The film ends
emerges from a web of discourses which constructed the Inuit as Primitive with the arrival of a storm and the family taking shelter in an abandoned
man, and which considered cinema, and particularly Flaherty's form of cin- igloo.
ema, to be a mode of representation which could only be truthful. The I cali the mode of representation of the "ethnographic" which emerged
concern here will not be with whether or not Flaherty was an artist or a liar, from this impulse taxidermy. Taxidermy seeks to make that which is dead
but with ethnographic "taxidermy," and how the discourse of authenticity look as if it were still living. In his study of the impact of the taxidermic
has created the film. impulse on the writing of history in the nineteenth century, Stephen Bann
I take inspiration from the subtitle of Leprohon's fine book on the eth t|uotes British taxidermist Charles Waterton who complained that the un-
nographic cinema of travel and exploration, L'exotisme et le cinema: leu adorned dead beast was "a mere dried specimen, shrunk too much in this
"chassems d'images" la conqute du monde (1945), and examine Nanook part, or too bloated in that; a mummy, a distortion, an hideous spectacle."
of the Noith as the product of a hunt for images, as a kind of taxidermic Waterton explained that in order to reconstruct life, one must accept the
display. First, I examine the discourse around the Inuit, a discourse whicli lact of death, and use art as well as artifice: "It now depends upon the skill
has been largely ignored: Nanookmania was preceded by a historical fas and anatomical knowledge of the operator (perhaps I ought to cali him artist
cination for Inuit performers in exhibitions, zoos, fairs, museums, and early .U t h i s stage of the process), to do such complete justice to the skin before
cinema. Second, I look closely at the film and show how the film represen ts liiin, that, when a visitor shall gaze upon it afterwards, he will exclaim,
a paradigm for a mode of representing indigenous peoplcs which parallcls 'Thai animal is alive!'"8 As Bann comments, "The restoration of the life-
the romantic primitivism of modern anthropology. Finally, I examine t i u- l i k e is iisclf postulated as a response to a sense of loss. In other words, the
discourse on Flaherty as cxplorcr/artist, a discourse which has painted l i i n i U t o p i a o lifc-like reproduction depends upon, and reacts to, the fact of
as either the great artist, or, like the Wizard o Oz, the Creat Humhu; < > i J e . i i l i . ll is a strcnuous a t t e m p t to rccover, by mcans which must exceed
falsifier of reality. Therc are t h u s lince l i i m t s (and thcrcorc thrce acts l iliose o convcntion, a state whicli is (and must he) recognizcd as lost."9
t a x i d c r m y ) : the history o t h c h u n t lot tcpicscni.il mus o the I n u i t lor si i Itv loss, Hann was iclcuinj; lo I he sense o loss o lack o wholencss that
f

102 Taxidermy
Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography i o T,
brought about a crisis in the nineteenth century: the realization that instead
of one history there were many histories. Donna Haraway, in her marvelous
article on Cari Akeley's early-twentieth-century dioramas, taxidermy, pho-
tography, and film at the American Museum of Natural History, likewise
speaks of taxidermy as a means to protect against loss, in order that the body
may be transcended: "Taxidermy fulfills the fatal desire to represent, to be
whole,- it is a politics of reproduction."10 Thus in order to make a visual
representation of indigenous peoples, one must believe that they are dying,
as well as use artifice to make a picture which appears more true, more pur.
Since indigenous peoples were assumed to be already dying if not dead, the
ethnographic "taxidermist" turned to artifice, seeking an image more true
to the posited original. When Flaherty stated, "One often has to distort a
thing to catch its true spirit," he was not just referring to his own artistry
but to the preconditions for the effective, "true" representation of so-called
vanishing culture.''
It is a paradox of this cinema of romantic preservationism that the re-
action"That person is alive!"is most easily elicited if the subjects filmed
are represented as existing in a former epoch. As Johannes Fabin has
pointed out, the specificity of anthropology is that the subjects of its inquiry
are represented as existing in an earlier age. Fabin explains the significance
of the use in modern anthropology of the "ethnographic present," the prac-
tice of writing in the present tense about the people whom the anthropolo-
16. Still from Nanook of the North (1922), dir. Robert Flaherty.
gist studied. The dominant pronoun/verb form is "They are (do, have, etc.)" (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art)
This form of rhetoric presupposes that the people studied are timeless, and
establishes the anthropologist as hidden observer, akin to the natural histo-
rian in that he or she stands at the peephole into the distant past.12 The Nanook, the archetypal moment is that of a society ignorant of guns or
ethnographic present obfuscates the dialogue and the encounters that took gramophones: a society of man the hunter, man against nature, man the
place befween the anthropologist and the people studied. In other words, as eater of raw flesh. Nanook of the North was a cinema of origins in many
Fabin writes, "pronouns and verb forms in the third person mark an Other ways: its appeal was the myth of authentic first man.
outside the dialogue."13 What has been called Flaherty's "slight narrative"15 thus fits perfectly
The cinema of Flaherty worked in the same way: Nanook and his family with a racializing representation of the Inuit, which sitales indigenous
were represented in a cinematic "ethnographic present" in which intertitles peoples outside modern history. Nanook, however, is structured as a film
establish the camera, and thus the filmmaker, as observer. Furthermore, i I about the daily life of the Inuit, its novelty deriving from the fact that it
the indigenous man, Nanook, is constructed as a being without artifice, as was neither a scientific expedition film meant to serve as a positivist record,
referent, the indigenous woman is there to be uncovered, her bodyand this or a traveloguc of jokey tourism. As mentioned above, Siegfried Kracauer
is true of ethnographic cinema in generalto be scopically possessed by the dcscribcd Flaherty as a filmmaker of the "flow of life." Kracauer writes,
camera/filmmaker and the audience as well. As intendcd, however, this "Flaherty's 'slight narratives' portray or resuscitate modes of existence that
form of ethnographic film, infused with the not ion o dcath and the idea o obtain among p r i m i t i v o peoples. . . . Most Flaherty films are expressive of
vanishing races, is a cinema ofarchetypal momcnis cndlessly repeated. 11 In his romantic desiro to summon, ail preserve for posterity, the purity and
IO4 Taxidermy
Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography 105
'majesty' [Flaherty's word] of a way of Ufe not yet spoiled by the advance of
civilization."16 The Hunt for the Inuit and the Alaskan Eskimo:
Flaherty explained this best when he described film as "a very simple Explorers, Museums, Fairs, and Films
form." For Flaherty, the mdium made simple was well suited to the subject
The trail of contact between Arctic peoples and whites was already littered
matter: with corpses by the time of Nanook. The appetite for the Inuitspecifically
[Films] are very well-suited to portraying the lives of primitive people for images of their bodiesby both scientists and the public began in 1577
whose lives are simply lived and who feel strongly, but whose activities when the explorer Martin Frobisher presented Queen Elizabeth I with a
are external and dramatic rather than internal and complicated. I don't man, woman, and child from Baffmland.20 The representation of the Inuit
think you can make a good film of the love affairs of the Eskimo . . . began with explorers' accounts: the belief that the word "Eskimo" means
because they never show much feeling in their faces, but you can make "eater of raw meat" reveis what the public found most interesting about
a very good film of Eskimos spearing a walrus.17 them. Because of their diet of raw meat, they were described as animal-like,
savage, and cannibalistic. They also would be repeatedly compared to their
The Ethnographic is without intellect: he or she is best represented as sled dogs, and this canine metaphor was used in Nanook.21
merely existing. It is the camera of the explorer/artist who will capture the
Arctic explorers brought back more than just maps, furs and ivory. It was
reality of their "simply lived" lives. Henee the notion (and myth) that the
common for explorers to bring back Inuit and Alaskan Eskimo. It was also a
actors in Nanook were "non-actors." "tradition" that these Inuit rarely returned to their homelands: they fre-
The desire of Euro-American audiences and critics to perceive Nanook as quently died from diseases for which they had no immunity. Like the West
authentic Primitive man, as an unmediated referent, is evident in the fact
Africans and Malagasy whom Regnault filmed in exhibitions, the Inuit
that until the 19705, no one bothered to ask members of the Inuit commu-
were extremely popular performers in exhibitions, zoos, and museums.
nity in which the film was made for their opinions of the film. Only then They were treated as specimens and objects of curiosity.
was it learned that the ame of the actor who played Nanook was Al-
Some of the Inuit left behind written records of their experiences as per-
lakariallak. The same applies to all the other characters in the film. Al-
formers. One such account is that of a man named Abraham, one of eight
though it was typical for explorers to "nickname" the Inuit they encoun- Labrador Inuit brought over by J. Adrin Jacobsen to perform in the Hagen-
tered, Flaherty's innovation was in giving the Inuit nicknames that soundcd beck Zoo in Berln.22 Abraham kept a diary in which he described how one
Inuit. Henee Nanook (the Bear) was a better and more easily marketablc
member of the group was beaten with a dog whip and how they performed at
ame than Allakariallak, because of its seeming genuineness and its dual the zoo in freezing conditions. Like the climax of Nanook, the climax of
connotations of cuddly like a teddy bear, and wild like a savage beast. these performers' acts at the zoo was a seal hunt. Within three months,
At the end of the film there is a haunting shot of Nanook sleeping, a cise
however, all had died from smallpox. Their bones immediately were used
up of his head. He appears to be asleep, but his absolute stillness reminds us for anthropological research.
of a waxwork or a corpse. Taxidermy is also deeply religious: when Bazin
Explorers like Robert Peary were dependent on the good will and money
writes that the mummy complex is the impulse behind the evolution o of industrialists and museum philanthropists to fund their expeditions. To
technologies of realism"To preserve, artificially, his bodily appearance is
increase their own fame, and to make some profit, explorers brought back
to snatch it from the flow of time, to stow it away neatly, so to speak, in thc
Inuit and Alaskan Eskimo to be exhibited. Peary was notorious for his cru-
hold of Ufe"one is reminded of the imagc of the sleeping Nanook. 18 In
elty and arrogance toward the Inuit who worked for him, often treating
ethnographic cinema, the narrative of the film hinges upon the body of thr
ihcm no better than dogs.23 When they died, often from diseases which his
nativeplugged into the narrative of evolution and the myth of vanishinr, ships inadvertently brought, he would exhume their bodies and sell them to
races. It is this body, and not that o an (Vdipal father or mother, whicli nuiscums. Explorers also made most of their fortunes through the furs and
must be slain and upon which the na r ral i ve tesis. 1 '' Tliai A l l a k a r i a l l a k dietl ivory they received from the I n u i t . ' 1
two years afler ihe f i l m was leleased, o r i i l i e i s i a i v a l i o n or disease, only In iSy, Pranz Moas, who w.is l l i r n as.sistam curator o the American
enhanced the film's status as a woi k o . u i i l i e n i u u v M u s e i i m o N a t u r a l l l i s t o r y , ple.ided w i i l i l Y . n y to h i i i i L ' h.-irlf "> !"' '--
io6 Taxidermy
Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography
.tl,ji.j5idpiiy 107
107
died the scentists had staged a fake burial, and that indeed his father's
bones were at the museum. As Wallace explained in a letter to a friend:
You can't know the sad feelings I have No one can know unless they
have been taken from their home and had their father die and put on
exhibition, and be left to starve in a strange land where the men insult
you when you ask for your own dear father's body to bury or to be sent
home.

These are the civilized men who steal, and murder, and torture, and
pray and say "Science."26

Not surprisingly, the Inuit were popular subjects for museum models in
dioramas. For example, the first museum models at the Smithsonian In-
stitution's United States National Museum (now the Museum of Natural
History), made in 1873, represented two Inuit named "Joe" and "Hanna,"
flanking the figure of the explorer Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. Museum displays
of life groupsdepicting cultures in nuclear family units performing rituals
or subsistence activitiesare another characteristic form of the "taxider-
mic" mode of salvage ethnography.27
In the nineteenth century, the image of the Inuit and the Alaskan Eskimo
aequired nuances in addition to that of "wild Savage." As Ann Fienup-
R iordan explains, the Eskimo were made into the mrror image of the ex-
plorers. Like the explorers, the Eskimo were represented as noble, brave,
mdependent, persevering, and incorruptible. But ideas about the relatively
lofty status of the Eskimo did not mean that the Eskimo were perceived as
27. Elisha Kent Kanc, Joe, and Hanna, Smithsonian Institution Ufe group, 1871 alilc to undergo their own "independent progress" without white interven-
(Smithsonian Institution photo no. 28321, used by permission of the Smithsoniii i ion.1'8 In a sense, the Eskimo were seen as Primitive success stories of an
Institution, National Anthropological Archives) A i c t i c "survival of the fittest/'Fienup-Riordan explains:

The publicity these arctic representatives received marked the progres-


the museum. It is surprising that Boas, who in 1893 had worked on anthm
sive transformation of the image of Eskimos from subhuman to super-
pological exhibits at the World's Columbran Exhibition in Chicago whrn
h timan. Displayed along with their sophisticated hunting tools and
many performers, including Inuit, had died (their bodies were later used in
wearing polar bear skins, these living specimens carne to represent
the Field Museum), apparently did not consider the danger of exposing i In
i h e ultmate survivors, intrepid and courageous individualists who
Inuit to disease as an obstacle.25 Of the six Inuit from Smith Sound w l n >
i lirough shccr cunning were able to best their rivals in the free market-
were brought back by Peary and housed in the American Museum of Nal u
place of the arctic world. Happy, peaceful, hardworking, independent,
ral History, only one did not immediately die of pnemonia, a l i t t l c l m \n as Minik Wallace. Abandoned by Peary, Boas, and the museum s< i
.un adaptable- these were the images rnost often used to clothe Eski-
mos in the twcnticth century. The nuances of Eskimo reality dimmed
entists who had brought him to the United States, Wallace was adopted . u n
in comparison tn t h i s dramal i c a l l y siaged representation, an image in-
grewupin New York, only t o d i seo ver asa tecnagcr t h a t when h i s f a t h c i l i . n l
r u M s i n g l y acci'plahlc hi-f.iuse o its incorporal ion o t r a i t s Wcsterners
v.ilncil ni ilicmsclvcs.-"'
io8 Taxidermy
TaX1dermy and Romantic Ethnographv -ot-"/ iuy
This notion of the Eskimo as an uncorrupt example of all the vales of the
Westindependence, perseverance, and patriarchyreached its epitome in meat. In Van Valin's films the Alaskan Eskimo are portrayed as carefree,
playful, dancing, and instinctive: "Od Eskimo smell whale through twelve
the cinematic character of Nanook.30 In both the United States and Europe,
the 19205 were characterized by a pervasive fear of racial mixing: the white feet of ice." The Alaskan Eskimo filmed tend to line up and stare, laughing
was constructed as the Nordicpal, blond, blue-eyed, from the North. The at the camera. Even in Van Valin's film, however, death is lurking: the
term "Nordic" was used in popular culture to refer to whites of Northern camera pans the bones of Alaskan Eskimo, skeletons scattered everywhere
European descent. The fear was that the Nordic was being annihilated by in an empty landscape, with the accompanying intertitle: "Where solitude
racial mixing. At best, the Inuit or Alaskan Eskimo was the primitive Nor- now reigns supreme, except when the wind whistles through the eye orbits
and nasal cavities of these empties."35
dic, or as Asen Balikci termed it, a "primitive Protestant."311 would like to
suggest that the character Nanook was thus something of a mirror for the Nanook shares several aspects with arctic expedition film predecessors
white audience: he too was from the North, and, as Balikci's comment such as the films of van Valin. In both, there is an emphasis on hunting and
suggests, like the Nordic, was seen as embodying the Protestant vales of the eating of raw meat by people and dogs. As I have suggested, the seal hunt
patriarchy, industriousness, independence, and courage. But the character scene is all but obligatory. To the extent that Western contact is portrayed,
Nanook is still the subject of voyeuristic observation, not acknowledged as it is as benign, even amusing, tradethe Inuit get novelties and the Euro-
coequal of the adventurer/anthropologist. Americans get fur. In both Nanook and the expedition film, moreover, the
As I have argued in chapter i, cinema took over from the world's fair Inuit and Alaskan Eskimo are portrayed as playful, and are given nick-
names, but in both death is always lurking.36 The close-ups in Nanook also
many of the functions of the native village exhibition. Indeed, one of the
earliest cinematic depictions of the Inuit is a body of film by Thomas Edison borrow from the expedition genre: the laughing Inuit holds up the fish for
the camera,- other portraits in Flaherty's film are infused with the dreamlike
in 1901 of the "Esquimaux Village" at the Pan-American Exposition in Buf-
l'ictorialist style characteristic of Edward Sheriff Curts.37
falo. Edison produced footage of the Inuit as happy gamesters in dogsleds
amid papier-mch igloo environments with painted backdrops of snowy Despite these many smilarities, Flaherty's film stands out. As I arge in
mountains and fake ice floes.32 Edison was not alone: numerous films aboui i he next section, the innovation lies not only in Flaherty's distinctive film
style, but also in the creation of the myth that Flaherty had produced for the
Arctic exploration that include footage of or relating to the Inuit and Alas
I i rst time a form of cinema paralleling participant observation.
kan Eskimo were made before Nanook. In almost all these films, the narra
tive centers on a whaling expedition or an arctic exploration. Footage o
Inuit and Alaskan Eskimo hunting polar bears and paddlirig in kayaks wc-ir 'I'he Historical Settng of Nanook of the North
"picturesque" details which, as in other films of the period, lent an air I
authenticity to the representations.33 I 'I i e i mage of the Inuit was not always one of a simple, incessantly smiling
I'copie struggling heroically against the arctic cold. In the i88os, Quebec
The use of film to enhance lectures on expeditions and Arctic peoples w.r.
I n u i t murdered shipwrecked crews of white men, and were consequently
also common. In this genre as well, the indigenous people served as "piel u i
esque" elements of the landscape, marking the exotic and primitive p.i-.i ni allowed access to the posts of the Hudson's Bay Company. Ironically,
ilrscendants of these men were among the Inuit who welcomed the firm
through which the modern white explorers were passing. In William V.m
i l i . i t sponsorcd Nanook, the French company Revillon Frres (in 1910 Re-
Valin's films of Point Barrow, Alaska (1912-18), for example, there is .1
vi 11( >n Frres established several posts and became a fierce competitor of the
noteworthy seal-hunting scene, apparently already a staplc of films aben u
llmlson's Bay Company), and were also among those Flaherty filmed in
the Inuit or Alaskan Eskimo.34 In an empty landscape, a lone Alaskan !'.,. i') i ,|.IK
kimo hunts patiently, the intertitles explaining that "Thought of him.r.i\e and kiddies urges weary hunter on." Becausc this title is followed 1>\1
Hrc.msc tir prices were at thcir height in the 19208, the Inuit in Quebec
\ V C - K - mi roduced to a cash economy, and the Inuit portrayed in Nanook thus
pan of the landscape, it allows the viewer lor a m o m r n t to see w i l l i i l n
\\TIC i i s i n g gnus, k u e w a h n n l gramophones, wore Western clothing, and,
hunter's cyes. Like other expedition f i l m m a k r i / l e t u i v r s , Van V a l i n u-.c
i i l l l i n u g h m a n y liad dird liom WVslrm disrasi-s, c r r i a i i i l y were not van-
catchy, kitschy tilles like "Doj; eal doy," I o .1 srrnr ni w h i c h a dog cats MU
r.INIII', l ; m.mci.il s l a h i l i l v pmvcd p i n .11 uns, h o w r v c i : t h e lar! lli.n t l n >
no Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnograph y iii
actor Allakariallak, who played Nanook, died of starvation or disease two Flaherty as "the moving picture boss" as well as Koodjuk (swan) because o)
years after Nanook was made is not surprising. According to Bernard Sal- his white skin,- he explains that his cise relative Noogooshoweetok made
adin d'Anglure, the Canadian government during the early part of the twen- many drawings for Flaherty, work which Noogooshoweetok found tiring.'1'1
tieth century virtually ignored the Inuit and gave no social aid. D'Anglure It was these drawings which Flaherty drew on for inspiration for one part of
writes that Quebec Inuit were dependent on the "good will of the fcw Euro- his 1914 film a segment about the making of a film from an Inuit drawing).
Canadian residents (traders, missionaries, and meteorological station em- Characteristic of these drawings was an emphasis on the snowy white vast-
ployees) or to passing ships whose crews too often exchanged gifts for wom- ness of the landscape suggested by the white of the page, in which Inuit
en's sexual favors."39 individuis and dogsleds are rendered small in the overall scheme. Thanks
If Flaherty had not banished history from Nanook of the North, he would to the visin of the Arctic environment of the artist Noogooshoweetok, and
have had to acknowledge his own role as an agent of change in the lives of of later Inuit camera operators who worked for Flaherty, Nanook has some
the Inuit. Ironically, Flaherty made several expeditions in the Hudson Bay of the most beautiful landscape scenes ever filmed.45
regin of northern Canad on behalf of Canadian industrialists. He thus
followed in the footsteps of his father, a mining engineer who prospected
The Film Nanook of the North
Canadian reas for minerals for U.S. Steel and other corporations.40 In 1910,
Robert Flaherty went to work for the Canadian Railroad builder and flnan- The images and the scenes in Nanook which have been most written about
cier Sir William Mackenzie as a prospector and mapmaker looking for min- are the hunting scenes, especially the walrus and the seal-hunting scene.
eral deposits, particularly iron ore. Mackenzie was also hoping to establish Ethnographic cinema is above all a cinema of the body: the focus is on the
shipping from Hudson Bay to countries outside of Canad. anatomy and gestures of the indigenous person, and on the body of the land
As Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker explains, during the period from 1900 to 191 o, they inhbil. Nanook of the North thus begins by introducing the two main
the territorial boundaries of the possessions of the United States and Can- landscapes of the film: the land of Inuit Quebec, and the face of Nanook.
ad were still in dispute, and photography became an important tool for The shot which will be the defining image of the filmNanook at the top of
establishing claims of possession.41 In 1913 Mackenzie asked Flaherty to the hill, harpoon in handshowcases both elements. When he faces the
bring a film camera on his explorations. Flaherty brought along a Bell and camera, the actor Allakariallak smiles, interpreted by critics to mean that
Howell camera as well as equipmcnt for developing and printing. These he was childlike, not complex, feeding Flaherty's conception of "primitive
early films of 1914 and 1916 are said to have been destroyed in a fire.42 Eskimos" as simple people. Until the 19303, it was unseemly in the United
It is clear that both Robert Flaherty and his wife Francs began to think States and Europe to face the camera smiling: smiling was considered to
that their careers might be in cinema, and they hoped to profit from their make the subject look foolish and childlike.46 Recent research has shown
films, going to various organizations like the Explorer's Club, museums, that the Inuit found Flaherty and the filmmaking a source of great amuse-
and movie companies asking for fmancial backing. (Apparently both Boas ment, 47 and this amusement may well account for Nanook's smile. The
and Curts were consulted for financial advice and were shown the films.) enigma of Nanook's smile allows the audiencc to project its own cultural
The career of the explorer/artist was already in the mind of Francs Flaherty presuppositions: from the point of view of an outsider he is chldlke, from
in 1914 when she wrote that she hoped the films "will attract a great deal o (he Inuit point of view he may be seen as laughing at the camera.
attention, be widely shown and gain recognition for R. [Robert] as an ex Nanook's subsequent arrival at the edge of a lake or sea by kayak, after
plorer, as an artist and interpreter of the Eskimo people, and consequently which one-by-one various members of his family appear from within the
bring him greater opportunity."43 scemingly diminutive vessel, perhaps appeals to an unconscious associa-
According to Danzker, the representation of the Eskimo as a type, and thr t i o n of the Inuit with fairs and circuses. As Barsam has noted, ths comic
idea of following the daily life of an Eskimo man and his family, was presen! dcvicc is similar to the one with which one introduces clowns.4X The last
even in these early films. Peter Pitseolak, an Inuit photographer from Ser "inc'mber" of Nanook's f a m i l y to emerge from the kayak is the puppy Com-
kooseelak (Cape Dorset, Baffin Island), remcrnbcrs I'lahcrty coming OIH ( n k Liter in (lie lilil, puppics w i l l be comparcd to I n u i t habies, and sled
winter to film, giving out guns as wdl ns o t l i r i i i r i n s l'iiscolak rcfers tu iltigs lo l i u i i l .
Taxidermy and Romn tic Ethnography 113
II2 Taxidermy foreign technologyis another sign of authenticity. This conceit, of course,
obscures the Inuit's own appropriation of the new technology, their par-
ticipation in the production of the film.
In the next scene, intertitles first explain that Nanook's children "are
banqueted by the tradersea biscuit and lard?" The viewer sees two little
children laughing contentedly, licking their lips. But Allegoo, the son, "in-
dulged to excess," is given castor oil by the trader, a medicament which
immediately cures him. Licking his lips as well, Allegoo smiles at the cam-
era, while Nanook looks on delightedly. The trader is depicted as superior in
both technology and medicine, in a message covered overby all the furs. It is
also a scene of eroticism. Nyla sits on the fur-covered ground, her baby and
the puppies playing affectionately, licking and touching. It is a space of
pleasure, with music from a gramophone and gorging on biscuits. The eroti-
cism contines in other ways throughout the film, especially in its em-
phasis on oral contact: Nyla licks her baby clean, Nanook licks his knife,
the family lick their lips while eating raw meat. The bottle from which the
trader pours cod liver oil to Allegoo, however, also looks like a liquor bottle;
the encroachment of whites brought not only influenza, smallpox, and tu-
berculosis, but alcoholism as well. Eroticism, a lust for the Native body,
is here conjoined with an image foreshadowing impending death and de-
struction: the myth of the vanishing race could be used to make genocide
mz-s erotic.49
28. Still from Nanook of the North (1921), dir. Robert Flaherty. And the bodies must be uncovered: in a later scene where the camera
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) serves as a fourth wall, the viewer sees the family getting dressed and un-
dressed. The women are shown half-naked, their breasts displayed for the
Like a museum display in which sculpted models of family groups per- viewer. (It is difficult to imagine a film by Flaherty about his own life in
form "traditional activities," Nanook's family adopts a variety of poses for which his wife Francs would be shown undressing for the camera before
the camera. These scenes of the picturesque always represent a particular she goes to bed.) Because they are not actually in a closed igloo, but in an
view of family or community, usually with the father as hunter and the open igloo set, their bodies are shivering as they dress. Although the interti-
mother as nurturer, paralleling Western views of the nuclear family. I le erroneously claims that the igloo has to be below freezing, the family is
In the f ollowing trading post sequence, Nanook is shown to be ignoran t o htcrally left out in the cold, and their cold is palpable.
Western technology. Against a wall of the white fur pelts, Nyla sits in the The trading sequence, which includes the scenes described above, serves
background rocking her body, with her baby, and Nanook, crouched in tlu- .is ;i ncxus for discourses of colonialism, race, and gender. It must be re-
left foreground with the trader at the right in a higher position, gazes ,n Biembered that Nanook was sponsored by the French fur company Revillon
the gramophone in the center. Nanook touches the gramophone; intert ii U. I tries. The trading scene serves as propaganda for Revillon, who, as I have
explain that he does not understand where or how the sound is made. 1 1 > r x p l a i n e d , was a staunch competitor with the Hudson's Bay Company at
then is shown biting the record three times while laughing at the canu-i.i i l n - l i m e . The complexity of the Inuit/white trader relationship is glossed
This conceit of the indigenous person who does not understand Wesirm nvci hy Flaherty's representation of the trading post asa joyful place.
technology allows for voyeuristic pleasure and reassurcs the viewer o Un I he next sequence begins w i t h Nanook "already on the thin edge of star-
contras! between the l'nmilivc and Un- Modcm: ingrains the notion th.ii v.ilion," .1 suipiising t u m o evenls considering that the family has heen
' " illv .u t m g Tlirn n . n v r t r U u-y do not undersland i h r .
Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography 115
ii4 Taxidermy
This last line is ambiguous, implying that the wolf is the forebear of Na-
"banqueted." Despite the grave intertitle, what follows are lovely outdoor nook. The intertitle is followed, however, by a close-up of a snarling dog.
fishing, hunting, and igloo-building scenes. The dramatic tensin in many The subsequent intercuts of the dogs barking and the family eating raw seal,
of the scenes is conveyed by intertitles which do not reveal too much too Nanook licking his knife and the dogs fighting, reinforce the parallel, visu-
soon, and by the use of long takes and great depth of field. In the walrus
ally associating Nanook and his family more closely with dogs than to the
scene, Nanook rushes out with the other men in kayaks, they stalk the
trader with his Western technology and medicine. Van Valin depicted the
walrus, and pul it in. Making this particular scene, Flaherty said, was a idea more bluntly with the intertitle "Dog eat dog"; Flaherty's use of inter-
difficult struggle requiring subterfuge: the men were afraid that they would cutting shots of dogs is metaphorical and more ambiguous.
be pulled out to sea and kept on calling Flaherty to shoot the walrus with his
At the end of the film, there are extremely beautiful, long takes of the
rifle, but Flaherty pretended not to hear them.50 Flaherty shows a close-up snowy landscape. Indeed, the land takes over as a protagonist, the sky be-
shot of the head of the dead walrus, a common shot in travelogues, and the
coming as heavy as the snow. The filmed landscape against which the fig-
film explains that the men "cannot restrain the pangs of hunger" as they ures of the actors appear small and remote takes on the spare, suggestive
immediately begin to eat ravenously. The scene in which Nanook and his aesthetic of the Inuit drawings that Flaherty collected. Since a number of
family build an igloo is built on suspense: the viewer only realizes that
Inuit served as camera operators, one has to attribute much of the beauty of
Nanook is making a window for the igloo, for example, after he is almost
the way the landscape is filmedgreat expanses of sky and groundto an
finished installing it. In a subsequent scene, Nanook teaches his little son Inuit sensibility.52 These haunting images of the landscape, moreover, are
how to shoot a bow and arrow, while Nyla perf orms duties which show she
not present in films about the Arctic made before Nanook.
is a devoted mother and cook. The Western ideal of the independent f ather
Just as the shots of the dogs show the dogs becoming increasingly sleepy,
struggling to make a living for his family is implied to be universal. As
gradually blanketed by snow, so too the camera shots of the landscape ap-
Richard Barsam points out, "In Nanook, [Flaherty] showed primitive man's
pear to bob in a drowsy manner near the end of the film. The final image is of
realization that his destiny lay in his own hands, that it was his obligation Nanook sleeping. Italian critic Ricciotto Canudo wrote that the tragedy at
to improve his lot on earth by working, and that the members of his family
the end of the film is that Nanook does not choose to leave: "[Nanook] is
were probably his first and most important helpers."51 Man, in all his truth. His tragedy, in its absolute simplicity, is that of Man,
The climax of the film is the seal hunt, pitting Nanook against a wild
under any climate, despite all the possible complications of that many-
animal. The seal hunt was always a big attraction at Inuit performances,
sliaped, changing outer dress known as civilization. . . . But fate made him
and, as described above, was all but obligatory in travelogues which in
inastcr here, in this huge and solitary whiteness, in which his children, like
cluded scenes of Inuit life. This scene, so beloved by Bazin for its use of real
hiin are destined to live and die.53
time and the stark drama of the solitary struggling Nanook against a bleak
I listory is abolished when archetypal moments are repeated. In the end,
landscape, was actually staged: the line at which Nanook puls strenuousl y,
Niiimok is a film about hunting and killing, about the desire for death and
apparently in a fierce struggle with a seal that has been harpooned bencaili
i lie ilesire to defy death. The head of Nanook at the end of the film is shot in
the surface of the ice, in fact did not lead to a seal at all but to a group of nn-n,
.i . 1111 i lar fashion to the head of the walrus that we see at the end of the hunt:
off-camera, who would periodically tug at the line, creating the impressn u i
i l u - walrus is huntcd by Nanook, but Nanook is hunted by the explorer
of a great physical struggle. I l . i l i r t t y . The film begins with a close-up of Nanook's face; throughout the
After this scene, there is constant intercutting between shots of dogs .11 u I
l i l i l ihe camera surveys Nanook's face and it becomes a landscape; at the
shots of the family. The beginning of these sequenccs starts with an i n t n 1 1
i mi o ihe film it is this landscape which is also penetrated. The sleeping
tle, shown immediately after the seal is pulled out of the water: I m i l v ni Nanook, like a corpse, represents the triumph of salvage ethnogra-
From the smell of flcsh l ' l i v I u- is capturcd forever on film, both alive and dead, his death and life to
andblood comes the I irplaycd c'vcry time the film is screened.
blood lust of the wolf I u \liow how A l l a k a r i a l l a k really dressed, to show his poverty or his so-
his forcbear.
116 Taxidermy
Taxidermy and Romn tic Ethnography 117
phistication with a gun or with a motion picture camera, would have been
too brutal, too hcavy. It would not have brought about the necessary Samuel eration with actors whose roles are authentic. The documentary is a
Waterton response that taxidermy must evoke"That man is Alive!" The work of art imbued with rationality and truth.58
irony is that in order to look most alive, the "native" must be perceived as De Heusch states later,
always already dead.
Flaherty, more than anyone, had the gift of entering into conversation,
on our behalf, with the Stranger. Through "Nanook" we "grasp" to the
Nanook of the North and Panicipant Observation
fullest extent, that is emotionally and rationally, the essential con-
Those who have praised Flaherty see him as a great artist and observer, or as dition of Eskimo man left to himself: he is no longer a phantasmal
Calder-Marshall called him, "an innocent eye," a man who filmed out of shadow moving across the snow, an anonymous creature whose body
love not greed. As Richard Corliss said, Flaherty "simply saw the truth and and real presence can only be imperfectly imagined from the reading of
learned treatises.59
brought it home."54 Many have complained, however, that Nanook of the
North did not present a true depiction of Inuit life. Only seven years after
In a sense, then, what Flaherty was doing was opposing mere inscription
Nanook was released, the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefannson claimed that (the objective of early ethnographic footage) to what I term taxidermy, and
Nanook was as authentic as Santa Claus.55 But there were many rebutais to which Bazin praised as ontological realism. Flaherty's use of long takes,
the critics' denunciations of Nanook as staged. Flaherty's statement, "One reframing, and depth-of-field cinematography using deep-focus lenses thus
often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit," was seen to prove that constituted a new style, one which Bazin describes as more moving, more
Flaherty was an artist who portrayed "felt experience," not a mere mechan- realistic than what had gone before:
ical recorder.56
Forty years after Nanook, ethnographic filmmakers Le de Heusch and The camera cannot see everything at once but it makes sure not to lose
Jean Rouch as well as Asen Balikci praised Nanook as the first example of any part of what it chooses to see. What matters to Flaherty, confronted
participatory cinema. Unlike early ethnographic filmmakers such as Bald- with Nanook hunting the seal, is the relation between Nanook and the
win Spencer and Rudolf Pch, or later filmmakers such as Boas and Mead, animal; the actual length of the waiting period. Montage could suggest
de Heusch and Rouch did not put much stock in the valu of using ethno- the time involved. Flaherty however confnes himself to showing the
graphic film for mere empirical documentation. De Heusch in particular actual waiting period; the length of the hunt is the very substance of the
image, its true object.60
pointed out that films of everyday life in real time are usually quite boring
and, at most, of interest only to the anthropologist. The irony~and this I do not contest the great influence of Flaherty's approach on subsequent
irony is at the heart of taxidermyis that "reality" filmed does not appear 11< u-u mentary and realist forms of flmmaking, but would merely emphasize
real. The filmmaker must use artfice to convey truth. One way he or she i l i . i t Flaherty's reputation as "ontological realist" stems as much from the
can do this is by inviting the indigenous people who are the subjects of the s i . n u s of the Ethnographic Other as inherently "authentic," and from Fla-
film to act out their lives.57 De Heusch explained that the Inuit actors in Fia hci i y's self-fashioned image as explorer/artist, as it does from his style.
herty's film willingly play-acted for the camera, a technique which he chai l n ( lie same year that Nanook was released, the anthropologist Bronislaw
acterized as ethnographically sound, using French anthropologist Maree I M.ilinowski wrote his pioneering ethnography Argonauts of the Western
Griaule's use of role-play as an example. De Heusch wrote, / ' < / ( ( / / < ( 1 9 2 2 ) about the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands, off the coast of
The authenticity of this sort of "documentary" ultimately depends en w l i . i i is now Papua New Guinea. If Nanook is the archetypal documentary/
tirely on the honesty of the director, who, through his work, asseits nographic/art film, Argonauta is without a doubt the archetypal written
that "This is what I saw." In fact he has not seen exactly this or t h . i l DOgraphy. The m a n y cominon aspects of Malinowski's new conception
aspect of what he shows, he lias not always seen tese things in the w.i\e ni itl hi ea anthropologist
shows them, sinee t w.iy is a longUAgC as lieldworkcr
which he iand
n v e nFlaherty's
s in eoop notion of the filmmaker
,i'. "explorer/artist" show i l i a t i h e f i l m and the hook were made and re-

i n v r t l ni .1 s i m i l a r e h m . i i e o ule.is ahout indigenous peoples and t r u t h f u l


118 Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography 119
representation. Malinowski wrote, "The final goal, of which an Ethnogra-
pher should never lose sight... is, briefly, to grasp the natives' point of view,
his relation to Ufe, to realize his visin of his world."61 The product of this
ideal of the anthropologist entering the "field" as a solitary observer was to
be a written ethnography, a cultural description of "a people," rather than a
historical account of an encounter, a description meant to convince the
reader that the anthropologist "had been there" as both all-knowing insider
and as scrupulously objective observer.
Such "participant observation," notes Fabin, "was not canonized to pro-
" S- * ,,,*
f
mote participation but to improve observation." Like the time machine of
cinema, anthropology as participant observation involved an oscillation s fif*
between the positions of distance and closeness, subject and object. Anthro-
pology's visualism, its "ideological bias toward visin," meant that knowl-
edge was "based upon, and validated by, observation. "62
Part of the appeal of participant observation is that it purportedly enables
the Ethnographer to show not how the anthropologist sees the native, but
how the native sees himself. Flaherty encouraged the belief that he was j.y. Original drawing on paper, most likely by Wetalltok, from the Belcher Islands,
doing just that. He explained, "I wanted to show the Innuit [sic]. And I i y 16, of Flaherty and Inuit camera crew. (Courtesy of the Muscum of Modern Art)
wanted to show them, not from the civilized point of view, but as they saw
themselves, as 'we the people.'"63 Nanook is perhaps the first examplc in
film of a mode of representation which incorporates the participant obscr is more fruitful to view the claims of collaboration as evidence of the "ro-
vation ideal. Flaherty claimed to be a long-time explorer in the rea, and his mantic" ideal of the ethnographer/artist than as an essential aspect of the
admirers even said that he had been adopted by Nanook and his family (this film.64
was never proved). Because Flaherty showed rushes to his Inuit crew, and In Nanook of the North, as in the work of Dixon and Curts, participant
because Inuit contributed to all aspects of filmmaking (from acting, to t h r observation is achieved by the erasure of almost all signs of white contact.
repair of his cameras, to the printing and developing of the film, to t h r Tlms the spectator views the landscape with Nanook; but he also views
suggestion of scenes to film), critics from the art world as well as anthropol Nanook. The spectator becomes both participant (seeing with the eyes of
ogy have claimed that Nanook represents true collaboration, the native Nanook) and observer (an omnipotent eye viewing Nanook). The viewers of
acting out his or her own self-conception. Niinook thus become participant observers themselves: the audience par-
As James Clifford and Clifford Geertz have pointed out, the myth of "p.n i ir i patos in the hunt for the seal and the walrus along with Nanook. A white
ticipant observation" was fashioned out of rhetorical devices creating i l i i v i r w e r may identify with the Nordic qualities of Nanook, but still partici-
impression of "Being There." Although Flaherty wanted to crate the un l>.nr in the "hunt" for the body of Nanook, as vanishing race, as First Man.
pression that his film grew out of his intimate knowledge of Inuit c u l t i m I'lu- isstie then is not "whether Flaherty was a legitmate anthropologist,"
however, it would be hasty to take his account at face valu (his w r i t i m y . l>i 11 liow the public was led tobelieve that they were seeing anthropology in
boast of an intimacy which Inuit eyewitnesses do not seem to recall). Tliu-. .1 ni.muer that allowed them to play with the boundary between viewer and
although Inuit undoubtedly assisted in the filmmaking, there are no C X I M v i r w r i l as vicarious participant observers, while reaffirming the boundaries
ing Inuit accounts of the process, suggesting the film was not as "collaboi.i l u - i wirn representation and reality. Intrinsic to this coding o Nanook as a
tive" as Flaherty would have one bclievc. S i m i l a r l y , because we do mu w o i k o Truth, a work o grrat a r t , was the construction of the image of
know whether Flaherty asked people to play thcmselvrs, and because wr de. l l . i l i n i y .is Explorer/Artist, an image w h i c h Flaherty himself helped to
not have an indigenous point o v i r w .ir,.imsi w l u r l i lo rompan- t l u - i misi i nc I I hioui'Ji his vai lous w r i l iiigs.
i2o Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography 121

real ethnographic film, without voyeurism, the product of complete collab-


Flaherty as Explorer: Heart of Whiteness oration. The image of the devoted native is underlined by another anecdote
Ethnographic filmmaker Asen Balikci has summed up the image of the in which Flaherty explains that the Inuit who worked for him gave up food
explorer/ethnographic filmmaker from the time of Nanook: so that he could eat. This prepares us for Flaherty's final words of reminis-
cence on Nanook's death. According to Flaherty, on his departure from
The ethnographer from Paris, London or New York, had usually gone to Inukjuak, Nanook was sad to see him go and begged him to stay: "The
an extremely remote and exotic place where he studied the people and kablunak's [white man's] movie igloo, into which thousands carne, was
wrote books about them. The literature of exploration in exotic regions utterly beyond his comprehension. They were many, I used to say, like the
had further contributed to the popular perception of the ethnographer little stones along the shore. 'And will all these kablunaks see our "big
as hero. Buding upon this reputation, the ethnocinematographer had aggie"?' he would ask. There was never need to answer, for incredulity was
the added advantage of showing to a large audience a film about strange written large upon his face."70
and f ascinating peoplesthis was a demonstration that he was actually My Eskimo Friends was a celebration of Flaherty as great humanist Ex-
there, that the strange people liked him and that he liked them, other- plorer, beloved by the natives, privy to the essence of native life. The book is
wise how could the film have been made? His was a lonely and daring dcdicated to Flaherty's father, also an explorer. Flaherty's later novel The
adventure, an exploration into the unknown, and so on.65 Captain's Chair (1938) provides further evidence of what being an explorer
Because of the idea that the ethnographic filmmaker must have been friends nieant to him. Told in the first person, it is the story of a young man who,
with the nativesthe film being the proof of the relationshipFlaherty's I i ko Flaherty, goes to look for minerals in the Hudson Bay rea of Canad,
image as authentic communicator of the life of the natives remained intact I > i i t who throughout his years of travels in Northern Canad is searching
even as critics complained of inaccuracies in the film. above all for the great explorer and trader Captain Grant, the first man to
Like Malinowski, who constructed "the Ethnographer" through rhetori- i rade with the Inuit. The narrator explains that it is a story of a captain and a
cal devices such as the ethnographic present, Flaherty contributed to the sliip penetrating into the heart of the Hudson's Bay Company's domain on
notion that his film was authentic through his own writings. In his auto- I 1 luisn Bay. It is also a search for a "father" hero by a young explorer.71
biographical My Eskimo Friends: "Nanook of the North" (1924), the trea- I Uiring his expeditions the narrator learns of the "terrible disaster that had
sures Flaherty describes include his mineral discoveries and maps, as well l u - t a l l e n Grant. He had left England on top of the world. The Company had
as the film and photographs he took.66 My Eskimo Friends is an account o c.i ven him all the means in their power to let him go ahead and open up the
Flaherty's career as explorer and filmmaker in the Arctic. Like all great i u u i b . . . rich not only in furs but perhaps in gold, silver, copper, and who
explorers, he attributes the "discovery" of an island archipelago to himsell. l< in-w what other ores? They had given him also this wonderful new ship."72
The Inuit he meets are depicted as grateful natives, although foul-smelling, I lu- book is thus an Arctic Heart of Darknessor perhaps Heart of White-
and often "primitive looking"; he, on the other hand, a kind of exploro r iu",s is i he better term. For where Joseph Conrad revealed the dark and evil
Santa Claus, gives them tobceo, needles, and candy at Christmas. Toll , i i l i - 1 il c-olonialism, Flaherty writes only about its good side. Like Marlow in
ingly, he claims the Inuit cali him Angarooka, "the white master,"67 and ai I Ir,a i <>f Darkness who hears stories of Kurtz's exploits, the narrator in
times he uses animal metaphors to describe them.68 I l . i l i r i i y's novel hears stories of Grant's hardships, his noble sacrifices, how
The story constitutive of the relationship between Nanook (nevcr iv I u I i.id (o lash himself to the ship's crow's nest to fight storms. LikeKurtzin
ferred to by his real ame) and Flaherty is that of Nanook's devotion to t l i < lli ,ni <>/ Durkness, Grant has confronted "the horror." The narrator muses,
"aggie" (film). In My Eskimo Friends, Flaherty explains that he had askol I i l i o n j ' J i t o the hardship, the horror, the strain of it."73 The horror here,
Nanook if he understood that in filming the walrus hunt, the film was n > n I m w r v n , is not the heart of darkness within, but the horror of Nature's tide
important than the hunt. Nanook replicd, "'Yes, yes, the aggie will COIIH- 1 1 | > - , , b l i i u l i n g squalls, and burning cold.
first.... Nota man will stir, not aharpoon will be thrown untilyougivi- i l n M i u - l i lias been written about how theanthropologist Malinowski identi-
sign. It is my word.' We shook hands and av.trcil lo siai ( (lio noxt day."'1" li r. i i i d w i i h K u i i z , t h o m.-id i'ompany olficcr in llctirl of Darkness, who the
this anocdoto (hat is so ircasurod hv i l u 1 < i u u \m U mr.inl the film was .1 n n i u . u M.iilow sois oul 10 (nd. In ono soction of his diary, Malinowski
122 Taxidermy
Taxidermy and Romn tic Ethnograph y i >i
explicitly invokes Kurtz when he describes his angcr at the people he is convulsed with laughter over the famous seal-hunting scene so beloved by
studyingthe Trobriandersfor not posing long enough for adequate time Bazin and usually received with solemnity by Western audiences.
exposures for his photographs, even after his hrihe of tobceo: "On the The inaccuracies in the film are pointed out by Moses Nowkawalk, the
whole my feelings toward the natives are decidedly tending to 'Extermnate manager of the local televisin station, and Charles Nayoumealuk, who.se
the brutes.' "74 When Malinowski's diary was published, it unsettled cher- father was a friend of Allakariallak's. Flaherty, explained Nowkawalk, "doc-
ished conceptions of the empathetic, value-neutral anthropologist.75 In The tored" scenes, including costuming the Inuit actors in polar bear skins,
Captain's Chair, by contrast, Grant remains a hero explorer who "pene-
using an igloo set, and falsifying to a ridiculous extent (in the locis' eyes)
trales" and opens up the North for the good of the company. Both the Inuit, the seal hunt, "so that the image would fit the Southern [i.e., non-Inuit or
faithful guides, and Indians of the regin, crafty interlopers, are in awe of the white] imagination." The scene with the gramophone was staged. As Now-
great Explorer: "To the Indians . . . Captain Grant was a fabulous figure kawalk succinctly phrases his reacton as he watches the gramophone
chief of the biggest canoe that surely was ever in the world. Among the scene, "This scene hcre is sort o f . . . I'm not so crazy about this scene."
Esleimos in the north, too, he was a legend, he with his monster omiak
Explaining that Nanook's real ame was Allakariallak, Nayoumealuk
[boat] with its long black tail and a voice that re-echoed among the hills."76
comments, "Nanook seemed to suit the whites better." He also points out
Like Kurtz, Grant's nerves are frayed after his harrowing experience
that the two women in NanookNyla (Alice (?) Nuvalinga) and Cunayoo
aboard his ship (named the "Eskimo"), but he is no Kurtz, for the novel ends
(whose real ame we do not know)were not Allakariallak's wives, but
when the narrator finally meets Grant in person and discovers that he
were in fact common-law wives of Flaherty. The intended audience, as
"looked more like a scholar than a seaman."77 As Francs Flaherty com-
Nayoumealuk explains, was meant to be white. Nayoumealuk declares, "It
mented, those who decry Flaherty's films as being overly romantic do not was a film for white people, Inuit customs alone were to be shown. It was
realize how much Flaherty was interested in the emergence of the ma- forbidden to see white men's tools. Flaherty wanted only Inuit objects."
chine.78 In The Captain's Chair, the young explorer is not really looking for The reception of a film as "authentic" is dependent upon the preconcep-
adventure and material treasure but for a mirror of his own masculine self in tions of the audience. The smile of Allakariallak/Nanook is almost an icn
Grant, the Great White Explorer, his father surrogate. In similar fashion, of ethnographic cinema, and it is frequently described as unforgettable, yet
ethnographic filmmakers like Rouch and de Heusch would find the mirror Nayoumealuk explains that part of the reason for the smile is that Al-
of their own selves in the myth of the father figure Flaherty. In the history o lakariallak smply found what he was told to do in front of the camera
documencary and ethnographic film, Flaherty is kept reverently alivc, t h r unny: "Each time a scene was shot, as soon as the camera was starting to
mode of taxidermy here serving the filmmaker, through the aura preservi-d shoot, he would burst out laughing. He couldn't help it. Flaherty would tell
around his ame. liim'Be serious.' He couldn't do it. He laughed each time."
If the Inuit who Flaherty encountered were interested in and soon became
Nanook Revisited adept at filmmaking, so too their descendants have a passion and a com-
ui.-md of visual media. Like other indigenous peoples in Australia, the Pa-
In Claude Massot's documentary film Nanook Revisited (1988), a few i cific Islands, and the Americas,80 contemporary Inuit have embraced video,
Inuit residents of Inukjuak and of the Belcher Islandsincluding de i ca I zing that the power of white media can only be combatted with Native-
dants of one of the Inuit sons fathered and left behind by Flaherty pn iduced media. Robert Flaherty's own grandson, Charlie Adams, took over
interviewed about their memories of Flaherty and the making of Ninu
Nowkawalk's position as manager of the local Inukjuak televisin station,
The interviews reveal a remarkable tensin bctween the Western ivc c| T.H|iamiiit Nipingat, Incorporated (Voiccs of the North). Adams is, as he
of the film as a great work of art, and the desire of the local Inini i piils ii, "a one-man crew," as producer, director, cameraperson, and editor:
records of their ancestors and their land, and their recognition o i l I I I N programs include coverage of local weekly events as well as shows about
tional quality of many of the scenes, a numberof which they find l u d l i i i n t i n g w i t h elders."' In l y N i, a group of I n u i t bogan the Inuit Broadcasting
At a screeningof Nanook, members of the I n u k j u a k communily aic -.1 ( 'iiiporation, the lirst iiuligcnous bio.idcasting Corporation in North Amer-
124 Taxidermy Taxidermy and Romn tic Ethnography 12 5
_.
ica.82 Inuit media producis believe that knowing the history of how they
were represented by whites and understanding the image-making processes
themselves will serve to empower their own communities. As the Inuk-
juak televisin station manager, Nowkawalk, said about Nanook, "Despite
all the faults that I pointed out about this film this movie is a very im-
portant movie and the photographs that Robert [Flaherty] took, because
they're... these pictures and the still shots are the only pictures of that time
in this regin. . . . 'Cause it's everybody else proclaiming it as a great film."
Both Nowkawalk's and Nayoumealuk's comments reveal how early eth-
nographic cinema is not always received by the indigenous audience in the
same manncr as it is received by a Western audience. Neither art, or em-
pirical document, it is nevertheless of valu because it evokes history and
memory.
Starting Pire with Gunpowder (1991), a film about the Inuit Broadcasting
Corporation made by the Inuit filmmaker David Poisey and the British
filmmaker William Hansen, opens with a shot of a young Inuit woman who 1,0. Still from Qaggiq/The Gatherng Place (1989), dir. Zacharias Kunuk.
states, "This is not me. This is my picture." Then we see a longer shot of the (Courtesy of Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn)
woman in front of the previous image of herself on a televisin screen,
saying "And here it's not me. It's my picture." The mise-en-abyme con-
tines, and we realize that Hansen and Poisey are deconstructing the notion lumting with guns and using teakettles. It is clear that Nunaqpa is about
of the Inuit on film as "real." By using a female narrator, Poisey and Hansen remembering a recent past: older actors recount the games they used to
also move away from the image of the Inuit typified by the male hunter play, and chide younger actors on their clumsiness in performing tasks.
Nanook. In the film, the narrator Ann Mikijuk Hansen, a producer at IBC, Nunaqpa depicts a hunt, which culminates when the younger hunters,
speaks of the lack of written Inuit history, and explains that Inuit video can w i ves, and children return to a tent where the older people are waiting. The
help ameliorate the problem of documenting history. Furthermore, she clar- l i i u i t actors return to the past, but in order to share it with the future, with
ines that Inuit televisin is necessary to counteract the hegemony of white i lie children, and with those who in the future will view the video.
televisin, to preserve Inuit culture, and to promote Inuktiput language. Nunaqpa is a collaboration, made from an insider's point of view, without
Several televisin shows on IBC are adaptations of American shows such as i he conceit of any "ethnographic present": there is no subtitle, no voice-
Super Shamou (Superman), but there are also specials on specific Inuit prob- ove narrative, just the voices of the people themselves, and their laughter
lems such as PCB pollution, substance abuse, the need for midwifery, and .u t l i c i r own rustiness in trying to use od equipment. Outsiders to the
Inuit politics. i 1111 m c a re gi ven no taxonomic devices such as a map with which to sitate
Video, as Canadian Inuit videomaker Zacharias Kunuk has pointed out, is i l n cvi-nts portrayed in the video: many culturally specific details are only
closer to Inuit culture which remembers history orally.83 Although on the i omprehensible to members of the community themselves. Instead of in-
surface similar to Flaherty's, Kunuk uses reconstruction practices which i i n d i i r i i i g t h e viewer to the characters, the viewer is plunged immediately
are not used to further the kind of redemptive narrative, or taxidermic im- i i i i t i i he sccne.
pulse present in the work of Flaherty.84 In Nunaqpa/Going Inland (1991), In Qaggiq/The Gatherng Place (1989), Kunuk again uses historical re-
Kunuk and his actorsall part of the community of Igloolikcollahorated 1 1 ni 1 .11 iici ion techniques. (JaKKi'l is ;' video about the communal quality of
to make a video reconstruction of Inuit life before World War II. Kunuk shot Igloolik l i l e : the story ccntcrs on the building of a t/dggii or community
on location, with the actors wearingtraditional scal-skin clothes. Howcvci, ( t her ng place, with a si de1 story about the courtingof a young woman by a
unlike Allakariallak in Nanook of ihc Nortli. ihcsc l i u i i i actors are showu v i m i i r , m.in (>iiKKi<l siu-sscs ihc import.mcc o communal activitiessuch as
126 Taxidermy

joint hunting ventures and communal rituals and dances in Inuit life. As
one woman sings at the end of Qaggiq, "Let's help one another. White
people are coming." As in Nunaqpa, the importance of language is empha-
sized in the use of Inuktiput. Kunuk allows his actors to act out scenes from III TERATOLOGY
the recent past of their own culture, demonstrating that he views film and
video as a means of expressing history and exploring memory. For Kunuk, as
for many contemporary Inuit, a film about the community should be made
in the same spirit that one builds a qaggiq. As Kunuk declared, "We are
saying that we are recording history because it has never been recorded. It's
been recorded by southern film makers from Toronto, but we want our
input, to show history from our point of view. We know it best because we
Uve it."85
The Inuit live history, according to Kunuk. Flaherty removed signs of
history, such as the Inuit encounter with whites, in order to sustain the
signs of the Ethnographic: the myth of the Inuit as archetypal Primitive
man. My purpose has not been to prove whether or not Nanook was a
truthful document of Quebec Inuit life in the 19205, or whether Flaherty
staged scenes. Instead, my goal has been to excvate the levis of discourse
around the notion of authenticity, salvage ethnography, the history of the
media cannibalism of the Inuit, the film's historical and intellectual con-
text, and the style and content of the film. I have also attempted to show
how a reading of the film is inextricably connected with the cult of the
Ethnographic Filmmaker in ways that other film genres are not. Flaherty's
awe for the figure of the great explorer, and his own similar self-fashioning,
reveis the underlying narrative around his persona: Flaherty is the father
of a men's club of explorer/artists. Like his fictional character Grant, Fla-
herty was the first to "pentrate" and open up ethnographic cinema foi
other chasseurs d'images, those many independent U.S. and European film
makers like Jean Rouch and Richard Leacock who admire him. The awr
that he is granted emerges from the myth of his relationship with Nanook:
it is an ideal perfect relationship between ethnographer and his faithful,
loyal, simple subject. Unlike the Trobrianders who were resistant at tinn-s
to Malinowski's image-making, the Inuit who worked for Flaherty dicl so
out of love, so the myth goes.
This is why Nanook of the North is seen as a point of origin for art f i l m ,
documentary film, and ethnographic film: it represents the Carden of lidcn,
the perfect relationship between filmmakcr and subject, the "innoivni
eye," a search for realism that was not just inscription, bul which inade ilir
dead look alive and the living look dcad.
5 TIME AND REDEMPTION IN THE

"RACIAL FILM" OF THE 192OS AND 193OS

The role of chaos is to summon up, topiovoke its intenuption and to


become an order. Inveisely, the order of the golden age cannot last be-
cause wild regularity is mediocrity...Georges Canguilhem1

In 1895, H. G. Wells's The Time Machine was published, a novel fore-


grounding a fin-de-sicle disquietude about science and the control of time.
A former student of zoology, Wells describes the experience of a scientist
(lie Time Travellerwho builds a machine that takes him to the year
80271. Wells's story is an obsessive fantasy of evolution and progressit is
science fictionand the Time Machine is a fascinating metaphor for the
(echnologies for manipulating time which became possible at the turn of
i he century. The museum was one such time machine: not fortuitously,
Wdls has his Time Traveller come across mummied heads, dessicated
plas, and an array of idols in a long-deserted museum; in an act of ter-
ritorialism, the Time Traveller even writes his ame upon the nose of a
"stcatite monster from South America."2 Photography was yet another time
technology: at the end of the book, the scientist, whose claims of time travel
.11 c d i scredited by his colleagues, returns to the year 80271 in order to obtain
photographs as documentary evidence, as proof of havingbeen there.
Tune travel is defined in racial and spatial terms. Wells's scientist likens
IIP. shock in going to the futurewhich he discovers is no Golden Age of
l'nij'irss but rather an era of declineto that which an African coming to
I milln lor the first time must feel:
( 'imrcivc the tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central frica,
wc ni Id take back to his tribe! What would he know of railway com-
P.IIIICS, o social movcments, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the
l'.mrls I Vlivcry (!ompany, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at
Ir.isi, shoiild br w i l l i n i ; enough to explain thcse things to him! And
130 Teratology Time and Redemption 131
even of what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend films of ethnographic reconstruction a deeply religious aspect. Signifi-
either apprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a cantly, this very religiosity resonates with the ontology manifest in leading
negro and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval film theorists' conceptions of cinema, and helps explain the attraction for
between myself and these of the Golden Age!3 many such theorists of ethnographic taxidermy. As Fredric Jameson has
pointed out, both Andr Bazin's notion of the mummy complex in cinema
The African in London is a symbol of incongruous time travel as Africans
and Siegfried Kracauer's belief in film as the redemption of physical reality
were situated by early anthropology as beings from an evolutionary past.
take black and white photography as their ideal.6 The black and white pho-
Indeed, the roots of anthropology have been traced to the "philosophical
tograph, imbued with a sense of loss, is taken to be the embodiment of the
travel" of the eighteenth century, which explicitly portrayed voyages of
cinematic potential to seize and preserve a moment of the "real." Thus Cur-
spatial distance as travel in time.4 In the 18505, with the archeological
tis's photographs were always more potent than his films: Curtis's use of
discoveries at Brixham Cave in Great Britain and the publication of Charles
melodrama, as opposed to Flaherty's "slight narrative," and his stilted edit-
Darwin's The Oiigin of the Species (1859), the span of humankind's exis-
ing in In the Lana of the Headhunters worked against the quality of "the
tence on earth could no longer be calculated using the Bible; time was
living dead" which his own black and white photographs of "vanishing Indi-
secularized. This new sense of time was, according to Johannes Fabin,
ans" and Flaherty's taxidermic cinema possessed. The implicit conception
conceived of as natural and as having a spatial dimensin, implying a tax-
that Flaherty's film is holding onto deathwitness the sleeping, Christ-like
onomic ranking of geographically dispersed peoples in terms borrowed from
Nanook at the end of Flaherty's filmgives the film redemptive potential.7
natural history. Fabin writes, "It is not the dispersal of human cultures in
The notion of redemption provides another link between cinema and
space that leads anthropology to 'temporalize' (something that is main-
anthropology. Both cinema and anthropology were interested not only in
tained in the image of the 'philosophical traveler' whose roaming in space
visualizing indigenous peoples for the future, prompted by the politics of
leads to the discovery of 'ages'),- it is naturalized-spatialized Time which
salvage ethnography, but also in finding redemption for the West. The per-
gives meaning jin fact a variety of specic meanings) to the distribution of
ceived sins of the West were manifested not only in a disillusionment with
humanity in space."5
"civilization" after World War I, but also in colonial guilt over the genocide
Two prominent arenas for "naturalized-spatialized Time," as we have
through massacre, disease, and the sheer brutality of slavery and colonial -
seen, were the ethnographic exposition, and the anthropological museum,
ism inflicted on subject peoples, whether Native Americans, Tanzanians,
where artifacts extracted from a distant place and past, placed within the
Tahitians, West Africans, or Balinese. As Claude Lvi-Strauss emphasizes
context of the museum, embodied an evolutionary "real." Yet perhaps the
in his own Time Machine, Tristes Trapiques (1955), anthropology is im-
consummate time machine of the sort dreamt of by H. G. Wells was cin-
pelled forward by remorse over the West's failure to fulfill the promisc of
ema, invented in the same year in which The Time Machine was first pub-
srientific progress, the promise of eradicating brutality, evil, disease, and
lished. Cinema could launch the viewer into the future with science fiction,
ij'.norance. The anthropologist (and I would add, the ethnographic film-
and, as we saw with Nanook of the North, into the timeless past.
inaker) is thus, says Lvi-Strauss, "the symbol of atonement."8
In contrast to the historical film genre in which history is reconstructecl
Redemption infuses many of the "racial films" of the 19205 and 19303, a
through the use of actors who are recognized as such, the ethnographu
f.mre which played on the notion of time, race, and progress. The term
reconstruction genre makes the indigenous subject into a document, thr
"i.icial film" was first used by an unidentified film reviewer to describe
image of the body seen as "real," sufficient in itself to establish the truth o
I l.ilu-riy's Moana (1926), set in Samoa, and Karl Brown's film about Appa-
the implicit evolutionary narrative. The viewer in both cases is transponed
l.ichia, Siark Love (1927). In a 1928 unsigned review the critic commented,
back in time, but with ethnographic reconstruction, the underlying lii
"l'l'lu-se two films are] interesting because they present the daily life of out-
tional context is elided, a result justified by the notion that the timo
nl ( l i e way minorities. Secondly they are natural pictures with a minimum
graphic, although living (we see the "actual" Ethnographic body, nol ,m
ni poscil and directed action. They are photographically excellent and both
actor), is a survival of something long since dead. As suggcsted above, i l u s
Jiow indications of cinematography, which is not carried to the extent to
notion of the vanquished/vanishing races gives Nnook and many othri
w h i c h we have become accustorned in later films.'"'
Time and Redemption 133
i ja Teratology
long travelogue which followed a Citroen motorcar expedition traversing
The redemptive theme in Moana is implicit. The film is one of tropical frica from the north to as far south as Madagascar. An explicitly colonial
simplicity, portraying a lost Golden Age, a garden of Edn implicitly set in film, La croisire noire was a grand motorcar adventure designed to give
opposition to the trouhled world of "civilization." Although Stark Love is a witness to France's "civilizing action."11
film about poor rural Appalachians who yearn to become modern city- In the United States the "racial film" vogue followed directly upon the
dwellers, like Moana, this film is "racial" in the sense that history is repre- success of Nanook of the North: Hollywood was willing to invest in films of
sented as a race: here, the distant Primitive is set explicitly in uncomfort- ethnographic romanticism, time machines into a faraway present which
able proximity to emerging modern industrialism, providing the context for rcpresented a simpler, "savage" past. Critics who have discussed early eth-
a rumination on loss and the passing of time. The crucial difference be- nographic cinema, including anthropologist Franz Boas, frequently men-
tween the two films is that whereas Stark Love ends with confidence that tion Cooper and Schoedsack's Grass (1925) and Chang (1927) as archetypes
certain Appalachian "primitives" can make a successful transition to mo- of the genre.12 Merian C. Cooper was an airplane pilot in World War I and
dernity, Moana ends where it begins: in a land without history. World War II, a man so opposed to Bolshevism that he volunteered to fight
It is no wonder that if Bazin loved Flaherty's Nanook, he also loved lUissian Communists for Poland in 1919-21. He met Ernest B. Schoedsack,
Moana: their mode of realism, what he describes as their respect for time a freelance war photographer, in Europe during World War I. David H.
and space, their narratives which take the viewer "back in time" to a Primi- Mould and Gerry Veeder explain that Cooper and Schoedsack were typical
tive age, and their use of location and indigenous actors provide a medita- "photographer-adventurer" culture hroes, who, like other filmmakers in
tion on the mythical transition from the Primitive to the Modern. As will (lie period from 1895 to the 19305, portrayed themselves as mavericks who
be discussed below, Moana differs from Nanook in that its image of tropical liad rebelled against the constraints of society, iconoclasts seeking adven-
Primitivism heightens the contrast, and contradiction, between Primitive l u r c in the photographing and filming of peoples in foreign lands." As
and Modern (Balikci's neatly labeled "primitive Protestant" straintrie Mould and Veeder put it, "The mission of the photographer-adventurer was
struggle of the nuclear family against adversityin Nanook allows for dra- lo bring back the film, whatever the danger or cost."14 Whether it was the
matic identification of viewer and subject). In the narrative of scripted eth "liontier" of world wars or remote places, Cooper and Schoedsack took on
nographic films subsequent to Moana (many of which are also set in the i lie macho, individualist personae of modern Davy Crocketts who risked
"South Seas") the contradiction becomes explicit, most often with tragii i lie ir lives in order to film distant places, an image spectacularized in the
consequences for the indigenous protagonists. According to this narrativc-, liiiiv,lo filmmaker character in their 1933 film King Kong.
the Primitive does not belong, and simply cannot exist, in association w i t l i (.'//.s.s (1925), their first feature-length film, made with journalist Mar-
the Modern. In these later films, contact with the West is conceded, but tbe K i i r n i e E. Harrison, took as its subject matter the Baktiari migration in
result is seen to be racial pollution. Redemption takes the form of nostalgia Hiiiihwest Irn across the snowy Zardeh Kuhpass in search of grass to feed
for the pur, unadulterated Ethnographic, and contact leads not to complrx i ln- Haktiari's herds. Like other expedition films, Grass focuses on the film-
cross-cultural adaptation, but to monstrous hybridity. This chapter exam m.ikiT as intrepid Great White Hunter, flagrantly equating the camera with
ines how these themes developed in ethnographic cinema in the wakc ni i i;mi and using ballistic point-of-view identification to crate the thrill of
Nanook of the North. Iii ni)', tberc."' s Visual anthropologist Asen Balikci asserts that Grass is
niurkcdly different from the humanist films of Flaherty in that it lacks a
it mu.!', loeiis on a man and his family struggling for survival: "The basic
The "RacialFilm" as Expedition
H u m e o Grtiss emerges somewhat behind the screen; it lies in the gran-
In Europe, the "racial film" accompanied what Fierre Leprohon has cal k-d". i i l i c i ' . i - ronccption of the filmmaker as the new explorer, the daring traveler
violent upsurge of exoticism" during the years 192,0-25, a phenomenon M!M i u n iliM-overer o exotie land, and this is the myth of the ethnographic
reflected in literature, in the triumph of Cauguin, and in jazz music (labrlol laker as a bero!""'
in France "la musique negre"). 1 " Probably thc most famous French "raci.il x p e d i t i o n is a voyage through t i m e lo a remote lcale in search of
cruise" film was Len l'oiricr's l.n cro/.s/rrc noirc (The Black ('ruisc; i ir.'(>|,.'
134 Teratology
Time and Redemption 135

American audience, her point of view is never established in the scenes or


intertitles, and she almost fades into the mise-en-scne of the expedition.
The film comments:

But going ahead, we were turning the pages backwardson and o'n
further back into the centuries.
Till we reached the first Chapter, arrived at the very beginning
A voyage back in time to the origns of the "Aryan race" (and thus to the
origins of the purported white viewer), Grass has no central native protago-
nist: even Haidar Khan, the chief of the tribe of Baktiari, portrayed as a
leader of this trek, is not developed as a character.17 Instead, what is fore-
grounded is epic endurance and spectacular nature: wide-angle shots of
t housands of dark figures making a zigzagging line as they climb mountains
o ice and rock. This epic theme, however, is adorned with cuteness. As the
re viewer in the New York Times commented, "It is an unusual and remark-
ablc film offering, one that is instructive and compelling but in no way a
31. Stillfrom Crass (1915), dir. MerianC. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. siory. Yet in this picture, there is drama interspersed with captivating com-
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) cdy, and the audience last night applauded some of the wonderful pho-
tographic sequences and at other times they were moved to laughter by the
, i n i ics of the animis."18 Thus picturesque details such as the blowing up of
a human unknown. The Baktiari of southwestern Irn are referred to as f.o.ii skins for floating across rapids are accompanied by jokey intertitles.
the "Forgotten People" living the life of "three thousand years ago." Grass I lie Times reviewer accurately noted that the intertitles appear to have
begins: I u < n w ri tten for Barnum and Bailey's circus.
The way of the world is west. < .'fv/.sp.v ends with the triumph of the filmmakers as contemporary Aryan
Long the sages have told us how our forefathers, the Aryans of od, hemes who followed the Baktiari on their dangerous trek in order to make
rose remote in Asia and began conquest of earth, moving ever in the 1111 11 I i I in. The film thus betrays a curious anxiety with producing suf ficient
path of the sun. r v i i l c i i i e, reminiscent of the Time Traveller in H. G. Wells's novel who goes
li.n k i n t o the future with a camera in order to take photographs which will
After a panoramic shot of camels walking in profile on the horizon, t l n - i i ii i v mee othcrs of the veracity of his trip. The final film sequence in Grass
intertitles continu: < v i - 1 1 mrludesaclose-upof a document signed by officials claiming that the
Back in the East behind us are the secrets of our own past, and a tradi U l i i m i . i k t T s were the first foreigners to make the dangerous trek across the
don of our brothers still living in the eradle of the racea long siim / M i N l i K u h pass. Dcspite the obvious effort to make the film succeed as
Forgotten People. I I n l l v w o o d entertainment, the filmmakers were concerned with establish-
int; i he l i l n i ' s status as truthful document.
The hroes of the film are introduced: pipe-smoking Cooper, ruggeil i uii|iri .uul Sehoedsack's next film, Chang(ig2j), filmedinThailandasif
looking Schoedsack, and female journalist Harrison. Tilles explain i h . u in i In "ethnographic prescnt," is about a family living in the jungle who
Cooper and Schoedsack will not be pictured in the film, because they .m n n i ' i i l u i i i e i i d w i t h w i l c l mimis, especially tigers and elephants.19 The
behind the camera. Subscquently, Harrison, portrayedasagenteel lady u . i v M U " ' . i I r . i i r d In-.ist is "chang" (elephant), a word that the audience repeatedly
eler fully dependent on her malc traveler companions, is t h e only I H > M """ "i i n t e r t i t l e s but does not le.im the m e a n i n g o l u n t i l midway through
Baktiari person filmcd. Altbough providinga w h i t e point o relerenee li I 'he vnv.if.e ni discoveiv m ('Inii^ is onc leading to the revela-
136 Teratology
Time and Redemption 137
both wild (hungry tigers, rampaging elephants) and domestic (especially
Bimbo the pet monkey and a bear cub), with the intertitles even attributing
dialogue to them. In his book L'exotisme et le cinema, Fierre Leprohon
explains that the success of Chang derived from its ability to evoke the
shock of childhood: "It is here that cinema brought us back again to the
most beautiful moment of our childhood. We suddenly found again our
desire for discoveries, our nostalgia for these 'elsewheres' where we would
never be able to set foot."22
As the product of "photographer-adventurers," the filmed scenes with
wild animis were considered risky, thrilling, and dangerous, and Chang
cnds with the spectacle of the elephants entering a corral, the intertitles
underlining the lesson that "Brawn surrenders to the brain," man conquers
nature. A glowing review in the New York Times called Chang "an unusual
piece of work, beside which all big game hunting films pal into insignifi-
cance, and through the clever arrangement of its sequences, excellent com-
edy follows closely on the exciting episodes."23 Slapstick comedy, espe-
cially evident in Chang in the scenes between the children and the pet
animis, as well as patroni/ing and corny intertitles, are again present. In
i lie expedition variant of the "racial film" genre in general, the filmmakers
na ke "inside" jokes with the audience about the "ignorance" of the subjects
32. Still from Chang (1927), dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. ihrough intertitles or with montage, the use of slapstick only serving to
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) lu-ighten the physicality of the characters. Much of the patronizing quality
i il t he Hlms derives from the use of the ape metaphor. In Chang, shots of a
w i/rned od villager are intercut with that of a monkey, intended to lead the
tion of the identity of the beast, a discovery made all the more impressivr
v i r wcr to laugh at the parallel. This simian motif contines in Schoedsack's
when the film opened at the Rivoli theater in New York City, through t h e
l.iin Knngo (1931), a film about a family in Aceh, a regin of Sumatra,
use of magnoscope technology for the climactic scene of the stampedinf,
Indonesia, that takes as its premise a comparison between the orangutang
elephants.20
.mil (lie Acehnese protagonist. Finally, of course, the anthropoid ape be-
The stars of Chang are not the human characters Kru and his wife mu i iimcs (he star in King Kong.
children, but the animis and the filmmakers who capture them on f i l m
Schoedsack wrote that, with Chang, they were pursuing the same thcmr as
they pursued in Grass, "the theme of man's struggle against naturc, o n l v Mi '.n, The Silent Enemy, andPrmitivist Romanticism
this time nature was represented by the jungle and its animis."21 The f i l m
A l t liough there appear to have been two distinct categories of "racial film"
begins with the opening statement common in ethnographic cinema t h . n
ni dir ryiosand 19308one whichglorified the Great WhiteHunt, andone
Kru's family, these "natives of the wild," have never seen a motion pict un
u I I H li p.unted a picture of romantic primitivismthe two categories over-
The family is represented as archaic Primitive Jungle people who m i r . i
l , i | > .nul mcrgc. dVc/.v.s1, for example, appears to be an expedition film, but it
tame or kill wild animis in order to survivc. In Chang, thcre is somc .H
.intiri/.cs the llaktiari as Aryan ancestors of the West; Chang, a film
tempt at depicting nuclear family life in the jungle (it is man and his l . i i u i K
v v i i l i n i i l v Thai actors, might he thought an exereise in romantic primitiv-
against nature), but again there is l i t t l e character dcvelopment and no scn-.i
i ' i i i i . l u i i .m underlying theme of the f i l m is the courage and skill of Cooper
of any broader social intcraction. The real stars of ihc f i l m , the a n i m i s , .n < l l i i l '.( liurds.irk.
K
138 Teratology
Time and Redemption T39
As George W. Stocking }r. explains, the period after World War I in both
Europe and North America was a period in which the cultural status quo
was being questioned, a period of sexual experimentation and intellectual
bohemianism. This "ethnographic sensibility" coalesced in the search for
"genuine culture," and certain geographical places became the focal points
of the search: Greenwich Village, the center of white bohemian life;- the
Southwest, where anthropologist Ruth Benedict found Pueblo culture ex-
emplifying the Apollonian balance; Tepoztln Mxico, romanticized by an-
thropologist Robert Reducid; and Samoa, pictured on the dust jacket of
Mead's Corning of Age in Samoa as a barebreasted young woman running
off hand-in-hand with a naked man for a moonlit encounter. In European
and U.S. avant-garde movements in art, the application of aesthetic forms
borrowed from African, Asian, Pre-Columbian, and Oceanic art burgeoned
into the movement known as Primitivism, an art movement characterized,
among other things, by the use of non-Western aesthetics as a means to
rattle the "rational" status quo. As Stocking rightly points out, however,
there was another side to this use of the "primitive" to criticize Western
culture. Referring to the subtitle of Mead's Corning of Age in Samoa, Stock-
ing writes,
1 1 . Still from Moana (1926), dir. Robert Flaherty.
The presentation of cultural relativism in an evolutionary package ("A (( oiirtesy of the Museum of Modern Art)
Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation") made it possible to
appeal simultaneously to motives of romantic primitivism and ethno-
centric progressivism. On the one hand, Mead insisted that "our own U;r (1926). After the success of Nanook, Paramount eagerly gave Flaherty a
ways are not humanly inevitable or God-ordained" . . . and that we "pay l i l . i n k check to make Moana. Although purporting to be a film about the
heavily for our heterogeneous, rapidly changing civilisation." . . . But in d . i i l y lifc of the island Savaii in British Samoa, Moana, like Nanook of
return, we gained "the possibility of choice," the recognition of "many ilii' North, is a reconstruction of aprojectedidyllicpast. 25 Thefilm tclls the
possible ways of life, where other civilisations have recognized only .ini v o the daily life of a young, handsome Samoan, Moana, who hunts for
one. 11 u 11 uses with the young boy Pe'a, and flirts with his girlfriend Fa'angase. As
ni i l u - f i l m s of Regnault there is a fascination with native tree climbing. At
This same duality, of course, was present in Nanook of the North. In
i l n "climax" of the film, however, Moana undergoes a painful ritual tattoo-
Flaherty's film of 1922, the Inuit are shown as true hunters in an epochal
n i i ; IIMUCSS, <i practice already prohibited in 1926. If the character Nanook
struggle with nature, but they are also represented as tragically vanishing.
i mhndicd First Man, Man the Hunter, the young Moana embodies Primi-
While the West implicitly is portrayed as a civilization that can learn from
i n i Man as Carefrec Adolescent, whose only pain is culturally imposed.
other peoples, indigenous peoples implicitly are seen as threatened with im
Hi u r.h documentary filmmaker John Grierson, who coined the term "docu-
minent extinction. The anthropologist, like the ethnographic filmmaker, is
i n i n i . i i v " f i l m in his 1926 rcview of Moana, wrote, "The golden beauty of
thus the agent of redemption, but he or she can only really savc the West.
I m u i ve heings, of a South Sea Island that is an earthly paradise, is caught
As described in the last chapter, Francs Flaherty claimed that her bus i i n i l n i i p t i s o n e d in Robert J. Flaherty's Moana.""'
band was interested in "primitivo" peoples prccisely bccause he was n t e r
A / i > , / / ; < / hcgins l > y v i s u a l l y i n v i t i n g ( h e v i e w e r t o f a l l haek into Paradise.
ested in the emergence of the machine; wc (ind that dual movement o
I I u i . u n c a l i l i s f rom t h e lop o t a l I pal ni trees down through f o i age i n t o a
romantic primitivism in his second l i l i n , Miximi: A Itoniiincc <>/ iln- ( , ' < ) / < / < / /
hlililcn tropical s a n c l i i . i l v: l l i e v i c w c i is ( l u i s welcomed m o a mvthiral
140 Teratology
Time and Redemption 141
golden age without colonialism, without missionaries, where the most dan-
gerous animal is the wild boar, and food and smiles are plentiful. The cam- the Samoans are given a poetic and idealized form, reminiscent of the ide-
era often adopts an observational perspective, placing the viewer above it alized representational manner used by artists to depict Renaissance angels.
all. The village, for example, shot from very high overhead, appears small, At times the images are quite effective: the faces of the elders as they sit
like a display in a glass museum case. Shots altrnate between high camera around Moana as he is tattooed, shadows flickering across the lines and
angles and close-ups of hands, backs, and buttocks as the Savaii villagers crevices of their solemn faces, are particularly moving. Again, as in Na-
wring coconut, prepare bark cloth, and tattoo each other. Francs Flaherty nook, the landscape and the face are the film's foci. One intertitle explains:
declared, "Simply in the beautiful movement of a hand the whole story of Through this pattern of the flesh, to you perhaps no more than cruel,
the race can be revealed," a statement with which Regnault probably would useless ornament, the Samoan wins the dignity, the character and fibre
have agreed.27 Although Moana lacks the drama of man versus nature pres- which keep his race alive.
ent in Nanook of the Nozth, Flaherty creates suspense by not revealing
immediately the purpose of human actionas in a scene where the boy Pe'a The irony was that tattooing was no longer practiced, having been banned
is shown poking rocks with a stick. Only later does the viewer discover that ater mass conversions to Christianity, but it remained an attractive trope
Pe'a is smoking out a crab. Grierson complained of the fllm's chasteness, or a Western audience eager to see and visualize a golden adolescence
where the most threatening moment in life is a ritual ordeal.
but sensuality is present in the way Moana pours water from a bamboo tube
into Fa'angase's throat, and in the way she rubs his body with coconut oil. In many ways, Moana is of a piece with Nanook, and both are prem-
Desire is also manifest in the nocturnal dance of Moana and Fa'angase, ised on self-conscious reconstruction, thus manifesting the vanishing races
described by intertitles as "The art, the worship, the courtship of the race." I heme. If both are works of Ethnographic taxidermy, however, Moana, with
The viewer is meant to view the couple as the archetypal Samoan adoles- iis implicit mourning of a lost Golden Age, more starkly sets a paradiasical
cent pair. l'rimitive against the Modern. The character of Nanook, with his disci-
As in Nanook, the body of the native woman is revealed to the viewer. In plined hard work and industriousness, is simultaneously an embodiment of
one scene, Fa'angase is barebreasted facing the camera, her knees deep in i he "living dead" and a dramatically heroic evolutionary "ancestor" for the
water and her arms raised above her head to pick leaves. Unlike Paul Gau- Western viewer to identify with (as suggested by Balikci, he s a "primitive
guin's Where do we come fmmi What are we! Where are we goingl (1897- Pmtestant"). In Moana, by contrast, the lush tropical setting and utter ab-
98), which represents Polynesian women in a similar pose, there are no '.eii ce of Western presence take the viewer to a Carden of Edn. Critic Grier-
enigmatic figures lurking in the background as devils in Flaherty's paradise. '.on thus described Moana a welcome experience for those suffering from
The Samoans are seen living in a timeless Edn, in "traditional" garb: there i lie "grime of modern civilization" and longing "for a South Sea island on
is no place in paradise for Christianity and British colonialism. i he leafy shores of which to fritter away a life in what 'civilized' people
The visual effect of Moana depends in large part on Flaherty's use of a long wi ni Id consider childish pursuits."31 In catering to this longing, Moana reas-
lens and panchromatic film. According to Flaherty, this technology allowed '.ii i es the viewer that all is well in the Ethnographic world (no colonialism,
for better voyeurism, since the Samoan actors were less self-conscious with ni i war, etc.), and also holds out to the viewer the promise that earthly
..i I va(ion might still bepossible.
a more distant camera presence;28 it also lent "a roundness, a stereoscopic
quality that gave to the picture a startling reality and beauty.... The fign res S.ilvation is given explicit Christian overtones in The Silent Enemy
were alive and real, the shadows softer, and the breadfruit seemed likc {i <) IH), a "racial film" dirccted by H. P. Carver which was not a product of
living things rather than a fat background."29 As with Nanook, it was this I lnllvwood but of the museum. 32 A wealthy young amateur and American
roundness, this three-dimensional quality in the representation of indige M u s c u m o Natural History trustee W. Douglas Burden produced the film,
nous peoplesin contrast to the hieroglyphs of Regnault, or the exotic dcc< >t u l i i c h purportcd to show the life of the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indians before
i l i e ronimg o Jesuit priests. Carver used a natural history approach, with
of early travelogues suchas thoseby Gastn Mlieswhich anthropologistl
. i i i e i i i i o n to m a t e r i a l c u l t u r e . The cast was advertised to be all-Indian and
were topraise. 30 Portrayed as without COinplcxity or histrica! specifieity,
. m i l i r n i i e : (he ch.ir.iclers iiu luded the Chiel Chetoga (Chauncy Yellow
142 Teratology
Time and Redemption 143
film technology sets the stage for the film as truth. A hybrid film, the rest of
The Silent Enemy is without sound and uses intertitles.
The film, despite being set in a period before white contact, has a power-
ful Christian framework, as Elizabeth Weatherford has pointed out.33 The
shaman Dagwan is portrayed as evil in traditional Jesuit terms: he becomes
the greedy capitalist. The Great Spirit is made into an Indian versin of God.
Baluk, who has led the tribe on a seemingly futile trek to find caribou, is
unjustly sentenced to die by Dagwan. He is led to the pyre, his Christ-like
body set momentarily aflame like a cross on fire, and he is only saved at the
last minute when caribou are spotted. Given that the Chippewa did not
practice immolation, the narrative apparently was intended to appeal to
Euro-American notions of Christian sacrifice. In the expansionist ideology
of the vanishing Indian found in the United States, this image may be taken
as an indigenous Christ dying for the sins of the West, assuaging the guilt of
gcnocide and dispossession that Anglo colonialism had inflicted on the
native peoples of the Americas.
Like Moana, The Silent Enemy contains scientific pretensions to salvage
cthnography and reconstruction for the purposes of redemption. The ideol-
ogy of how The Silent Enemy reflects the Western pastime of picturing
34. Still from The Silent Enemy (1930), dir. H. P. Carver. Native Americans as Noble Savages struggling to survive in the wild is
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) belied by the biographies of the main actors of the film. Chauncy Yellow
Robe was not a Chippewa, but a Lakota from Montana, one of the thousands
ul Indians who as a small child was taken from his parents and sent to the
('arlyle School in Pennsylvania, forced to forget his native language. He
l.ii i-r lived in New York and was married to an Euro-American woman. The
Robe); the Beautiful Maiden Neewa (Molly Spotted Elk), the Heroic Hunu-i
li.iidsome star Long Lance was also a Carlylc gradate, but had embellished
Baluk (Long Lance), and the evil Medicine Man Dagwan (Akawanush). Tbr
.1 wliolc Indian biography for himself. Although he claimed he was a chief
Chippewa Indians are represented as always precariously involved in .1
and .1 war hero, historians have discovered that he was Usted as a "colored"
struggle with nature for adequate food.
xnldid in World War I rosters. Both he and Yellow Robe were part of the
Like several of the "racial films" of the late 19205 and early 19308, V'/ic
New York social life: they could eat at the Explorer's Club, a wealthy lite
Silent Enemy's implicit theme of transition in its depictions of indigenoui
mrn'.s club in New York, a privilege which, as an African American man,
peoples as innocent Primitives parallels the transition of film technology
I mi); l.ance would never have been granted. Molly Spotted Elk, aPenobscot
occurring at the same time from silent film to sound. In many of tlu<
I M U 11 M.iinc, was known as an exotic dancer in New York and Pars. She
films, the language of gesture of the silent film and accompanying m i n
IM i l m m i ' d in speakeasies in the 19205, wearing for her act an Indian war-
titles coexist with sound sequences. The Silent Enemy begins with soinul.
I un, bul was also a Native American historian and an assstant of an-
with Chauncy Yellow Robe declaring that the film is "the story of my |><-n
tluopologist Frank Speck. In 1931, she was invited to go to Pars as part of
pie," thanking "the white man who helped us makc this picture," a m l < x
i l n l n i l i . n i Ballet Corps for the I'aris Colonial Exposition, and she settledin
plaining that very few of the Native American actors liad cvcr bcloiv srcn i
I' n r . Ini scveral ycars." Tbus tbe lead actors in The Silent Enemy, "reel"
motion picture. This convcntional declaralion o llic nativos' ignotaiu r ni

L l i l i l . n i ' , , participated m trie popular c u l t u r e of theirday.


144 Teratology Time and Redemption 145

Political Physics
The treatment of time in anthropology turns on what Fabin calis "political
physics," the cultural equivalent of the scientific principie that two bodies
may not occupy the same space at the same time.35 The "racial film" genre
serves implicitly to reenact the logic of political physics: in the films dis-
cussed above, the Primitive is sacrificed like Christ, or otherwise as a figure
of redemption; in other films of the genre, however, the Primitive is directly
juxtaposed to the Modern and enters the same time and space as the posited
audience. Either way, when the Primitive meets the Modern, the only possi-
ble outcomes, as Fabin put it, are the annihilation of the Primitive, or
apartheid,36 the Primitive trapped forever in the "imprisoning" image, to
paraphrase Grierson, of the Ethnographic. This result, even in the guise p:P a. K
liftf s * .. -** *.i':;l|:5^
of tragedy, reinforces the Historical/Ethnographic dichotomy. Primitivist
films like W. S. van Dyke's White Shadows in the South Seas (1929), Andr
Roosevelt and Armand Denis's Goona Goona (1932), and F. W. Murnau's
Tab (1931) all highlight the inevitably ruinous effects of modernity on thr
Ethnographic.
The colonial guilt which Lvi-Strauss speaks of in Tristes Tropiquc\s personified in the white protagonist Dr. Matthew Lloyd of W. S. van

Dyke's White Shadows in the South Seas (192,9).37 One of the first films ID
use sound technology, White Shadows in the South Seas portrays Tahiti ,r.
in transition from paradiasical isle to adulterated colonial island. Tallin
in the 19205 was already seen by anthropologists as syphilis-infested, m >
i s Si ill from White Shadows in the South Seas (1929), dir. W. S. van Dyke.
longer genuine, corrupted from the French colonial presence and too u u l i I ( '"iirtcsy of theMuseum of Modern Art)
tourism.38 In the film, the story of degeneration is presented from Lloyil'-.
(Monte Blue) point of view. Shipwrecked on an "untouched" island, l . l o v t l
saves the life of the chief's child and marries his wide-eyed daughtcr I .iv.i 1 1 . i vi I i nevitably brings contamination. The camera pans the beach with the
way (Rachel Torres). Lloyd's voyage back in time is suggested by onc r.-n l\e in which he is washed moni iidil up title
on the"Whiteisland.shadows
The first .people
. . Whitehe sees a 11 11 u a boy is dressed in
shadows":
W r M r r n clothes, an alienated woman smokes a cigarette, and there is a long
beautiful young women of the island bathing and sleeping by a w a t n l . i l l .I n ii ni a white man lounging and a glimpse of a native woman dancing in a
flowers in their hair. The lens of the camera is in soft focus, and s l o w l \s the foliage to give
l u the lm viewerwhite men. a closer
The look at this
film endsprimeva! si > i >
with a close-up of Fayaway's sorrowful
l.u < , as vcil upon veil of black gauze darkens the screen.
When Lloyd learns of the damage that the "white race" has inflicu-d < > n i In l . i l i i - White Shadows in the South Seas, Andr Roosevelt and Armand
Tahitians through disease and exploitation of male divers, he is asli.iim < l l ii iip.'s I o ve melodrama set inBali, Indonesia, Goona Goona: An Authentic
the "white shadows" of the title are the evil white capitalists. Howevri, .1 i Mi-ln,li,nuil of lie Isle of Rali (1932) is a film in which political physics
white man, Lloyd cannot elimnate the instinctive greed in his bloml I 1.1 !<, piomincnce. Sincc Bali wasalso the site of early research and films by
realizes that he can be rich when he notices the size of the pearls t o i n n l m inthropologists Meatl and Bateson, it is useful to survey the historical set-
the waters near the island. He inadvcriently triggers the dcmisr o i l u \d society, and, in M i ithe i ; o end, i l u - lisi i nhimscll
i In ( l i eslioi by vBali
U.HOS, v h i t replaced
r c a p i t a l iTahiti
s i s l mand Samoa as the new
i l n . i i n l . i i u l topos loi i i n i n h i h i t e i l desire: anthropologists, artists, and tour-
Time and Redemption 147
146 Teratology
ists carne to Bali with ideas of romance, barebreasted dancing women, and
handsome men. According to Tessel Pollman, Bali was a favorite tourist
spot and a fashionable artists' colony in the mid-i93os: Mead and Bateson
could thus enjoy a kind of caf society existence whenever they wanted to
take a vacation from the site of their fieldwork, the village Bajung Gde.39
Pollman's articlewritten, perhaps subversively, in the "ethnographic pres-
ent"describes the machinations of this circle of white intellectuals in
Bali. Like Derek Freeman, who went back to Samoa and interviewed Mead's
informants, discovering evidence that Mead's research methodology and
conclusions were faulty, Pollman concludes that Mead's work was suspect.
Pollman, however, more pertinently emphasizes Mead's blindness to the
political infighting in Bali and the brutalities being worked by Dutch colo-
nialism at the time of her research. Mead's anthropology, Pollman explains,
was in this way complicit with the Dutch policy of "Balinization," a set of
colonial policies designed to maintain Bali as a static, folk culture. As the
Balinese historian Prof. Dr. Ide Gde Ing. Bagus explains, "Balinization is
this: the Dutch wanted us to be a living museum."401 Made Kaler, Mead and
Bateson's main informant, explained that he did not dissuade Mead and
|6. l'latc 56 from Margaret Mead's book Balinese Charactei[i<)42).
Bateson from their belief that Bali was a "steady state." In other words, he
(('ourtcsy of the Instituto for Intercultural Studies, Inc., New York)
did not explain to them that "rust en orde" (calm and order), the Dutch
colonial slogan, was not an indigenous notion: "To Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson I never talked about what was invisible, but very much nnply that the Balinese are indeed schizoid. Mead and Bateson's use of a
alive in Bali. Talking was too dangerous, regarding the Dutch. Margaret psychoanalytical approach, a methodology characteristic of the Culture and
Mead herself never broached a political discourse."41 Mead's informants did 1'iT.sonality school, and their personal discomfort with the Balinese are not
not explain to her their f ear of the Dutch plice state and why they f elt they .!. surprising as their eulogizing of Bali as a "last paradise."44 In this last
had to comply with the demands of Westerners to pose nude. As I Madc .cuse, "Balinization" picked up where representations of Tahiti left off,
Kaler recalls, "The people don't want to sit nude and are angry when they Itlthropologists, adventurers, and popular filmmakers alike adopting the
were forced to do so, but yet agree. They are afraid to be arrested if they lii-.t (olden Age rhetoric characteristic of tourist promotion and colonial
reuse."42 propaganda.
Like Regnault, who classified West African movement as Savage, and 1 ikr Mr.id and Bateson's view of Bali as a lost Edn is directly reflected in
Regnault's colleague Charcot, who used chronophotography to study hys (.mull (:<><ma. A cinematic form of Balinization, Goona Goona indeed
teria in women, Mead and Bateson filmed Balinese in trance in the interest i n . i k r s Kali a "living museum." In the film, Bali is allegorized as a lost
of medical pathology. Mead and Bateson's films of 1936-38 were finaiuvd l>.ii.idi.se: colonialism and political infighting are erased. It begins by intro-
by the Committee for the Research into Dementia Praecox (schizophrenia), il i)', (he bespectaclcd Andr Roosevelt, notebook in hand just like the
and were motivated by a belief that the Balinese routinely entered i n t e llf.uic o (he anthropologist, sittingunder a trec with a fewBalinese. Roose-
dissociated states of consciousness akin to those of the schizophrenic: p.i vi It, wr .ir told, "reconstructed this Balinese story as it was told by the
thology is still apart of the anthropologist's conception of the Ethnographu i i . i i i v r s " l'.inoramic views of the landscape follow as a male voice-over
In Mead and Bateson's film, Trance and lance in liali (1936), the camcia r, ih i l.ui-s, "Bali, t h e last paradise," and the viewer is then presented with
consistently always al a distVICC, a l w a y s in control, a cool medical ryr ' | M I | I I I | . I ( ion s t a t i s l i c s , ;i map, and other postean! views. The story unfolds
But, as l'ollman p o i i i t s mu, Mr.u! did nol really like Bali, and her w o t k - .
148 Teratology Time and Redemption 149

with intertitles carrying the narrative, and an authoritative male voice-over


explaining the customs, for example, "In Bali, women only cover their body
during ceremonial occasions," or "Rather commonly in primitive cultures
marriage occurs after a prerequisite abduction." Roosevelt and Denis ex-
ploited the vogue for bare Balinese breasts in their film's title and represen-
tation of Balinese women: the slang term "goona-goona" was used in Hol-
lywood trade magazines to refer to the use of shots of naked breasts of
women of color in films (in Indonesian, the term actually means "black
magic").45 The breasts of women of color were not censored by the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors Association, especially in films mar-
keted as "ethnographic."46 Because Goona Goona was made during the
transition of film from silent to sound technology, moreover, the film is a
pastiche of many different styles: it is not just a museum of the Ethno-
graphic but of cinematic styles. The film uses strategies of hoth silent and
sound film, and straddles genres, combining elements of the travelogue, the
melodrama, and anthropological film. This hybridity is apparent in its use
of anthropological voice-over commentary; in its titillating "goona goona"
(bare breasts); in the intertitles which explain the story; in its use of di-
alogue (in Indonesian, by someone with a European accent, rather than in 17. Still from Goona Goona (1932), dir. Andr Roosevelt and Armand Denis.
Balinese); in travelogue scenes of the landscape, temples, outrigger canoes, (('ourtesy of the Museum of Modern Art)
and markets; in its use of Balinese court gamelan music; and in the sophisti-
cated acting styles of the Balinese performers. Indeed, what allows Goona
Goona to escape being merely a muddled pastiche of travelogue, melo- harmony of the kingdom by falling in love with a peasant woman instead of
drama, eroticism, and anthropology is the strong, expressive acting of the i he woman of royal blood betrothed to him. His monstrousnesssymbol-
performers and the expertly performed dance sequences. i/.ed by his European dressis implicitly blamed on his Westernization.
The essential drama lies in a question posed by the voice-over, the voice l'i i neo onga wreaks havoc by returning to his village, disrupting the integ-
of the anthropologist: "Will onga, with the advantages of his European 111 y of Primitive space and time.
education, have the courage to protest or will he submit to his father's l'lie native's inability to survive outside of his or her Carden of Edn is
will?" Prince onga returns to Bali from his studies in Europe and falls in .i)'..im highlighted in one of the most famous films of the South Seas "racial
love with the young peasant woman Dasnee. She in turn elopes with her l l h n " genre: F. W. Murnau's Tab: A Story of the South Seas (1931). Al-
strikingly handsome boyfriend Wayan to escape the designs of the prince. i h n i i g l i Flaherty worked on the film in the beginning stages, he disavowed
Nevertheless, Prince onga manages to rape Dasnee. Wayan seeks revenga I ir. own contribution and considered the film entirely the work of Murnau.
by surprising the prince as he is bathing, stabbing him with the ceremonial A nioditation on loss and desire, Murnau's film is more sexually charged
kris (dagger) in the water. In the final scene, Wayan is cornered at the tcm i l i . i n I laherty's films, with more action, an expressionist use of mise-en-
pie. The king points a dagger at him, and we sce Wayan's Christ-likc body 1 1 nc, aiul melodramatic acting. The narrative of T bu centers on two inno-
stretched out in the shape of a cross as the king withdraws. The body o c i i n lovors, Matahi and Reri, the latter a young girl declared tab (forbid-
Wayan slumps, and then we see a moving succession of close-ups o t l n i l e n ) , .1 sacrificial virgin for the gods. Bora-Bora is pictured as a society "still
faces of menyoung, od, asymmetrical, handsome who stare at Wayan m i i n u o h c d by (he hand of civilization," a "land of enchantment." The film
Instead of the contaminating whitc malo iiHcrlopcr of Whilc Slnnows in he>'iir, whon Malahi and his malo Iriends discover several bathing women
I he ,Sof///i ,S'(V.s. it is P r i m e onga t e t u r n i n g (rom Europe who spoils the i i i n l c t .1 w . i l e t l . i l l , l l i o pastoral (iolden Age Hopo wo saw in Whilc Shadows
150 Teratology

Time and Redcmpimi' i', i


dance, when Reri dances, Matahi impulsively jumps in, their plca.suu- i
m
being together quite palpable on their flushed, smiling faces, apleasure di...
comes to an abrupt end with an angry silencing gesture from Hitu. Then
actions have a choreographed, or preternaturally predetermined, air, as i I
they are figures who are moved by fate.
Reri is tab, she is the mystery, the forbidden, and to touch her means
death. The narrative centers on conflict concerning who may properly love
Reri. Reri first chooses Matahi. As Charles Jameux writes, the film turns
objects into characters: such as Reri's floral wreath, symbol of her beauty,
fragility, and love, the black pearl (representative of the masculine), and the
flower (the feminine) lying isolated on the sand.47 Here, the "real," as Ja-
meaux details, takes on the characteristics of the imaginary: the object s
part of this world and of the imaginaton.
The central confrontation in Tab is not man versus nature as n Nanook,
lint desire versus law. Reri and Matahi express their desire through dance,
Init are caught in a web spun out of writing and law. Hitu, the od man who
IN sent to bring Reri to the chief of Fanurna, is the figure of fate, and the
.ly.cnt of the archaic law of "primitive" society; but the other law is the
38. Still from Tab (1931), dir. F. W. Murnau. f.irrdy captalist colonialism of the French. Polynesian law is manifestedin
(Courtcsy of the Museum of Modcrn Art) i l i c written decree that Hitu produces to prove that Reri is destined to
!>((orne a sacrificial virgin for the gods. We are introduced to colonial law on
i l i c l ; rench-ruled island as soon as Reri and Matahi arrive: a colonial police-
in the South Seas. When the spectral eider Hitu declares that Reri must he in.ni records their arrival in his ledger. Later, a French policeman brings a
brought to the chief of Fanuma as the new sacrificial virgin, the two lovers Id ici (rom the colonial government showng that an award has been made
elope to another island, one under French rule. In his new house, Matah . i v . i i l a b l c for the arrest leading to the return of Reri; Matahi bribes him with
makes a fortune as a pearl diver, but he is cheated by conniving merchantfl .1 pr.n I. Writing also circumscribes Reri and Matahi's ability to rernain safe:
of Chinese descent and falls deeply in debt. Matahi and Reri then learn t II.H i l n ( ' l m e s e dry goods storekeeper fools the illiterate Matahi into signing
Hitu has arrived (on the ship Moana), and when the young diver is forccd 11 < lu M i m e fraudulent bilis. Cornered on all sides by written decreesthe
perform a dangerous dive at night in a tab rea, he returns to find thal i In 11 > ( ni i lie film are written in Tahitian, French, and Chinese, and are trans-
grim-faced Hitu has taken Reri away on a small boat. Reri is at last rcsigncd I . H I (I loi ihe audience into Englishthe other islanders turn monstrous.
to her fate. Matahi swims after them, in the immense ocean lit only by i In In me compclling scene, set in a colonial bar, Reri and Matahi celbrate
moon. This last scene is haunting: when he reaches the boat, Hitu cuis i In M . i i . i l n ' s discovery of a huge pearl. As the wine flows freely, the islanders
rope which Matahi clings to, and the boat beeomes progrcssively s m a l l r i U i l . n n i-, hu u is no longer a dance of pleasure but of greed. Strikingly, Mur-
Matahi grows weaker, until finally he drowns, vanishing under the w.ivt. M m loni.scs on the feet and calves of the dancers, some brown-skinned,
Unlike Flaherty with his observational high camera shots, and Ins i m w l u e, some barefoot, some in high heels. The ncongruityPrimitive
phasis on material culture and gesture, Murnau is much more coni-mn .1 i H i MI i\l y lo Modcrnis hotli a manifestation of desire gone awry and a
with allegorical spectacle and composition. Reri's village greets I h i i i \p ili < n i w l n c l i loresliadows the impending disaster. The beaming faces of
hy theatrically rushing on deck: (he dance sec|ucnces are also v v r l l sta^i ! MI n . u n M . i i . i l i i , hy contras!, .ir ingciuious. Thns this Adam and Eve are
(such seqnences, o eourse, i n c l u d c ( l i e obligfltory "goona goona") In n> u - I | I | M 11 ni . i n r i w o i k o l.ini;n.n;e, w r i i mi;, and money, and theend resnlt can
MU U I u . i i i i u l i i l . i l u n o pe versin.
Time and Redemption r53
152 Teratology
triarchy of the Primitive and the exploitation of the Modern. No less than in
Goona Goona, monstrosity is present where the Ethnographic meets the
Historical.
What would an inappropriate "racial film" be? In 1906 the Dutch conquer
the South of Bali, but the narrative of glorious colonialism, a narrative that
colludes with anthropology and cinema to picture Bali as a peaceful island
of dancing people and ancient preserved temples, is disrupted. The Raja of
Badung and his court, dressed in royal white finery and numbering in the
hundreds, greet the Dutch colonial soldiers by refusing to submit. The
scene turns red with their blood: in a puputan (finishing) these people kill
ibcmselves, each other, or march forward toward the Dutch colonial army
lo be gunned down.49 The soldiers later loot the Raja's palace. A filmmaker
is there to produce documentation. The film of the puputan that he shoots
is placed in a drawer and never shown to the public. Only certain kinds of
clbnographic spectacle are acceptable in cinema, not those which expose
I he repressive violence that undergirds the ideology of political physics.

l:n>in Taxidermy to the Monstei


I i l m s such as Moana and Tab are characterized by critics as exemplary
l>iudiicts of a golden age of ethnographic cinema. Andr Bazin described the
39. Still from Tab (1931), dir. F. W. Murnau.
l i l i n s of the period as "tropical and equatorial," and as having "an authen-
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art)
l i f i l l y poetic quality which does not age and is admirably exemplified in
Niiintok." He asserts that the films actually mark the beginnings of a new
In Tab there is a shift in the relationship between word and image. I n
Wrsii-rn mythology: "But this poetry, especially in those films shot in the
early films like Cannibals of the South Seas or In the Land of the Head
' i i i i t h Seas, began to take on an exotic quality. From Moana, virtually an
hunteis, words are used to ascribe meaning to images in the twof od man in i
i ilmugraphic document, to Tab, by way of White Shadows, we are aware
of inscription described in chapters 2 and 3; in Tab, words are mistrustol
ni i l n - gradual formation of a mythology. We see the Western mind as it were
as a form of colonial slavery.48 Murnau emphasizes that writing is a socici .11
i 11' ni)', over a far-off civilization and interpreting it after its own fashion."50
tool used to trap and control Matahi and Reri, whose mutual innocencr r.
h u i h r r e was a problem with the "racial film": it soon became all too
represented in symbolic images rather than words. Interestingly, howi-vn.
l u i l u i.ihlc. Explaining the problem of the cinema of exoticism, of which
it is precisely through the written word that Murnau has Reri express l u
N.inunk of I he North was considered a masterpiece, Fierre Leprohon begins
feelings, a rare attribute for the cinematic figure of the Native woman. Si c
l i \i ing Len Poirier, the director of two Croisire films:
ing the stone-faced Hitu in the moonlight, Reri knows that she must le.ivr
to save Matahi, and she accepts her sacrificial fate. In order to c x p l . n n " Yon src," Len Foirier told me one day, "this is it, the real cinema....
her actions, she writes Matahi a letter explaining why she must i v i m n I >i p.ni w i t b a small crew, go far, and capture the brutal life, without
with Hitu. Yet although Reri is portrayed as a character with s u b j e c t i v i i \d emotions, she is stillm an
. i k rallcgorical
up, ignoring thefor
figure stndio,
a bipolar the deeor, all sin
univeisr the organization which
p.n.ilv/'s out enthusiasms."
is ultimately the innocent human victim of both the rigid, despulir l.iu Hu , i l l filmmakers to not show such humble and noble ambitions.
of authentic Bora-Bora and of the mcrcenary grecd of l ; rencb r o l o m . i l i - . i n Ai i nmp.imril by a i'.ic.il p i i b l i c i t y i'ommotion, these productions in-
Herc the mitcoim- is tragir: U r r i aiul M a t a b i are stiick I K - I W C C I I i l u p.i
154 Teratology Time and Redemption 155

volve the voyage of a considerable crew and tons of material. They "endangered species." Ethnographic ventriloquism assumes the inarticu-
organize real expeditions to give some intrigue of an obvious impover- lateness of the Native, and it is the West's own narratives of evolution, loss,
ished nature a "sensational" frame. They accumulate impressive fig- and "political physics" which are expressed.
ures, dramatic episodes, with the desire to provoke the astonishment In trying to understand the shift in interest away from films constructed
and the enthusiasm of the public. So much results that are not worth so on the model of Moana, to films like King Kong, Murnau's Tab is a key
much money dispensed, or the dangers run. The film disappoints like text. It embodies transition: it focuses on the drama of the clash between
vacation photos. Such a equatorial site takes on the look of a zoological the Modern and the Ethnographic, a clash typified by the image of Reri and
garden and the natives have the air of figures deprived of their trade.51 Matahi clapping their hands with innocent delight at the colonial bar,
caught up in the spectacle of the colonial dance, a transitional moment
Leprohon's use of the metaphor "zoological garden" is instructive: "racial
which is further signified by the shot of feetbare, brown, high-heeled,
films" more often than not rendered natives as specimens, and the inevita-
whiteof the faceless, dancing colonial subjects. The ideology of the inev-
ble ennui of the viewer soon approached that of a zoo visitor. At the zoo one
itahly destructive nature of this clash is present in Tab but is given its
sees what one already knows one will see: the interplay of wildness and
purest expression in the image of King Kong clinging to the Empire State
domestication. With ethnographic cinema one also sees what one is already
Building. This "entertaining contradiction," as Haraway succinctly puts it,
prepared to see, one "sees anthropology." The "roundness" of Moana soon
produces pleasure in its violation of boundaries, here between the "primi-
became fat, at least to mass audiences. i ive" and the "modern."55 Tab contains a moral message which will reach
To avoid this resemblance to the experience of the zoo, Leprohon writes,
11 s f ullest expression in King Kong. The indigenous person who does not
Hollywood turned to the use of sets as well as organized scenes of spectacle.
irmain in his or her proper space is something abhorrent, and it is the
As Bazin explains, the exotic film in the 19308 went into "a decline charac-
implicitly monstrous character of this hybridity which King Kong takes
terized by a shameless search after the spectacular and the sensational. It Utcrally.
was not enough merely to hunt the lion, the lion must first gobble up the
beasts."52 This mannerist turn led to King Kong, one of the most outrageous
"racial films" ever made. The genre of the "racial film" became increasingly
baroque: if writers describe Nanook as epitomizing the Golden Age of sucli
cinema, they describe King Kong as an example of how the genre degene r
ated.53 Andr F. Liotard, Samivel, and Jean Thvenot explain the dierence
between Chang and King Kong as follows: "The travelers and the explore s
themselves give in to the temptation of the 'spectacular.' Their works ai e
less and less spontaneous, more and more premeditated, organized, mu
what they gain in coherence and formal qualities, they lose in authentu u \54

The time machine of ethnographic cinema attempts to maintain modr


nity, that is, to effectuate the complete separation of science from tlie snl.
jective, the study of "nature" from the study of "society," through its \>
larization of the Ethnographic and Historical. The problem is that t l i r .
polarization is effectuated by aligning the Ethnographic with N a t m r In
both Chang and Moana, as in Nanook, the filmmaker speaks lor M.-HIM
peoples, raising the problem of the ethics of ventriloquism. In the "i.u i . i l
films" of the ujaos and early ig^os, the Ethnographic becomes embltm "I
the "vanishing races," an image which is ihe direct prcdccessot o I lie ulc.i < 'I
6 KIN6 KONC ANP THE MONSTER

IN ETHNOCRAPHIC CINEMA

i)ui ddaigne King Kong n entenda jamis ren au cinema.


AndrFalk1

// l'oc weie olive,, he would not have to invent horror; horror would
invcnt him. Richard Wright

Al t h e beginning of the century, a Chirichiri man named Ota Benga from the
K.is.-ii regin of what is now Zaire was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo. He and
i u hcr Batwa were brought to the United States by missionary anthropolo-
>,!>i Samuel P. Verner at the request of William Tohn McGee, director of the
Imithsonian Institution. After "exhibiting" Ota Benga and others at the
i o i.| St. Louis Exposition as anthropological specimens, Verner, unlike his
prtulcccssors such as Arctic explorer Robert Peary (see chapter 4), ensured
i l u u i i ' t u r n back to theirhomeland.
( >nr man, Ota Benga, chose tocme back to the United States. Itisunclear
w l i v I Imised first at the American Museum of Natural History in New
Vi 'i ! ( 'ii y, where Minik Wallace had also stayed, Ota Benga was one of sev-
i hil Alnc.ms "exhibited" at the St. Louis World's Fair. In oneincident, Benga
> i i i i l i i i l u - i African performers attacked a photographer who had taken their
|lmi <i>;iaph without asking first for their permission: they demanded that
!n j i . i v lu i lie privilege. Benga was later put in a cage at the Monkey House
.u i l n - I t i n i i x /(o, rendered a zoological spectacle for the hungry public and
I M . itti ( nnlrmporary press accounts reported that Ota Benga could not be
i h l l i n ni i.iicd (rom the other monkeys. What Ota Benga thought about his
i IM m u c is u n k n o w n . The few documents that remain of his time in the
un u n lude phoiographs of him looking seriously at the camera, posed in
i li u u i r n s i i i .mthropomctric stylc: he is photographed frontally, from the
li.ii ! .mil i n piolilc, holding piops .1 m o n k e y in one .-irm and a club in
MIH u I h i \vlin 11 icmliiiccd his public i/.rd "missinj; l i n k " status.
158 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster 159
^iiotvi 139
for racial taboos. Its status as cinematic fantasy, as "a modern, movie-born
myth" without historical antecedents, remains, however, largely unques-
tioned.3 But King Kong is not merely a classic Hollywood film, it is a work
which in significant respects builds on and redeploys themes borrowed
from the scientific time machine of anthropology.
The lineage of King Kong should be obvious: the filming, capture, exhibi-
tion, photographing, and--finally murder of Kong takes its cue from the
historie exploitation of native peoples as freakish "ethnographic" speci-
mens by science, cinema, and popular culture. Critics have consistently
40. Photograph of Ota passed lightly over the fact that, in the 19205, Cooper and Schoedsack were
Benga (1904), St. Louis well-known ethnographic filmmakers, producing and directing both Grass
Exhibition. (Neg. No. (1925) and Chang (1927). King Kong, moreover, begins with an expedition,
299134, photo by Jessie ully equipped with film camera, to a remote tropical island: King Kong is
Tarbox Reals, courtesy literally a film about the making of an ethnographic film. As exaggerated
Department of Library and baroque as King Kong may appear compared with Regnault's chrono-
Services, American photography or Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North, the film makes
Muscum of Natural irlerence to many of the themes that characterized the construction of the
History) "cihnographic" in early cinema. If, as Cooper had complained, there were
no longer any remote, genuinely alien cultures left to be discovered, mon-
One may surmise from what happcned later that the experience of being a MCIS still lurked in the imagination of interwar ethnographic cinema. In the
zoological exhibit destroyed Ota Benga's mind if not his soul. Protests by '.ptvtacular commercial cinema of this period, monstrosity was the mode of
icpicsentation of the Ethnographic.
African American ministers probably led to his relase from the Monkey
House, and he was allowed to walk freely about the grounds of the zoo. Ota I'ierre Leprohon writes that the cinema of exoticismand under this
Benga ended his time at the zoo when he brandished a knife at one of the zoo M i l u u- he includes both the research films of an anthropologist like Marcel
keepers. After this incident, Ota Benga left the zoo and in 1910 moved to i .1 i.iule and falsified documentaries like the film Ingagi (1933)partakes at
Lynchburg, Virginia. Six years later, he committed suicide.2 i l i e same time of science and of dream: as scientific document, it furthers
i lie pursuit of knowledge,- as poetry, it is the food of dreams.4 In this chapter,
I w 111 show how the monster is both the subject of scientific representation,
King Kong and Ethnographic Spectacle .1% w.is i he case with the Komodo dragn, the object of W. Douglas Burden's
In Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's film King Kong (1933), i lu i n i i ' . e i i m expedition in 1927, andof fantastic cinematic representation, as in
giant prehistoric gorilla Kong is captured and made into a lucrative Bro.nl i nope and Schoedsack's The Most Dangeious Game (1932) and Erle C.
way attraction by the jungle picture filmmaker Cari Denham (Robert Moni IM nioii's Tlic sland of Lost Souls (1933), horror films which explore the
gomery). Kong then escapes, creating terror in the metrpolis,- he s t a l k i n i i n M I ni hybridity in teratological terms. Whether the monster was the
the blonde heroine Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and carries her off to the t n p < >! nl'ii i i o science or fantasy, and whether shot with rifle or camera, it was a
the Empire State Building where Kong is killed by an incessant barragc ni u mili o i epicsen tation inextricahly linked with sex, power, and death.
bullets from fightcr airplanes. The incredibly polysemous quality o Kmy M n l i k e inosi of the films of the "racial"genre which I describedin the last
Kong, which has assured its continuing widcsprcad popularity, has also l< I i l i . i p i e i , KI/IK Kong was a sotind film. With the advent of sound technology
to a multitude of interpreta!ions o! the film as dream, capitalist l a i r v i . i l i In i l n e.nlv lijaos, ihc "racial film" genre ironically lost one of the dimen-
imperialist mctaphor, allegory lor t l u 1 unconscious, ail repressed spiTi.u l< H i i u i ' . ni i i s "ivalism." Andiv !'. l.ioianl, Samivel, and (can Thvenot note,
I v i ii i l u doesn't havc dialogue, I he i'xotir sound f i l m always risks bcim r
16o Teratology King Kong and the Monster 161

betrayed by its noises, and especially by its music and its voiceover."5 What it is its logical negation. . . . The normal is the effect obtained by the execu-
propels King Kong forward is not the voice-over or intertitles of the scien- tion of the normative project, it is the norm exhibited in the fact____It is not
tific research film or lyrical ethnographic film, but sound of a different paradoxical to say that the abnormal, while logically second, is existentially
sortthe blonde heroine's screams, the giant gorilla Kong's roar, the lush first."8
Wagnerian score of Max Steinerand movementthe longboat rushes to The Ethnographic, as we have seen, could be romanticized as authentic
Skull Island to save Ann, the crew runs through the jungle in order to save culture and/or as "pathological" culture, as in Margaret Mead's representa-
her, and later the hroes run through Manhattan in an attempt to save Ann tion of the Balinese as schizoid. But one need not seek out extreme exam-
from Kong again. King Kong is not a film of poetic juxtaposition like Na- ples: the notion of the "ethnographic" as monster was only an exaggeration
nook, but of frenetic braggadocio, clunking the viewer over the head visu- of the common propensity to see native peoples as strange, bizarre, and
ally and aurally, a tone set by the very title of the film with its alliteration abhorrent. As I have already noted, it is significant that anthropologist
and rough-hewn rhythm. King Kong is the ultimate carnivalesque versin Bronislaw Malinowski's infamous invocation of Heart of Darkness "ex-
of early ethnographic cinema. termnate the brutes" comes out of his exasperation at the refusal of the
Trobrianders to sit still long enough to be photographed. The Ethnographic
becomes monstrous at the very moment of visual appropriation.9
Teratology and Fantasy: The Science Noel Carrol! has explained that, in the horror film, the two essential
Expedition and the Honor Film characteristics of the monster are its impurity and its dangerousness. Bor-
My notion that the mode of representation of the "ethnographic" in spec- rowing from Mary Douglas's analysis in Purity and Danger (1966), he ex-
tacular commercial cinema takes the form of teratologythe study of mon- plains that monsters are impure in that, as hybrids, they are not easily
strosityderives once again from Stephen Bann's study of the rhetoric of categorized, and thus cross the boundaries of cultural schemas. Monsters
history-writing in nineteenth-century France and Great Britain. Emphasiz- i re, Carroll emphasizes, interstitial. Kong, neither human or ape, is im-
ing the parallel between monstrosity and taxidermy, Bann points out that purc in this sense. Thus the monster is not just physically threatening, but
the monster is "the composite, incongruous beast which . . . simulated the .ilso cognitively threatening: its existence threatens cultural boundaries. As
seamless integrity of organic life."6 It is thus not surprising that King Kong ( .u roll suggests, this cultural dangerousness explains why the geography of
emerges in large part out of the "racial film" genre initiated by Nanook. Imrror often involves lost continents and outer space.10
Nanook was a work of taxidermy, inspired by the politics and aesthetics of The Ethnographic is seen as monstrous because he or she is human and
reconstruction, and King Kong is not only a film about a monsterthe film voi radically different. Early examples of the monstrosity of the Ethno-
itself is a monster, a hybrid of the scientific expedition and fantasy genres. C.i.ipliic include Regnault's association of race and cranial deformation,-
Bann states that the "very anxiety to establish [the] distinction between '.|ioiic.cr's description of "naked, howling savages"; the Tohnsons' coding
'all' imagination and invention, on the one hand, and on the other the facts, ni Western Pacific peoples as lascivious cannibals,- the obsessive filming of
is of course the evidence of a desire to repress the rhetorical status of histor- n.ii u r (a ubiquitous subject in ethnographic cinema); and the plethora of
ical writing."7 The desire to find truc representation of the real, or truc u .iv. in which indigenous peoples were, through the use of cinematic spec-
inscription, was characteristic of Regnault's work, and his writings ail I . M Ir, in.iclc into Savages, a term which still had credence in anthropology as
chronophotography betray a deep-seated anxiety with differentiating fac Li i < .is i Q^O." Monstrosity is essentially visual, an aspect of "seeing anthro-
from imagination, the normal from the pathological. Teratology was an IMiluc.v" t h a t involves a scarch for visual evidence of the pathological, a
important aspect of early anthropology: the "monster," like the Primitivr i l n un niadc ovidont in both Paul Broca's and Franz Boas's recommenda-
Other, was of keen interest because it could be used to study and define i lu i I ni 1 , i h . i i anthropologists observe the indigenous person as apatient. 12 Be-
normal. In The Normal and the Pathological, historian of sciencc Gcory.i". i in .r i h c miago in ethnographic film is taken as "real," footage of aperson
Canguilhem describes how abnormality is necessary to constitute normal Mi
I r o t h i n g a t the mouth and biting off a chickon head, or of aperson
ity: "The abnormal, as ab-normal, comes after the detnition of the normal, ni) 1 , opon ,1 sea I and e a l i n g raw moa I, ofton is road by the i n tended viewer
King Kong and the Monster 163
162 Teratology - " ' -;'
Under a layer of rouge and powder they were hiding syphilis, tuberculo-
of ethnographic film, the Western viewer, as evidence of the essential savag- sis and malaria. They carne in high-heeled shoes from the banaco,
ery of the Ethnographic. As Wilson Martinez and Asen Balikci have ex- where they lived with "the man," their seringueiro, and, although
plained and documented, cultures in ethnographic films are usually seen by ragged and dishevelled all the rest of the year, for one evening they
students and other audiences as aberrant, bizarre, and even repulsive, un- appeared spick and span; yet they had had to walk two or three kilo-
less the culture on display is similar to the culture of the audience.13 Such metres in their evening dresses along muddy forest paths. And in order
audience studies raise questions about the ethics of filming acts which were to get ready, they had washed in darkness in filthy igaraps (streams),
never meant to be seen by outsiders, and showing the films in contexts in and in the rain, since it had poured all day. There was a staggering
whicheven with extensive commentary from anthropologistsabhor- contrast between these flimsy appearances of civilization and the mon-
rence is aroused. Brazilian ethnographic filmmaker Jorge Preloran explains: strous reality which lay just outside the door.16
After seeing dozens of films on ethnographic subjects, one thing stands Although with greater pathos, Lvi-Strauss, like Murnau, mourns the pas-
out clearly for me: the majority of [the films] crate a gulf between us sage of time: acculturation brings disease and despair, and indigenous cul-
and the "primitive" people they usually depict. This to me is a racist ture cannot withstand the onslaught. Mixture, whether it takes the form of
approach because unless we have a chance to listen firsthand to those miscegenation or acculturation, produces monsters.
people, letting them explain to us WHY they act as they do, WHY they Stephen Neale's description of the monster in the horror film reveis a
have those extraordinary rituals, those fantastic, colorful, exotic, dis- direct similarity between screen monsters and the Ethnographic rendered
gusting, fascinatingyou label itceremonies that are shown to us, we as monster. In both cases, the focus is on bodily disruption:
will only think of them as savages.14
The monster, and the disorder it initiates and concretises, is always
Several different tendencies converged to produce the image of the Eth- that which disrupts and challenges the definitions and categories of the
nographic as monstrous. First, the great variety of indigenous societies con- "human" and the "natural." Gencrally speaking, it is in the monstcr's
tinually destabilized the Modern/Primitive dichotomy. Second, thepercep- body which focuses the disruption. Either disfigured, or marked by a
tion of indigenous peoples as a link between the ape and the white man, as lieterogeneity of human and animal features, or marked only by a "non-
in between animal and "human" (white), made the Ethnographic always liuman" gaze, the body is always in some way signalled as "other,"
already monstrous. Third, the image betrays anthropology's obsession with signalled, precisely, as monstrous.17
hybridity. The concern with hybridity manifested itself both through an
abhorrence of interracial intercourse and "blood mixing," reflected in Paul Noi surprisingly, the archetypal narrative of many forms of ethnographic
Broca's influential research purportedly establishing that the offspring of i m u n a , hut especially of the expedition film, mirrors that of the horror
blacks and whites were infertile,15 and through notions of salvage ethnogra- 111111 l '.irrol 1 points out that the horror film uses variations on the "complex
phy, the belief that the "ethnographic" as embodiment of an earlier, purer i l i - . i o v r t y " plot: the monster first appears or is created (onset); it is then
humanity, would spoil upon contact with the West, a conceit which was in ii u o hy the human protagonists (discovery); its horrible existence is ac-
played out in the "racial film" genre. This latter form of hybridity is besl klinwli'dgcd (confirmation); and the film ends with a fight to the death
expressed cinematically in the scene of clashing styles of dancing in Mur I i wo-ii h u m a n and monster (confrontation). 18 As Neale explains, the nar-
M I I V I - pioo-ss in the horror film is "marked by a search for that specialized
nau's Tab, described in the last chapter.
Its literary counterpart to the spoils-upon-contact theme is exemplificd i ni o knowledge which will enable human characters to comprehend and
in Lvi-Strauss's description of the society of Brazilian Indian rubber tappers i i n l i l i . H wliich simultaneously embodies and causes its 'trouble.'"19

I
in Tristes Trapiques. He explains that if the Nambikwara had taken him lo M i m l . i i l v , t l u 1 plot of expedition films like Grass and Moana is structured
the Stone Age, and the Tupi-Kawahib to the sixteenth century, then ilu MI I i l u - disrovery and confirmation of a being (whether zoological rarity
society of the seringal (rubber plantation) in the Brazilian Amazon brouglii ni i'.ion|i o |H-opk-) w i t h incongruous features or habits.
him to the eighteenth century. ll is worth quoting his description o i l u I In i \ | i o l i i i o n f i l m clicl not have lo t a k e n a t i v e peoples as its subject

I n d i a n women at Icngllv.
164 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster 16
matter in order for it to be informed by the obsession with race and fears of _ ..^vyil^LW IOS

hybridity characteristic of ethnographic cinema. Perhaps the best example in Cari Denham's oft-repeated reference to Ann's relationship with Kong
of an expedition film that contains "ethnographic" elements without being as "Beauty and the Beast." Burden comments, "A fiery dragn in itself is
explicitly about indigenous peoples is a film by W. Douglas Burden, on a fascinating ideaso, also, is the thought of a beautiful white-skinned
the 1927 American Museum of Natural History expedition to study the Ko- maiden. Link these two ideas together, in some way or other, and you have a
modo dragn lizard. Komodo, an island in what is now Indonesia, is the story which by its very nature would survive through untold ages."27 Thus
home of Vaianus komodensis, the Komodo dragn lizard, described as the the narrative of the expedition was propelled forward by the figure of the
largest lizard in the world and the closest living relative of the dinosaur.20 white woman, a kind of lure for the monster-like beast.
Cooper would later claim that Burden's expedition was a direct inspiration Cooper, the creatve mind behind Kong, was struck by Burden's account
for his film King Kong. of the immediate death of the two Komodo dragons which Burden brought
Burden's short film begins with a view of the American Museum of Natu- back and displayed at the Bronx Zoo. In a letter to Burden dated 22 June
1964, Cooper wrote,
ral History, followed by a map detailing the itinerary of the Burden voyage,
and then scenes of the arrival of the expedition on Komodo Island, the
When you told me that the two Komodo Dragons you brought back to
hunting of animis for use as bait, the hunting and shooting of the lizard,
the Bronx Zoo, where they drew great crowds, were eventually klled
and the capture of other live lizards. Although Carroll is discussing the plot
by civilization, I immediately thought of doing the same thing with my
of the horror film here, he might as well be discussing the Burden expedition
Giant Gorilla. I had already established him in my mind on a pre-
film: "An initial, contested discovery calis forth a project or expedition for
historic island with prehistoric monsters, and I now thought of having
the purpose of corroborating it, and closure is secured when the confirma-
him destroyed by the most sophisticated thing I could think of in civili-
tion can be made to stick."21 King Kong, labeled a fantasy horror film, was
zation, and in the most fantastc way. My very original concept was to
successfully modeled on the narrative of an expedition film. The fantasy of
place him on the top of the Empire State Buildng and have him klled
the movie draws its sustenance from the science of the museum expedition.
by arplanes. I made considerable investigation on how this could be
The title of Burden's book on his expedition even sounds like a horror film done technically with a live gorilla.28
title: Dragn Lizards of Komodo: The Expedition to the Lost World of the
Dutch East Indies. Burden, like Cari Denham, the fictional expedition film- In the expedition film, Burden himself does the shooting. At one point,
maker in King Kong, stressed the importance of maintaining secrecy in i IHTC is a shot of Katherine Burden crankng the camera juxtaposed to a shot
order to be assured of being the first white man to lay claim to the exotic i il I )i uiglas Burden shooting with his rifle. The positioning of the two makes
beast.22 In Burden's book, Komodo Island is represented much as King u ippear as if he is in fact shooting Katherine.29 This scene s followed by
Kong's Skull Island will be represented by Cooper and Schoedsack: Burden une ni which a Komodo dragn is shot and killed. Shooting with a camera
writes of the sound of "tomtoms beating across the water; incessant, mo- .iiul shooting with a rifle are conjoined: the product will be the display of the
notonous, rhythmic beats, thrilling and barbarous," evidence that the na- ii u l l f i l dragn lizards together with film footage at the American Museum
tives are "child-like and superstitious."23 Burden's portrayal of the expedi- ni N.iiural History. But the woman is also shot and captured on Burden's
tion's Chinese servant Chu as an amusing lackey prefigures King Kong'* l l i n sex and the hunt are implicitly made parallel.
portrayal of the Chinese cook Charlie.24 In King Kong, the monster Kong's attraction to Ann s transgressive:
Similarly, just as Kong and the dinosaurs of Skull Island are portrayed ;is KIIII.I;, .1 liybrid figure, a manlike beast, threatens the taboo on interracial
riveting, prehistoric monsters, the Komodo dragn according to Burden is ",-i i \s obsession with racial differencethe Javanese are "unfathom-
perfectly marvelous sight,a primeval monster in a primeval setting."'' i i h l r , " i he "cannibals" of Wetar are "Oceanic Negroids"30is exposed in his
Cooper later explained that the character of Ann Darrow was inspiro! tli'.;iisi lor (he Dutch colonials who do not enforce a caste system or color
luir
by Burden's wife, Katherine Burden, a photographer on the museum i-x
pedition.26 Burden himsclf extollcd the spectacle of a monster attractc-d
W h e i e is ( h i s gctting I lie world, t h i s intermarriage hetween race and
to a beautiful white woman, a themc repeated frequenlly in King Kuuy
ure, i l n s breaking ilown o tlic h . n i i e i s o i.ice consciousness? In the
166 Tcratology

long run, as intermarriage becomes more and more frequent, does it not Kingu Kong
.., and
ojiu the
uie Monster 167
lead inevitably to one grand hodge podge, one loathsome mixture of all lieved my book." The Count, by contrast, takes the visual logic of the Great
races into a pigsty breed? An unattractive thought, perhaps, but sure of White Hunter to ts logical extreme: his own desire to see, to visualize the
fulfillment, as long as racial intermarriage contines.31 hunted, is revealed in his collections of pickJed human heads (he even has
It is the body of the racially mixed hybrid which Burden finds loathsome, one taxidermic group depicting the hunt of an unfortunate victim). His
the hybrid body which defies the idealized polarization by science and mo- pathological visin, embodied n his bulging, piercing eyes, in one scene
dernity of the Ethnographic Other and Historical Same, nature and science, fixes Eve, in the manner of a scientist gleefully pinning down a butterfly
specimen.
archaic and modern.
According to film critic Claude Beylie, the very dry, nearly scientific style
of the film mixes elements of the documentary with a touch of de Sade: The
Islands ofFantasy: King Kong and the Horror Film Most Dangerous Game utilizes "the words of science, or of teratology, be-
King Kong borrowed not only from the scientific expedition film, but also cause it was about a prehistoric animal, or a phenomenon of a fair." Thus
from the Hollywood horror film. The Most Dangerous Game (1932), di- l he very tenor of the film betrays a fascination with teratology. Watching
rected by Irving Pichel and Schoedsack and produced by Cooper, was started i lie film, Beylie asserts, is like watching animis at a zoological preserve.32
before but made concurrently with King Kong, with some of the same sets In his intriguing analysis of The Most Dangerous Game, Thierry Kuntzel
and actors (Robert Armstrong, Fay Wray, Noble Johnson, and Steve Clem- secs the film as revealing a relationship between dreams and cinema, be-
ente). As in King Kong, the hunt in The Most Dangerous Game is a means c.inse the viewer must believe a little, but not too much; he or she is drawn
of playing out the survival of the fittest. Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), the mi o viewing not only frorn the point of view of normality, that is, of the
bored, effete big game hunter, lures Rainsford (Joel McCrea) and Eve Trow limitcr hero, Rainsford, but also from the point of view of abnormality, that
is, tliat of Zaroff.33 The horror film thus makes the viewer complicit not
ridge (a brunette Fay Wray) onto his island and then f orces them to becomr
n i i l y with the protagonists, but with the monster as well.
game for his hunting pleasure. The plot again follows Carroll's model
onset/discovery/confirmation/confrontation. Here, however, the monstci r/ii' Most Dangerous Game is an exploration of the relationship between
is the Count, a man who embodies Regnault's nightmare of the suraf/iin' i l i c hunted and the hunter, between Savagery and Civilization, a theme
(overrefined, overcivilized). i>',iiilcd by the recurrent image of the centaur. The centaur, half-beast and
The Most Dangerous Game also reveis that where taxidermy lurks, h . i l l man, emblazons the film as both mythical and fantastic. Kuntzel has
teratology is sure to follow. Zaroff vilales cultural boundaries, but he alsi > l ' i u n i c d out that all the men in the film figure for the centaur, especially
I v . n i , i he Cossack servant (Noble Johnson).34 The same fascination with
pushes certain notions to their logical limits, such as the link betwcen se\d the hunt: "We barbarians know that it is after the chase, and then < > n U
l i v l u u l i i y hetrayed in Burden's account of his expedition is made explict in
i l n % l.iniasy horror film in the image of the centaur.
that man reveis. You know the saying of the Ogandi chieftains: 'Hunt l i r . i
the enemy, then the woman.' It is the natural instinct. The blood is q u i i I II / 1 n - Most Dangerous Game is a meditation on Savagery and Progress,
i n i l i l i c i lie "racial film" which purported to offer a peephole into the past,
ened by the kill. One passion builds upon anothcr. Kill, then love! W i n n
you have known that, you have known ecstasy!" i l n I l l i u .il.so looks to the future, envisioning a "monster" of overcivliza-
H H I I AiioilicT horror film that presents a visin of deviant evolution is
The monster is thus the Count himself who crosses the boundaiy I"
tween Civilization and Savagery, and tellingly invokes the "Ogamli c l i n I 11 li i Kriiion's nhind of Lost Souls (1933) based on H. G. Wells's The Is-
l,in,l *'l I > Mon-in (1896). i s The island ofDr. Moreauis describedas "anex-
tains." Rainsford is the hunter who remains within "propcr" hotiiul 1 . In
|n H I I M n i . i l si.iioii or bioanthropological research." The narrative s again
hunts only animis and recognizes the valu of expedition photography .i'i
un. ni iiiisei/discovcry/confirmation/conrontation: the shipwrecked Ed-
evidence of "having been thcre." As Rainsford says to the Docioi, "Ymi
fc.iiil l ' . i i k c i ( R i c h a r d Arlen) is I u red by the oily, odd-looking Moreau
didn't turn out so hot as a hunter, I )oc, but oh what a photographe:! V i \i
|l h n l i . I . i i i r j i l o n ) (o ( h e l.niei's island station, where Moreau has caused
we'd had you to take pictures on t h c Sumatra n trip, (bey mii;hl I I . I M I"
p V i ' l i i i imi i" l>e speeiled np Inmdicds ni ihous.inds o years, producing not
Mili) n mi pl.mis, h u .liso .1 new biccd o "liiim.nw" ! **--
168 Teratology King Kong and the Monster 169

sarong, she is a typical "South Seas" screen siren. When they kiss, Parker
discovers that her fingernails are really claws, and he confronts Moreau
with his knowledge. Moreau is merely perturbed, because this fact is evi-
dence that the animal nature of his "human" creatures reverts back and
cannot be suppressed. Interbreeding fails (nineteenth-century anthropolo-
gist Paul Broca might have approved), and the monster is thus necessarily
impure, no longer animal but not capable of becoming fully human.
The danger of miscegenation appears again when Parker's virtuous blonde
liance, Ruth Thomas (Leila Hyams), comes to rescue Parker only to be
nearly raped by Ourlan, the hairy ape-man, mirroring Ann Darrow in the
paws of Kong. Parker saves her from this fate, but is warned not to do the
same for Lota, the Panther Woman. Later, Ourlan pursues Lota: when he
Kiabs her, they maul each other to death, as natural selection takes its toll on
( h e imfit.
In the end of the film, Moreau's society of hybrid Savages rebels in a per-
Irrt enactment of the colonialist nightmare. Although forced to worship
M i n e a n as a God, and as keeper of the Law, they revolt and torture Moreau
w 1 1 1 1 1 nstruments from his own laboratory, called the House of Pain. In both
I I 1 1 ns, (lie true monster is the insane white male who desires to maniplate
iiiii m e and is willing to upset the boundaries separating man from beast.' 6
In l;l,nnl of Lost Souls as in The Most Dangerous Game, the viewer takes
lii'i ni her cue as to how to react to what is happening from the human
|ihii,i)',iniists on the screen, but since the viewer at times sees the action
l i i n i i i h e point of view of Moreau or of the island's other "humans," the
* wt i
n is made into a monster as well. Like Moreau, a doctor obsessed with
i'ilf.e, with destroying the limits between the biological and the fan-
41. Still from Island of Lost Souls (1933), dir. Erle C. Kenton. M I M i he viewer is simultaneously fascinated and horrified by the trans-
(Courtesy o trie Museum of Modern Art) |i i -MU i c ni i il bou ndaries. The revolt of Moreau's hybrid experimental subjects
| i j m . i l i d (mematographically by the reverse of a zoom: one by one, the
section of live animis. The doctor hopes that Parker will mate w i i l i I ln^niti nr.li np lo thc camera lens, their hairy faces filling the lens as they
most prized creation, the beautiful Lota, the Panther Woman ( K . n U ' |W>H np u i h c eamera.

Burke). In hi'i ile.i iission of King Kong, }. P. Telotte has argued that an effective
The monsters in thc film, Moreau's creatures, are neither ful 1 y a m i n. 11 i l t i i i I l l m Ji.iws ihe viewer into its world of excitement and terror through
human. The racialist and imperialist underpinnings of the f i l m .m >|ii h t i ' i n i p n l . i i u n o boundaries: "The horror film can play most effectively
explicit, for the monsters are coded in racial terms. Ourlan, an api in.ui | K M l n i i i i i i l a i v posiiioii; monsterlike, i t can simply reach into our world
coded as the lusty and bestial dark Savage. M'ling, Moreau's l a i i h l n l -! I i t i i i l ' i i r . p . i i i o i i s ni^htmarish realm, forcing us to complete horrific
man, is coded as East Asianservile and bestial slightly highei i n i t in i ' ' S i m i l a r l y , e i t i n g Tzvetan Todorov, Noel Carroll explains that
than somc of Moreau's other heasts who have heeome his slavr .m.l ) i t n i . C I | M m c i n e m a is piodueecl by allowing for a vacillation between
form hard physieal labor. Lota passes as a l'olynesian: w i i l i In i ! > i M u i i i i . i l .ind n a l u i a l i s l i e e x p l a n a t i o n s . M a n y horror stories begin as
madc-up cyes, rouged lips, lonj; hlack eurly liair, and s k i n i p v l u m l i I M v i M p m p o i l i n g l o oller r a l i o n a l e x p l a n a t i o n s lor ( h e lanlastic, b u t
170 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster 171
then build up to a confrontation with the monster, a supernatural being that
jungle filmmaker, and bis colleague Jack Driscoll, first mate of the ship and
cannot be explained by science.38 Above all, Carroll adds, the horror film
later the fianc of the Fay Wray character, Ann Darrow. In addition to the
demands proof, proof of the monster's existence and a clear explanation of
model of Douglas Burden, Cari Denham was closely modeled on Cooper,
why it exists. The horror film genre works because the audience is fasci-
Jack Driscoll on Schoedsack, and Ann Darrow on Schoedsack's wife, Ruth
nated by the monster's impurity, its hybridity, and because it is curious to
Rose, as well as Katherine Burden (Rose, in fact, was one of the screen-
get at the heart of this unknowable: the audience follows the narrative until
writers for King Kong).40 Denham was apparently also modeled on the brash
it discloses all the secrets of the monster.39 This knowledge is arrived at
showman Frank Buck, who made films about capturing animis for zoos,
only by observation. It is this desire for proof by observation that links the such as Brng 'Em BackAlive (1932).
ethnographic film to the horror film: from its inception, the efficacy of
Noel Carroll writes, "No other film has ever been as self-congratulatory
ethnographic film was believed to derive from its status as pur observa-
,is Kong. It is a swaggering, arrogant film that spends much of its time tell-
tion, pur inscription, evidence for the archive. But this logic linking visin
iiij; ushowgreatitis.... Kongis the quintessential American filmits self-
to knowledge, producing an incessant desire to see, is not without its atten-
i in.ige is so enormous."41 The self-referential tenor of the film does not arise
dant dangers. Nolely because of King Kong's many references to film history, a point made
l>v (.unes Snead,42 but also because, as shown in the last chapter through the
King Kong: A Cise Analysis itlisrussion
mema. of Grass and Chang, self-referentiality is central to ethnographic
In a scene about two-thirds of the way through King Kong, a dishevelcd
young couple Ann Darrow, a pal blonde woman, and Jack Driscoll, lu-i
I u Depression-era Manhattan: The White WomanCriminal, Trouble,
virile male lover flee on foot from the giant ape-monster Kong through .1
i />//< / of Exchange. The second scene of the film takes us down one level
jungle of enormous, primordial vegetation. As they run we see their widr In i l i e evolutionary taxonomy of race and gender to the white womanAnn
eyed but grimly set expressions as they frantically brush aside the leaves i il
I Mu o w the forever fainting, screaming blonde heroine of King Kong. If
the jungle that hang in their way, the young man pulling on the woman i < >
MI i rvs.ir y for the propagaton of the "mee" and the furtherance of Civiliza-
run even f ster as she becomes progressively weaker, until she is so r \d that she has to Ibe I M Icarried
I , '.lie is,toassafety in thealways
Jack says, man's arms. This
trouble. Shescrm
is the, >i object of the film spec-
i.n Ir, ireognized as a necessary accessory because, as Denham explains
the two running, running, forever running, is full of suspense Wi II Km ir
t v i v l v , " I he public, Bless 'em! Must have a pretty face to look at." King
catch up? Will they make it? Moreover, will they make it back to C i v i l i i ^ M i i r I ir i; ms then as thehunt foran appropriate "pretty face" for the exped -
tion? Their running is a literal embodiment of the race of history, .1 i . n ' HHII ,i w h i le womanjust as t later becomes a hunt for Kong.
which is a locus of ethnographic cinema. The outcome is known- iln- n u m
I IM l i l m is set contemporaneously at theheight of the Great Depression.
ster will be destroyed, and the heroic whites will triumph but i l n - n i I t i i t i u r . l v , c t i i i c i s m of King Kong rarely mentions Ann's poverty and her
always a tensin, an element of uncertainty, a possibility that the i .1, r i n n l i n i ' l i , ,1 i i i m m a l status. In the taxonomic classification system of early
go either way. |tnliiM|', >lor,v aiul Regnault's conception of race as pathology provides an
MI i II. ni i l l i i s i i . i i ion of this thcmethe interest in indigenous peoples as
i. At Dock: The White Male lite Hunters, Filmmakers, Voviiy.i-r. n, |*ltiini u i u .is rlosely allicd to the study of "sociolgica!" types such as the
roes. King Kongbegins and ends as a tribute to the Empire S t a i i - U n i U m , MIH..I u u n i l i r c n m m . i l , the e t h n i c immigrant, laborers, homosexuals, and
the triumph of modernity. After credits with graphics of the l.u .ni, "i <\ JJit I H - . I I A l l o i hese marginal groups were sccn as deficient both morally
building, the film introduces the viewer to the humans whom ani h n i | > , > l , , | , > i. I I , , ni.illv."
had glorificd as being at the "hcad of the stecplechase" of hisloi y i In > l m < | ii n l i mi r'.pies A u n I ).irrow when she is canght tryng to steal an apple
male, specifically the adventurous white ni a le l i t e . We meei l i i s i i l n h u
-i \ m i , u , i h e liciomc to he is an l ; ,ve wlio has alreaily fallen. He takes
male crew of the moving p i e t u r e ship: the m a s t e r n i i i u l o t h r i .|>, , i n l < i II IM i , , i l l r r shop lo ex pa i n his i n t e m i ns, a nil t h e audience as well as
the w h i t e b e a t i t v and I he beasl i s a characle nameil C !ai 1 I >enh.im . l.iU I. i i
MU r, !. in -.eiiilim/r hei uiule llie hiij'.hl liglils o the interior. In
172 Teratology

several close-ups from the chest up, Ann sits eagerly with her back against a
wall lined like a Cartesian grid; she is posed in the manner of anthropologi- M '
cal as well as criminal photographs. The lines of the wall imprison Ann as a
type; it is Denham who has saved her from criminal punishment, but he
will entrap her, even while elevating her, as object of trade and of spectacle.
If, as a criminal in the darkened streets of Manhattan, Ann is first associated
with darkness, she also represents lightness: as Cooper told Fay Wray, he
wanted Ann to be a blonde beauty in order to highlight the contrast with
Kong (Cooper referred to Kong as the darkest leading man she would ever
have).44 Throughout the film, Ann is compared implicitly to Kong. Cooper ya',M}? W Ji'fc
had his own notions about woman as beast:
Woman has retained, fortunately, the fighting, dominant blood of the
savage. . . . She would have perished as a distinctive individual long W?!P*SPK
ago had it not been for her own rights. This quality can be found in the
most frage of women. For a long time I always thought that "the
lylW'ltlIfK
most dangerous" game naturally would be one in which a woman was
involved.45 1 1 M i l i from Trader Horn (1931), dir. W. S. van Dyke.
|( i u u i i-.sy of the Museum of Modern Art)
Cinema works as a time machine not only in the scientific research film,
the romantic ethnographic reconstruction, or the Hollywood horror film: as
this "racializing" of gender reveis, white women as well as people of colm
are "evolutionized." If the 19305 was the era of Frankenstein, Dracula, and shouting at them and whipping them. At the film's end she and
King Kong, it was also the period which saw Lota the Panther Woman, N111. i l'rin Ira ve frica to get married, effectively marking Nina's entry into Civi-
the Fetish in Trader Horn (1931), the gorilla-suited Helen Faraday (Mari e 11 < ll.Miion as a proper wife. Ranchero, Trader Horn's African assistant, be-
Dietrich) in Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932,), and the incessan Is i mus leminized and is made into the object of desire for the Great White
screaming characters played by Fay Wray. I l i n i ihno."'
H.un r i , as seen in the death scene where Trader Horn embraces the dying
The figure of the white woman is thus another object of knowledge m-nl
ing to be explored, understood, and tamed. In Trader Horn, for exainplr, .1 Ih,'.mu.u ly in Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932), it is unmistakably
film by W. S. van Dyke (who also made White Shadows in the Soutli Seat i u l n i e woman who is the enticing object of inquiry. The film begins
[192,9] and Tarzan the Ape Man [1932]), the legendary Trader Horn and I n - r,.n n ,i y.miip of students of science unexpectedly come across Helen and
sidekick Per soon embark on a mission to save the young white w t i i n . m lu i M i n ss Iriends swimming nude in a secluded lake in Germany. Helen
Nina, who as a child had been abducted in an African raid and wlm h.i Idii i m . M I es one of these menFaraday, an American scientistand they
become a "fetish" for an African tribe. The characterization of Nina i?, un .011 named /ohnny. The image of Helen frolicking n the water is
biguous and strangely charged. Speaking no English, and with lu-i w i M .11 ni o i he South Scasbathingbeauties who representa Golden Age
frizzy blond hair and skimpy feathered outfit, she is initially pctrnvi ,1 itl l i i i i n i m e m 'l'tihu and White Shcidows in the South Seas. Helen, a the-
being "as great a savage" as the Africans with whom she li ves. Like l.oi.i i l i . illi i -ti i n .,, is b i o u g h t o u t of na tu re and thus "civilized/'Bccause Faraday is
Panther Woman in Island of Lost Souls, Nina has the crackling Innr. luill |li in i i l ni n i o i i e y lo pay lor a medical operation, Helen returns to the the-
and the blazing, darting eyes of a creature who is half-animal, h a l l h n m m |MM ( d i l . i l l lo .1 more' "savage" s t a t e is indicated hy her famous "Hot
But while Lota is, in a sense, racially coded as ;\. N i n a is codnl i i VIH u!'"' i i n m h r i In ,i laney n i g h t r l i i b ( o r a n audienee o rieh white men,
truc white woman capable o dominating tlie A l r i r a n men o hn v i l l ijii n i In i'.ur, w i i h shois o ( l i e s m i l i m ; i'.esliues o ( h e hlack orehestra
lili i u l u i r .1 conga Ime o w l n t i - >'
King Kong and the Monster 175
-'
Even as the White Woman is made into the visual object par excellence,
her wildness is linked to her desire to know through seeing. As the object of
the camera and of the viewer's gaze, Ann is punished for wanting to be an
active viewer. It is Ann's curiosity to see that repeatedly gets her into trou-
ble. Her own gaze mus be continually frustrated, for the gaze has been
cstablished as allied with the camera, and thus with Cari Denhamthe
White Male.

(. On Deck at Sea: The Chnese ManBarbarie, Comical, Feminized. The


f i l m crew together with Ann then embark on their voyage to a mysterious
i.sland. One scene aboard the ship magnificently coalesces into a racial tab-
lea u. On deck, Ann waits for her screen test to begin, while Charlie (Vic-
loi Wong)the Chnese cook for the shippeis potatoes. Ann laughs at
('liarlie's pidgin English. He is firmly established as a guest worker, not the
iwnt of a cross-racial relationship. Charlie never really looks at Ann: he is a
lonking glass for Ann, a means to establish what Laura Mulvey has called
l i r r "to-be-looked-at-ness."47 Moreover, Charlie is feminized by his position
43. Still from Blonde Venus (1932), dir. Josef von Sternberg. ir. cook and by his body language. Any possible hint of sexual tensin be-
(Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art) i wren Ann and Charlie is diffused by the sudden appearance of Jack who
li u iks actively at Ann's face, alternately telling her he approves of her looks,
H i u l complaining that she is trouble. Ann retorts, "Iggy's nice to me. Iggy
Afro wigs weave their way on stage, swaying in their grass skirts, leadiny, .1
hlu-s me better than he likes anyone else on board,"at which point the film
squatting gorilla on a chain. Suddenly a pal blonde apparition with Ion)1,
1 1 i i s (o reveal the identity of Iggy, a pet monkey on a string, a kind of
white arms emerges from the black hairy gorilla suit: it is Helcn, singin^.
n a i u re precursor to Kong. This scene establishes an evolutionary and
how "she wants to be bad," how she is "beginning to feel like an Afrir.m
( l u i s anthropological hierarchy: Iggy the monkey jerks frantically on the
queen." This "Hot Voodoo" number highlights how White Woman, as < > ! >
( l i i H i i H l , Charlie the Chinese man sits peeling potatoes in the background,
ject of spectacle, was seen as savage, part of her appeal her inherent In
A u n is standing and thus is higher than Charlie, and Jack stands over them
tiality. But it is the myth of frica which lends the image of Hclcn l u iill, lookingintentlyat Ann.48
"savagery": the image of frica and blacknessthe orchestra leader, i l i <
l l i r character of Charlie, his lowered posture and pidgin English, draws
black stuttering man at the bar, the conga line, and Helen's gorilla/Al i u .m
itin n i i o n to the place of Asia in the cinematic imagination. Films dur-
queen stanceis exploited in order to spectacularize Helen's sexual i t y . ' I I u
tii): f l u s period shown in the bigger movie houses were often accompanied
aristocratic society of the nightclub is seen as wickedly decadcnt, . u !
In ,n is labclcd "exotic" such as a Siamese twins act. As evdenced by the
Broadway becomes a present-day jungle. (MI i i l i . i l inany early movie houses were built as faux Egyptan or Chinese
The depiction of Ann Darrow, like that of her screen sisters Lota, N m \d Helen, reveis a cinematic fascination with bcautiful white w o m r n i
|i<il u rs, last Asia, Egypt, and cinema were firmly intertwined: cinema
m u l l i . i k c (he Iraveler/viewer eithcr to the past and beyond to Savagery, or
unconscious source of disordcr. The doublc-edged rcprcscntation I i l n
|lii"ii):h i he present to the futurc. 49 East Asia is seen as an intermedate
White Womanas pillar of the white family, superior to non-wbiu- n u l i n
I I I H I H l i r i w r r n (he West and "the Rest," as midway between Savagery and
nous peoples, but also as a possibly Savage creature, inferior to w h i l r u n n
( h i l i . . i l i o n In a srene in Kiiig Konx, f o r e x a m p l e , the wall which prevents
is cxpressed in the parallels drawn between Ann and Kong as oli|i-t i -I fciiMi; I n i m csr.ipmi; Irom ( h e jimgle is dcscribcd hoth as Egyptian and as
spectaele, and by |ad< Driscoll's s i n i u l t a n c o u s car o and lust loi lu-i i(|.in in Anr.koi W a t . Asia is i l i u s sccn as an impenetrable wall, one side
iy6 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster i //
facing the future, one side opening onto prehistory. The prototypical Ch- But the common interpretation that the natives are coded as black,
nese in cinemaChan, "the Yellow Man" of D. W. Griffith's film Broken merely derogatory stereotypes for African Americans, fails to take seriously
Blossoms (1919), for examplewas a liminal being, neither a real man or a the way that King Kong engages the racial discourse of ethnographic cin-
real woman, trapped in the role of looking glass, a reflecting surface. ema. Just as Malinowski described the Trobriand Islanders using a racial
After the racial tableau of the potato-peeling scene, Denham reveis to slur for blacks in his diaries, the natives of Skull Island who are coded as
Jack and the Captain the destination of the voyagea forgotten land called black are also explicitly geographically situated off the coast of Sumatra, in
Skull Island off the coast of Sumatra. The next scene on deck emphatically what today is called Indonesia. Many Indonesians have been and are seen by
locates Ann as spectacle for a sadistic white male gaze. Ann is implicitly (he West as black or, to use the scientific category, "Oceanic Negroid."54
compared to a charging rhino in Denham's explanation to her of why he Thus the use of African American extras to play the role of Indonesian
shoots wild animis. Ann shivers and raises her hands as Denham's voice islanders underlines how in the popular as well as scientific imagination
contines, "You're amazed!" dark skin was fully synonymous with Savagery. Anthropological accounts
You can't believe it! Your eyes open wider! It's horrible Ann but you o Sumatran groups such as the Nias Islanders (whose dialect the Skull
can't look away. There's no chance for you Ann. No escape. You're Islanders speak) and of the Dayak groups of Kalimantan and Sarawak (i.e.;
helpless Ann. Helpless. There's just one chance. If you could scream, i lie Wild Man of Borneo) also painted the groups as dark-skinned Savages,
but your throat's paralyzed. Try to scream Ann. Try! Perhaps if you Animists, Warlike Cannibals. King Kong is merely a baroque versin of this
image of the "ethnographic."
didn't see it you could scream. Throw your arms across your eyes and
scream. Ann, scream for your Ufe! The arbitrariness of ethnic distinctions in Hollywood is reflected in the
rhoice of the actor Noble P. Johnson to play the Chief of this Malayo-
Ann is seen to be enjoying the attentions of the camera and the crew, and Polynesian island. Johnson, a light-skinned African American actor and a
Fay Wray herself described the filming as "a kind of pleasurable torment."'" .pioneer producer of black film (in 1916, he founded the Lincoln Motion
l'n ture Company), also played Ivan, the Cossack servant in Cooper and
4. Ai the Village on Skull Island: Indigenous IslandersSavage, Supi-i Schoedsack's The Most Dangemus Game.55 Similarly, the Yaqui actor Steve
stitious, Bestial, Childlike, Evil. Cutting through the water in dense blincl ( Icmente played the evil Mongolian servant in The Most Dangerous Game,
ing fog, the sound of drums beating in the distance, the moving picture ship , i i n l m King Kong he appears as the Medicine Man.
arrives at Skull Island. When the fog clears, "seeing is believing," Denham I lie representation of the native in King Kong is therefore extremely
exclaims, as he gloats to the Captain of how closely the island resembles 1111 i i i n i p l e x : it is true that, in the context of black/white relations in the
map of the island he had shown the Captain. Denham and the crew, incliul I i m i i ' i l States, whites undoubtedly were intended to see the Islanders as
ing Ann, sneak on to the island, and see in the distance an enormous w.ill l i l . i t k, Init t is also true that the Islanders are clearly defined as being from
Denham explains that the natives have "slipped back" and are infenoi in i hf Indonesian archipelago. An African American viewer could thus lcate
the higher civilization that once inhabited the island and madc the w . i l l i l n S k u l l Islanders as Sumatrans and still register them as Other. The cu-
The island is constructed as a feminine space with a wall which mus In i i n i i - , obsession with authenticity in the use of the Nias languagethe ac-
penetrated before male glory can be attained.51 l u r , '.pr.ik a few heavily American-accented phrases of the languagecalis
The Skull Islandersdark-skinned, fierce, lustful, and yct c h i l d l i l < i i i c i i i ion to the fact that thcse cinematic natives have a referent out in the
afraid of gunsare represented as the most Savage of men. Both David U . n .11 w i n l d , lor Nias isan island off the coast of Sumatra.
sen and James Snead have pointed out the racial politics played out in /\KM i I I K lii'.ure in the great island spectacle is practically erased. Ann is the
Kong by way of the Skull Islanders, emphasizing that the portray.il o i l n i t i l i t - i lo i l i c w h i t e man, and the native man is the Other to Ann, but the
Islanders built on racist fears of miscegenation by whites during the pe I 11,111 vi woman the bride, of Kongfwhen the film crew arrives on the island,
of the great African American migration to the North.''-' James Siu-.ul .iK l l n l'.l.indiTs are preparing a ceremonial "bride" offering to Kong)has no
refers to Denham's voyage as "optical-colonialism" and sees Kong's t .ipi m i i i l i u ( u n i d , naki-d, dorilc, and m u i r , she is f i n n l y established as less
as an ideolgica! screen for the Europcan-American slavc trailc.''' i v . m l i v ni spcctaclr, :\C shadow ncxt lo A u n , and lar less desirable as a
I
178 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster 179
commodity. Indeed, Kong's bride never speaks in the film, only looking up
once at the moment that Denham and his crew are spotted. In the evolu- begin. A roar is heard, the nativas silently watch, and Kong pushes the trees
apart to get a better look at Ann.
tionary schema of King Kong she hardly exists. As cultural critic Michele
Wallace has pointed out, in racialized ideology there is no Other to the
woman of color; she is denied a space of agency.56 However, within the .The fungle: King Kong The Missing Link. Kong is a cinematic fantasy of
racial and gender economy of King Kong, it is impossible to imagine that a the Darwinian link between the anthropoid ape and man. As Donna Hara-
man be sacrificed in her place: the centerpiece of the spectacle must be way explains in her brillant analysis of the narratives implicit in Jane
female, to be visually possessed and violated by men. Goodall's primatological research project, the burden of the ideology of race
Although we remember the ame of Fay Wray and forget her character's after World War II was often placed on the anthropoid ape rather than on
ame in King Kong, Ann Darrow, we remember the ame Nanook, and indigenous peoples.57 Cooper's explanation for creating a monster Missing
never think of Allakariallak. Nobody dcigned to ask if Nanook was the Link stemmed from his lament that there were no more places to discover.
actor's real ame in Nanook of the North, or to question the ethics of ven- Perhaps even at the height of imperialism, the viability of representing
triloquism and taxidermy in romantic ethnography: the Native Man in eth- native peoples as static Ethnographic beings was seen as impossible: there
nographic cinema is not even perceived as being an actor: his performance is was always the problem that these colonial subjects spoke, and spoke quite
always "real." At the other extreme is the White Woman. Fay Wray be- vehemently. Apes, however, do not speak. And so the voyage of the moving
comes, in the public's eye, the screaming heroine that she played; by iden- picture ship culminates with an encounter with the prehistoric Kong.
tifying the heroine with the "real" ame of the actress, the feminine is As we have seen with the work of Regnault, the desire to rank the "races"
revealed as pur spectacle. The White Woman in ethnographic cinema can- iind find the "missing link" between man and the ape was a defining obses-
not, like Allakariallak, be renamed, for she is the star, already a signifier, for NIOII of nneteenth-century anthropology. This fascination manifested itself
beauty, glamour, the feminine, but also the unknown. In popular culture in the portrayal of the ape as evil monster, a characteriza-
By contrast, the Native Woman almost always remains unnamed: she is l ii ni which only gained currency in the latter half of the nineteenth century
typified by the compliant, silent, staring bride of Kong (see illustration i ) w i i h (he rise of Social Darwinism. Edgar Alian
r w n s m . Edgar Alian Poe's
Poe's "The
"The Murders
Murders in
in the
the
Vlorgue" (1841)15 an earlvinst;in<"pr,-i-,--
H tic Morgue" (1841) is an early instance of this genre, in which the hideous
This is not to say that there are no exceptionsTabu's Reri, or Gooiiii
Goona's Dasnee, for examplebut she largely remains mute, a type. As ex n n m l e r of two Parisian women is ascribed to an escaped orangutn. A later
emplified by the character of Cunayou in Nanook of the North, the Na t i v e i s.imple is H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1896), in which power is held
Woman is the silent, figure of maternity, and through the kind of "girlir" IM ( h e I u ture by the Morlocks, evil, cannibalistic apes, the descendants of
photos displayed by Burden, to take another example, she is the figure ni l l i e miulern-day working man. Cooper's own fascination with apes sup-
eroticism, of goona goona. The Native Woman is silent because, as Michel ( H r . e d l v hegan with his childhood reading of Paul du Chaillu's Explorations
Wallace has pointed out, there is no other for the other. If the White W< >i i1.11 < in / iiiiioritil frica (1856). Du Chaillu, the first white man to shoot a
is the other to the White Man, and the Native Man the other to the W l m < j . M i i l l . i . described the gorilla as "some hellish dream creaturea being of
Woman, the Native Woman is excluded from the spacc of production |u-.i l l i M i liiileous order, half-man half-beast," and already identified the gorilla
as anthropology describes women as objects of exchange which enablc l< m i" i i l e . i i u r c notorious for abducting women.58 Harold Hellenbrand ex-
ship systems to function, cinema circuales the native woman as p i n r ,u (iliiiie, i l u f i l m s lke King Kong were representations which "cinematized,
nifier, or as Wallace puts it, as a black hole, in a system that is largely < > i n ni ni.nli l.ii.r.ci i han life, the conflict of white civlization with brute strength
iiiiil i nir.c musiiess in the guise of a prehistoric or backwards beast. Often
male transaction.
Ann is kidnapped and replaccs the bride of Kong, for the Skull Kl.mJ H i n H c l i i h e he.isi was an ape, and the ape black." This image, Hellenbrand
Chief recognizes that she is six times more valuable than an m i l i r r M j ' l MU-., w.is .i visualizaron o "the naturalist and Spenceran concet of
'Illt .i'i liin.r.le.' " '"
woman (the Chief offers to purchasc Ann from Denham at thispricc) Smil
I il'i ihe c e n t a m o Tlic Mus nangcrou* dame, or the minotaur of the
thereafter, however, Kong's arrival at llie wall is gnnounced w i t h i l n .mi
h .inie.ilisis, King KOMI; w.is h.ill ni.in/hall beast. Many films before
ing of the gong, the three eoups de (lientre announcing t h a t ( h e d i . i m . i i i"
/ i./n; li.nl depieied Alne.ins .ind Asi.IMS .is .ipe men, histlul and sav-
18o Teratology

age.60 Sometimes the films involved evil apelike creatures such as the evil King Kong and the Monster 1 8 1
ape in Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel Tarzan of the Apes (1912), which was Both the desire to see and the dangcrs of seeing, essential to the horror
first filmed in 1918, or the evil creatures featured in the film adaptation of film, are foregrounded in King Kong. The forbidden, what "no white man
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1921), produced by First National has seen," is above all the interracial, interspecies intercourse of Ann and
Studio. In the latter film, an expedition of scientists fights dinosaurs and Kong. This titillation propels the narrative forward. King Kong the film, like
evil apelike men in South America. The animator of The Lost World, Willis its eponymous character, is a monster, a hybrid of the ethnographic film and
O'Brien, was also the animator of King Kong.61 the science fiction film. As in the Komodo dragn expedition film, itself a
But the ape-man did not merely lurk about in science fictlon, ethno- hybrid, the white woman is a lure, an object to stimulate the beast's willing-
graphic cinema, or jungle stories. The cinematic time machine was at work ness to come out nto the open and be seen. Kong sees Ann and immedately
in the racial melodrama as well: D. W. Griffith's films were masterworks wants to possess her. Ann collapses: incapable of movement, she is an ob-
of racialist evolutionism. His early films often involved prehistoric tribes, JL'ct to be possessed, an object of circulation; but it is Kong who must be
captured.
and he made several racial melodramas.62 In The Birth of a Nation (1915),
Griffith's depiction of the African American character Gus is faithful to the
book upon which the film was based, Thomas Dixon Jr.'s The Clansman <i. The Jungle: Dinosaurs and the Prehistoric Age. Kong leaves the scene at
(1905). Gus is represented in Dixon's book as a lascivious apelike beast who l lie wall after taking possession of Ann, and the camera follows Kong be-
lusts after innocent white girls. This film, which many whites, includinj; voiul the wall to a "forgotten land": here the time voyage reaches its desti-
Robert and Francs Flaherty, found to be an extremely moving and profound n.'ition a place where time has stopped and dinosaurs still roam, a pre-
masterpiece (and which many people of color found abominable), is noi hisloric jungle ofgiant trees andplants. Inhis design for the opening shot of
only a defining "monument" of the history of cinema, it also serves as a i l i i s scene, Willis O'Brien drew on nineteenth-century images of fantasy
defining artifact of the nation: the nation is born through a demarcation o Undscapes, inspired particularly by Arnold Bocklin's painting The Isle of
the African American as inferior Other against which white "superiority " \-. lili' Dcad (1880), and by Gustave Dor's illustratons of purgatories, hells,
defined.63 iiiul wild landscapes.64 O'Brien's animation is almost seamless, and its jar-
Although Kong is monstrousboth in size and by virtue of his h y l u n l i m>; M~CS and spaces add up to a pastiche which is quite compelling. Using
status as man/apeKong is a Noble Savage as well. Noble Savagery, U i i p i n . i l (ricks such as projected backdrops and painted glass plates, Willis
emphasized earlier, was important to the romantic ethnographic cincm.i < >l 1 1 Mi ICH created a hyperreal space.65 As Denham, Jack, and the crew, Lillipu-
filmmakers like Flaherty and Murnau. There is a noble side to Kong: IN m l i i i i i in contrast to the giant vegetation, fire at a huge dinosaur in the back-
the ethnographic exposition, the boundaries between viewer and vu -wc > l ni i ii 1 1 ni,
V
i lie viewer has a sense that they are firinginto a museum dinosaur
were at times broken through, allowing the viewer of King Kong to ser i I n -tUH. WJ.

world from Kong's eyes. This play with boundaries is made possibK-1>\ I n me kry scene, fantasy literally bumps up against reality. Kong places
H ......
way that Kong is filmed. For example, in the scenes where Kong v i e w. A ,< ni lop of n tree in the foreground, and we see him dueling with a
for the first time, there are shot/reaction shots of Kong and of wh.n K"m ,nii'..mnis. Ann must sit and watch, rooted to the scene. The fighting
sees. Similarly the viewer experiences Kong's view of the audicncr w l i < n In '. i l i i - n l i t e r a l l y bump into Ann's space, knockng down the tree on
is later exhibited in the Broadway theater. As these shots suggrsi, !- li '.lie sits. Ann falls precipitously farther into the foreground: in a
is dccidedly anthropomorphized. He fights dinosaurs like a h m i i . n i |>n .lie l.ills uto our space, the space of the audience. Fantasy and real-
fighter, is tender toward Ann, and is tragically defiant at the cnd o i l i < M u i onioined marvelously in O'Brien's animation. Praising the film's
his back arched like a diva just before he falls from the Empirc S I . H I r.mi.l . i i l l o c a i i n g l y drcamlikepower, Claude Ollierdrawsattention to this
i ni i l i c . m i m . i t i o n :
ing. On Skull Island, moreover, Kong is in control of the ga/.r; Aun n lm
"just wants to see," is identified only by her scrcam, and by lici IM i i i > M| un
inability to use her legs to stand up and run away whcncvcr Konj-, r. n. i l . . n i i i i o i liaws in the conl i n n i t y o perspective or movement, far
vicinity. i dc'.i l o y i n g or i'iileebling I he c r e c l i i l i l y o I he spectaclc, are in ac-
i . i i I u-1 w i l h 11 u' pre.sc'iilalion o a t o t a l I y d r e a m l i k c si. He, a dream
18 2, Teratology King Kong and the Monster 183

created by means of spatial illusion, optical displacements, and disrup-


tions between individual shots and the overall continuity. The "doubt-
ful" space created by the depth montages of O'Brien and the necessity
of filming in fragmented time results in a visual pattern altogether of a
kind with the sort of "collage" manifest in all visions of nightmare
worlds.66
As Noel Carroll has suggested, the dinosaur, though always used to in-
voke prehistory, was paradoxically a modern monster. The dinosaur, only
made fashionable beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, soon became
an object of study and of museum spectacle for those fascinated by the
implications of time and evolution. Carroll explains why dinosaurs and
warring tribes were key to the literature of such writers as Jules Verne and
Edgar Rice Burroughs: "as symbols, dinosaurs and their fictional lost world
are rather modern, i.e., as modern as our concept of prehistory."67 Carroll
arges that, from the turn of the century, the jungle metaphor referred to the
necessarily savage character of economic competition, an economic sur-
vival of the fittest:
.|.|. Still from KingKong (1933), dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.
The combination of dinosaurs with the biologically charged character- |('(uirtcsy of the Museum of Modern Art)
ization of battling nation/tribes (in which the "humans" were aided by
Europeans) is a recurring motif in prehistoric tales; it registers the ap-
w h i c h Kong crushes down, or that the serpent-like body of the dinosaur
plication of intrinsically nondramatic biological concepts like "com-
lui-shadows the snaking, elevated train, or that Kong should crunch a Skull
petition" and "survival" to social concepts where the biological con-
Kl.nulcr in his mouth in the sanie way that he does a New Yorker. Even the
cepts become particularized, dramatized, literalized.... This tendency
iulience for the formal unveiling of Kong, made up of white theatergoers in
to transate the terms of pur biological theory into vivid, combat-
lu in.il evening dress, mirrors the Skull Islanders: both are hungry for the
oriented metaphors for picturing society was rife at the turn of the
century and prehistoric tales may, thereforc, be seen in conjunction i|>i(-lacle, and on Broadway, as on Skull Island, the spectacle is a subdued
(plticatcd or captive) Kong.
with the currency of Social Darwinism.68
I h r lascinating cannibalism of the audience, its greedy desire to see
In the jungle, Kongthe Missing Linkalways wins in the eat-or-be-eatcn K i ini;, is the subject matter of the next sequence. The desire of the audience
world of ruthless competition for Ann. i 'i 1 1 1 1 1 n (>r of our own desire to see. Depression Manhattan is portrayed as a
l i . i i ' . l i M ingle in the beginning of King Kong, but for the bourgeois white the-
7. Broadway: The White Bourgeois AudienceSuiaffin, Consumensi. ih i . M i d i c n c c awaiting the unveiling of Kong, the jungle must be brought
Cowed. When Kong is finally subdued by Jack and Cari, fellcd by a ga1. i I I I M - I , .in cxample of what Haraway has called the entertainment of vio-
bomb, and is brought to Manhattan, King Kong reverses itself and retn ir. l i i i i 'I Itomularics. 7 0 Like the nghtclub crowd in Blonde Venus, orthemem-
forward in time to the present. Although situated in the present, howcvt i , ln c. ul i l u ' audience waiting for Kong, we, the viewers of the film, are also
Manhattan is a city in which all is no in order (recall the early, dark SCCIH c >l ! I M | I | I . 11 Iv ( i i t i c i z c d for our voracious appctite to see the "real" thing, even
desperate women waiting in a soup line). 69 Thcrc is stylistic and n a r r a n v . i l |hnii)'.li wc .ilrcady know t h a t what we take for real is now only film, a
symmetry between Manhattan and Skull Island: it is not surprising t l n n ! i i i i n As t h e theatergoers ( a k e t h e i r scats, one elderly, crotchety
that the wall of Skull Island is mirrored in ilie thCAtCI w a l l in M a n l i . H i . m I v v i t h spi'ctacli-s complains, "I can't sit so ncar (he screen. t hurts
184 Teratology

my eyes." To which the usher informs her, "This is not a moving picture, 'nster 185
madam." She huffs, "Well! I never! I thought I was going to see something!"
In this comic aside, the ref erent itself is secondary to the representation; the
woman's comment, however, plays on the audience's desire to see the con-
flation of film and reality. Kong, of course, is an animated monster created
through the use of eighteen-inch full-body models, and of seprate models
of his head and paws: the monster himself is not even whole, but made of
pieces, already fetishized. Like Disneyland, Kong is presented as imaginary
in order that we more firmly believe that the rest of the world is real.71
Denham tells the eager audience that he has "a story so strange that no
one will believe it." He contines,

But ladies and gentlemen, seeing is believing. And we, my partners and
I, have brought back the living proof of our adventure. An adventure in
which twelve of our party rnet horrible death.... I'm going to show you
the greatest thing your eyes have ever beheld. He was a king and a god
in the world he knew. But now he comes to civilization. Merely a
captive. A show to gratify your curiosity.
Again the audience's desire to see is made visible. The curtain is pulled back
and Kong appears, manacled as if crucified (Ann was also manacled on Sku 11
.|s Siill (rom King Kong (1935), dir.MeranC. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack.
Island). Next we see a reaction shot of the audience from Kong's (as well as |i nurtcsy of the Museum of Modern Art)
Denham's) perspective. Denham then explains that he wants to allow t l u
audience the privilege of witnessing the first photographs taken of Kong a 1111
his captors. i .ilion of this fear. Lvy thus argued that the terror of being an unwlling
In ethnographic cinema the process of visualization is often brough i 11 > v i r wcr is what made the film work:
the fore through the use of maps, panoramic views, and scenes of the t i l n
maker as intrepid adventurer/photographer. King Kong reveis what h . i | > I saw again trait by trait a remarkable detail of my familiar nightmares,
pens when the processes of visualization break down. Infuriated at the pl n < w i t h the anguish and the atrocious malaise which accompanes it. A
tographers, whom he thinks are attacking Ann, Kong's huge body frees 11 M 11 'pcctator, not very reassured, would like to leave, but one makes him
from the chains, and he penetrales the audience's space. Kong refuscs l u .ish.imcd of his pusillanimity and he sits down again. This spectator,
u '.s mysclf; one hundred times, in my dream.
"shot." He tears down the theater wall, grabs a sleeping woman thnmj'h m
open window in a nearby building, throws her down, and finally spot s A n n I li i l i - M 11 lies the film as akin to a Max Ernst fantasy of Maldoror: "It does
in a hotel room with Jack. un .i|i|u-.ir necessary to insist on the apocalyptic grandeur of certain tab-
Ann's cry that it is "like a terrible dream" makes explicit the o i u - m . li.iir., ( i . i i i i f u l a r l y the battle of King Kong in the grotto, with the mon-
character of the film, a perception shared by the surrealists when i l u Mm n t i . i i r . .( ipcnt; thcqualityof the decorsseems tome, in one hundred places,
was released. King Kong was seen by some surrealists as a poctic f i l m , 1 1 > . l u i h M.-ildororicn." 7 - 1 As Theodor W. Adorno pointed out, surrealism at-
perfect cinematic versin of a surrealist drcam. 7; The strange honoi c >! i IP i M i i i ' i 1 . lo slioc'k us w i t h i he experience of childhood, and thus makes fre-
film strucka chordin Jean Lvy. Writing for the surrealist art j o n n i . i l A l m , . l|Mi ni ir.f o moniage, > t e c h n i q u c which leads the viewer to ask, "Where
taue in 1934, he reealled that as i c h i l d he liad lost sleep mn Ir.n i l i n IIMK I M - C I I i l i . i t brloie:""' 'l'lie rccognilion (if childhood experience, so
gorilla-like monsters might appearat the w i n d o w , King Kony. w.is flttii l i i j i . n i ni s u r t c a l i s m , was made visceral n //n; Koti^.':'
V V I n i lie i ni m i l Ms loi ni w.is exallcd, however A.'/"" ' ' ' '
King Kong and the Monster 187
186 Teratology
was complicit with the avant-garde's love of Primitivism, its tendency to
look at the Primitive as a figure of the unconscious, as a limit to the ratio of
the West. Kong is a cinematic visualization of the rnale beast which the
Surrealists so longed to unleash. In King Kong, visualization is a hunt which
involves titillation, capture, spectacle, and death: King Kong is a mix of the
surrealist ingredients of the erotic, the exotic, and the unconscious.76 James
Cliff ord suggests surrealism is in this sense a modern sensibility: "Reality is
no longer a given, a natural, familiar environment. The self, cut lose from
its attachments, must discover meaning where it maya predicament,
evoked at its most nihilistic, that underlies both surrealism and modern
ethnography."77 Clifford calis the object of this ethnographic/surrealist
attitudenon-Western peoples, and womenthe other.78 If we take Lvy
seriously and consider King Kong as, among other things, a surrealist text,
the object of the ethnographic surrealist attitude of the lm is thus the
Ethnographic itself, King Kong as Other, and WomanAnnas Other.

8. At the Pinnacle of the Empire State Building: The White Male Mili-
tary Piogress, Technology, Imperialism, the Future. King Kong, which has
taken us back in time and returned us to the present, now lurches forward |d S t i l l from King Kong (1933), dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schocdsack.
and upwardsup to the future. Ann is seized by the rampaging Kong. The ( uiirtcsy of the Muscum of Modern Art)
searchlights of the city keep Kong in sight, and all watch as he climbs to the
top of the Empire State Building. Completed in 1932, the Empire State
Building was, at the time of the film, the ultmate U.S. symbol of progress, ni.nniained, order must reign again, and everything must returnto its place.
A'i lolin Seeleye writes,
technology, and Civilization. Like the Eiffel Tower at the turn of the cen
tury, perceived as embodying French greatness, and which provided thr K i n g Kong is a movie inextricably tied by intertextual references to a
perfect contrast to the so-called "simple" cultures represented in the e t l i l< ing literary tradition in America, one that can be traced back via fairy
nographic expositions Regnault frequented, the Empire State Building pro .i i >ries to the Wild Man myth. It is a tradition, moreover, that promotes
vided the perfect contrast to the monster Kong. Ultimately only the mus i he majority opinin found in American literature, that wild things
sophisticated technology can stop Konggas bombs subdue him on Skull w h e t h e r whales, apes, or menbelong where the wild things are, that
Island, warplanes shoot him down in New York. Even as Kong meets I u i u .iiti-mpt any interplay with civilized forces is to guarantee the de-
fate, the play with the boundaries between observer and observed u > n M i uci ion (not the assimilation) of wildness.80
tinues: we see the action both from the point of view of Kong as tlie .m
I lid Ir.n two
planes swoop toward him, and from the point of view of the planes as i In \n him down. Ironically, <>( mixing
of the was explicit
gunners in Douglas
were Burden's
reportedly playi-dloathing of the "pigsty
l > \r and Schoedsack themselves.79
I m i i l , " " 1 ,i lear that was also aroused by migration, whether it was the
inir.i u 'I Alrican Amerieans from the rural South to Northern cities, or
This was the necessary conclusin to King Kong. As in Tab and (.'< > tita llii immii',1.ilion of non-Northcrn Europeans and inhabitants of formerly
rul TI! n.iiions to colonial metropolitan centcrs. The fear of interbreed-
Goona, the native must be crucified, murdered, or at least captmvd u n
HIM WT. m . i m l r s t in t h e stuily o race and h y b r i d i t y in early anthropology: it
made a wax figure, assuggestedby the close-up of Allakariallak at t l u - r n < l l
fctiic ,i I M I I I I I I I H - I I I s l r a i n in (ernian anthropology ail was, of course, later
Nanook o//ic orth. Tur, abov- all, in ordcr tor the myth of modemit v i I
188 Teratology
King Kong and the Monster 189
embraced by Adolf Hitler. In the United States, the nativist Lothrop Stod-
crum, the raising of the Ethnographic to the Icvel of horror. He is no longer a
dard was particularly influential in mobilizing fears of racial impurity. In
referent to anything, for the referent is cannibalized from within. When
The Revolt against Civilization, he asserted,
Kong stares into Ann's eyes, and Ann looks back at Kong, they are creating
Usually highly prolific, often endowed with extraordinary physical their own mise-en-abyme. The viewer, figured in this viewing process by
vigor, and able to migrate easily, owing to modern facilities of transpor- the Skull Islanders and the Broadway theater audience, is within this end-
tation, the more backwards people of the earth tend increasingly to less precession of signifiers. King Kong celbrales its own technology: al-
seek the centres of civilization, attracted thither by the higher wage though the film glorifies the Empire State Building, its greatest boast is its
and easier living conditions which there prevail. The influx of such own technology, the very ability of animator Willis O'Brien to crate a
lower elements into civilised society is an unmitigated disaster.... The cinematic monster like Kong, the monster of evolutionary nightmare. King
racial foundations of civilization are undermined.82 Kong thus ultimately celbrales cnema's tendency to crate monsters
which mirror the anxieties of any given age. In so doing, it screens from our
This again is the realm of "political physics": the Ethnographic is not coeval
visin the historical cannibalisms which turned West Africans into hiero-
with the Historical, and the two simply cannot exist in the same temporal
glyphs for medical science, stole the bones of Minik Wallace's father for a
space. To preserve the separation, the Civilized man will resort to apartheid
inuseum display, and led a Chirichiri man named Ota Benga to commit
and murder. To set evolution back on course in King Kong, the white man suicide.
seizes upon war technology. The film moves into the future with its depic-
tion of fighter planes as cutting-edge technological achievements, but it
also anticipates the postcolonial future by anticipating the end of the age of l;.ilmographic Spectacle Revisited
high imperialism. In this sense, the film may be taken as an unintended
l'oct Elizabeth Alexander subverts the representation of the African as Eth-
advance metaphor for racial conflict within the United States, and the im
nographic spectacle n her poem about Sarah Bartman (Saartjie Baartman), a
perialist wars that the United States fought in Asian and Central American
Klmi-San woman who was exhibited in France in the nineteenth century,
countries after I933.83
u i i l y to be dissected after death by the French biologist Georges Cuvier, her
Kong is thus both prehistoricalthe Ethnographicand postcolonial p u n a i s put on display at the Muse de l'homme in a bell jar:
the Postmodern, at the end of History. As a monster, he embodies the col
lapsing of the future into the prehistorical, the "primitive" into the tcrh ()bserve the wordless Odalisque.
nological, the Ethnographic into the Historical. King Kong insists that i l i < 111,1 ve not forgotten my Xhosa
public desires or hungers for authenticity: it is more spectacular to bnn.r. dicks. My flexible tongue
back Kong, than to take pictures of him. King Kong is a meditation m i .mil healthy mouth bewilder
ethnographic realism, on the audience's desire to believe and disbclicvr, i < t h i s man with his rotting teeth.
travel backward and forwards in time, to embrace the Ethnographic, ser 1 1 M II lie werc to let me rise up
world from his eyes, and then be rid of him, murder him. King Kong cn-.m l i n n i tliis table, I'dspirit
both a monster object and a monster viewer. The audiencc can o n l v I" I ns k n i ves and cut out his black heart,
monsters, since the image precedes the referent: King Kong becomcs .1 - , | i'.il il with science fluid inside
tacle, a monstrous parade of horrific images, andto borrow B a u d i i l l . n . l .1 I x - l l jar, place t on a low
expressiona "precession of simulacra."84 ihrll m a white man's muscum
Donna Haraway, as indicated above, has argued insightfully t h a i , m i l n n i i lir wholc world could sec
twentieth century, the narrativeof race and evolution bascme to l>r p l . n ! u w.is shrivcled and hard,
increasingly upon the figure of the anthropoid ape: Cooper ail Srliuril. i < I i;i u m r i i ir, delormed, unnatural.85
take this allegorical figure one stop furthcr, crcating the pcrleri I i l m . .
In lu i pnrm, A l e x a n i l e r slidcs (rom t l i r voicc o the ohservinganthropolo-
graphic monster. Stuck in the past, doomcd to dio, Kong is p m r -.1 1<
||m m.I M i r n isi id Mari man's own voirr, speaking her revrnge in t h e pres-
190 Teratology
+^~ji.if, and
King0 Kong O.ILU the
tne Monster 191
daily activities included watching televisin and working at computers, but
they also performed "traditional" aboriginal activities. A plaque presented
visitors with a map and a taxonomc description of Guatinau, an imaginary
island in the Caribbean, and explained that the people there were only
recently "discovered." Visitors could speak to them by telephone, but only
in Spanish.87 Gmez-Pea explained this parodie performance in the fol-
lowing terms:

We want to bring back the ghosts and unleash the demons of history,
but we want to do it in a way that the demons don't scare the Anglo-
European others, but forc them to begin a negotiation with these
ghosts and demons that will lead to a pact of co-existence. The ghosts
we are trying to unleash are extremely whimsical, irreverent, and gro-
tesque, extremely crazy and picaresque.88

My rereading artifacts of ethnographic cinema like King Kong, and by creat-


11ig vvorks that reveal gaps in dominant discourse, these demons may also be
unleashed to confront the monstrous imaging of indigenous peoples as
47. Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gmez-Pea in "The Couple in the Cage" (1992). Ithnographic.
(Photograph by Peter Barker, courtesy of Coco Fusco)

ent tense. Alexander's poem responds to the long-established tradition o


ethnographic spectacle in which indigenous peoples are exhibited and dis
sectedboth visually and literallya tradition carried forward in cinema i u
pastiche in Cooper and Schoedsack's King Kong; but it also speaks to i l n
possible forms of resistance. Poets and artists like Alexander upset t l n
structure of fascinating cannibalism, by imagining (or perhaps listen i nj; 11 >l
the silenced displayed person, by destroying the shell of the ethnogr.iphn
simulacrum which encases the historical person.86
A response to the racist politics of ethnographic display is literally > n i
bodied in the parodie performance of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Conn
Pea who defy the silencing and murder of native peoples in ethnogi.iplm
spectacle. In the quincentennial year of Columbus's arrival in Norl li A u n i
ica, Fusco and Gmez-Pea commemorated the event by drawingaticm
to the West's practice of exhibiting humans, highlighting the fac i l i . n i
lumbus brought back several Arawak Indians to the court of Spain In " I In
Year of the White Bear: Take OneTwo Undiscovered Aboriginrs," \<\*
sented at the University of California at Irvine, in Madrid's ( ' o l n m l ' i i
Plaza, and in London's Covent Carden, in 1992, I'usco and Come
dressed in speetacular Hollywood "native" dress and liveJ in a i.iy.r
CONCLUSIN.

PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE1

l''acing the Camera/Grabbing the Camera

Margaret Mead: No, you see, I do not accept that I have done things
1'i't'iiusel dreamt about them.
liiincs Raldwin: But Ihad to accept that I was on a slave boat once.
Mi'iitl: No.
liii/ilwin: But I was.
/\: Wait, you werenot. Look, you don't believe in reincarnation!
n, 11, l\vin: But my whole Ufe was deflned by history.... My Ufe was
i li-iini -d hy the time I was ftve by the history written on my brow.2

IM i <>/1 at the American Museum o Natural History, anthropologist Mar-


(iiiici Mead and the novelist and cultural crtic James Baldwin conducted a
den in,i(ing public debate onamong other topicsdefmitions of history
iinil t i m e . As Baldwin declared, there is "this time and time," that s, chron-
nliij'.ii .illy measurable time and a notion of time that collapses thepastinto
iln | ii <-sen t and future.3 He asserted to Mead's dismay, "I don'tthink history
tu iln p.i.si.... History is the present."4 Mead, on the other hand, saw history
tt'i ,i IIMICI-SS of compiling facts about past momentous events, suchasgreat
li.uili l i k r the Battle of Waterloo. Theproblems of racism in this country,
In :iilii mi'il, would be ameliorated if one could establish the exact facts of
)|M lir.iniir.il relationship between blacks and whites. Mead explained,
h n \ u iv (Ic/initon of what did happen is that if there'd have been a camera
llh n i i i n i i m g o n itsown steam with no human being to press the button on
ni nll u l i . i t would have been on the film is what really happened."s
Mi ,nl'. visin o history as the unfolding of events, as a linear temporal
fiin i -.-. ili.ii i-onlil be captured by a film camera running without any hu-
IIHM u n i v r u i m n , is a visin rooteil in the nineteenth-century Rankean
Hniinii ni 111 si (11 v: wif es cigcntlich xcwcscn. Since Mead saw film as a pos-
i >J4 Conclusin

Rouch's film about her, Poitiait of a Frend (1978), Mead proclaims con-
fidently that she and other anthropologists have largely succeeded with Conclusin 195
their project of documenting all the "vanishing," "primitive" cultures left as embodying and conferrng authenticity. Even today, the realism of eth-
on the earth: the next project of the anthropologist, she said, was to build nographic representation is less contested than is the realism of historical
space coionies. Although Mead derided doctrines of racial determinism, she representation. At the center of the story, is the body of the Native, the
never discarded the evolutionary divisin of the world into "primitive" essential ndex of authenticity, and thus visual media, capable of capturing
versus "modern" peoples: history was for Mead one of progress, expansin, the body and holding it for the viewer, have long played a lead role in trans-
exploration, and benign colonializaton. mitting the narrative of race and evolution.
James Baldwin's "history" was vastly different. First of all, Baldwin In order to begin to come to terms with the continued hold of this narra-
claimed that history was "written in the color of my skin."6 In a colonial or tive and the role of visual media in transmitting it, I have attempted in ths
slave society, whose effects linger into the present day, the person of color book to identify and delinate what I believe are the three central modali-
could never escape the constructed difference placed on skin color. As ties of Ethnographic representation in early cinema. I used Regnault's chro-
Frantz Fann elucidated, the "racial epidermal schema" located the person nophotography of West African performers at the Pars Ethnographic Ex-
of color in three places: as a body, as a race, and as one's ancestors.7 Baldwin, position of 1895, a body of work concerned exclusively with gesture and
however, refused to place himself within the Eurocentric view of History; locomotion, to exemplify the first of the three modalities, termed here Eth-
ndeed, he saw it as impossible: "I am one of the dispossessed. According to nographic "inscription." In Regnault's film sequences, the indigenous body
the West I have no history. There is that difference. I have had to wrest my m motion, perceived as raw data, is literally written into film for the scien-
identity out of the jaws of the West."8 With a third eye, Baldwin was not ncally trained "reader"the langage par gestes. Regnault believed that
only rejecting a discourse which represented people of color as "savages," siich images would serve as an ndex for race, much as subsequent anthro-
but also the Western notion of rational, linear History. Instead, for Bald w i 11, (xilogists such as Boas and Mead believed that films of gesture and behavior
history was composed of histories: the history of racialization, the histoi v wuiild provide unimpeachable records for the classification of cultures. Re-
of a people, the history of individuis, and the necessity to bear witness d u j'.n.uilt's workshares with later scientific research film the fate that all but a
the future.
Kin.ill fraction of the images are not viewed even by specalists. The narra-
i ivr o/ evoution emerges only through the written text accompanying the
Story-telling/History-telling IMI.IJ;CS and the conceptual framing of the images as entries in a projected
flliih.il "archive" for the scientific mapping and classification of race and
The telling of history is linked to the telling of stories, both textual i u l i n r e . Direct echos of Regnault's conception are apparent not only in
cinematic (as is often remarked, the Latn word stora contains both nn MI i.illy ordered unversity collections of research footage, but also in the
ings). The epic story of human history told by the West, boundedby t h e c AAnl . n liives de la
i I umax, plante of Albert Kahn, the choreometrcs dance project of
andsoon.
lutionary schema reflected in Mead's comments, has itself had a pe r n 11 n
history. Early anthropology, cinema, and popular culture constructed u n A M-rond modality of Ethnographic representation is exemplifed in Rob-
enous peoples as Ethnographic: oan earlier time, without history, wn In i i i I l.ihrriy's Nanook of the North. Flaherty's film, which hinges upon a
archives. The construction of the Ethnographic, however, was a l w . i v Mn''Ml>;ic reconstruccin oa more authentic humanity (the "unspoiled"
bivalent, for the Ethnographic was not only viewed as Savage bul .ilv l'i f i m f i ve) and is considered today a pioneering work of the romantic, lyri-
seen as alternatively authentic, macho, pur, spiritual, and an a n t i d i i . i l i ilmo,i;r.iphic film, embodies what I term the "taxidermic" mode of
the ills of modern, industrialized capitalism, a myth embodicd m i In i I i l i i n i i ; i . i / i l n c representation. Flaherty's film was produced within the same
of the Noble Savage. No matter the particular variant of the story, h ( V i i l i i i n i n . i l v lame thatgaverise to Regnault's "ciphers"of race, theindige-
the Native was portrayed as stuck in the evolutionary past, as lu I I M I I limlv M i / I serving as evidence of n time before history, but, with Fla-
dence of a biological progression. Whelher the story was told m M |i-it 1.11 u I be/ore h i m , ('ur(is), t h e iileology of the "vanishing races" comes
research terms or imhued w i t h ronianticism, indigenous pcoples wi Ii< i l u l u i r The l'ihnographic, a l t h o u g h now portrayed "in the round," is set
(II ,i | i i M I M - . ( | I I C p.ist innocenl o, r.ilhci ( h a n m icive, comn'"" '
fellli i l n '.piiMd ul Wesicn i--m.<'-
196 Conclusin
Conclusin 197
since passed by in the steeplechase of history, the "vanishing" Native is
"redeemed" through taxidermic reconstruction: the dead is brought to life. era obscured, the viewer is meant to observe and experience the film as if he
The premise o the inevitable death of the Native, moreover, allows the or she had been there, from a "fly on the wall" perspective.9 The beginnngs
physical and cultural destruction wrought by the West to appear inelucta- i il a shift in academic ethnographic film to a more participatory cinema also
ble, and such films, albeit with pathos, implicitly provide ideological justifi- occurred in the 19505 with the self-reflexive films of French ethnographic
cation for the very colonial and economic conquests that brought film- (ihnmaker Jean Rouch, but this shift did not have an appreciable impact on
makers like Flaherty to the Arctic. mainstream academic ethnographic film until very recently.
Finally, in King Kong, a sublime example of ironic Hollywood pastiche The "crisis" in anthropology which began in the late 19705 has introduced
replaying many of the Ethnographic themes central to Regnault's chrono \e interpretive and questioning stance concerning the colonialist un-
photography and Flaherty's Nanook of the North, Ethnographic spectaclr dr rpinnings of the discipline's representational practices. This growing self-
takes the form of "monstrosity." Here the Ethnographic is made to enter thr irllrxivty did not simply reflect changes in anthropological thought, but
temporal and physical space of the white audience, the resulting "incongtu dlso resulted from post-World War II decolonization, a movement marked
ous beast" generating fears of contamination and hybrid pathology. Kiny, I w mdependence struggles and demands for self-determination. Anthropol-
Kong itself is a hybrid between museum diorama and horror film, teratoli >r,v Mj'.v's temporal suppositions could no longer be sustained: indigenous peo-
and the fantasy illustrations of Gustave Dor. Although baroque in exprrs plrs and other marginalized peoples of color were criticizing the history of
sion, the film implicitly links anthropology, or at least the camera-wieldin| 1111 11 representation by Euro-Americans, and were attempting to counteract
scientific expedition, with nationalism and imperialism: in order to bnn.r. Wrstrrn media exploitatiori by obtaining greater access to televisin and
back Kong for examination and spectacle, the Skull Islanders must be- dr I l l i n production.10 Today, the reform is being carried forward by a growing
feated, and, in order to subdue Kong, the latest war technology mus I n i u i i h r r of fllmmakers/scholars including David and Judith MacDougall,
marshaled. The film, made by early ethnographic filmmakers Coopcr . u n i ,,n v KiIdea, and Faye Ginsburg. Another recent development in academic
Schoedsack, explicitly recalls the historical practice of exhibiting hum.ni i ilmographic filminitated by filmmakers and videomakers such as Terry
at ethnographic expositions, and partakes of many of the aspects o i l n l u un, Timothy Asch, and Vincent Carelliis to teach indigenous peoples
IIMVV 10 use video and film technology.11
"racial film" which flourished in the wake of the commercial succrs.-. ni
Nanook of the North. In its construction of the ethnographiable monst, i I irsptr these innovations and growing self-criticism within anthropol-
King Kong summons a notion of time that feeds into ideologies of the i i ni i r Hj'v f.uirrally, however, the camera is still too often seen by ethnographic
enous body as the site of a colusin between past and present, Ethnographli l l l i i u i i . i k r r s as an unproblematic, innocent eye on indigenous peoples, a
and Historical, Primitive and Modern. In the end, history yanks thr mmi UN l u lool for science, many filmmakers turning to self-reflexive exami-
ster from the past only to kill it. l i i i i i i i u o the process of production to make ethnographic film more sci-
Although the discipline of anthropology has undergone s i g m l i t . i m t n i i l l ' ' l ; urthermore, even though many academic anthropologists are
changes since the 19303, it has continuedto provide fodder for botb pnpul u l i l l i l v i niical of the discipline's complicity with racializing stereotyping,
and scientific conceptions of the Ethnographic. The conception o u l m , . lln i pi'.irmeof the Ethnographic is still alive and well, especially in popular
Mu
graphic film as a scientific tool for anthropologists studying thr Im ni IMV
Televisin specials like Harvard anthropologist David Maybury-
"disappearing," "primitive," "uncontaminated" tribes survived aitn W, u M . Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (1992), Holly-
War II. Films made from the 19508 to the 19703, including works l > \" H f i n i i l l i l m s like Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), Michael
makers now considered major figures in ethnographic film- Job n M. u . I . , 11 M'inii ' /'/"' l'tisl oftlii- Mohcann(i992}, orFrankMarshall's Congo(1995)
Robert Gardner, and Timothy Aschwere often labeled "obsrrv.il i o u . i l , , , , I i i i n i i - , upd.iicol King Kongand science fiction epics like George Lucas's
erna." This cinema, characterized by a restrained stylr thr usr ni Inu, /i 1^', iinn <> llic /i'di ( l y t f } ) , with its representation of the "Ewok" tribes-
takes, slow pacing, seamless editing, and often synchronizrd souml u i,, HH u <!' pr.i< H u , hrowii crea tu res, continu to rcinforcc established concep-
tliMi'i ni i lie li Imographic.
however, a troubling form of "obscrvation." With thr prrsrnrr o
VV.iiil ( I I I I H I n l l rxplain.s tln 1 dillcrcnccs aiul thr s i i n i l a r i t i e s that a recent
198 Conclusin
Conclusin 199
film like Dances wth Wolves shares with earlier Hollywood representa-
Josephine Baker and the Stereotype of the
tions of Native Americans: Ethnographic Primitive
Stripped of its pretty pictures and progressive flourishes in directions
and affirmative action hiring, Dances With Wolves is by no means a Josephine Baker, the great music hall star of the 19203 and 19305, is decried
movie about Indians. Instead, it is at base an elaboration of movieland's by some as an agent of minstrelsy and a toady to whites, by others as a black
Great White Hunter theme. . . . hcroine and the first modern international black star.15 Because of the hy-
If Kevin Costner or anyone else in Hollywood held an honest inclina- hridity of the stereotyped images she embodied, both spectacular Primitive
tion to make a movie which would alter public perceptions of Native and fashionable French star, the figure of Baker is susceptible to disparate
America in some meaningful way, it would, first and foremost, be set in mterpretations. Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a poor family, Jose-
the present day, not in the mid-igth century. It would feature, front phine Baker moved to Paris in 1925 and soon became a focal point for the
and center, the real struggles of living native people to librate them- l'icnch fascination for the black, colonial female body, jazz, andl'artnegre.
selves from the oppression which has beset them in the contemporary When Baker debuted in Pars, she was portrayed as monstrous. In her auto-
era, not the adventures of some fictional non-Indian out to save the lnography, Baker cites an astonishing review of one of her performances:
savage.13 Woman or man? Her lips are painted black, her skin is the color of ba-
What is at stake, asserts Churchill, is the obscuring of pressing Native nanas, her cropped hair sticks to her head like caviar, her voice squeaks.
American problems such as the expropriation of water rights and mineral s, She is in constant motion, her body writhing like a snake or more
involuntary sterilization, and FBI repression of Indian activism, in favor o l a precisely like a dipping saxophone. Music seems to pour from her body.
romanticized and thus pernicious myth.14 The cotinued proliferation o She grimaces, crosses her eyes, puffs out her cheeks, wiggles disjoint-
images of indigenous peoples as spatially and temporally distant, howevri, edly, does a split and finally crawls off the stage stiff-legged, her rump
sustains a dcnial of the history of native peoples' struggles against col higher than her head, like a young giraffe. . . . This is no woman, no
dancer. It's dominant
nialization and genocide, and their ongoing struggles for cultural idcni n \t the forces of an image-hungry somethingculture
as exotic and sees
which elusive as music,
them ai the embodiment
o all the sounds we know. . . . And now the finale, a wildly indecent
always already dead. dance which takes us back to primeval times... arms high, belly thrust
Before I conclude my book, I want to turn my attention to two conten|< lorward, buttocks quivering, Josephine is stark naked except for a ring
raries of Flaherty, Cooper, and Schoedsack who worked within dominanl i )l hl ue and red feathers circling her hips and another around her neck. l6
Western media and academic institutions and yet have been almost r u i n Miil'ci was thus made by the media into an "ethnographic" spectacle, a
pletely ignored in the history of cinema's relationship to anthropoloK) niitii'.itT, neither man or woman, neither human or animal.
Josephine Baker was a popular performer whose stage and screen ida u u \s based upon a spectacularization
l'l.ucd in a contradictory of the collapse of theBaker
position, Primitive i n i u that
believed 11 >. she was making
m i nli". lor African Americans as a black star in a white entertainment
Modern,- Zora Neale Hurston was an anthropologist who studied liri n n vvm lil, rvi-n as she understood that Euro-American culture constructed her
community of originthe African American Southand in so doinr. \ ' " ii'i ' i n i i l i i n g hut a body to be exhibited in varous stages of undress."17 The
lated the boundaries between Observer/Observed. In their very posil u mi ti* j tiii n i . i l i o n in ethnographic cinema for the displayed body of the woman of
women of color moving in and out of white-dominated fieldsin Jo.srpl i nli u r. icndc-redcarnivalesquein Baker's shows. For Baker was not only the
Baker's case, the entertainment business, and in Zora Neale Hursion'-. i r ' >l ni i he "black woman," but of all colonized women, and she per-
anthropology and folkloreBaker and Hurston embody the very po . < il ni .iris which represented her as Inuit, Indochinese, African, Arab,
ness of such dichotomies and reveal their limits. In their c u l i u u l | > i u ihlu'an:'* . l s
ductions, they upset the categories of Ethnographic/ Histrica I, l'i mi u n .
Modern to the extent they mobilizc the t h i r d eyc in rcspondinv, i" ''" /V..MII .nul again we rehcaiscd a lamboyant numher about the French
racialization processcs o Ethnographic cinema. 1 1 ilun i es, w h i c h included Algcrian di uns, l u d a n he lis, tom-toms from
M.iil.ij',.is( .n, rocomils (rom (hr Congo, cha chas Irom (uadeloupe, a
2oo Conclusin
number laid in Marinique during which I distributed sugar cae to the
audience, Indochinese gongs, Arab dances, camels and finally my ap-
pearance as the Empress of Jazz.19
If Baker was trapped by Ethnographic spectacle, her ame never enabling her
to escape the roles she was consigned to play in a story scripted by white
society, she was acutely aware of her predicament and responded to it. As
Baker commented, "Since I personified the savage on the stage, I tried to be
as civilized as possible in daily life."20
Ironically, although Baker was admired not only for her "primitive" per
sona, but for her elegance of manner and hyperfeminine style, on a par witli
Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, these same characteristics led to whai
many saw as an intolerable hybridity. Reviewer Janet Flanner, for examplc,
deplored Baker's transformation into "almost... a little lady":
Her caramel-colored body, which overnight became a legend in Euro pe,
is still magnificent, but it has become thinned, trained, almost c i v i
lized. Her voice, especially in the voo-deo-do's, is still a magic ute 111. \
hasn't yet heard of Mozartthough even that, one fears, will conn- m
time. There is a rumor that she wants to sing refined ballads; one i s . u i
prised that she doesn't want to play Othello. On that lovely animal v i - .
age lies now a sad look, not of captivity, but of dawning intelligence '
The figure of the Ethnographic is thus imposed again: Flanner reads Ba k > t i
an innocent Savage falling from grace to become a decadent half-Civih i
monster, a sister to the "racial film" heroines Reri, Dasnee, Fayaway
In Baker's first sound film, Marc Allegret's Zou Zou (1932), the
pans a circus scene of performers and spectators, halting backstage tu
ture the sight of a few Frenchboys spying through a window at a lil.n I
powdering her face. The girl is Zou Zou, a circus act, whose stage
a white boy named Jean. From the outset, the spectacle of racial and .
fcnll I I I H I I /.on '/.on (1932), dir. Marc Allcgret.
difference is highlighted, providing voyeuristic pleasure, and si-ii
lilil '\I i l n - M i i . s c u m of Modcrn Art)
stage for a versin of Haraway's "entertainment of violated bomnl.ii n
If Zou Zou is a sister to a white boy, she is also the object o aj1,)1,"'
for, as a black woman, she is a threat which must be control led and i.m ||i ((-i < - . ! i lie exotic, black, female performer. At the end of the film,
figure appropriate for the stage but not as marriage partncr I o i l n f l l l ' i i ' l ' i n l>v Jcan's choice of Claire, she sobs as she walks past poster
French boy ]ean. Although Zou Zou grows up to become a grca i m u Hft u "I IH r.rll as icn Zou Zou. At the film's end, there is a flashback of
star, she falls secretly in love with Jean (played as an aduli hy |r.m ' i in .1 i n n s K hall performance asa feathered bird in agoldencage.
only to discover that Jean has instead fallen for her blonde I u-m U I iipon l ' i . m t z Fanon's analyses of the psychic economy of race in
tellingly named Claire (Yvette Lebon). Zou '/ou's proper plac- i-, i l n U n I I 7 u / c M/,V/<\ I lomi M h a b h a has explored the stereotype as an
where we first saw her, where slie can orcvci si-i vi- UtheobjCCl < > l M!I MI i n d i - r i l h y h i id iniag'. As I lomi Hhahha argues,
2O2 Conclusin Conclusin 203

Stereotyping is not the setting up of a false image which becomes the Baker also embodied what critic Michele Wallace calis the postmod-
scapegoat of discriminatory practices. It is a much more ambivalent ern "negative scene of instruction" between African American and Euro-
text of projection and introjection, metaphoric and metonymic strat- American art. Wallace defines the negative scene of instruction as one in
egies, displacement, overdetermination, guilt, aggressivity; the mask- which "the exchange is disavowed and disallowedno one admits to having
ing and splitting of "official" and fantasmatic knowledges to construct learned anything from anyone else."25 The reluctance of Euro-American
the positionalities and oppositionalities of racist discourse.22 critics to acknowledge the contribution to world culture and to Euro-
American art itself of African American and other artistic traditions stem-
The obvious fabrication of Zou Zou into a sign of the Primitivethe posters niing from non-Western sources also betrays cultural anxiety. A desire to
which render Zou Zou into a stereotyped symbol of black female sexuality, rontain this anxiety manifests itself in the stereotype of the Primitive/
Zou Zou's theatrical presentation as both exotic bird and elegant star I l hnographic as mute and inferior counterpoint to the Modern. According
underline Bhabha's assertion that lo lhe logic identified by Wallace, there can be no dialogue because, by
the recognition and disavowal of "difference" is always disturbed by 11 u Irlinition, the Ethnographic is constructed as lacking fully developed
Niihjcctivity.
question of its re-presentation or construction. The stereotype is, m
fact, an impossible object. Por that very reason, the exertions of t l u II Baker was not able to escape her predicamcnt, her awareness of it and
"official knowledges" of colonialismpseudo-scientific, typologir.il, ( I i r lincsse and exuberant parody of her theatrical performance allowed her
legal-administrative, eugenicistare imbricated at the point of i l u - n til lunes to transcend the gilded cage of her situation. In Baker's filmed
production of meaning and power with the f antasy that dramatizcs 11 u |in li u manee, there are gaps and disruptions. At times, like many great Afri-
impossible desire for a pur, undifferentiated origin.23 uiii American performers such as singer and actor Paul Robeson, Baker
mmis lo rise above the stereotyped roles she was given, in herportrayal of
The character Zou Zou is thus flattened into a sign, much as Bakei w.i. /un /oii, or Aouina the goat herder in Prncess Tam Tam (1935). Although
made into an icn for the Frenen "primitive," an object of projection . u n MI i.ili.-cd as a sign of the Primitive, contained by a discourse which could
repudiation. In one of her music hall acts, Zou Zou sings "Hait," :\| n u l v i rail her as Ethnographic spectacle, Baker in her extraordinary use of
which denies Zou Zou's status as a postcolonial subject, as a U.S. l> Hiii'ii|iiei.ideappears to be winkingat the viewer.
woman of color living in Paris, for it is a song about her desire to re 111 n U
see the blue skies of her distant "homeland." In other words, e ven .1 H
viewer is meant to sympathize with the "caged" Zou Zou, shc is In m, \h i ',11 ', l't-rspective: Zora Neale Hurston
categorized and labeled according to Ethnographic convention. 1 n 11 u \\ i I 'i 1111111 ve was a stereotype consigned not only to black performers like
she can only serve as what Bhabha calis a visible fetish of racism .1 n i n i < i i l u ) .ilso to scholars and artists of color. Born in Eatonville, Florida,
in Fanon's color-coded epidemial schema of skin color. In this way, I' 'I > n ) o i , lilmmaker, writer, and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston was one
own hybrid status as a black star in white society is containcd. i llh l l r . i Al i can Americans toreceive aB.A. from Barnard College. Hurs-
According to renowned theater director Max Reinhardt, a man cen i il i" lin n , n i m ontaged by Franz Boas, then the department Head of Anthropol-
the dazzling Berln theater scene, Baker "personified ExprcssioniMn 1 1 .11 ll.n n.mi, lo collcct folklore in the South. As par of her research,
poet Erich Mara Remarque told Baker that she "brought a w l u l l ni ri> M i l u m.ule f i l m s in 1928 and 1929 of children's games, dancing, a bap-
air and an elemental strength and beauty to the tired showpl.u r ni \v. !
.iml .u n v i i i e s in a loggingcamp, and in 1940 of activities in Beaufort,
ern Civilization."24 This perception of Baker as antidote to t l u . i l i (filil i . u i i l m a , including road scenes, dock scenes, landscape, the activi-
of European society, together with the "Savage" connotalioir. w l m i > n |n| l , i i i n wniker.s, prison laborers, and, most importantly, the activities
Baker herself was aware, accompanied sueh praisc, h c a u t i l n l l v > H '< Iflli i i i m m . i n d i n e n ! Kccpcr Church, a local African American church. As
Bhabha's point that the colonial stereotype, which is ncccss.mK iu4| l l t l i l o i l lirlow, a l i h o u g h par o Boas's attraction to Hurston was as a
tUtnSODboth recognition ("they are jusl l i k e ns") aiul a disavovv.il ni l i i h i n i i u leu i" .111 insidei e t h n o g i a p h e i w h o i x u i l d pro vi de data (Boas did
ence ("they are moral and biological degener.it es"). I M i n i r . l v i ni oiii.ige llurston to consider a e.neri ;is .1 piofcssor), and
2O4 Conclusin

although her films served as a form of vicarious cultural tourism for hei
Concli
patrn Mrs. Charlotte Osgood Masn, Hurston's anthropology broke w i t l i
Ethnographic convention in complex ways.
Hurston referred to Boas as "the greatest anthropologist alive" and praisol
his "insatiable hunger for knowledge." Boas, Hurston wrote, was a man
characterized by "[a] genius for pur objectivity. He has no pet wishcs l u
prove. His instructions are to go out and find what is there."26 This stancc-1 il
objectivity, the mpetus to observe cultural practice as if from a dista i ice.
Hurston would later write, was what she had gained from her anthropologj
cal studies. In her book on African American southern folklore, Mul* <m,l
Men (1935), Hurston explains how she became attracted to the discipline
"It was only when I was off in college, away from my native surroumlimv,
that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at m v
garment. Then I had to have the spy-glass of Anthropology to look thronv.li
at that."27 The "spy-glass of Anthropology," as Hurston so cogently pin n
had traditionally been reserved for the white anthropologist, the w l n i i
acholar who believed in the objective, descriptive recording of so-c.illi il
"vanishing" peoples. Not surprisingly, Hurston herself was not innocr I
objectifying the people she studied as Ethnographic. As Hazel V. Carhv liii* s
observed, Hurston romanticized the "black folk," in order to preserve m
(ii '.nll liom Zora Neae Hurston's films 0/1928-29.
aesthetically purified versin of blackness," a romanticization of blac ! m >
j| i M i i n - . v <>l Lucy Ann Hurston and theLibrary of CongressJ
ciety that was seen by critics such as Richard Wright as a continuanrr i >l i In
stereotypes of minstrelsy.28 Even as she was in part caught up in i l u I i l i
nographic romanticization of the period, however, Hurston also bioki I n m i
(toii i v n n i c i i on the porch, to an extreme long shot of the garden with the
that romanticization in significant ways.
i ||iiM'<i ' . n i ilie background, followed by a shot of the young woman lying
In one sense, Hurston's short, unedited research films of 1928 ?,< ni \ I H I |n|tiliiii|iir si y le facing the camera on the porch, concludingwithalow-angle
can Americans from the South indeed appear to be within the P O M I M i-.i
||iiii u/ .1 woinan's feet rocking on the porch next to the paws of a cat. In
scientific tradition begun by Regnault and carried on by Boas and Mi > !
I {Mili i -ilii (.;, i wo women are seen on the porch, and the camera is obviously
Much of her footage seems to have been conceived as scientific s . i n i | i l i M | i
ll^iiiMini; / n u i l hehinda tree, from thepositionof voyeur (or,perhaps, neigh-
for Boas. Boas's interests in "isolable actions" are reflected, for c x . i m i ' l ' m llMl! I I , I M u - 1 "liarnov has brillantly explained how Hurston, in what seems
Hurston's footage of children playing: they are made into "typc-s," l i " M m n
ilii ,il . i i i c i u p to cali attention to the fetishizing and the voyeuristic
uppieces of paper with their ages, filingpast the camera frontal I v . u n i l i .
iM."I ,Ai l>/. i vilu camera, antcpates the self-refexive, deconstruction tech-
. i 1I )eren.'"
in profile. Yet at one point there is a marked disruption from i l n M . . m . . i l
iconography of Ethnographic inscription, a certain knowing p l a v l n l n . A
' ||iii"inM'. i i w n u.se of the "spy-glass of Anthropology" was a constant
young, barefoot African American woman emerges from a hon-.c i ||ii i > n< nr,i;nii.-i(ion. Hurston was perceived by Masn as a sweet, un-
front porch and walks toward the camera. She smiles at the c.mn MI !>
|Hl(''' I' 1 m u i ve:: on Hua.s's advice, Hurston had sought Mason's financia!
turns her head left, and then right. It is clearhere that, despitc i l u I m ! \ u '((lilil i MI i l i . i l slie coukl pursue a I'h.D. in anthropology at Columbia
betrayed by the woman's smile, the woman is meant to he poi n.m il 44 V
U V I - I I I M ( m i M.i.son coltIJy refused, apparently beJieving that Hurston
type: Hurston uses the poses typical of anthropometry. Hu i l n - n i l n <>(
||il In i n i i i c i l hv loo iiiii'h cclucalion. Sidestepping t h i s obstacle, Hurston
shots take on an experimental q u a l i t y , (he camera c u t t i n i ' , l i o m i l i - t <4
i l i n i I C . M C lici ( i w n f i c M w u i k iiu'iliodology, borrowingfrom icachcrs
M.I-. I n 11 i el i isi ni; (o < m i l i nc hciscll lo l l i c di v ohse v.il lon.il modc / 1 > -
ao6 Conclusin

Malinowski and Boas espoused. At one point during her 1928 research trip, Conclusin 207
for example, Hurston even posed as a Jacksonville bootlegger's woman on ni ent Keeper Church, whose African American congregation often fell into
the run.31 During her hoodoo research of 1928 in New Orleans she lay fot trance, "testifying" to their spiritual visions and speaking in tongues.38
sixty-nine hours nude without food or water in order to become a novitiatc I lurston again saw these forms of religious ecstasy as stemming from Afri-
can religions. She wrote:
of Samuel Thompson, a Crele conjurer.32 Unlike Mead, who approachcc!
her subjects from the outside and pursued what she saw as a rigorous scien
This church seems to be a protest against the stereotype form of Meth-
tifie agenda, associating Balinese trance, for example, with schizophreni.i,
odist and Baptist churches among Negroes. It is a revolt against the
Hurston was not willing to scientifically analyze her own psychic expe i
white man's view of religin which has been so generally accepted by
enees due to what her biographer Robert E. Hemenway describes as "Hus
ton's awareness of the spiritual possibilities in the hoodoo experience . 'ormhirate
the Negro, and is therefore a versin [sic] to the more African
of expression.
her belief in the magic."33 Instead of participant observation, Hurston''.
Its keynote is rhythm. In this church they have two guitars, three
methods may be characterized as observing participation.
symbols [sic], two tambourines, one pair of rattle gourds, and two wash-
During the late 19208, Hurston became interested in new forms of c i l i
boards. Every song is rhythmic as are their prayers and their sermons.39
nographic cultural production. At the time that she made her 1928-29 f i l
she began to collaborate with Langston Hughes on a black opera, Wli.n makes these films unlike any other ethnographic research film of its
seen first-hand the popularity of Hughes's poems with the people she si n < l , liliiil is that Hurston herself appears in them as a participating worshipper,
ied in the South.34 Hurston's goal, one that emerged from living w i t h . u n H l f l i n playing music or walking among the congregation. In one scene in
participating in the culture of the people she studied, was to show thc wi M M ' llic, Imtch, among the worshippers playing musical instrumentsis Hurston
the great originality of southern black culture, a culture which had i i s i |il.ivm; drums while a congregation member, Julia Jones, goes first into
in African cultures. Instead of salvage ethnography, seeking to d o c i i i i n m <H tii-.v, t lien into trance as she proclaims prophecies.40 In another scene in
and preserve evidence of an ostensibly dying culture, Hurston in l u n Hflid, h .1 religious service is held outdoors on a river bank, the congregation
search, writings, theatrical productions, andfilmswasportrayingbl.il I ni tllm'i .md plays various instruments, and the preacher eventually passes a
ture as a living culture, one marked by continual, dynamic transft >i / / . 11 > " > IJWM11 w 11 i t e male onlookers. Hurston is again arnong the worshippers, play-
As she explained, "Negro folklore is still in the making. A new ! u n i< ? |lOi i l n di uns. At one point she appears to push a woman smger closer to
crowding out the od."35 lti- mi. lophone. Hurston is both drecting the action and takingpart in it.
In 1935 Hurston told an interviewer: "I needed my Barnard edm .u n m '" i i M v e , diis particular section of the footage reveis Hurston's great
help me see my people as they really are. But Ifound that it did nui J I" 'iH u, ,-, o ihe politics of spectatorship: in the scenes of the service on the
too detached as I stepped aside to study them. Ihadtogoback, diev. i i i > M i lie Kevcrend George Washington is represented as beingfully in com-
did, talk as they did, live their life, so that I could get into my -,i i u n 1 1 - - iMl u! .m impassioned congregation, but when the footage cuts to the
world I knew as a child."36 In April and May of 1940, Hurslon m ni' i > - u'Hi,; w l i n e male onlookers he becomes merely a hand passing a hat.
second set of films of activities in Beaufort, South Carolina. 'IIu-. M i I > i i i i c i i . i m m c n t valu of black spirituality to white onlookers is fore-
of footage includes road scenes, dock scenes, landscapes, thc .u 1 1 \ i. t tnin>li il hcic in a manncr that is unthinkable in Boas's or Mead's ethno-
farm workers, and prison laborers, and, most importantly, i l n i. n > m |*liii I l l m s , revcaling again Hurston's third eye sensiblity to Subject and
||l i I i l i m M r conscioLisness.
of the Commandment Keeper Church. The church, a Sevenih I > . > \ i " > . M
of God, was a local African American Baptist church w i t h .1 < > m i < > <>< -H i ''" ''Y l heme he re is that of living culture, of active tmnsfozma-
of sixteen. These 1940 films were financed by Jane Helo, an .mi Im r- 1 ' '' l l m M u n nsi-il film not only to crate a histrica! record, but also as a
who had studied trance in Bali during the time of Margatci M. i.l l < m ih ll In ( . . n i c i p a i c in and t r a n s m i t to othcrs the ongoing artistry of the
films reveal a new direction away from the F.thnographic m . i H I - H . H , ,4 |)li \l world i > l black c u l t u r e in which Hurston was involved. These
Hurston's films from the late u;2os. il/ Two camera opcialor. . u n i mii| l||i i m i l i i . i n s i l ion aiul process, henee I lurston's great interest in trance
person were hired by Helo to iloeument thc a c t i v i t i e s o i h < ' . . m i n i m l P l t i i t i l ' l i o i i h . n I I l u s i n nsc-sm her writings is the transformation from
|IH- i" , i ' l n l I l i i i s l o n ilrscnhcs how w h i t e h v m i i s simu bv Hl-i.-'" '-
ao8 Conclusin

come "a sort of liquifying of words."41 She explains the role of the preacher Conclusin 209
in these terms: Underlying t all, however, is Hurston's newfound embrace of black spir-
/ ituality, one which could never be fully recorded or expressed in words. In
The voice of the people is truly the voice of God, but it is necessary that
' writing about the Commandment Keeper Church, Hurston uses the image
some unusual man shall arise and pronounce the things strongly felt by
of the
She limbs of a tree to underline the mystery of the church's spirituality.
wrtes:
his people but vaguely spoken. He acts as a sort of catalyser. From
gaseous to solid. After this stage has been reached, the religin grows by
accretion. Things come into it from various sources and become insep The unanimous prayer is one in which every member of the church
arably a part of it.42 prays at the same time but prays his own prayer aloud, which consists of
exotic sentences, liquefied by intermittent chanting so that the words
As Hurston wrote, "the church is the visualizing of emotions."43 Ail
are partly submerged in the flowing rising and falling chant. The form of
thus Hurston 's filming of trance, the movement from consciousness to t i u
prayer is like the limbs of a tree, glimpsed now and then through the
speaking in tongues, the jerks and the spasms, is connected to her beliel m
smothered leaves. It is a thing of wondrous beauty, drenched in har-
black culture as not dying but as an ever-emerging and dynamic cultutv, .1 mony and rhythm.47
culture in which she readily took part.
In 1935, Hurston described to the folklorist Alan Lomax her techniqu < >l In the 19408 footage, there is a beautiful shot of Spansh moss and tree
collecting songs. She states: Iraves reflectingin the water. Hurston stands in three-quarterprofile while
<ii her left are the great twisting branches and wisteria for which the Beau-
I just get in the crowd with the people and if they sing it I listen as br-.i I
li u i landscape is so famous. She turns her head slightly, her eyebrows raised,
can and then I start to joinin' in with a phrase or two and then fina 11 \
N i n i l i n g enigmatically: her glance among the trees is a third bemused eye
get so I can sing a verse. And then I keep on until I learn all the vrr.i in knowledging the spectacle of the camera.48
and then I sing 'em back to the people until they tell me that I can -.u
l'liere is thus a tensin in Hurston's work, one which I believe reveis an
'em just like them. And then I take part and I try it out on dilcn m
t i l n native space withn which to begn to understand an important aspect
people who already know the song until they are quite satisfice! i h.n l
ni Aliican American culture. Part of Hurston's dilemma was that she was
know it. Then I carry it in my memory. . . . I learn the song myscll . u n
Iniri-d to picase many different audiences: the African American commu-
then I can take it with me wherever I go.44
n i i v ni the Harlem Renaissance,- the scientific audience of "Papa Franz"
Hereagain, it is clear that Hurston is engaged in much more than < > | > M - I * i Mi i.is who wanted anthropological, so-called "objective," data,- her mercurial
tion and documentationshe learns the song so that she "can take n \ li H-lnic linancial patrn, Masn,- and the community that produced her
[her] wherever [she goes]." In a letter to Belo dated May 2, 1940, hmvi \ i I i t t u n v i l l c , Floridathe site of much of her research. This multiplicity of
Hurston wrote that the congrega tion members of the church "are 11 < > i i . 11 m, rtinlit nccs is evident in her writings, both literary and anthropological, and
to it any too kindly" that "white men" were to come in and makc .1 l i l m "i In lin lilms. One of the strategies for establishing Ethnographic authen-
them.45 Soundperson Norman Chalfin explained later that the ( l u u I ili ii v is lo write in the "ethnographic present," describing the people stud-
ment Keeper Church resisted being filmed because of their religin. pin lul ni h i a l person, present tense. Hurston begins the following excerpt
hibition against graven images: Hurston convinced the church i h . n li MI 11 lin si ndy of southern African American folklore Mules and Men in the
film had 110 contouritwas not graven.46 One could spcculatc t ha i l > v i i l ,, i i h i n i j ; i a p h i c present," present tense, but then shifts and subverts the ex-
part in the film she was trying to make the congregation membcis I r < 1 1 , , . . , , ti MU! v.intai;e point by using the pronoun "we":
comfortable about the cameras. But Hurston's participation givi. i In Mu.
I ol|< loa- is not as easy to collect as it sounds. The best sourceis where
an intimacy missing from many cthnographic films. Once agam, n n l i l ni
l i m e .ni- l he leas! ontscle inlnences and these people, being usually
standard anthropological films of the period such as Mcail's 'l'nin, . '
i n i i l c i p i i v i l c g c i l are the shyesl. They are most reluctant at times to
Dance in Rali, Hurston is not prcscnt in the film as the ligme o i l n . "'
n vr.il l l i . i t w h i c h ( h e sonI lives by. Ail t h e Negro, in spite of his opcn-
bling anthropologist, QOtebook in hand, bul as both viewer and v i r w . .1
l,n rd l.nn;hfiT, his srrming acquiescence, is pai l i r n l . i r l y i-vasive. Yon
2io Conclusin
Conclusin 211
see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out
erybody knows all about them. They are lay figures mounted in the
of here!" We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the
museum where all may take them at a glance. They are made of bent
white person, because, knowing so little about us, he doesn't know
wires without insides at all. So how could anybody write a book about
what he is missing.49 the non-existent?51
In this incredible shift from "they" to "we," Hurston dramatically
From her perspective as both Viewer and Viewed, Subject and Object, at-
switches from the voice of the anthropologist speaking to a white Western
tracted to yet aware of the perverse history of anthropological "objectivity,"
audience to the voice of her African American cultural identity: You see we
Hurston was able to use her training for novel and experimental ends. In the
are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out of here!"
concluding paragraphs of Mules and Men, Hurston recounts the tale of Sis
Hurston is alternately insider and outsider, subject and object. As she ex-
Cat and de Rat. Rat manages to escape Sis Cat a first time by chiding Sis
plains, her book is about the recording of all those "big od lies" which she
Cat's lack of manners in not having washed her face and hands prior to
and the rest of the black community grew up listening to in Eatonville.
cating, but is thwarted by the wily Sis Cat when he tries to use the trick a
Hurston's work thus not only anticipates Deren, it is a direct precursor of
second time. Hurston narrates Sis Cat's response the second time around:
the movement toward self-reflexivity that one begins to see in academic
anthropology in the late 19705. Hurston's work, moreover, is pioneering in "Oh, Ah got plenty manners," de cat told 'im. "But Ah eats mah dinner
another sense: Hurston created new forms of communicating what she and washes mah face and uses mah manners afterwards." So she et right
learned from her experiences with the communities that she studied. She on 'im and washed her face and hands. And cat's been washin' after
put her anthropological knowledge to work in a wide array of cultural pro- eatin' ever since.
ductions, including novis, children's tales, essays, and theatrical produc- I'm sitting here like Sis Cat, washing my face and usin' my manners.52-
tions. In this regard, Hurston is similar to Katherine Dunham, pioneerinj;
I lurston's daring ending to her study, shifting from the position of anthro-
African American choreographer, teacher, and anthropologist (Dunham
pologist/folklorist to that of Sis Cat, a character who learns to get what she
studied at the University of Chicago under Boas's student Melville Herskc >
wants in a story told by one of her informants, is radical: like the camera
vits), who shot ethnographic film (Dunham's films were of Afro-Caribbean
nhot in which the camera is right up next to the paws of the cat on a porch,
dance), but excelled by applying her knowledge in her dance and choreog ,i
I lurston breaks with both the anthropological and the ethnographic film
phy.50 Instead of upholding the tradition of Boas and Mead in which t i u i i.iilition of being the cool, distanced, observing, scentific eye.
ultmate objective of the anthropological encounter is the written cih
nography, a book intended for academic discourse, Hurston and Dunham
posed radical forms for ethnography, producing works which transgress i In i .i/il'hing the Camera/Facing the Camera:
liiiii^e Sovereignty
boundaries between academic objectivity and subjective insight.
These new forms are within the realm of what I cali the third eye. Evm .1 I iiin me of them, and I am their daughter. Helen Nabasuta Mugambi,
Hurston championed Boas's attempts at objectivity, she was extraordi n.m I \e of anthropology's
mi IKT powerful propensity
rclationship to temporalize
to the Baganda andshemakr
women that i-vi53 >
fllmed

lutionary specimens of the peoples being studied. In her essay " Wha t WI m. In i he late 19605, Sol Worth and John Adair conducted an anthropological
Publishers Won't Print," she decries the racialization processes at woi ! m i H|n-iiuient: they gave film cameras to a few Navajo youths to see if what
museums like the American Museum of Natural History: i l i r v lilmed would reflect an animist sensibility. The assumption was that
l l i r Navajo had little knowledge of Hollywood film language, and an anal-
The question naturally arises as to the why of this indifference, un i"
V'H'. o i he kinds of film they chose to makeand the ways theyframed their
say scepticism, to the internal lifc of educated minorities.
lin.if.fs wonlcl rcvcal something of the cultural lens through which they per-
The answer lies in what we may cali THE AMERICAN M U S I U M MI
i rivcd l l i c worlil. Worth and Adair's entireproject was premisedon Western
UNNATURAL HISTORY. This i s an intangible b n i l t on lolk bclirl li >
I l l i n i onvi'iitionsas (lie normal, a standard against which Navajo deviations
assumcd that all non Anglo-Saxons are uncomplicated slcrentyprs I v
i u n i d IH- miMsurcd. The book t h a t Worth and A d a i r wrole, Through Navajo
i
212 Conclusin
Conclusin 213
Eyes, is ascinating for what it reveis about anthropological assumptions of body, defeating the expectations of the viewer accustomed to ethnographic
"proper" ethnographic filmmaking. At one point in the project, as the book film. The expected full-body shot never materializes. In another scene, a
relates, Sol Worth became so irritated by the way that Maryjane Tsosie was row of Hopi adults and children till the land in extreme long shot: we are not
filming her grandfather Sam Yazzie as he engaged in sand painting that allowed to see their bodies up cise. And in the final dance sequences by
Worth grabbed the camera away from her. She had not chosen to go in for a Hopis in Native costume as well as in jeans and platform sandals, we are
close-up. introduced to the dancers by shots of their heads or their feet, a reticence
That Tsosie had refused to use that essential form of classical film gram- which denies the audience the sense of visual power inherent in seeing and
marthe close-upreveis not only the great respect which she held for her consuming everything. Thus the wholisticcultural anthropology's tradi-
grandfather as an eider and an important spiritual leader in her community, tional thirst for studying whole culturesand the holisticthe New Age
but perhaps also her discomfort imposed by a historical divide. As a chikl, lascination with Native ceremonial ritualsare obfuscated in a clever and
Tsosie, like many other young Native Americans in the United States, had yct moving rendering of Hopi history.
been sent to boarding schools in a measure promoted by the U.S. govern I'art of the history Masayesva is evoking here is the history of the repre-
ment in order that Native Americans would forget their own language and entation of Hopi as racialized, ethnographic bodies. Masayesva, like other
assimilate into white society.54 The violence of the gesturethe anthropol Native filmmakers and video-makers including Dean Curtis Bear Claw,
ogist Worth seizing the camera from Maryjane Tsosieis an apt metaphoi hile! Moreno, Diane Reyna, and Edward Ladd, does not so much repudate
for the control the West has long sought to exercise over the representa!ion iis i econtextualize archival photography, reclaiming his own histories from
of indigenous peoples in the pursuit of "science." I he museum's deep freeze of Native Americans as metonyms of a "timeless
Tsosie's reticence to enter too closely into her grandfather's "space" m u jiisi." 56 Yet Masayesva does not deny the ability of photography to give
rors as well a restraint that many contemporary indigenous filmmakers lee! Ic'.i nnony to the past. As he explained, "I wouldn't know my grandfather if
toward revealing certain aspects of their culture. The definition of wli.ii r. ni ti lor photography, because I never met him and I saw him in [a photo-
photographable is often in variance with the standards of the anthropologlll Hiiipli of a Snake Dance. So that's how I've met him." Film is not just a
and the filmmaker. Hopi filmmaker Vctor Masayesva Jr. says it succiiu i 1 \g from photographing certain
I H C . I I ivist subjects
record of thehas become
world but aaspiritual
kind o w< u
intervention with one's ances-
tni 1 ., what Masayesva describes as a Ghost Dance, a means to exorcise the
ship."55 Masayesva's statement would appear to tread dangerously cKr.< i . > ilr 11 u n is of colonialism and communicate with the beloved dead and the yet
censorship, violating one of thebasic tenets of Western democracy: t l u i \\ In I ir liorn. S 7
health of a state can be gauged by the degree to which it tolrales i l u l i . I he i h i r d eye turns on a recognition: the Other perceives the veil, the
flow of information, both textual and visual. The conviction that ;ill i" >< I I M M i-ss o being visualized as an object, but returns the glance. The gesture
pie should have the liberty to appropriate and disseminate informal ni I u i i i j r , Irozen into a picturesque is deflected. In a circulating economy of
widely viewed as pertaining as much to the right of academicians su. \ ti iiif. a i u l representation, there are moments in early ethnographic cinema
anthropologists andhistorians to publish data on the pcople and evenl . i Iml W l i d l i h a l l the flow of the evolutionary narrative: the Historical collapses
they study as it does to the media journalist's right to expose corrupi | > .lu M i l i ' i l i f l'ihnographic, the Savage parodies the Civilized.
cians. In stark contrast, the importance of not photographing e e i i . i m I In '.i i.itegies that Masayesva calis into playopen resistance, recontex-
jects, whether profane or sacred, is a central theme in the w o r k s o i iH'ih .ii ion o| archival images, parody, and even refraining from represent-
indigenous filmmakers. |li(i i i 1 1 . u n subjectsrecall instances of the third eye that I have examined
Masayesva's new and often sly forms of film language in his woi|. Mil i ni); I i i h i s book. Open resistance, as we have seen, is one mode of the
cerning the Hopi vividly demnstrate the complcx potential o t h r . 11 i l ' y S o m e t i m e s resistance is direct, as in the testimony of the Inuit
In one particularly fascinating section of his video Itaiu ll<iknn tli M i n i k Wall.ice who embarkcd on a publicity campaign to forc the
(1985), Masayesva scans turn-of-the-century photographs o I lop < I . M I < ni .111 M i i s e u m o N a t u r a l I listory ( h i s ormer "home") to return his
sometimes settling briefly on certain secons o the sepia lom .1 | < l > , lilil n I u he i '. liones. ( ) i , to t a k e a n o t h e i ex ampie, at t h e i 404 St. Louis Fair,
graphs: the filmmaker reluses o is u n i n t e r e s t e d in revea!mi'. Id ni'..i . u n o t h e i A l r i c a n performers chan;ed at a photographer for plio-
214 Conclusin

Conclusin 215
tory and memory. Looking at early photography and film is to acknowledge
one'spresent
the in the past, a means, to paraphrase Masayesva, of "meeting"
ancestors.

Sometimes the third eye winks at us. Parody is present in the spectacular
performances of Josephine Baker, singing in her limsy golden cage mas-
querade. See me as a Primitive, if you want to, butnoticehowridiculousmy
cage and my image are, Baker seems to say as she pushes her Mae West-like
mink stole over her shoulder. The carnivalesque is pushed to another level
in the cage of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gmez-Pea, who demand that
the contemporary audience confront the history of "exhibting" humans for
lthnographic titillation.
Although some artists and writers ignore Ethnographic conventions en-
l i rely, as James Baldwin's comments quoted at the beginning of this chapter
powerfully demnstrate, the Ethnographic imagination is still pervasive,
.mil thus many other people of color engage such conventions head-on or
rnier into indirect, but complex mediations wth them. Finally, then, I
li.i ve drawn from examples from contemporary film and art, examining the
50. Still from Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1985), dir. Victor Masayesva Jr. wi >i ks of some of those who refuse (or pretend not) to listen to the admon-
(Courtesy of Victor Masayesva Jr.) iNlnnganthropologist who grabs the camera from their hands. Photographer
I n i n a Simpson refuses to show the facethat which is seen as the most
Individual aspect of the body yet is precisely what is vulnerable to the kind
tographing them without their permission: they demanded to be u n
ni pillaging of the spirit that many cultures have found objectonable in
bursed for the privilege. In other instances, resistance shapes itself in a loi i pilleigraphy. What is figured instead in Simpson's work like Easy for Who
of great subtlety. Dances do not lose their sacredness if they are purpns in ,S'<M' is a whole language of racialization that turns people of color into
fully performed backwards, a fact understood by the Navajo who perli > 1 1 1 \> liuilic.s for a narrative of evolution (see llustration 18). The Ethnographic
the Yeibichai dance in such manner, a detail of which Edward S. Cun r m liii.ij'.r presented by Regnault, in which the bodies of West African per-
other gleeful camera-toting tourists were unaware.
li ii i n r i s at the 1895 Ethnographic Exposition become exemplars of a Primi-
Another mode of the third eye is in the recontextualization o r i l i m l i vi-1iiiirelie en flexin suitable for war, is explodedin Ousmane Sembne's
graphic footage. The Kwakwaka'wakw who fought successfully l < n i In n i ,n11/> </( Thiaroye which concentrates instead on the individual!ties of the
patriation of potlatch objects seizedby the Canadian governmcnt igm irtl V i i i n iiis soldiers whose lives are being shaped and exploited by French colo-
stiltedness of the melodrama of Curtis's In the Land of the Headhtiiti< / i t i d i l i ' . i ' . In an Inuit vllage of Igloolik, a community uses video cameras to
well as his sensationalizing of headhunting; instead, footage f n >i 11 11 Mi i u .n r .1 ncw f'orm of oral history in order to reconstruct their recent past on
of the war canoes of the Thunderbird, the Wasp and the Grizzly Hr.n llU I i i l i n, i l i r i r fniiit colleagues form the Inut Broadcasting Corporation to
to remember a great and enduring history in a eollaborative m u s r u m < i li.n ilu- liegemonic cffects of dominant televisin on their children and
hibition. Nanook of the North becomes a valuable document t u i l n i i m l - i MI n n i i i r s . An African American woman, Zora Neale Hurston, is in-
juak community where it was filmed, not bccause of its i r i i t l i l i i l m | i l n kl nii i n l l>y hri anthropologist mentor to film ethnographic types, but she is
"sacred" Bazinian scenc of the seal hunt is the object of l a u g l i t n m ip|-" ii n n |. '.iri sin- cxpcrimcnts wiih zooming back and forth between different
ciation of its obviously stagcd q u a l i t y ) , but bccausc il r o n t . n n s un i r . . j i i i i n i . ni virw, Se 11 .-mil ( )(|HT, N;K ive and Scirnlisl, shattering the voyeur-
their land a n d their anccsiors, . 1 mrans o provoking contempla) mu < > i I n (mu "i i l u - i;.i.-c in ( I i r l . i i r i i>.>.os, long brloic MU h sell-reflexivity is leniti-
HI.HI i l n i .miInopology. Hands (<< '
2i6 Conclusin Conclusin 217
like the Hopi clown who remonstrates and educates, declines to film cer- the colonialists: the camera-person coiludes by not doing anything. Henee
tain aspects of the entire dancing body, respectful of the belief that refrain- the inappropriateness of the film: it shoves in the viewer's face the horror
ing from photographing certain things can also be a spiritual act. of colonialization, and, unlike the more soothing narrative of "vanishing
Demanding sovereignty over one's image does mean that the filmmaker races," does not conceal the annihilation and apartheid of political physics.
representing his or her own community can easily elide the multifarious Yet to confine historical scholarship exclusively to the model of critiqu-
problems of representation, as Masayesva, Sembne, and Hurston's work ing "negative images" presents the critic with the suffocating trap of fas-
attests. Helen Nabasuta Mugambi, a U.S.-educated scholar, explains that cinating cannibalism: the reproduction feeds the West's appetite for images
within the colonial structure of hierarchy, she is posited as superior in of people of color as marvelous Savages. Like Fann, Baldwin, and poet
status to the Baganda women of her village which she filmed, but culturally, Elizabeth Alexander, I have tried to read images of indigenous peoples made
Mugambi explains, she is subordinate, she is their "daughter." Her relation- into the Ethnographic for the spaces of resistance contained within them,
ship to the women she is filming distorts the Western structure that views cognizant of the danger of trying to recover voices that can never fully be
the Western-educated scholar as expert. The predicament of the media pro- represented. It is with this objective in mind that I have attempted through-
ducer filming within his or her own community is indeed complex, requir- out this book to reveal disturbances within the linear narrative of evolu-
ing the negotiation of several cultures, media, languages, and notions of tionary imaging. Recovery is incomplete, always with gaps, cracks, and
history. other evidence of reconstruction. In a work which is considered the "first
ethnographic film," a West African woman walks with a calabash, and be-
comes the nexus of a gaze of male looks including the white Parisian
WHO Took This Pictuiei
flneui; yet in the same frame, a little girl's look disturbs the neat Ob-
What is the task of the postcolonial scholar examining the history of media server/Observed dichotomy. In her glance, I would like to imagine that she
representation of native peoples and people of color? Pat Ward Williams knows this: the Emperor has no clothes. Reading performance is thus one
asks the important question of how one can be a person of color and look al important space of resistance brought into view by the third eye in images
picturesnow collected as historical documentsthat exploit the pain o I rom early ethnographic cinema. The comfortable distance of the Colonizer
one's own people. InAccused/Blowtorch/Padlock (1986), Williams accom Vi >yeur from the Colonized Native necessary for the machine of spectacle to
paes framed photographs of a lynched African American man taken from f.i i nd on collapses when a Wolof man harangues a Parisian visitor to the Fair
the book The Best of "Life" Magazine with text, asking the question, " WI K > tu toss some coins over the fence separating him from the Parisian: this is
took this picture? Oh, God, Life answersPage 141no credit." The iden noi Iree, but for your entertainment, and you must pay. The laughing West
tity of the viewer is crucial to the reception of photography and film: t i u A11 i can perf ormer is read by the European as a childlike and authentic Prim-
Observer/Observed dichotomy implodes when the Observer realizes t l i . n H i vi-: he or she is not even seen as a performer, but is said to be "exhibited"
he or she is the Observed. Moreover, the arrogance of Western culum .mil jiist "existing." But in that laugh, there may also be irony. The laugh
which looks at a Life magazine photograph of a lynched man as mere I y .m I'.H k at the visitor exposes the fact that the latter is also wearing a mask, a
objective document of historical brutality is emphatically called into qin. in.r.k imposed by the relations of dominance peculiar to a visualizing colo-
tion by the Observer who knows that this is somebody's loved one, t h r . in.11 system, as George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" so insightfully indi-
could be my loved one, this could be me. How could this photo havc ho i .u rs. Those made into Ethnographic subjects starc back at the camera, at
taken? ir., eme hundred years later, and the directness of that gaze declares, "I am
Williams's question reveis the inadequacy of Margaret Mead's teiu-i i I I . H In ir, .uul so are you." The ghostliness of testimony and presence is made
a camera running on its own steam is an objective eye. Inmy example I n v n l m i hese fragments of early ethnographic film.
chapter 5 of the inappropriate "racial film"Balinese who rcspond tu m v . i . l W h e t h e r throwing stones at the photographer, recontextualizing early
ing Dutch colonial soldiers by walking straight towards them, onlv n > I" liMii.ij'.r, w i n k i n g at the camera, refraining from representing certain sub-
gunned downthe violence of the guns is equal to the violcnre o t l u l i l m |i i !,, o t.ikinj; up the camera, the third eye isalso LIS, the Others, the native
camera. A filmmaker was thcre to record, but LB COtnplicit with the gun "i l i i l i n i n . n i i s who que.sl ion, mock, d i s q u i c t , and inlorm, descernants of eth-
2i8 Conclusin

nographic spectacle, forced to build an identity from veiled selves. We at


times have an extra eye in our encounter with a society that fails to ac
knowledge our humanness, that denies us our presence in the present.
James Baldwin's statement that so puzzled Mead"I had to accept that I NOTES
was on a slave boat once"reveis that the writing of history is a nieans o
giving a present voice to the past, an affirmative act by dispossessed peoples
in their struggles for physical and cultural survival, a means of bearing
witness for the future. Who is photographing and what is being photo
graphed are no longer innocuous questions. These are the extraordinarily
multivalent problems of representation that must be addressed in conten
porary photography, video, and film as practiced at the beginning of tlir
second millennium.
This could be my mother, this could be my daughter, this could be me. /111 roduction

i Flix Regnault, "Des altitudes du repos dans les race humaines," Revue encyclop-
dique (7 fanuary 1896): 9-12.
; Flix Regnault, "Le langage par gestes," La nature 1324 (15 October 1898): 315.
l See chapter i for my discussion on chronophotography, and chapter ^ for more dc-
tailed discussion of Rcgnault's theories on film.
.| W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Books, 1989; orig. publ.
19031,3.
s Ibid., 6.
ii l'rantz Fann, Black Skin, White Masks: The Experences of a Black Man in a Whilc
World, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 140.
' Ibid., 147.
H I.evi-Strauss writes, "Nowadays, being an explorer is a trade, which eonsists not, as
me might think, in discovering hitherto unknown facts after years of study, but in
rcivcring a great many miles and assembling lantern-slides or motion pictures, pre-
h-rably in colour, so as to fill a hall with an audience for several days in succession.
For this audience, platitudes and commonplaces seem to have been miraculously
ii.msmuted into revelations by the sol fact that their author, instead of doing his
plagiarizing at home, has supposedly sanctifled it by covering some twenty thousand
miles" (Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Trapiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman
( N r v v York: Penguin Books, 1992], 17-18).
> H'iii., ns.
i "An Interview with Gayatri Spivak," ed. Judy Burns, Women &> Performance: A
foufnal of Feminist Theory %, no. 1.9 (1990): 82.
(.rnige W. Stockmg Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), 47,
1 i')

|,iv Knby, "Is Ethnographic F i l m a FilmicEthnography?"5futfjesin the Anthropology


l Visual Communication z, no. 2 (fall 1975): 108.
M u lele Duebel, l,c parlti^e des suvoirn: discoiiK iiialoriquc et cliscours ethnolo-
g/i/l/c (Pars: ditions l.i Dccouvcrte, i y 8 s ) , 19.
I vm sl.iiul.ird relciciicrs In r a i l y "ethnographic i l n i , " o ronrse, are subjeet to the
i li.nj'.c I h-spile M.iir,.ii<'l Mc.ul .un (.'i (),( >i v H.ilcsdn's c \ l c i i si ve (Inini.ikint; in H:il
22,o Notes to Introduction

and New Guinea in the 19308, ethnographic film began to be considered a distinct
genre only in the 19508: two important signs of its arrival wcre Harvard University's
Notes ttoChapter
o ^napter Une
One 22I 221
funding of anthropological films after the success of the Marshalls' The Hunters ing Fascism," which investigates the aesthetics of fascism and why fascism con-
(1958) and, in France, the attention paid to the films of Jean Rouch in high art venues tines to fascnate even those born after the 19405. See "Fascinating Fascism," in
like Cahiers du cinema and in educational organizations like UNESCO (Claudia
Under the Sign ofSaturn (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 73-105.
Springer, "Ethnocentric Circles: A Short History of Ethnographic Film," The Inde- 25 Similarly, D. W. Grffith's Broken Blossoms (1919), considered by many to be the first
pendent [December 1984]: 16). art film, portrays a Chinese male as a feminized Other thwarted in his desire for an
In 1952 the International Committee on Ethnographic Film (CIFE), headed by innocent blonde girl. Again, an important cinematic "milestone" takes its suste-
nance from stereotyped views of gender and racial difference.
Rouch, was formed to promote the preservation, production, and distribution of
ethnographic film (Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in Princi Richard Fung has pointed out that Asian men are stereotyped as undersexed
pies of Visual Anthtopology, ed. Paul Hockings [The Hague: Mouton, 1975], 28). ("Looking for My Penis: The Eroticised Asian in Gay Video Porn," in How Do ILook
Films made before the 19508 which today qualify as ethnographic were only de QueerPilm and Video, ed. Bad Object-Choices (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 146). In this
fined as such retroactively by visual anthropologists like Emilie de Brigard, Karl light, the title of Wayne Wang's 1981 film Chan Is Missing can be taken as a brilliant
Heider, and Jcan Rouch looking for historical precursors. See de Brigard; M a r t i n pun on the cinematic construction of the Chinese American male: what Chanthe
Taureg, "The Development of Standards for Scientific Films in Germn Ethnogra Chinese American characteris missing in Hollywood cinema is, n fact, his mascu-
phy," Studies in Visual Communication 9, no. i (winter 1983): 19-29; Karl Heidci, linity, his penis. Moreover Chan, i.e., an unstereotyped depiction of the East Asian
Ethnographic Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); and Jean Rouch, "l.c American male, is literally missing from cinema. The Asian American, whether
film ethnographique," in Ethnologie genrale, ed. Jean Poirier, Encyclopdie de /</ male or female, is consistently allied with Art: with costume, surface, design, detail,
Pleiade (Paris: ditions Gallimard, 1968), 24: 429-71. and artifice. The "Oriental" is thus made akin to the "Ornamental." But like other
15 Fayc Ginsburg, "Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?" CultUIl people of color, whether African American or Inuit, the Asian American is also
Anthropology 6, no. i (February 1991): 104. pathologized, henee the use of "Yellow Peril" and other metaphors that portray Asian
16 Recent examples of what I term ethnographic cinema include David M a y b i u v Amercans as virulent. Frantz Fann writes, "The terms the settler uses when he
Lewis's Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (PBS special, 11>*> I mentions the native are zoological terms. He speaks of the yellow man's reptilian
which, although self-reflexive about anthropology, contines to represent and m motions, of the stinkof the native quarter, of breeding swarms, offoulncss, ofspawn,
manticize indigcnous pcoples as exotic Others,- the Ewoks in George Lucas's Kcimn o gcsticulations"
York: Grove Press, (The
1964),Wretched
42). of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New
of the fedi (1983) are veiled science fiction references to the "ethnographic" as snn
pie, fuzzy, brown tribcspeople. i fi l'br an insightful article on the representation of race in The Birth of the Ntion see
17 Phil Rosen, "From Dqcument to Diegesis: Historical Detail and Film Spcct.-u l< ('lyde Taylor, rgpr):
(Inly-October "The Re-birth
12-13. of the Aesthetic in Cinema," Wide Angle 13, nos. 3-4
earlydraft of achapterfrom theforthcoming.Pasr, Present:Theoiy, Cinema, llisinn
18 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," MI i lean Rouch apples the term self-consciously to Regnault, Flaherty, Mead, Gregory
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Selm. |.. n llaieson, Dziga Vertov, andothers. See, e.g., Jean Rouch, "Our Totemic Ancestors and
Books, 1969), 223. i 'i.izcdMasters," SenriEthnological Studies 24 (1988): 225-38.
19 Rosen, 20. i I i la Abu-Lughod, "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography ?" Woman &> Performance:
, 1 loiirnal of Feminist Theory 5.1, no. 9 (1991): 24.
20 V. Y. Mudimbc, The Invention of frica: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the o / , / , / ni
Knowledge (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 15-16. "i |.unes G. Fraser, Foreword to The Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw
M.ilmowski (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961; orig. publ. 1922), ix, xiv.
21 George W. Stockingjr., "Bones, Bodies, Behavior," in Bones, Bodies, Behavim /.VMII
v Meplien Bann, 5:8.
on Biological Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anilui"'l,n-\: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), The See
Clothing of Clio:
also George W.ASioc-|.
Study u n of
|i the Representation of History in
Nui'iccnth-century
I ' ) , ' < . | ) , f.2. Britain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology {New Yml' I u > 11 I ,iniin, 109.
Press, 1968).
22 Claude Lvi-Strauss cxplains in Tristes Trapiques how travel involves sp.uc. t n m
and status (85). i Vr;m; Anlhrnpology
23 Johannes Fabin, Time and the Other: llow Anthropology Mukcs lis ( > / > / < ' n1 '
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 39. i \ Muclimbc, The, Inven! ion o frica: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Orderof Knowl-
24 The inspira t ion for the la bel, of coursc, comes froni Susan Sonlaj;'.s ess.iv "1.1 i / r r Illloomington: Indiana U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1988), i s ( t i l i n g R. I. Kotberg, frica
,iii,l
'iii //, / v/i/o/iT.sv
v l'iess, i M/oJ) Motives, Mctliotl and Iiupacl (Cambridge, Mass.: I larvard Univer-
222 Notes to Chapter One

Marcel Mauss, "Les techniques du corps," in Sociologie et anthropologie (Pars:


Presses Universitaires de France, 1934), 379. ., u es to Chapter One 22
N testo Chapter One

3 Regnault, for example, used the word "savage" to describe the West African per- in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Phil Rosen (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 507-34.
formers he fllmed in 1895 in "L'histoire du cinema: son role en anthropologie,"
Bulletins et mamones de la Socit d'anthropologie de Pars 3d tome, /th ser. (6 July 15 For studies of the history of French anthropology, see Elizabeth A. Williams, "The
1922): 64. According to George W. Stocking Jr., the word "savage" ceased to be a Science of Man: Anthropological Thought and Institutions in Nineteenth-century
legitmate anthropological term for indigenous peoples only by the 19305 (George W. Fiancc" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1983); Joy Dorothy Harvey, "Races Specified,
Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology [New York: Free Press, 1987], xv). Evolution Transformed: The Social Context of Scientific Debates Originating in the
4 Flix Regnault and Cdt. de Raoul, Comment on marche: dea divers mode de progres- Socit d'anthropologie de Pars 1859-1902" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983);
sion de la supoiit du mode en flexin (Pars: Henri Charles-Lavauzelle, diteur Donald Bender, "The Development of French Anthropology," fournal of the History
militaire, 1897). Illustration of man reproduced on p. 23. of the Behavioral Sciences i, no. 2 (Aprl 1965), 139-51,- and Brtta Rupp-Eisenreich,
5 See more detailed discussion of Regnault's chronophotography in chapter 2. ed., Histoires de 1'anthropologie XVIe-XIXe sicles: colloque lapratique de l'anthro-
6 Martin Taureg, "The Development of Standards for Scientiflc Films in Germn Eth- pologie aujourd'hui 19-21 novembre 1981, Svres (Pars: Klincksieck, 1984).
nography," Studies in Visual Communication 9, no. i (winter 1983): 22-23; Ernilii- 16 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origiti and Spread
of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in Principies of Visual Anthropol
ogy, ed. Paul Hockings (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), 15-17. Ethnographic filmmaki-i 17 The first anthropologist to discuss race, William Frederic Edwards, apped the con-
Jean Rouch claims that the conceptions embodied in present-day museum displayx cept to French history in an attempt to justify French nationalism (see Claude
are timid in comparison with Regnault's visin of a museum "of gesture and souml" Blanckaert, "On the Origins of French Ethnology: William Edwards and the Doc-
(Jean Rouch, "L'itinraire initiatique," in CinmAction: la science Tcran, ed. JIMn trine of Race," in Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biolgica! Anthropology. ed
Jacques Mensy [Pars: Les Editions du Cerf, 1986], 6). George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 5 [Madison: University of
7 Mudimbe, Invention of frica, 191-92. Wisconsin Press, 1988), 18-55). Racial determinism also characterized the thought of
8 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Wiilmv probably the most famous French historian of the nineteenth century, /ules Michclet,
Sacriflce," Wedge 7-8 (winter-spring 1985): 271-313. who claimed that France's superiority was due to its unique mixture of the Ceitic and
9 See my introduction. Romn races (William B. Cohn, The French Encounter with Africans: White Re
10 In 1921, Regnault along with the director of the Institu de Marey, Fierre Nnr.ni i xponsetoBlacks, i^o-z##o[Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1980), 215-16).
fllmed the boxer Johnny Coulon, aman who billed himself as "unlif table," i n o 11 li i ti) i M George W. Stocking Jr., "Polygenist Thought in Post-Darwinian French Anthropol-
give scientiflc explanation behind Coulon's supposed supernatural powcrs. I l > i ogy,"
York: in Race,
Free Press,Culture
1968), and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New
42-68.
found no evidence that Regnault made any other films (Fierre Nogucs aml I < l i
Regnault, "Explication mcanique des trucs de 1'homme insoulevable," AYri;i .' i u In the later nineteenth century in France and Germany, "anthropology" was used to
pathologie compares [10 May 1921]: 191-94). icfcr to what in the United States is described as physical anthropology, and "ethnol-
11 According to Regnault's birth certifcate at the Archives of the City of lU-mn In i>y,y" was used for cultural anthropology. In the British tradition, anthropology was
father was a professor of physics. In his dedication to his medical thesis, I n m rvM diviilcd into social anthropology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and archeology.
Regnault described his father as a professor of mathematics (correspondan r M n l i n i Ser Harvey, 50-51, and Elizabeth Williams, 116-21, for more on transfoimisme. An
Mme. Catherine Laurent, archivist of the Archives of the City of Renncs) nnportant aspect of evolutionist anthropology was positivism. Positivism, with ts
12 Books which Regnault wrote include Hypnotisme, religin (1897), <<>"""' m "i> n iiurrn with phenomenological description and the study of longhistrica! develop-
marche with Cdt. de Raoul (1897), Les gardes-malades (1901) with O. MI le 1 1 i i i i r n , as weli as its emphasis on the physiological bases of psychology, the impor-
ton, L'volution de la prostitution (1906), and La gense des mitades ( 1 1 ) n >l i.mri- o technology and progress, and the environment as shaper of human behavor,
13 Flix Regnault, "Le role du cinema en ethnographie," La nature ?.<><. ( i i > inlu-i mldimcd rnuch of anthropology during the nineteenth century [Histrica! Diction-
1931): 305. ,ii v 11/' ihi' 'l'bird French Repuhlic, cd. Patrck H. Hutton (Westport, Conn.: Green-
14 For more on film and physiology, seeLisaCartwright'sexcellent ,S'i-/ccmiiy ili. i ivoml l'n-s.s, ty6|, 796-98). For more on anthropology and Auguste Comte's notion
ni |>inj;ic,ss, sce Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 25-30.
Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture (Minncapolis: University of M i n n < MU i i >
1995), which makcs explicit the tics between physiology, cinema, and 11 i i I lidin.isS. Kuhnarges that mcasuremcnt hecameanessentialelementofthephysi-
tion of gender. For an insightful analysis of how Miiyliridgi:'s i i m r m n i n m i n i> . i ,il M iriuv paradigm s l a r l i n g in 1840 ("The Function of Mcasurement in Physical
construct gender, sce Linda Williams, "I 1 i I ni Hoily: An I n i p l . i n l . i l ion o l'i i vi i imu '.i i i - n c r , " in Tl/c lis.sc/iiiii/ 'Ic/isiot: Sclccicd Siinlics in Sc.ienti/ic Tradition and
i li,niy,c ( 'liicago: UmviTsily ni ('hicago Press, 1979), ?.2o).
I !.( of < dmpai.iiivr anatomical siiidics, cspecially comparativo 1 s i u d y of craina
2,24 Notes to Chapter One
Notes to Chapter One 225
began in the late eighteenth century and burgeoned in the nineteenth century. In the
late eighteenth century Johannes Blumenbach used new anatomical techniques, in- 31 For more on Mortillet's applied anthropology and pseudo-sociological trends, see
cluding cranial measurement, to classify man into five races, and Peter Camper Harvey, 269-326. One of the most influential writers on racial hygiene was, of
described a way to measure facial angles. In the early nineteenth century, U.S. physi- course, Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau. In his now famous Essay on the Inequal-
cian Samuel Morton initiated what carne to be called the "American School" of ity of Human Races (1853-55), Gobineau asserted that race determines history, and
anthropology, a school which based its research on comparison of massive collec- that the intermixture of races will cause degeneration and ultimately death. His
tions of skulls; the Viennese medical doctor Franz-Josef Gall popularizcd phrenology, work, later often cited by Adolf Hitler, was not widely read during his own time, and
predates the founding of the Socit d'anthropologie de Paris.
a science in which the bumps of the head were read to determine character and
intelligence; Belgian biostatistician Adolphe Qutelet used statistics and physiog- 32 On decadence see "De la dpopulation de la France," La mdecine modeme (1893):
nomy in an attempt to identify the "average" man, i.e., European man; and, in 1840, 1256-57,- and "The role of dpopulation, deforestation and malaria in the decadence
Anders Retzius invented the cephalic ndex, which was the ratio of head length to of certain nations," Smithsonian Institution Annual Report (trans. from Revue sci-
head breadth. Retzius divided humanity into two groups: the brachycephalics (broad- entifique [Paris, lojanuary 1914): 46-48) (Washington, D.C., 1914), 593-97. Onnurs-
headed) and the dolichocephalic (long-headed). Regnault made extensive use of ce- ing, see Regnault and Dr. Mlle. Hamilton, Les gardes-malades; on prostitution, see
phalic measurements in his studies of pathology. L'volution de la prostitution; on strongmen, see Nogus and Regnault, "Explication
22 Paul Broca, "Anthropologie," in Dictionnaire des sciences medicales, vol. 5 (1866), mcanique des trucs de 1'homme insoulevable," 191-94,- and ongeniuses, see "Con-
280-300, quoted in Harvey, 42. That those who were considered "pmitive" or "sav- frence Lamarck: des infirmitcs des organes des sens dans la production des oeuvres
age" were often politically despised groups is best seen in British characterizations o de gnie," Bulletins et mmoires de la Socit d'anthropologie de Paris 9th tome, 7th
ser. (1928): 79-81.
members of the Irish as low on the evolutionary scale: the Irish skull was said to be1 n Harvey, 133-38.
akin to that of the Australian Aborigine and the higher primate (Pitt Rivers, A.H.L.E,
Catalogue of the anthropological collection lent by Colonel Lae Fox for exhibition 14 Many colonial naval doctors learned anthropometry at Broca's laboratory. Louis
in the Bethnal Green Branch of the South Kensington Museum, fue 1874, Par* I Faidherbe, Governor-General of the Sudan, was a Socit d'anthropologie de Paris
and II (London), cited in William Ryan Chapman, "Arranging Ethnology: A.H.I..I member from 1865 to 1879, and served as president of the Socit in 1874 (Har-
Pitt Rivers and the Typological Tradition," in Objects and Others: Essays on Mu vey, 115, 133-34, and 155). Faidherbe claimed that African brains were of "rcla-
seums and Material Culture, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Aathropology, tively weak volume," explaining the "weak will" of the African. This, he wrote, ac
vol. 3 [Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1985], 28). Pitt Rivers established l lie counted for why Africans could be enslaved (Louis Faidherbe, Essai sur la langue peni
flrst anthropological museum in Great Britain, the Pitt Rivers Museum, at Oxlonl |IJaris, 1875], 14, cited in Cohn, 230-31). Paul Bert, another Socit member, was
University in 1884. Governor-General of Indochina during the Ferry government (Harvey, 133, 159).
23 George W. Stocking Jr., "Bones, Bodies, Behavior,"in Bones, Bodies, Behavior: /.SMM , t s l'aui Broca, "Instructions Genrales pour les rcherches et observations anthropolog-
on Biological Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History ofAnthiopology, ve 11 iques," Mmoires de la Socit d'anthropologie de Pars II (Paris, 1865), 69-204,
quoted and trans. in Harvey, 128.
5 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 19881,7-8.
24 Cohn, 234. i<> Scc Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Faw-
cx-tt (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
25 Adam Kuper, The Invention of Pmitive Society: Transformations of an / / / ; / \ n > n
(London: Routledge, 1988), 5. i/ 'I'he interest in visualizing hybridity was also present in the earlier colonial (Spanish
26 French anthropologists Fierre Gratiolet and Cari Vogt, for examplc, believed i l i u and I'ortuguese) obsession with visual categorizing "castes" generated by particular
"racial" mixtures. I thank Mary Miller for this insight.
black skulls were similar to those of microcephalic idiots, and thus bclicved i l i . n |M rabian, Time and the Other.
blacks would always be mentally inferior to whites, a conclusin used by theprotta
ery movement (Harvey, 125). o llml., 106. Fabin explains that visualism encourages quantiflcation and diagram-
27 L. J. B. Brenger-Fraud, Petiplades, 2-4, cited in Cohn, 241, and Flix R c g n a n l i , "I ' in.iiic: representation "so that the ability to 'visualize' a culture or society almost
lirrnmcs synonyinous for understanding it."
lafonctionprhensiledupied," La nature 1058 (9 September 1893): 229 1 1 .
28 Charles Letourneau, Sociologie d'aprs l'ethnographie (Paris: Reinwald, i x . s . i l i i<' ( m u t i l a n Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision andModernity in the Nine-
quoted in Harvey, 139. i i ' f i i l h Century (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988). I thank Esther da Costa Meyer
lu i l n s insight.
29 Max Simn Nordau, Degcneration (New York: H. Fertig, i H y s ; repr. i g 6 K ) .
30 For more on Charcot, scc Hcliora S i l v c r m a n , Arl Nouvi'dii in l!in de .s/cc/c l-iiim i 11 I r l i x Kcgn.iuli, /)'.s' tiltcrtitwnx cniiiciinc.i iltins le rtichitisme (Paris: Steinheil,
i M K S ) , l )..
Pohtics, Psychology, uud sivlr (Berkeley: University o Ctllforni* i'iess, miui
106. Ii Al i l i c - Mii.sriini ( I l u s i o n e n . i l i i i c l l c , ilu 1 most i m p o r t a n ! (-'rend scientific research
nr.l i l u l mu o ( l i e I une, skeletOni O t lise af f l i r l c i l WH l> "!'
226 Notes to Chapter One

of microcephalics, hydrocephalics, and so on, were displayed as point of comparison Notes to Chapter One 227
to the "normal" skeleton. In the same museum one could view the Ethnographic
Hall series classifying the races (G. Xert, "Les nouvelles galleries du musum," La 's bodies in tf
nature 1297 [9 April 1898]: 297-98). Anthropometry was also extensively used in the Afean bu-ks of
new feld of criminology. In 1884, Alphonse Bertillon, the son of Socit d'anthropo- women, and he
logie de Paris member L. A. Bertillon, began work on criminal identiflcation using
a work
anthropological measuring techniques. See Harvey, 305-6. Regnault himself was rom oihercul tures , such
influenced by and wrote about the Italian criminologist Lombroso. See, e.g., "Des woman's by sc.nce, seo
anomalies osseuses chez les arrirs criminis et les brigands," Bulletins et m-
moires de la Socit d'anthropologie de Paris 9th tome, yth ser. (4 November 1926):
92-95.
43 Flix Regnault, "Les cagots et la lpre en France," La nature 1022 (31 December
1892): 67-68; J. LajardandFlixRegnauh,Derexistencedelalpreattenuechezles
cagots des Pyrenes, ed. Progrs medical (Paris: Lecrosnier et Bab, 1893); "Les mains
polydactyles," La nature 1044 (3 June 1893): 5-6; Flix Regnault, "Les monstres dans away slnclly
l'ethnographie et dans l'art," Bulletins et mmoires de la Socit d'anthropologie de of and ^
Paris 4th tome, 6thser. (3 July 1913): 400-411. dlffence-as an
umanity.
44 See, e.g., Flix Regnault, "Nouvelle race d'ours des cavernes," La nature 720 (19 March
18871:255. i early as
45 See, e.g., "De la perception des couleurs suivant les races humaines," La mdecinc ,, *~ i^ssemblance anatomique d psychlquc ,
moderne (1893): 1062-65; "Les scarifications," La mdecine moderne (1895): 507; opposed to the anatomical look intended PSychlc un"y as
"De la fonction prhensile du pied." The French were fascinated with steatopygy, Bloch's "De la race qui precede les -e, (Discusin for Ado
a trait thought to be characteristic of prehistoric French sculptures of women. One 1 Socit d'anthropologie de P,
<
cyclopoedia universalis, s.v I902|: 68, Scc
of the most tragic outcomes of this fascination was the treatment of Saartjie Baart '3
man, a Khoi-San woman (then referred to as Hottentot) from South frica who w.i'. poedia Universalis France S. msdle' s: Encyclo-
brought to Europe and performed in an animal show in Paris, displaying her boilv 48 Regnault, Hypnoti
After her death from tuberculosis in Paris, anthropologist Georges Cuvier of t h < 4 y Etienne Balibar, "'.
Musum d'histoire naturelle dissected her body and her reproductive organs. Ser Iden tifies, 19. , Natl0n, Cass:
so
Cohn, 239-41, and "The Hottentot Venus," in Steven Jay Gould, The Flmula;
Smile: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 29I-30S.
Sander L. Gilman's article "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconograpliy < >l
Female Sexuality in Late-nineteenth-century Art, Medicine, and Literaturc," m
"Race," Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Chicago: Universiiv "I
Chicago Press, 1985), 223-61, is frequently cited by critics discussing the represen -rettbtrT^
tation of Woman in the nineteenth and twentieth century. I agree with C . ' i l n i . m ane see Silverman, 7 5 _ I o 6 . "-pion of Ch.rcot's study ofart and medl _
that there is a connection between the representation of women of color .un ni
white prostitutes: as Etienne Balibar explains, racism and sexism function toj'.i-dn i
(EtienneBalibar, "Racism and Nationalism," Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous lil/-n
"A propos des deformado:
mthropologie de Pars 6
' extensively on >lmiti
^^^
,f ^ '3 ^""^ I8 9S): xo.
tifies, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein [London: Verso, UMM ,41) l
disagree, however, with the manner in which Gilman links the cxploitanvr u | > i <
claimed that art by ** ^
d ans l' slno-)ap0nl " n " "J ?Omamentation. ("Dfor-
8
sentation of Sarah Bartman to the representation of the courtisane Nana in l i i l n i i . i n l tome, 4th se, (6 Ju /^ ! ^ ^- d' anthlopologe
*
Manet's painting Nana (1877). First, Gilman's own reproduction of imanes <>l '..u i l > ous observe." who did not v ' D ^ ther ha nd
Bartman and her genitals constituios yct anothcr cxploltation o Harlin.in, . u n " ^nu^^
veis that the critique of visualism may itsclt be visualist, w i t h a l l o ( l i e .i.v.m i i i > < l - tempcr^nent R,,,,,,,,, ^ , ? t h u s Wi!s 'kty d a nt of
imperialist and patriarchal comila!mus. Sri-oml, C iImn jumps lo l l i r cmu lu l ,n U. !, n.Hlc, U,,,,, , ** --n
W ,uuv,,, ,...........,. ; ; I, " l l -.s i l u v i l c! ccc,, .,
228 Notes to Chapter One
Notes to Chapter One 229
savage hunter lives in a non-fertile environmcnt, his ornamental imagination is less
fertile) ("Essai sur les debuts de l'art ornemental gomctrique chez les peuples primi- claimed that the Pai-Pi-Bris were brought to Pars "in the hope that the memories
tifs," Bulletins de la Sacete d'anthropologie de Pars yth tome, 4th ser. [i October they take back will permit us to establish French trading stations more easily in their
1896]: 539). country" (Schneider, 171).
Regnault averred that the study of art helps one to understand both Primitive and 67 Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibi-
Civilized man. The more advanced the civilization, the greater its imagination. tions and World's Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press,
The Primitive, Regnault explained, depicted real monsters, i.e., deformed people, 1988), 89; and Greenhalgh, "Education, Entertainment and Poltics: Lessons from the
whereas the ancients (for Regnault, the Greeks and the Egyptians) and Italian Renais- Great International Exhibitions," in The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (London:
sance artists depicted imaginary monsters (see "Les monstres dans l'ethnographie et Redaktion Books, 1989), 74-98.
dans l'art"). 68 Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 87.
69 Cohn, 281.
54 See, e.g., Regnault and Lajard, "La Venus accroupie dans l'art grec," La nature 1152
(29 June 1895): 69-70. 70 The story of the display of indigenous ethnic peoples is incomplete: there is little
55 Flix Regnault, "Classiflcations des sciences anthropologiques," Revue anthropolo- written record of the thoughts of the performers, and little record of the biographies
gique(ic,T,i): 12,2. and aspirations of the promoters of the shows. Accounts of the mass illustrated press,
56 Flix Regnault, "Des altitudes du repos dans les races humaines," Revue encyclo- however, shed some light on public response to the exhibitions, and accounts by
pdique (7 January 1896): 9. visitors such as Regnault shed light on the scientific response.
57 See, e.g., Flix Regnault, "Les altitudes de repos dans l'art sino-Japonais," La nature 71 Elizabeth Williams, "Scienceof Man," 139.
1154(15 July 1895): 106; "Des altitudes du repos dans les races humaines"; "Presenta - 72 Ibd., 144. According to Williams, Jomard deflned ethnography as "the science which
lion d'une hotte primitive," Bulletins de la Sacete d'anthropologie de Pars 3d tome, studied the advance of civilization among primitive peoples." The short-lived So-
4th ser. (21 July 1892): 471-79; and Regnault and Lajard, "La Venus accroupie dans cit d'ethnographie, founded by Len de Rosny in 1859, was never as powerful as the
l'art grec." Socit d'anthropologie de Pars. Its stated goal was to promote ethnography as the
58 John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Historie* science of progress, a science which would take as its object the societies of all
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 74. peoples, particularly "savages."
59 For more on anthropometric photography see Visual Anthropology 3, nos. 2-3 (1990!, /i Patricia Mainardi, Art and Politics of the Second Empire: The Universa! Exposit ions
special issue, "Picturing Cultures: Historical Photographs in Anthropological IM of 1855 and 1867 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 169. Another aspect of
quiry"; and Melissa Banta and Curtis M. Hinsley, From Site to Sight: Aothmpology, the artistic interest in the "ethnographic" is Primitivism, whose flrst proponent was
Photography, and the Power oflmagery (Cambridge, Mass.: Peabody Museum Press, arguably Postimpressionist Paul Gauguin. After painting peasants in Britanny, Gau-
1986). gun began painting in the French colony of Tahiti in 1890.
60 "Dilation des joues: chez les soufleurs de verre et dans l'art, "La nature 1030 (2 s l'Vli ;.| See Adolf Loos, "Ornament as Crime,"in TheArchitectureofAdolfLoos, ed. Yehuda
ruary 1893): 200. Safran and Wilfried Wang (London: Arts Council of Great Britain and the Authors,
61 Regnault believed that religin could be explained in medical and scientific in nr. 1908). On the detail, see Naomi Schor, Reading in Detal: Aesthetics and the Femi-
He suggested, for example, that Jess was a hysteric (see Hypnotisme, Religin, I nine (New York: Methuen, 1987). On the detail and historical film, see Phil Rosen,
62 Cario Ginzburg, "Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and S e i e n n l h "From Document to Diegesis: Historical Detail and Film Spectacle," early draft oa
Method,"in TheSignofThree:Dupin, Holmes, Peirce, ed. Umberto Eco ail Tliom.i rhapterfrom the forthcoming Past, Present: Theory, Cinema, History.
Sebeok (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 81-118. i \ ,'rcenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas, 89.
63 Arthistorians trace theirroots to connoisseurship studics by Johann Joacliim W i m I i. I hcophile Gauter had already remarked on prostitution of the "ru du Caire" in
elmann, Bernard Berenson, and Giovanni Morelli, but the writings o K r i ' . i i . m l i i H H y . See Leila Knney and Zeynep Celik, "Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the
Richer, and Charcot on art remain overlooked. r.xpositions Universelles," Assemblage i} (December 1990): [341-59.
64 Flix Regnault, "Exposition ethnographiquc de l'Afrique occidentale mi ( 'h.mi|. .1. > Regnault dcscribed the performers in a Dahomeyan exhibition of 1893 as little civi-
MarsParis: Sngalet Soudanfraneis," La nature 11S9 (17 August i H i ; s ) : i f i ' > li/ed and lazy, a fact he dcrved from the study of their body postures. He also spoke
65 "Un villagencgreauChampdeMars," L'iUustration 2729 ( i S J u n e r 8 ) s | SON ni l he performers as artworks, calling them "belles statues de bronzes" (beautiful
66 Petit Journal 5 June, 14 July, 26 July, and i s August i 8 i > s , quoted ni W i l l i - m i 1 1 lnonr.e statues), a reference whieh would seem to reveal how little he saw them as
Schncider, An Empire For the Masscs: ''he l'rcucli l'i>/>iiliir Inui^c I A l i n ,i iNni people ("Les dahomens," La nature 041 (13 March 1893): 371-74). In a laterarticle
1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, l y S i ) , i 6 g . The iustin'cation Im sin l i mi prehistoric sculptures, Regnault again mentioned the 189^ Hahorneyan exhbi-
positions ineluded eolonialisni; m the 7 Augusl i K i H l'ciii ininiiiil. mn i> >l>< l i o i i when he wrote, "Rappelez-VOUS ees lemines a l'aspeet bizarre que la Jardin
ll'Aeel i ni,Kiciii de Pars exhiba I y a quclque.s .11 mees: I loiienlols a n x seins pendan is
230 Notes to Chapter One

aux jambes faissant une enorme saillie" (Do you recall the bizarre looking women at
the Jardn d'Acclimation de Pars exhibited some years ago: Hottentots with pen- Ibid., u-12. Notes to Chapter Two 23I

dulous breasts, with legs curved to an enormous projection) (Flix Regnault, "Les
artistes prhistoriques d'aprs les derniers dcouvertes," La nature 1167 [12 October Many of the themes of the fair transferred to film: there are several early films, for
18951:306). example, showing young, non-European children in harbors diving for money. In
78 Regnault, "Les dahomens," 372. addition, films of the world's fairs were made by almost all major commercial film
companes, including Edison and Path.
79 Ella Shohat gives a survey of cinema, gender, and colonialism in "Imaging Terra
Incgnita: The Disciplinary Gaze of Empire," Public Culture 3, no. 2 (spring 1991):
41-70. TheWritnSof Race n PUm
80 Regnault, "Un village ngre," 508.
81 Regnault noted, however, that in "the black continent" the European practice of Walter Benjamn, "The Work of Art n the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in
throwing money to African children was an established one (in this sense the visitoi Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken
Books, 1969), 233.
could play at being a French tourist in an African colony). He comments that money
throwing at the ethnographic exposition was merely an amusing practice (Regnan 11, 2 68,
Bruno
66, Latour,
71, 90. Science in Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987),
"Exposition ethnographique," 186). Regnault fails to recount that in both the iSi 3 Benjamn, "Work of Art," 233.
Dahomeyan exhibition and the 1895 Senegalese exhibition, one performer was a
signed the Job of policeman to make sure no one crossed the railing to get coins whii 4 Mchael Hammond, "Anthropology as a Weapon of Social Combat in Late Nine-
had fallen short (Schneider, 148). 127.
teenth-century France," Journal of the History ofthe Behavioral Sciences 16 (1980):
82 Regnault, "Exposition ethnographique," 184.
83 Regnault, "Les dahomens," 372. 5 Flix Regnault, "L'histoire du cinema: son role en anthropologie," Bulletins et m-
84 Regnault, "Un village ngre," 508. moires de la Sacete d'anthropologie de Pars 3d tome, 7th ser. (6 July 1922): 65.
85 The throwing of money to performers in native villages was popular. If one imaj'.i'" t-, Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 8o.
a day at the 1895 ethnographic exhibition, one is likely to adopt the viewpoini ni / Regnault, "L'histoire du cinema," 64.
Frenchman or an African: the fair addressed viewers as national and racial stil>|< i i I Ibid.
But what about visitors of mixed heritage, or performers who stayed on a l i u i l n
expositions and settled in Europe or North America? One wonders about i l i < n Regnault wrote, "The first, or cinematograph, takes successive movements and dc-
sponse of visitors who were the children of French colonialist fathers .mi W < composes them n a series of photographic images: it is only important from a scien-
African mothers sent to be educated in France. I have no records, but om- mn l . i lific point of view. The second, or cinematoscope, recomposes the movement and
suppose that if asked to choose, they would likely have identifled with t l u - 1 i < n. i * gives us an animated spectacle, it has a commercial interest" ("L'histoire du cinema,"
with the Eiffel Tower technology. It is a sad fact that the exhibitions were si > ilc 11 6o-61). Throughout the early twentieth century, Regnault wrote about cinema and
ing to Africans that a person of mixed blood would have had little c h n n r I m i i > < 11 s history, a history he saw as an evolution originating from both science and popular
identify himself or herself as a French subject. riiiertainment, beginning with the concept of the persistence of the image on the
Timothy Mitchell has written an insightful article in which he describes i In w i l l u-i i na, Plateau's phnakistiscope, and Reynaud's praxinoscope, and reaching its apex
ten reactions of Middle Eastern visitors tovarious Universal Expositions in l'.m < m w i i h the invention of cinema by Marey, whom Regnault referred to as le pie du
the whole, Mitchell states, travelersfrom the MiddleEast were amazed .u i IH u i , smema
). (Flix Regnault, "L'volution du cinema," La revue scientifique (1922): 79-
spectacle, a reality effect in which the world was represented as thouj'.li n wi n ni
exhibition (Timothy Mitchell, "The World as Exhibition," Comparal i\-r sm.li, m n M.iita Braun, "The Photographic Work of E. J. Marey," Studies in Visual Communi-
Society and History 31, no. 2 [April 1989]: 217-36). , ilion 9, no. 4 (fall 1983): 2. See also her excellent Picturing Time: The Work of
86 The "ethnographic" body also represented biolgica! danger, t h a t wlm l i mu i l<. I u,-11111- ules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). For
attackedinits very corporeality. FrantzFann explaincd the represeni.n i |>. ,, ( ,l, m i i i r i i n Marey see Michel Frizot, E. J. Marey 1830/1904: la photographie du mouve-
of African descent by white society in these terms (Frantz Fann, H/<i< /. ,s/ m i l iii,-ni (('.iris: Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Muse national
Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in a Whitc Worlil, trans. C ' l i . n l c - . I .mi M.iik J .111 mineme, 1977-- 7N), and Frizot, I,a chronophotographie: temps, photographie et
mann [New York: Grove Press, 1967!, i < S 3 - f > s ) - in,ni\ aulour di' /.'. /. Marey, exhibition catalog for La Chapelle de l'Oratoire,
87 George Orwell, Shooting an ftlephnnt ail ()tlicr /.s-.sv/v.s- ( N r w Yoil< I l.m M. IMK rI I, nI udr.s
i l - (( Yiir
.1111 il'Or)
is tlr 7.7 May
M.iivy, i yS.|).? Scpteniber 1984 (Michel Frizot and Beaune: Associa-
& World, u;so), 8. 11
1 1 11 \, " l ' i l m s r( innsrrs t l V l l i n n g i a p l i i r , " ( '(nn>li's ii'iiilus ,i' /'-^ "''-'J"
h ,in^ i//-,; / ' < ' / / / ! i\',iii, i ' i i n ' i i l ,!,'< <''
232 Notesto Chapter Two

12 "Les muses des films," Biolgica 2, no. 16, supplement 20 (1912): XX, and "Un Notesto
-_ Chapter
^iO^LC! Two
LWO 233
233

muse des films," Bulletins et mmoires de la sacete d'anthropologie de Pars 3 el 26 These examples belong to the collection of Jean Vivi and are housed at the Archives
tome, 6th ser. (7 March 1912): 95-96. du film, cat. nos. 193 and 197.
13 Flix Regnault, "Le langage par gestes, "La nature 1324 (15 October 1898): 315. 27 Regnault, "Le langage par gestes."
14 Flix Regnault, "Films et muses d'ethnographie," 681. 28 Frantz Fann, Black Skin White Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in a White
15 For a description of Regnault's methods of chronophotography, see Flix Regnaull, World, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 129.
"Des diverses mthodes de marche et de course," L'illustration 2765 (22 February 19 See especially Regnault's long article "Les tempraments rustique et affin," Revue
1896): 155. anthropologique (1938): 18-40.
16 "Le role du cinema en ethnographie," La nature 2866(1 October 1931): 305; and Flix to Regnault and de Raoul, 28.
Regnault and Cdt. de Raoul, Comment on marche: des divers modes de progrensmn 11 Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism: Art, Lesure, and Parisian Society (New Haven:
dla supriort du mode en flexin (Paris: Henri Charles-Lavauzelle, Editeur m i l i Yale University Press, 1988), 33-34.
taire, 1897), 13-15. Regnault wrote an account of the evolution of fashion in "l,.i I >, Walter Benjamn, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism,
mode," La nature 1088 (7 April 1894): 289-91. I am indebted to Samba Diop loi
I ! trans. Harry Zohn (London: Verso, 1985), 35-36.1 thank Mary Miller for this insight.
providing information on the clothes and possible cultural identities of the people ni Etienne-Jules Marey, Prface to Regnault and de Raoul, 6. Comment on marche
Regnault's chronophotography. promotes the marche en flexin and reveis Regnault's emphasis on body move-
17 "Le grimpe," Revue encyclopdique (1897): 904-5. ments and what he believed they could tell the scientist about race, class, profession,
18 "Un muse des films," 96. education, costume, personality, and envronment.
1.1 Ibid., 8.
19 Hdi5 at the Cinmathque francaise.
IS
20 Lajard and Flix Regnault, "Poterie crue et origine du tour," Bulletins de la Socic/r Note by Charles Comte and Flix Regnault presented by Marey, Comptes rendus
d'anthropologie de Paris 6th tome, 4th ser. (19 December 1895): 734-39. hehdomadaires des sances de l'Acadmie des sciences 122 (February 1896): 401-4.
21 Regnault described this film sequence in this way: "Une ngresse pile dans un j'.i.nnl l<i See "Des diffrentes manieres de marcher," La mdecine moderne (1893): 596-
mortier. Elle leve le pilou, le lache en battant des mains, le laisse retombei ei l> 97; "Ouvrages offerts," Bulletins de la Socit d'anthropologie de Paris 4th tome
reprend dans sa chute" (A Negro woman grinds in a large mortar. She lifts the pe M I. ( 1 5 June 1893): 382; "La marche et le pas gymnastique militaires," La natura ios 2
lets it go while clapping her hands, lets it fall again and then picks it up againl ( " i MI (29 July 1893): 129; "Des diverses mthodes de marche et de course," L'illustrntwn
muse des films," 96). In some photographs of African women (unnamed) t a k e n i i 2765 (22 February 1896): 154-55,- Regnault and de Raoul, Comment on marche.
world's fairs, the women often appear barebreasted. See, e.g., the photograph e n n i l . .1 Regnault also made films of Commander de Raoul in a striped maillot shirt with
"Rcncontre insolite" of a Frenchman in a suit and an African woman lightlii) 1 . < .< l > h.it, white leggings, and baton, demonstrating the marche en flexin. The Cin-
other's cigarettes. This example was taken during the Exposition Uni verse Mi 1 i n I'.M i mathque francaise collection includes films of de Raoul as well as of other soldiers
in 1889 (Exhibition catalog, La tour Eiffel [Paris: Muse d'Orsay, 1989], 117). |H-rf orming the marche en flexin. Although the filmmaker is not attributed, and the
22 Seo Regnault and de Raoul, 171, for more on the evolution of carrying. t u l e s for the films were reportedly provded by Lucien Bull, Marey's assistant and
23 See cat. no. Hni3 (Cinmathque francaise). director of the Institut Marey (years after they were made), I beleve that these films
24 This example is "Course grands pas" (1895), cat. no. Hn22 (Cinmathequc l i >" iis well as all the Hn (Homme ngre} series were made by Regnault with the help of
caise). ('liarles Comte and Commander de Raoul. Other films by Regnault are in the Collec-
25 See LPhot 194, "Ngre marche," and LPhot 198, "Ngre marche d'aprcs s i 1 ' ' i ion Eric Vivi, at the Archives du film, and at the Collge de France.
which are available in the Eric Vivi collection at the Archives du film, See Kcgnault, "Des diverses mthodes de marche et de course," 155; Regnault and de
produced here. Lisa Cartwright describes the "China Girl" test image as l o l l e m K.iiMil, Comment on marche-, Flix Regnault, "La locomotion chez l'homme (Travail
static mdium close-up of an anonymous young white woman . . . h o l d i n r .1 < nlni ele l ' l n s t i t u t Marey)" Journal de physiologie et de pathologie genrale i5thtome, no.
scale test card.... The image setsin place a photochemical standard, establislinn > i ( i lannary 1913): 46-61. Throughout Europe and North America the use of film to
norm grades of filmstock that resolve light skin tones with the grcatcsi i . n n . '.I iiiiprnvc the efficacy of the Euro-American body must be seen in relation to burgeon-
subtlety and detail, responding to darker tones with a much more rcstrirtrd i.nw ni I iii)'. iliscourses around eugenics and Social Darwinism. Cinema and anthropology
tonal resolution." Cartwright explains that the China Girl image is :m ".ilv.em . i i i i i n e e l (orces not only in Taylorism, Henry Ford's use of analyses of films of workers
"prvate laboratory fetish object. . . closely related to the establishmenl < > l phvilnH l e m.ike ihe assemhly I i ne more eficient, hut also in the birth of thefieldof physical
nomical norms in nincteenth century science" (Lisa O i r t w r i g h l , i i i . i l r n . i l I i elnc.ilion, lo which Kcgnanlt's collcaguc at the Institu de physiologie, Gcorges
ehapterdraft toScreeningihu Body:Tracing Mcilicinr'x Visual Cullurc.\M\nt\{ .ipnll | I Vineney, e ' e i n t n l n i t e d tliroeigh I lie sluely o t h e body in chronoplie>tography.
University o Minnesota l'rcss, [995] which WMDOl focludcd ni the lin.il I u mi' I I lie c x l c n l lo wlnel sucli im.ij;es .ir- eipe'n lo mlcrprctation can he seen ni I he rcce-nl
Jneelilmi; o .1 e.iclie ni miele- pliolographs ni iindergi.'idn.ile's .11 e - l n . - '"
234 Notes to Chapter Two

were taken in the 19505 and 19603. These photos, which had been stored at the Notes to Chapter
r^i Two 235
i n 235
National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian, featured full frontal and siilr Cantrill, "The 1901 Cinematography of Walter Baldwin Spencer," Cantrill's Film-
poses, and were used by scientists to study the link between body shape and posturv notes 37-38 (April 1982): 41.
49
Those photographed, including many individuis now in powerful positions such as Spencer placed Australian Aborigines n compounds in Darwin and implemented
Hillary Clinton and Diane Sawyer, had sufflcient clout to lobby successfully for t h r many racist laws directed against Aborigines and Asians. Most of the information on
destruction of such photos (Ron Rosenbaum, "The Great Ivy League Nude Postuic Spencer is taken from the excellent arricie by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, ibid., 26-
Photo Scandal," New York Times Magazine, 15 January 1995, 26-31, 40, 46, s.s-s' 1 , 42, 56. I disagree, however, with their conclusin that permisson from the Arunta
and "Museum Shreds Nude Photos of Former Students at Yale," New York Times. Tribal Council should not be a precondition for viewing these films. They arge that
29 January 1995, 14). Needless to say, nude photographs of indigenous peoples .un
(56). and photography are our 'objects,' and they transcend the 'pro-flmic' subjects"
"Film
other people of color from the same period are not greeted with comparable shork
and disapproval by dominant society, or are the people photographed likely to havr Spencer was encouraged to use film by British anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon
sufflcient clout to demand the destruction of the images. who had also used film on the r898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the
39 In this sense, ethnography is also inscription, as Ira Jacknis explains: "An ethnoj'.i.i Torres Strait Islands, and who called film not only "an indispensable piece of anthro-
phy is the description of a single culture, usually foreign to the dcscriber. . . . Al t In pological apparatus," but also an endeavor which could be profitable if footage was
heart of ethnography, the initial act making all the rest possible is the act of ins ; /; > sold for use in commercial cinema (lan Dunlop, "Ethnographic Filmmaking in Aus-
tion, the flxing in permanent form of selected aspects of the field of socioculnn.il tralia: The First Seventy Years [1898-1968]," Studies in Visual Communication 9,
meaning. The process moves in stages of revisin and analysis, resulting in the l i n . i l no. i [winter 1983]: n).
presentation, usually in the form of written ethnography." I have found f a c k n r . < \ Walter Baldwin Spencer, "The Argus"( 1902), quoted in Cantrill and Cantrill, 38.
explanation of inscription and presentation to be quite useful (Ira Jacknis, "h.m \ Rudolf Pch, quoted in Paul Spindler, "New Guinea 1904-1906," Science and Film 8,
Boas and Photography," Studies in Visual Communication 10, no. i [1984]: 2- i) no. i (March 1959): u.
40 Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectatoi," m \ Kudolf Pch, "Reisen in Neu-Guinea in den fahren 1904-1906," Zeitschrift fr F.lh-
Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: R o u i l n l i - . iiologie (1907): 382-400.
1991), 18-19. \.| Spindler, 10-14,-and Pch, 395.
41 Ibid., 19. i , l'ch footage has been edited to produce the film Neu Guinea, 1904-1906, available
42 It is not my aim to survey all of anthropological research film in whatfollows. A >......I .u the Institu fr den wissenschaftlichen Film, Gttingen, Germany.
survey is found in Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in /'MU. i \t: (>nc example is Roben Gardner's DeadBirds (1961), a film which takes as its theme
pies of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings (The Hague: Mouton, 1 97 s I, i i i i i lie life of the Dani, an ethnic group centered in highland New Guinea. An opening
and Claudia Springer, "Ethnocentric Circles: A Short History of Ethnograph i i I i ! i u i n i c r t i t l e declares, "The people in the film merely did what they had done before we
The Independent (December 1984): 13-18. i .une and, for those who are not dead, as they do now that we have left."
43 Regnault, "Le role du cinema en ethnographie," 304. \ I IMS film may be seen at the National Film Archives in London, under the title
44 Ibid., 306. 1l-'ilin,"
1 i H res 16-17.
Strait]. See lan Dunlop, 11,- Spindler; and de Brigard, "History of Ethnographic
45 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mytholo^v. l'ln
losophy, Religin, Language, An and Custom (London, 1871), 2:200-201, q i m i i .1 ni u INi'ii
i l m Guinea, 1904-1906 by Rudolf Pch at the Institu fr den wissenschaftlichen
in Gttingen.
George W. Stocking Jr., "The Ethnographic Sensibility of the 19205 and t h e I h u i l l n I
of the Anthropological Tradition," in Romantic Motives: Essays on Anlhm/n >/< " >. ,l n i ncd in Le de Heusch, The Cinema and Social Science: A Survey of Ethnographic
Sensibility, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. (> (M.nli-inii , / / ; < / SociologJcal Films, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences, vol. 16 (Pars:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 209. IINKSCO, 1962), 18. De Heusch argued that although cinema was ola magic eye, it
46 Martin Taureg, "The Development of Standards for Scientiflc Films in G n u u n I H, 1 1 u i Id l>c ":i marvelous corrector of impressions." And when the subject is gesture, he
nography," Studies in Visual Communication 9, no. i (winter 1983): 22 M HijXi-.sicd, 'i'm "rightly belongs to cinematographic writing" (25).
47 George W. Stocking Jr., "The Ethnographer's Magic: Field work in Brilisli A m l n - i . . . I li.i l.icknis, "The Picturesquc and the Scientfic: Franz Boas's Plan for Anthropologi-
ogy from Tylor to Malinowski," in Observis Observad: sxtivs <>n /'.//i/inrM/i/ili i , i l I i l n m i a k i n g , " Vi.siuil Anthrti/ioloxy i, no. i (1987): 63.
Fieldwork, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History <>/ Antliropolt>xy, vol i Mtdllfl I |,n kms, "l-'r.mz Boas and l'hotography,"42.
University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 79. I.iv K n l i y , "Franz Boas and Larly (.'amera Sludy o Mehavior," Kinesis 3, no. i (fall
Walter Baldwin Spencer, Ai'ross Australia ( u j i . ' l , quoted m A i l h i u .nul t i'i.'i 11 << i i l:or ni oic un Diinham and I t u r s i n sce ilie r o i i H u d i n g chaptcr.
I h i l i k r Kiy.iuiill, howcvcr, h c r s l a l r d . u n w.is 11 ir i - x p l a n a i u n o culi mal l o t a l i l les
236 Notes to Chapter Two
Notes to Chapter Two 237
the whole cultureand she argued that an anthropologist must first conduct a cul- 69 See Margaret Mead, An Anthropologist at Work (New York: Avon, 1959): 16, quoted
tural study hefore fllming anything (Asen Balikci, "Visual Anthropology: The Legacy in Balikci, "Visual Anthropology: The Legacy of Margaret Mead."
of Margaret Mead," unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Com- 70 Chiozzi, 18. Since the 19808, Native Americans and Inuit/Alaskan Eskimo in North
mission on Visual Anthropology, 1985; Ira Jacknis, "Margaret Mead and Gregory America have been recontextualizing images from early ethnographic pholography
Bateson in Bali: Their Use of Photography and Film," Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 2 and film in their own film and video productions. See chapters 3 and 4 and ihe
[May 1988]: 160-77; Margaret Mead, "Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words," conclusin for discussion of media produclion by indigenous peoples.
in Principies of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings [The Hague: Mouton, 1974!, 71 Marcel Mauss, "Les lechniques du corps," in Sociologie et anthropologie (Pars:
3-12). Presses Universilaires de France, 1934), 362-86.
In sound films, the voice of the authoritative anthropologist hecame crucial. Mar- 72 Griaule disapproved of the use of reconstructed scenes unless absolutely necessary,-
garet Mead, for example, became a popular scientific icn herself. A leading figure in he also felt that anthropologists should make seprate films specifically intended for
the popularization of cultural anthropology, Mead used footage shot by herself and the public, and did so himself in Au pays Dogon (1938) and Sous les masques noirs
Gregory Bateson for films and televisin shows dealing with comparative studies o (1938). French ethnographic film is best known today, however, for the work of
personality. Prominent examples include Trance and Dance in Bali (1951), Bathiny, directors like Jean Rouch and Le de Heusch who foreground the subjectivity of film,
Babies in Three Cultures (1951), and First Days in the Life of a New Guinea Baby declaring that true ethnographic film must be participatory, collaborative cinema.
(1951). Although many of Mead's films, oftcn staple films of undergraduate introduc 73 According to Alan Feldman, early Germn anthropology focused on the diffusionist
tory anthropology courses, focus on themes like child-rearing which might be con theories of ihe Kulturkreis school and was less concerned with participant observa-
sidered "women's" themes, her stance is decidedly that of the Scientist, the authoril v tion than with the collecting and categorizing of data concerning cultural traits,
who expounds upon the timeless, stable essences of "primitive cultures." A propn activities, and behaviors. Accordingly, Germn ethnographic films tend to hold the
nent of what was called the Culture and Personality school within U.S. cultm.il subject at a distancc (the camera as a "fourth wall"), with long takes, clear foreground
anthropology, Mead classified cultures psychoanalytically, giving particular aticn and background differentiation, and liltle or no intertitle commentary. The K u l -
don to child-rearing practices, and altitudes toward sex. I discuss Mead in mon turkreis emphasis on material aspeis of cullure and quantitative analysis of cu11 nraI
detail in chapter 5. artifacts may explain in part why Germn ethnographic film tcnds to f rain e dances
64 Flix Regnault, "Films et muses d'ethnographic." and rituals much as dioramas in natural history museum displays to, rathcr t h a n
65 Johannes Fabin, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New attempting to pentrate cultural life with the intrusive camera movcmcm, cise
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 92. ups, and point-of-view shots more characteristic of later British ethnographic f i l m
66 James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture," in The Predicament of Culiin, (Alan Feldman, Notes for the Asia Society film festival, "Germany in Asia," Febru.ny
Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: l l . n v . n . l 1989). Also see Le de Heusch, The Cinema and Social Science, 21.
University Press, 1988), 228. /,) Gnther Spannaus, "Vergleich ethnographischer Topfereifilme ais Beispiel fr die
67 Even if ethnographic film has not triumphed in the academy, Regnault's visin "I > wissenschaftliche Auswertung von enzyklopdischem Filmmaterial," Research
museum or archive of film remains apowerful ideal. There are many contcni|>i.n \s which echo Regnault'sI:ilm aspiration:
2, no. 5 in his choreometrics
(1957): 251-55, cited project, t l i r25.
in Taureg, u '.For a list of strict guidelines for
ethnographic filmmakers at the IWF, see Institu fr den wissenschaftlichen Film,
anthropologist Alan Lomax aspired to collect footage of all the dances of tlu- w< .1 l . l "Rules for Documentation in Ethnology and Folklore," Research Film 3, no. 4(1959):
Using the classification system developed by George P. Murdock, who worki-il n u i l . . ?, }K-4O.
Human Relations rea files at Yale University, Lomax outlined seven ru 1 e s I I ' , B.ilikci, "Visual Anthropology," and Feldman.
ing films to be included in archives of comparative movement (Paolo C h i n , v i , "\>< < Kohcrt Proclor, "From Anthropologie lo Rassenkunde in ihe Germn Anlhropologi-
flections on Ethnographic Film with a General Bibliography," Visual Anthran>hn\ i . i l Tradition," in Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed.
[1989]: 15, 12-23). Similarly, the Institu fr den wissenschaftlichcn Film <mu l .Vorgc W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 5 (Madison: University of
to collect and make films with an undying faith in film as objectivc dociiim l Wisconsin Press, 1988), 138-79.
in France, Jean-Dominique Lajoux at the Centre national de la recherc-lu- se i < 1 1 1 1 1 1 . |< n ' Asen Balikci, "Anthropology, Film and ihe Arclic Peoples," Anthropology Today 5,
is working on an archive of movemenls, a collection of films o how pn,|.l. IniA no ?. (April 1989): 9; and Balikci, "Visual Anthropology." The emphasis on func-
around the world eat, sleep, sit, and perform other hasic tasks. tionalist explanation in British social anthropology tended to make British anthro-
68 f. W. Powell, "Twenly-Third Annual Report of ihc Burean o American l i l n i o l " i , pologists less interested in ainassing so-ealledpositivist records, including film, and
Annual Report, Burean of American Ethnology 23 (1901 ?.): x v i . I t l i . i n k l i . i I < I "< i r l . n i v r l y more interested in constructing analytic theories concerning social and
for poinling out this articlc to me. poltica! s l n i c t n i c s .
238 Notes to Chapter Two
Notes to Chapter Three 239
78 M. W. Hilton-Simpson and J. A. Haeseler, like Haddon, Spencer, and Boas, perceived 5 Jacknis, "The Picturesque and the Scientific."
the commercial heneflts of anthropological film, and speciflcally noted the proflt
6 George W. Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), 289.
that could be made in selling footage to commercial interests. They discuss the
7 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (London: Archon
importance of using telephoto lenses in order to take in scenes without the natives' Books, 1967,- orig. publ. 1927), 4, 14.
awareness, and even describe fllming a woman as she is sleeping (M. W. Hilton-
8 Richard Payne Knight, Analytical Inqury into the Principies of Taste (1805), cited in
Simpson and J. A. Haeseler, "Cinema and Ethnology," Discovery 6 [1915]: 318). ibid., 79-80.
79 Anthony R. Michaelis, Research Films in Biology, Anthropology, Psychology, and
9 Sara Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Medicine (New York: Academic Press, 1955), 199. 1992), 76.
80 Christopher M. Lyman, The Vanishing Race and Other Illusions: Photographs of
10 I thank Jeanne Beausoleil and the excellent staff at the Archives for their generous
Indians by Edward S. Curts (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
assistance and for providing information on Albert Kahn. See also Jeanne Beausoleil,
1982), 69. Luke Lyon writes that the footage reproduced in T. C. McLuhan's film on
Curtis, The Shadow Catcher (1975), is reproduced incorrectly as a mirror imagc "Au service d'un ideal de comprhension internationale: les oprateurs d'Albert
(Lyon, "History of the Prohibition of Photography of Southwestern Indian Cere- Kahn dans le monde," in Le cinema franeis muet dans le monde, influences recipro-
ques: Symposium de la FIAF (Pars: Cinmathque de Toulouse-msdtut Jean Vigo,
monies," unpublished paper).
1988), 61-69; Jeanne Beausoleil and Catherine Fortassier, "'Les archives de la pla-
81 Most museums have film collections, but the general emphasis is on the use of film
nte' d'Albert Kahn," Prestige de la photographie 3 (December 1977): 40-65,- and
for public education, rather than for research. In 1981, for example, Richard Sorenson
established the Human Studies Film Archives (a collection of travelogues and eth Jeanne Beausoleil, "La plante d'Albert Kahn," Les nouvelles littraires 2658 (12-
19 October 1978): u.
nographic cinema of all genres) at the Smithsonian Institution. Nevcrtheless, mosi
r i Mary Louise Pratt, "Scratches on the Face of the Country,- or, What Mr. Barrow Saw
anthropologists do not choose to study films about the cultures of the peoples pe u
trayed such as those at the HSFA; instead, such facilities are used more often l>v in the Land of the Bushmen," in "Race," Writng, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis
Gates Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 143.
scholars doing research on film history, or the history of visual anthropology.
12 Films in which white women were unclothed were also prevalent in medical .mil
82 For more on recent African American women's photography, see Fatimah Tobirt|
social science films of women classificd as pathological, criminal, or hoinosi-xn.il
Rony, " 'We Must First See Ourselves': Documentary Subversions in Contempoi.n \n Women's Photography," in Personal Narratives: Women / ' / i < > / < >
See Lisa Cartwright's Screening the Body: TracingMedicines Visual (.'IJ///HC ( M u
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
graphers of Color, exhibition catalog (Winston-Salem: Southeastern Center for ( C u
i i Charles Musser concludes that the travel film engenders a particular niodi- o p r n r p
temporary Art, 1993), 11-15.
tion which he calis "separation": just as the passenger on a train walches ilie lam
83 Regnault was one of the first to consider "les techniques du corps," or body i < . I.
iques, as a subject in its own right, and his work paved the way for Marcel M.m-- scape whiz by and experiences it as separation, so does the vicwer expeliente a i l i n .
ideas on the body as the first instrument of culture. This association of a cincm.ii See Charles Musser, "The Travel Genre in 1903-1904: Moving towards l ; ictional
Narrative," in Early Cinema: Space, Fame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (Lon-
interest in temporalizing the body and ethnographythe langage par gentes > M don: British Film Institutc, 1992), 123-32.
tinues today: when someone calis a scene in a commercial film "ethnographic," 1" '"
i I li. B. Tylor, Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, ph-
she is likely referring to a scene in which ordinary gesture and physicnl d u . n l m
losophy, religin, language, art and custom (London, 1871), 2:200201, quoted in
highlighted, a tableau of the picturesque which is suggestive of a prior aiithun n IM
George W. Stocking Jr., "The Ethnographic Sensibility of the 19205 and the Dualism
of the Anthropological Tradition," in Romantic Motives: Essays on Anthropological
3 Gestures of Self-Protection Sensibility, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 6 (Madison:
I Inivcrsity of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 209.
1 George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (New York: 1 l a m u n i , Hu ti
Irlix Mesguich, quoted in Andr F. Liotard, Samivel, and Jean Thvenot, Cinema
& World, 1950), 8. ll'exploration: cinema au long cours (Pars: P.-A. Chavane, 1950), 28.
2 Flix Regnault, "L'histoire du cinema: son role en anthropologie," Hulli-im: , / un 1
I lolincs's logo of a white silhouette of a white man in a bush hat typified this style of
moires de la Sacete d'anthropologie de Pars 3d tome 7th ser (6 July n>\] i n i n i s t posscsson.
3 Ira Jacknis, "The Picturesque and the Scientific: Franz Boas's Plan loi A n i l i i n | , , , | n n l
I lie niost filmed dance n the United States was the Hopi Snake dance at Walpi,
cal Filmmaking," Visual Anthropology i, no. i (1987): 61.
Ai i.'.(iim, in which the Antelope and Snake societies handlcd and danced with snakes.
4 Ibid. For Boas's discussion of "isolable actions," see Ira lacknis, 'T'i.m. r> i
l ' l n - first film of this dance was made in 1898, possihly by Thomas Edison (Luke
Photography," Studies in Visual CottUOlUiCOtOtt i < > , no. i ( i 1)84): ,]>..
I v o n , " l l i s l o i y o (lie- Prohibition of Photography of Southwestern Indian Cere-
240 Notes to Chapter Three Notes to Chapter Three 241

monies," unpublished paper; and Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic 29 In The River of Doubt (1913^4, compiled 1928?), available at the Library of Con-
Film," in Principies of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings [The Hague: Mouton, gress, a film of an expedition sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History
1975], captionof pate 7). and the Brazilian government, the Indians are described as "wilder and more primi-
According to Luke Lyon, authorities often clashed with the photographers. In tive than anyone we carne across in frica." The men who paddle for Roosevelt are
1913, for example, Indian agent Leo Crane chased Victor Miller of Pathe's Weekly (a compared to animis: "Men of the forest, lithe as panthers, brawny as bears. They
pictorial news service) through the desert, knowing that Miller's film of Hopi dances swam like waterdogs." In contras!, Roosevelt is hailed as a great hunter, geographcr,
would be used for commercial purposes, rather than "private or historical purposes." and discoverer of an unknown river.
In 1911, Charles Burke, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, banned certain Indian Another example of the exploration genre is Cari Lumholtz's In Borneo, Land of
dances, feeling that they encouraged "savagery." The Native Americans themselves the Headhunters(i<)i6), available at the National Film Archives in London. The film
chose to prohibit photographing of many of their dances, citing exploitation; they focuses on the explorer as hero with scenes of the Dayak population in between. The
also feared that the pictures might be used as evidence against them. Many Native first intertitle declares, "These are the first motion pictures ever taken in Borneo.
Americans of the Southwest would jump in front of the camera, throw sand or rocks, They were secured by Dr. Lumholtz, scientist and explorer, during two years spent
and even break cameras to prevent fllming. among the native tribes." Despite the serious opening, the film adopts a joking style
when it comes to the interaction of Lumholtz and the Dayak. When Lumholtz goes
18 Musser, 117.
19 Both are at the National Film Archives in London. to a village and views some nativos dancing, for example, humor is meant to be
20 Burln Holmes, Burton Holmes: The Man Who Photographed the World, ed. Genoa evoked when he joins in the dancing, accompanying "the most beautiful maiden."
Caldwell (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), 23. Other intertitles joke that it may be difficult to see that "this Saputan swimmer is a
21 This is in the collections of the Library of Congress. man" and "Young Murung Dayaks display a monkey-like agility in climbing."
22, One express aim of at least some of Holmes's films was explicitly to promote tourism 30 Herbert Tynes Cowling's Some Tribes of Central frica (1922), another African film
His film The Melting Fot of the Pacific (192 3 ?), f or example, was commissioned by 11 u safari, features many exploitative close-ups of African women's bodies.
World Travel Department of the U.S. Shipping Board to promote tourism in Haw;ii i i, i Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard
23 The Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam has four recently restored films froin (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 77.
this period. The films include works for the Colonial Institute by a man naiuol (2 Nina J. Root, ed., Catalog of the American Museum of Natural History l:i/m Ar-
Lamster, and for Path Frres, and feature court dances in what is today Indom-M.i. chives (New York: American Museum of Natural History Department of Lilirary
the arrival of the Resident (local Dutch colonial officer) at his post, a colonial p n s< > 11 Services, 1987), xv. Almost all of the anthropological museums in the United States
in Batavia (now Jakarta) with scenes of orderly prison life, and rice farming arnony, 11 sponsored lectures which used lantern slides and sometimes film: for example, the
Karo Batak in North Sumatra. Lamster began to make colonial films in 1912, pmli.i University of Archaelogy/Anthropology in Philadelphia showed lantern slides from
bly hiring a French camera operator. The films were used as visual aids at I > the Dixon Wanamaker Expedition and sponsored van Valin's expedition.
tures given by the Colonial Instituto in Amsterdam. I thank the archivists UHJ-.M i 11 Another Great White Hunter filmmaker who made both ethnographic and scripted
Schmeele and Maryke von Kester for this Information. films abroad was Hans Hermann Schomburgk, whose films made in Togo (1913) and
24 Patrick O'Reilly, "Le 'documentaire' ethnographique en Ocanie," in Premit'i < iitii Liberia (1922-23) are available at the Institut fr den wissenschaftlichen Film in
logue slectif international de films ethnographiques sur la regin du I'm i / i . / n . Gottingen, Germany. Schomburgk was part of a small group of white hunters who
(Paris: UNESCO, 1970), 289-90. hecame famous as great explorers/filmmakers. In his film The White Goddess of
25 See Linda Williams, "Film Body: An Implantation of Perversions," in N i i i i i i m , Wangora (1913) starring Meg Gehrts, the story is of a white woman, worshipped by
Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Phil Rosen (New York: C 'olum! i Africans, who later falls in love and runs off with a white big game hunter. The Togo
University Press, 1986), 507-34. locis were used as extras (Caroline Alexandcr, "The White Goddess of the Wan-
26 This jokeof the married man flirting with native girls only to be hev.klol In In f.ora," New Yorker[S April 1991): 43-76).
spouseoccurs again andagain in the films of this period. See, e.g., "Fatty .mil M.ilili il The anthropologist Baldwin Spencer himself had already done this in lectures; he

at the San Diego Exposition" (Keystone, 1915), in which a white man in Invr w i i l i loiind that film of the Arunta, humorous to white audicnccs, could be used to attract
"South Seas woman" at the fair is beatcn by his wife. proplc to his talks (Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, "The 1901 Cinematography of
27 See Gastn Mlis, Le voyage autour du monde de a !. Males Munulin innn Wallcr Baldwin Spencer," Cantrill's Filrnnotes 37-38 [April 1982]: 26-42, 56). See
Company (July gi2-May 1913) (Pars: Association "Les amis de Gi-oij-.r-. M ! > M a r t n Johnson, Cannibal-I.and: Adventures with a Camera in the NewHebrides
1988), and Patrick Mclnroy, "The American Mlis," Sight and Sound Ini'iniil |Ilusin: Houghton M i f f l i n , 1922), and Pascal James Impcrato and Eleanor M. Imper-
Film Quarterly (autumn 1979): is<) si .110, 'I'licy Marricd Adventurc: 'l'lic Wandering Lives of Martin and Osa ohnson
7,K For a dse ripl ion of RoOStVtlt in A/r/cn srr T/ir Moving ' / r u i c Wotltl, (> s '>< \y |Ncw BruiiswK'k, N.|.: lUilgris U n i v e r s i t y Press, 1992) for more on the Johnsons.
Notes to Chapter Four 243
Notes to Chapter Three the ethnographic exhibition (see chapter i). Franz Boas pioneered the display of ar-
tif acts by culture group instead of by evolutionary schemes, with an emphasis on the
35 Intertitlein the film Simba. . ' "Ufe group," or set of figures in native costume engaged in some sort of work or art
Suleri, 108.
36 Jacob W. Gruber, "Ethnographic Salvage and the Shaping of Anthropology," Ameri- process. But the divide between science and art needed to be clearly drawn. Boas, for
37 example, argued that mannequins should not look too realistic: "No figure, however
can Anthtopologist 172 (1970): 1297.
well it may have been gotten up, will look like man himself. If nothing else, the lack
Ira Jacknis, "The Picturesque and the Scientific," 61.
38 Joseph K. Dixon in Wanamaker Primer on the North American Indian (Philadelphia: of motion will show at once that there is an attempt at copying nature, not nature
39 Wanamaker Originator, rgog), 44, quoted in Susan Applegate Krouse, "Filming the itself. When the figure is absolutely lifelike the lack of motion causes a ghastly
Vanishing Race," in Visual Explorations of the World: Selected Papers /rom the impression such as we notice in wax-figures. For this reason the artistic effect will be
International Conference on Visual Communication, ed. Jay Ruby and Martin Tau- better when we bear in mind this fact and do not attempt too cise an approach to
reg (Aachen: Edition Herodot irn. Rader-Verlag, 1987), 257. Curtis's contemporary nature; that is to say, since there is a line of demarcation between nature and plstic
Joseph Dixon actually wrote a book entitled The Vanishing Race (1913). Like Curts, art, it is better to draw the line consciously than to try to hide it" j Franz Boas, Frederic
Dixon was a white photographer and filmmaker of Native Americans. See Susan Ward Putnam Papers: Correspondence, 7 November 1896, quoted in Ira Jacknis,
Applegate Krouse, "Photographing the Vanishing Race," Visual Anthropology 3, nos. "Franz Boas and Exhibits," 102).
53 Holm and Quimby, 65.
2-3(19901:213-33.
Lois Flury, "A Magnificent Obsession," Pacific Northwest (January-February 1984] 54 Barthes, 115.
40 55 Jay Ruby, "A Reexamination of the Early Career of Robert J. Flaherty," Quarterly
24-43. Review of Film Studies 5, no. 4 (fall 1980): 456.
See chapter 2 for discussion of the film of the Yeibichai ceremony.
41 Mick Gidley, "From the Hopi Snake Dance to 'The Ten Commandments': Edward S
42 Curts as Filmmaker," Studies in Visual Communication 8, no. 3 (summer 1982): 7 i
4 Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography
7 3. See chapter 2 for discussion on how the Yeibichai dance was performedbackwards.
When rereleased in the 19805, the lm's title was changed to In the Land of the Wni 1 Arthur Calder-Marshall, The Innocent Eye: The Life of Robert f. Flaherty [New York:
43 Harcourt, Brace &. World, r963), 72.
Canoes.
Edward S. Curts, In the Land of the Headhunters: Indian Life and Indian / , < > / r 2 Joseph E. Senungetuk, Give or Take a Century: An Eskimo Chronicle (San Francisco:
44 Indian Historian Press, 1971), 25.
(Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book, 1915).
Cited in Bill Holm and George Irving Quimby, Edward S. Curts in the Land o! i !>< 3 Asen Balikci, "Anthropology, Film and the Arctic Peoples," Anthropology Today s,
45 War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle: U n i v n no. 2 (April 1989): 7. Among the popular culture tems Nanook spawned wcrc ice
cream bars (in Germany) and a song (Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the
sity of Washington Press, 1980): 113.
Ira Jacknis, "Franz Boas and Photography," 12. See also Jacknis, "Franz Boas .un Non-Fiction Film [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 43].
46 Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology," in ( ) l > / < < i 4 Andr F. Liotard, Samivel, and Jean Thvenot, Cinema d'exploration: cinema au long
and Others, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 3 (Madr cours (Paris: P.-A. Chavane, 1950), 43, and Andr Bazin, "The Evolution of the Lan-
guage of Cinema," in What Is Cinema! trans. and ed. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: Univer-
University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 75-111.
For more on Hunt, see Ira Jacknis, "George Hunt, Collector of Indian Specnnrir,. u sity of California Press, 1967), 1:23-40.
47 Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlach, ed. Aldona Jonaitis (New v . , i l Le de Heusch, The Cinema and Social Science: A Survey of Ethnographic and So-
American Museum of Natural History, 1991), 177-224. ciological Films, vol. 16, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences (Paris: UNESCO,
1962), 37.
Jacknis, "Franz Boas and Photography," 44-47.
48 I am not dismissing the fact that smoke was an important symbol and I m n i )o-Anne Birnie Danzker writes, "Research with Inuit participants in Nanook of the
49 Communication in Native American communitics. However, the qiicst w.n. .ii'i' 1 ' North is in its initial stages. It would appear, however, that none of the leading
ently not a prevalent ritual among the Kwakwaka'wakw at the time, aiTonlm)'. i rliaracters were identified by their actual ames; that Allakariallak's (Nanook's)
community members, and smoke was afittingmotif in Curtis's work w l n c li > n i p u dothing was not indigenous to the regin; that the contrived sequences were highly
sized the picturesque to represent Native Americans as "vanishing peoplr-. " .ising to the Inuit; that the seal hunt was contrived. It is also possible that the
Anonymous, "Ethnology in Action," The Independan ( 1 1 (anuary u n , ) Lis-hunting sequence had been shot in 1914 or 1916 as part of Flaherty's earlier
5 lhns, cithcr in the Ottawa or Belcher Islands" (Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, ed., Robert
quoted in Gidley, 7 5.
Vachel Lindsay, T/ic An of llic Moving ' i r l u r r , rev. ed. (New Yoik: l . i v i - i u ' . l n i . l : l i i l n ' t l v Photographer/Pilmmaker: Tin- liniil 1^10-1922 [Vancouver: Vancouver
51 A i i ( l a l l r r y , i <)Ko|, (r?.). ames spelled w i t h question marks are Danzker's spelling.
111)7?.|), 1 1 4 , as quoted in ( l i d l e y , '70.
- n i l i i i i o| i l i r "bronzc" (n dcsi l l l n - Wc.( A l i n u n
244 Notes to Chapter Four
Notes to Chapter Four 245
7 Bazin, 1:27.
8 Charles Waterton, Essays on Natural History Chiefly Ornithology (London, 1838), in "Desire in Narrative," in Alice Doesn't: Femiaism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloom-
300-304, quoted in Stephen Bann, The Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representa- ington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 103-57. De Lauretis writes that Freud's
tion of History in Nineteenth-century Britain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge question of what is femininity "acts precisely as the impulse, the desire that will gen-
University Press, 1984), 17. rate a narrative" (111). In the narratives I am considering, of course, it is not only the
9 Bann, 15. female body which must be slain, but that of the indigenous person, male or female.
10 Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Carden of Edn, New 20 For an excellent summary of the representation of the Inuit and Alaskan Eskmo by
York City, 1908-1936," Social Text: Theory/Culture/Ideology n (winter 1984-85): Euro-Americans, seo Ann Fienup-Riordan, Eskmo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We
25. The metaphor of taxidermya form of reprcscntation which is infused with an See Them (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 11-23.
acknowledgement of death, but also a desire "to be whole"describes a plethora 21 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of
of technologies popular at the turn of the century used to represent the human the English Nation in Twelve Volumes, vol. 7 (1589; repr., New York: Augustus M.
body, including photography, film, and wax figures. Vanessa R. Schwartz arges that Kelley, 1969), 305, quoted in ibid., 12. Another example was a newspaper account
wax models of crime victims at the morgue and at the Muse Grevin (such models which explained that Minik Wallace who returned to Smith Sound aftcr many years
were extremely popular in Pars) were important precursors to cinema (Vanessa R. in the United States soon became a "full-fledged 'huskic'" (Kenn Harper, Give Me My
Schwartz, "The Public's Taste for Reality: The Morgue, Wax Museums and Early Father's Body: The Life of Minik the New York Eskimo [Frobisher Bay, N.W.T.: Black-
leadBooks, 1986], 149).
Mass Culture in Fin-de-sicle Pars," paper presented at the Society for Cinema Stud-
ies Conference, New Orleans, La., 11-14 February 1993). 22 J. Garth Taylor, "An Eskimo Abroad, 1880: His Diary and Death," Canadian Geo-
11 Robert Flaherty, quoted in Richard Corliss, "Robert Flaherty: The Man in the Iron graphic 101, no. 5 (October-November 1981): 38-43. Jacobsen's collection of eth-
Myth," in Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Richard Meran Barsam (New nographic artifacts would become the core of the collections at the Berlin Royal
York: E. P. Dutton, 1973), 234. Ethnographic Museum, where Franz Boas later worked. In 1881, Jacobsen collccircl
12 Johannes Fabin, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) artifacts in the same part of Canad where Boas s i i u l
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 84-87. ied. In 1883 Boas went to Baffinland himself to collect Inuit artifaets and e x h u m e
bones from graves surreptitiously. In 1886 Jacobsen brought a group o Bella ('ool.i
13 Ibid., 85.
14 I am borrowing here from Naomi Greene's insightful use of Mircea Eliade's dcscrip Indians to Berlin, an event which sparked Boas's own interest iu Northwcsl * 'o.i.-.i
tion of the mythic for her analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films of the 19608. Slu Indians. See Ira Jacknis, "Franz Boas and Exhihts: On the Limita t i us ni i l u - Muse um
quotes Eliade on the sacrifice: "[Every sacrifice] repeats the initial sacrifice and com Methodof Anthropology,"in ObjectsandOthers, ed. Georgc W. Slockinj; |i , lli:ii\f Anthropology, vol
cides with it. . . . And the same holds truc for all repetitions, i.e., all imitations ni
23 Peter Matthiessen, "Survival of theHunter/'A'eu' Vor/cer (24 A p n l i w s ) / s
archetypes; through such imitations, man is projected into the mythical epoih m
which the archetypes were first revealed. Thus we perceive a second aspect of pi 7,4 Harper, 4, 12-33. This book contains many of Minik's letters. M m i k ' s l a i n i l y was
tive ontology: insofar as an act (or an object) acquires a certain reality througli i l i < also studied by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber who would later write paperson Ishi, a
repetition of certain paradigmatic gestures, and acquires it through that alone, i In M Yahi Indian forced to live in a museum. See Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlils: A
is an implicit abolition of profane time, of duration, of 'history'; and he wlm n Biography ofthe Last Wild Indian in North America (Berkelcy: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1961).
produces the exemplary gesture thus finds himself transponed into the n i y i l m .il >.s Harper, 99.
epoch in which its revelation took place" (The Myth of the Eternal Return, I I . I N > > Minik Wallace, quoted in ibid., 132.
Willard Trask [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955], 35, quoted in Naomi C l i n m
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990! > / Thomas W. Kavanaugh, "A Brief Illustrated History of the Manikins, Statues, Lay-
Figures, and Life-Groups Illustrating American Ethnology in the National Museum
167).
15 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Realily ( N e w Y . . . I of Natural History," unpublished paper (16 June 1990). Kavanaugh points out that the
Oxford University Press, 1960), 273. same model was used by the Smithsonian for a Jivaro Indian and a Samoan youth.
JK
Stoeking points out that the anthropologist John Lubbock, in his Origin of Civilisa-
16 Ibid., 273-74.
17 Robert Flaherty, Rccorded BBC Talks, London, 14 June, 25 July, 5 Scplcmln i i < > | > i l ion (1870), suggested that Eskimo did well for themselves considering their environ-
quoted in Jay Ruby, "A Reexamination of the Early Career of Rohert |. 1'l.iln n \ Reviewof Film Studies ment,
5, no. 4but that
(fall they448.
1980): could not achieve progress without civilized ntervention (Stock -
ing, Victorian Anthropology [New York: Free Press, 1987], 154).
Fienup-Riordan/ ifi.
18 Andr Bazin, "The Ontology of the l'hotographic Imagc," in Bazin, i :i).
19 lam refcrring hcre to Teresa de Laurel is'sdeseript ion o the Oedipal lgico! i i . n i . n i i i This charaetcrization is present in anthropological litcrature as well. As recently as
i>)8?., ilu- Frenen anthropologist Jean Mal.umr describcd going lo study the I n n i l ni
2,46 Notes to Chapter Four
Notes to Chapter Four 247
Thule, Greenland, as "a return to the Stone Age" (Jean Malaurie, The Last Kings of
see Lisa Bloom, Gender on Ice: American Ideologies of Polar Expeditions (Min-
Thule, trans. Adenne Foulke [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], 19, neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
quoted in ihid., 21). 38
Bernard Saladin d'Anglure, "Inuit of Quebec," in Arctic, ed. David Damas, vol. 5,
31 Balikci, "Anthropology, Film and the Arctic Peoples," 7.
Handbook of North American Indians (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution,
32 These films, Esquimaux Game of Snap-The-Whip, Esquimaux Leap Frog, and Es- 1984), 500.
quimaux Village, are at the Library of Congress. The camera operators were Edwin S. 39
Ibid., 505. This period was also marked by religious movements among the Quebec
Porter and Arthur White. As an example of the representation of the Alaskan Eskimo
Inuit predicting the end of the world (neither missionary activities or these syn-
at the exhihition, consider the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Paciflc Exposition in Seattle, the
cretic, messianic religious movements were represented in Nanook}.
promotional blurb for which reads "These strange people, existing only on the prod- 40
Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (Oxford: Oxford
ucts of the icy North, half civilized in their nature, knowing no god, having no laws, University Press, 1983), 33.
no government, unable to read or write, with no history of their antecedents, givc 4i
Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, "Robert Flaherty/Photographer," Studies in Visual Com-
continuous performances of skill, marksmanship, canoeing, dancing, singing ail munication 6, no. 2 (summer rgSo): 9.
seal catching never before seen" ("The Alaska-Yukon-Paciflc Exposition of 1909: 42
For an excellent description of Flaherty's activities durng this period, see fo-Anne
Photographs by Frank Howell," Alaska Journal [summer 1984]: 14, quoted in Fienup
Birnie Danzker, ed., Robert Flaherty Photographer/Flmmaker: The Inuit 1910-
Riordan, 16-17). 1922 (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, rg8o), 52-65, and Ruby, "A Reexamination
Films of U.S., British, Italian, Germn, and French origin fcaturing Inuit includc of the Early Career of Robert J. Flaherty."
33
Wellman Polar Expedition: The Nordpol Expedition (Charles Urban Trading Co., 43
Francs Flaherty from her diary of 17 December 1914, quoted in Danzker, "Robert
1906), A Dash to the North Pole (Kineto, 1909), Fungen junger Eisbaren (Hunting f u i Flaherty/Photographer," 22.
Young Polar Bears) (Imperium Film, 1914), Eine Forschungsexpedition durch di u, 44
Peter Pitseolak, People from Our Side: An Inuit Record of Seekooseelak, the Land of
Nrdliche Eismeer nach Grnland (Mefiter, 1911), and Islands of New Zem bla (C;a \
the People of Cape Dorset, Baffin Land: A Life Story with Photographs (Edmonton:
mont, 1913). These films are located at the National Film Archives in London. HurtigPress, 1975), 87-88.
34 This film is available at the Human Studies Film Archives at the National Muscmn 45
Flaherty's use of drawings shows that he learned from the art of the Inuit. Flaherty
of Natural History. For information on the film I consultad the correspondencc ti Ir < >l
also wrote that he made it a practice to show rushes to the actors; indecd, his own
the Human Studies Film Archives.
photographs show that the Inuit he hired performed all aspects of camera work
35 These bones, said to be those of prehistoric Eskimo, were taken to the Wist.u In
(Danzker, Robert Flaherty Photographer /Filmmaker, 53-54).
stitute of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. ,)6
Christraud Geary, "Photographs as Materials for African History: Some Methodolog-
36 Flaherty was said to have admired Jack London in the South Seas by Martin |olm .< m icalConsiderations,"//isoryin frica 13 (1986): 112.
(r9i2), also an expedition film (Richard Barsam, The Vision of Roben Flaherlv I /i. 17 Danzker, ed., Robert Flaherty Photographet/Filmmaker, 57.
Artist as Myth and Filmmaker [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I9H8|, i c.| ,|K Barsam, 20.
37 For more on Curtis and Flaherty, see Brian Winston, "Before Grierson, bcfoir I I i IM
James R. Kincaid, "Who Gets to Tell Their Stories?" New York Times Book Review,
herty: The Documentary Film in 1914," Sight and Sound 57, no. 4 (autumn I I J I I M | 3 May 1992, 26-27.
277-79, and Bill Holm and George Irving Quimhy, Edward S. Curtis in the I un,I ni Barnouw, 37.
the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest (Sean le U n Barsam, 19.
versity of Washington Press, 1980), 30. BothHolm andQuimby believc that r l . i l n u
Barnouw writes that Flaherty's compositions reflect Inuit drawings (44).
whosaw/n the Land of the Headhunters and asked Curtis for advice, was i n l l i u m > >l
Kicciotto Canudo, "Another View of Nanook," in L'usine aux images (Pars, 1927),
by Curtis in his decisin to film only what appeared traditional, i.e., salv.i) 1 . 1 ' ' '
i rans. Harold J. Salemson, quoted in Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Ttadition
nography. For the complete diary entry of Robert and Francs Flaherty's vi (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 20-21.
Curtis see Jay Ruby, "A Reexamination of the Early Career of Robert J. Flahn i \o films of famous expcditions to the South Pole are Frank Hurley's l i l m "I MI
('(irliss, 231. For a more recent study of Robert Flaherty's films see Barsam.
VilhjalmurStcfanssonargued that the Inuit used guns and did not hunt seis through
Ernest Shackleton's 1914-17 polar expedition, South: Sir Ernest Shackli'.tun i '"
i l i e iee, and asserted that the seal in the film was obviously already dead. He also
ous EpicoftheAntarctic ( i 9 r 9 J , a film which focuseson the expedtion m c m l "I
clrrricd the fake igloo and the accompanying intertitle which explained that the igloo
their camp life, as well as their rescue, and Herbert G. Ponting's Wiih ( ' i i n , i i n Si ii)(
i i n i s t he eolder than freezing (Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Standardisation of Error
to the South Pole (1911-12, British G a u m o n l ) rclcascd laler as 'l'lic (,if,u \ \ l u i i -
{l.oiulon: Kcgan l'anl, 7'rench, Truhncr, 1929), K6 92, quoted in Paul Rotha with the
Silence (1914), a film of Captain Robert l ; alcon Scolt's i-xpi-ilition lo i l u - S m i i l i r..li
.issistiince o Basil Wright, "Nanook and the North," ftiidies in Visual Communica-
loth (ilins are at I he N a t i o n a l T i l n Archives, l.nndon. l'or nion- on p n l a i c s p i < l < linii 6, no. 2 [sumiller ii)Ho|- so).
248 Notes to Chapter Four

56 Robert Flaherty, quoted in Corliss, 234.


Notes to Chapter
^aj.^ Five
uve 249

57 DeHeusch, 16-28. 75 James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Self-Fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski," in The
58 Ibid., 35. Predicamentof Culture: Twentieth-centuryEthnography, Literature, andAit(Cam-
59 Ibid., 64. bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), no.
76 Flaherty, The Captain's Chair, 15.
60 Bazin, 27. 77 Ibid., 312.
61 Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York: E. P. Dutton,
19611,25. 78 Francs Flaherty, "Robert Flaherty: Explorer and Film Maker: The Film of Discovery
62 Fabin, 95, 106-7. and Revelation" (mimeographed c. 1958), 14-15, quoted in Jack C. Ellis, The Docu-
63 Flaherty, quoted in Riehard Griffith, The Wotld of Robert Flaherty (New York: Duell, mentary Idea: A Critical History of English-language Documentary Film and Video
Sloan and Pearce, 1953), 36. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1989).
64 If Margaret Mead's image of Polynesian society in her ethnography Corning of Age in 79 Nanook Revisited contains interviews of Inuit from the reas in which Flaherty
Samoa (1928) was offered as a counterpoint to U.S. society which she saw as puritan, filmed and photographed, but it quickly becomes a film about a man portrayed as a
repressive, and patriarchal, Flaherty's image of the Inuit was a foil for a romantic kind of latter-day Flaherty, John Johnson, the white school principal. His voice,
critique of technology and the machine. See George W. Stocking Jr., "The Ethno- discussing the erosin of Inuit vales, dominates the second half of the fllm. Unlike
graphic Sensibility of the 19205 and the Dualism of the Anthropological Tradition," Mary, the wife of one of Flaherty's Inuit sons, who responds to the fllmmakers'
in Romantic Motives: Essays on Anthropological Sensibility, ed. George W. Stocking questions about Flaherty and Nanook with enigmatic nonanswers, Johnson is eager
Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 6 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), to explain Inuit culture to the camera. The other Inuit Johnson is shown interacting
208-76. with in the course of the fllmhis Inuit hunting partner and an Inuit schoolteacher
65 Balikci, 6. are neither named or interviewed. Nanook Revisited is aptly titled: it becomes a
film dominated by a white point of view.
66 Robert J. Flaherty, in collaboration with Francs Hubbard Flaherty, My Eskimo
Friends: "Nanook of the North" (Carden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1924). Fui 8o Intrinsic to political activism over land sovereignty is the issue of image sovercign (y,
information on Flaherty's work as a prospector and cartographer, see Robert Flaheri y, in the eyes of many indigenous nations. In Hawaii, for example, native Hawaiian, ur
"The Belcher Islands of Hudson Bay: Their Discovery and Exploration," Geograpl kanaka maoli, fllmmakers are producing video with the support of such organi-
ical Review 5, no. 6 (1918): 433-58; and Flaherty, "Two Traverses across Ungav.i zations as Pacific Islanders in Communication. See Haunani-Kay Trask, Frota ti u
Pennsula, Labrador," GeographicalReview6, no. 2 (1918): 116-32. uve Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i (Monroe, Maine: Common
67 Charlie Nayoumealuk (sp?) in the documentary Nanook Revisited (directed l>v Courage Press, 1993), and Fatimah Tobing Rony, "Image Sovereignty," Afterinmx''
Claude Massot, 1988) remembers the fllming of Nanook, and that the Inuit callol 21, no. 7 (February 1994): 4-5; for information on Aboriginal Australian broadcast-
Flaherty an Inuit ame meaning, "tall, left-handedman." In Francs Flaherty's .u ing, see Faye Ginsburg, "Indigenous Media: Faustian Contract or Global Village?"
Cultural Anthropology 6 (February 1991): 92-112.
count of the fllming of Elephant Boy, she refers to Flaherty as Borah Sahib or "C'. KM i
White Chief" (Barsam, 131). K i Interview with Charlie Adams, 9 February 1996, by the author.
68 Flaherty, in collaboration with Francs Hubbard Flaherty, 126. 82 Laura U. Marks, "Reconflgured Nationhood: A Partisan History of the Inuit Broad-
69 Ibid., 134. casting Corporation," Afterimage 21, no. 8 (March 1994): 4-7.
70 Ibid., 169. Danzker points out that another section of Flaherty's account in w h i c l i In K 5 See Nancy Baele, "Video Award Winners Make Compelling Series on Inuit Life,"
Ottawa Citizen, 25 May 1994.
explains that Nanook protested the great bother of making a film about himsell ll
almost identical to comments attributed to another man, "Od Atchaweek," m In K.) See Stephen Hendrick and Kathleen Fleming, "Zacharias Kunuk: Video Maker and
discussion of his role in his 1914 fllm by Flaherty, Early Account of the Viliu '' < Inuit Historian," Inuit Art Quarterly (summer 1991): 25-28.
<s Ibid., 26.
"Filmography," ed. Danzker, 57.
71 Another book by Flaherty about a great explorer in the Arctic who is helped l>v i I M
Inuit was conspicuously titled White Master (London: George Routledge ^ .'un s Time and Redemption in the "Racial Film "
1939). n/ the 19205 and 19305
72 Robert J. Flaherty, The Captain's Chair: A Storyof the North (New York: S i - i i l m r i ' i i ,
19381,290. i c ,'corges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett
(New York: Zone Boks, 1991), 242.
73 Ibid., 291.
74 Bronislaw Malinowski, A Diary in llic Slncl .S'rmr of ilic 'Irru ( S i a n l o i d . S i . i n l i n . l i I I . G. Wells, '/'/)( Tinte Machine (Grcat Britain, iKy> ; rcpr., New York: Random
I loase, u j g i ) , ( > s .
University Press, 1989; orig. publ. ii)>/), <><).
2 5 o Notesto Chapter Five Notes to Chapter Five 251

4 Johannes Fabin, Time and the Othei: How Anthropology Makes Its Object |New alogue in Elhnography: Marcel Griaule's Inilialion," in The Predicament of Culture:
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 7. Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature and Ait (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
5 Ibid., 25. University Press, 1988), 55-91. Both of Griaule's films on the Dogon, Sous les
6 Fredric Jameson, "The Existence of Italy," in Signatutes of the Visible (New York: masques noirs (1938) and Aupays Dogon (1938), are similar to other anlhropological
Routledge, 1991), 186. research films in their emphasis on dancing and other activities like cooking, and on
7 Andr Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," in What Is Cinema? ed. the absence of a sense of the individualily of the peoples filmed. Sous les masques
Hugh Gray (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 1:9. noirs, however, has a fascinating montage of Dogon masked dances edited wilh fast
8 Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Trapiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New cuts, giving the scene a sense of frenzy.
York: Penguin Books, 1992,; orig. publ. Paris: Librairie Pin, 1955), 385, 389. 12 See chapter 3 for more on Franz Boas.
9 "Stark Love andMoana," unsigncd review in Movie Makers (November 1928), in The 13 David H. Mould and Gerry Veeder, "The 'Photographer-Adventurers': Forgotten H-
Documentary Tradition, ed. Lewis Jacobs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 2,7. roes of the Silent Screen," Journal of Popular Film and Televisin 16, no. 3 (1988):
10 Fierre Leprohon, L'exotisme et le cinema (Paris: J. Susse, 1945), i3.InFrance, a whole 124.
series of "cruise" films appeared with tilles reflecting the color coding of the "race" or 14 Ibid., 125. Mould and Veeder explain ihat when the popularity of these films began lo
regin of the people visited. One cruise, La croisire blanche (The White Cruise,- dccrease, ihey were relegated to "lecture halls, schools, libraries" (126).
1923), was an expedition film of Captain Kleinschmidt and his wife in Alaska, Sibe- 15 In his book Grass, Cooper explained ihe importance of cinema to the study of Human
ria, and other parts of the Arctic. In 1929, Len Poirier's La croisire jaune (The Geography, in words reminiscent of Regnaull: "In the study of Human Gcography
Yellow Cruise) was released, a film of the Citron-sponsored motor car expedition the motion picture can and will play an increasingly important part. With the flux
from Lebanon to Indochina. ible means of expression given by the film, it is possible to record the great natural
11 Leprohon, 64. In La croisire noire, frica is feminized (the camera fetishizes the geographical dramas which go on all over the world, wherever Man contcnds ag.imsi
breasts and buttocks of African women), portrayed as a body to be mapped and Nature in ihe strugglc for existence. . . . When man fights for his lile, all i h r w o i l d
crossed over. The image of the uniformed expedition officers motorcading through lookson" (MerianC. Cooper, Grass [New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, nm|, "<)
the deserts, forests, and rivers of colonial frica clearly was meant to make the heari 16 Asen Balikci, "Review of Grass," American Anthropologisl 82, no. i ( H > H < > | - > \n
of any young French child flutter with patriotic pride. The film, praised by Bazin as i? Cooper wrote ihal Haidar Khan had "gorilla arms," anticipatng i l i r use ni s i n i i . n i
poetic, is a glorifying tribute to progress, imperialism, colonial expansin, and tlic tropes in Cooper and Schoedsack's films (Cooper, 88).
motorcar: its stated purpose is to help frica "evolve" toward "humanity, justice, and 18 Mordaunl Hall, review of Grass, New York Times, T I Mardi HJ.'-S, i /
happiness." The automobile voyage quickly becomes a collection of stereolypcil 19 In an interview, Cooper explained that Chang, un l i k e (,'mvs. w.is m u .1 ilm i i m r n i . i i v
views: the audience is offered shots of pith-helmetcd French officers behind i l u but a staged film using nalives as actors (John Stag Hanson, " I lie M.in Wlm K i l l c d
wheels of their cars; panoramic views of landscape, market, and village sceiu-s, KingKong," Movies International i, no. 3 (19661: 2 i).
scenes of African dances, sacred rituals, and warriors; and scenes of Frenchmcn mi 20 Review of Chang, New York Times, 30 April 1927, 2 s.
lecting museum artifacts and hunting wild animis. The various ethnic groups rn 21 Ernesl B. Schoedsack, "The Making of an Epic," American Cini'matographi'r 64
countered are persistently categorized temporally: the Pygmies of the Belgian Coi u'.< > (February 1983): 113.
are said to be in "the most primitive state of human Ufe," and African Muslini-, .m 22 Leprohon, 116.
described as evoking the Crusades and A Thousand and One Nights. La ero/Mr/, 23 Review of Chang, New York Times, 30 April 1927, 25.
noire is a tightly organized voyage through time and through frica: if it is pori i v, II 4 Gcorge W. Stocking Jr., "The Elhnographic Sensibility of ihe 19205 and the Dualism
Bazin claims, then it is a poetry which celbrales primarily the greatness o IT.IIH i of the Anthropological Tradilion," in Romantic Motives: Essays on Anthropological
mission civilisatrice, and ihe exoticism of her colonial subjects as generali/.rd i ni Sensibility, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., History of Anthropology, vol. 6 (Madison:
tural types (Andr Bazin, "Cinema and Exploration," in What Is Cinema* i i , |l Universily of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 245.
Another French expedilion film, Marc Allgrel and Andr Gide's Voyag' <ui .'< myi < Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-ftction Film (Oxford: Oxford
scenes de la vie indigne en Afriqve equatoriale (1926), also is a travelogue h ij',1 > I ir I u University Press, 1983), 47.
ing exoticism and the colonial imperative. John Gricrson, "Flaherty's Poelic Moana," in The Documentary Tradition, ed. Lewis
One of the most famous French anihropological expeditions was t l u - Mr.'.mu Jacobs (New York: W. W. Norlon, 1979), 25-26. Il was not only films that were
Dakar-Djibouti, begun in 1931, in which Marccl Griaule and other anthropolon! i promoting this romantic image of the sexy Soulh Seas, however, as Mead's work
spent iwenty-one months collecting malcriis and documents for tlic Tu n i . ,. mythologizing the relativcly sexually uninhibiled Samoan lo sel in relief ihe prob-
Ethnognphic Museum. A discussion of Griaule'semphasis on documentation i . n In > Icins of the repressed adolescent of the United Stales unmistakably attests.
than on p a r t i c i p a n ) ohscrvation may be tound in james Clifford, "l'nwci . u n i " Trances llubliard I-'lalicrty, "The Camcra's Eye," in SpelIbOUOd in nurkiiess: A His-
Notes to Chapter Five 253
252, Notes to Chapter Five _
nence grise. In this film, many of the issues which Johannes Fabin discusses about
tory of the Silent Film, ed. George C. Pratt (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, how anthropology creates a Primitive Other are revealed. For cxample, the pos-
1966; repr., Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), 346. sessiveness of the anthropologists toward "his or her village" is explained by Mead.
2,8 Research anthropologists such as Hilton-Simpson and ). A. Haeseler also recom She describes to Rouch how she went to a congress of anthropologists in 1924, and
mended using longlenses to allow for better voyeurism; see chapter 2. how everyone there talked about "my people," and how she wanted "my people" too.
29 Robert Flaherty, "Filming Real People," Movie Makers (December 1934), in 7'fir Visually, this possessive past is displayed in the "Pacific Whole," the modular model
Documentaiy Tiadition, ed. Lewis Jacobs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 97-98. villages that can be put on coasters for easy filming. Pointing to one she cxplains,
30 Nanook and Moana were later hailed as "the classics of the ethnographic and so "This is my village." Mead's comments underline Regnault's ideal, which was to
ciological film" (Le de Heusch, The Cinema and Social Science: A Survey of Elli solve the vanishing races problem through archives of film and artifacts. With her
nographic and Sociolgica] Films, vol. 16, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences studies of personality and psychology, Mead went further, using anthropology to
[Paris: UNESCO, 1961], 39). study "culture at a distance" and "national character," e.g., the Balinese are schizo-
phrcnic, etc. One particularly popular instance of this kind of anthropology was Ruth
31 Grierson, % 5.
32 Some of my discussion of The Silent Enemy is based on Information presented at .1 Benedict's study of the Japanese character in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
panel discussion, "Early Cinema Imagines Native Americans," held at New Yoil (1946).
University, 31 January 1992. The panelists included Elizabeth Weatherford, A m v 4 <>
In the United States, Goona Goona was not shown in first-run houses, but in theaters
Heller, Dennis Doros, Clinton Elliott, and Rosebud Yellow Robe Frantz. Sec a I MI known as "artics," and other "subsequent run" houses. The film did well in Europe.
Donald B. Smith, Long Lance: The True Stoiy of an impostar (Lincoln: Universit v > 'I See the review of Goona Goona by Andr Roosevelt and Armand Denis in Variety
Nebraska Press, 1982); Kevin Brownlow, The War, The West, and the Wilderm-:: (17 September 1932). Another film on Bali as "the last escape from tired machine
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979); and Elizabeth Weatherford with Emilia Scubn i civilizations," as the New York Times reviewer put it, was Isle of Paradise directcd by
Native Americans on Film and Video (New York: Museum of the American Inili.m/ Charles Trego ("Island of Bali Shown on Screen," New York Times, 21 July i i) p.: i s).
,|6 In a Hays Office memorndum of 7 June 1950, the Production Code Administr.il ion
Heye Foundation, 1981).
33 Weatherford put forth this insightful observation in the panel discussion ment o u .1 described how it had eliminated footage from Tab of barebreasted w u m r n , mide
children, and a section of a dance considercd sexually suggestive, lu-causc n n l i k c
inn. 32.
34 SeeBunny McBride, "APenobscot in Paris," Down East: The Magazineof Maiti*- \t.. Moana, seen as an unscripted instructional film, Tab was thoughi to he si.ij'cil
"This picturc carries a seal which was granted after extcnsivc i n i s , r l i m i n . i l ni);
no. i (1989): 61-64, 80-84.
breast shotsfrom it. The picture was shot in the South Sea Islands and, UOUghoUt .1
35 Fabin, 19-30.
great portion of it, there were native women with exposed brcasts. It w.is cOQlidercd
36 Ibid.
37 It was also a film which Flaherty worked on briefly on location in Tahiti in i <.>>. / / u that this particular film did not come within the requirement ot the I lodcon ' n a l i v c s
(Barsam, 47). For a survey of films set in the Pacific Islands, see Diane Mei Lin M.u I in their native habitat,' because it is an entertainmem film with notliing o t l i e
"The Reel Hawaii," in Moving the Image: Independent Asan Pacific Amerir,m A i, 'travelogue flavor' to it, which scems required by the spirit oi the Codc provisin on
da Arts, ed. Russell Leong (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Ce 111 r i u >. I this matter. It also appeared as though the director of the picturc had not shot it
Visual Communications, 1991), 109-17. See also Ingrid Heermann, Myth<>\ indiscriminately but had very carefully selected the young girls for his cast with
SdseeTraum und Realitat (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1987). ohviously handsome breasts. For these basic reasons, the cuts were required when
38 Tessel Pollman, "Margaret Mead's Balinese," Indonesia 49 (April 1990): 10. the picturc was presented here for a certifcate" (File on Tab, Hays Office files,
Aeademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library, Los Angeles).
39 Ibid., 1-35.
40 Prof. Dr. Ide Gde Ing. Bagus, quoted in ibid., 15. I / C Miarles Jameux, F. W. Murnau (Paris: Classiques du cinema, 1965), 81-90.
41 I Made Kaler, quoted in ibid., 20. I M As Lvi-Strauss himself said, "the primary function of written communication is to
42 I Made Kaler, quoted in ibid., 17. lacilitate slavery" (Lvi-Strauss, 299).
43 Meadwrote, "One of our most successful films was made when weordcird .1 )'.mn|, i l>) l'ollman, 4,- Margaret J. Wiener, Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and
play in the daytime that ordinarily performed only late at night. . . . Tin- m.in wlm Colonial Conquest in Bali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 4, 269.
made the arrangements decided to substitutc young bcautiful wonicn l e u i l i < \ H!. Wiener has written a very interesting study of a similar puputan in 1908 which
ered od women who performed at night" (Margaret Mead, llackbcnv Wuih i AI\ Years |New York: William Mnrrow,
occurred 1972),
at the 252 ofs vKlungkung.
capital
v i Andr Bazin, "Cinema and Exploration," 1:154-55. Bazin States that in certain
44 Pullman, 34. One of the best portraits of Mead is (can Kouch's l'orlnin ni .1 l'fli II i'.cmrs, and he refers explieitly to films portraying indigcnous peoples, the actors
(1978). We see t h e cldcrly Margarct Mead represented as intivpid r x p l n i n . u n i > < i themsclves can spoil l i k e t r u i t : "Little Rari [sc] of Tab, they say, ended up as a
.....ih.-i w:ilkinr. alxmt i l n - A m e r i c a n Muse-u ni ni Natural I l i s i o i y as .1 M U "I
254 Notes to Chapter Five

prostitute in Poland, and we all know what happens to children raiscd to stardom by ^ Chapter
Notes to ^juapier S,
Mx 2SS
their first film. . . . Indispensable as are the factors of inexperience and nal vet,
Nineteenth-century
1984), 22. Hriain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
obviously they cannot survive repetition" (Andr Bazin, "An Aesthetic of Reality:
7 Ibid., 23.
Neorealism [Cinematic Realism and the Italian School of Liberation]," in What Is
Cinema!, 2:24).
8 Georges Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathologcal, trans. Carolyn R. Fawcett
The perceived fresh innocence of the indigenous actor is thus essential to the (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 243.
Ethnographic genre. Since the native person acting for the flrst time is installed in a
9 Bronislaw Malinowski, A IJary in the Strict Sense of the Term (Stanford: Stanford
flction in which, whatever script he or she follows, he or she will be taken to be University Press, 1989,- orig. publ. 1967), 69.
"real," playing him- or herself; he or she, according to Bazin's logic, does not "survive 10 Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (New York: Routledge, 1990), 31-34.
repetition." Like a child, the indigenous actor is used for his or her freshness, but at 11 George W. Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987), xv.
best, only once, for the "real" cannot be marketed in a star system.
12 See chapter i for Broca's analogy of the anthropological subject to the patient. Boas
51 Leprohon, 25.
advised his student Margaret Mead that the anthropological method is to set "the
52 Bazin, "Cinema andExploration," 1:154-55.
individual against the (cultural) background"a method which he compared to "the
53 See Andr F. Liotard, Samivel, and Jean Thvenot, Cinema d'exploration, cinema a\i
method that is used by medical men in their analysis of individual cases on which is
long cours (Paris: P.-A. Chavane, 1950), 52-64; Andr Bazin, "Cinema and Explora
built up the general picture of the pathological cases that they want to describe." See
tion," i: 154-55.
Margaret Mead Papers at the Library of Congress, Franz Boas to Margaret Mead,
54 Liotard et al., 57.
15 February 1926, quoted in George W. Stocking Jr., "The Ethnographic Sensibility of
55 Donna Haraway, "The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inapprop i
the 19208 and the Dualism of the Anthropological Tradition," in Romantic Motives:
ate/d Others," in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and I'mil.i Essays on Anthropological Sensibility, ed. George W. Stocking Jr., Hstory of Anthro-
Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 314. pology, vol. 6 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 243.
13 Wilson Martnez, "Critical Studies and Visual Anthropology: Aberrant vs. Antici-
6 King Kong and the Monster pated Readings of Ethnographic Film," CVA Review (spring 1990): 34-47,- Asen Ba-
in Ethnographic Cinema (April "Anthropology,
likci, 1989): 4-ro. Film and the Arctic Peoples," Anthropology Today 5, no. i

1 Quoted in Tristan Renaud, "King-Kong: le roi est n," Cinema 218 (February i u / / ) 14 Jorge Preloran, "Documenting the Human Condition," in Principies of Visual An
44- thropology, ed. PaulHockings (TheHague: Mouton, t975), 105.
2 Much of the above information on Ota Benga was communicated to me by U ni u 1 1 15 William B. Cohn, The French Encounter with Aficans: White Response to Klacks,
Bieder. See also Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume, Ota Benga: The l'\m i30-1880 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 234.
in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). I thank Robert Bieder for l i i s i l e l l m , 16 Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Trapiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (Paris:
me about Ota Benga. Librairie Pin, 1955,- repr., New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 371.
3 J. P. Telotte, "The Movies as Monster: Seeingin King Kong," Georgia Review ,\, un < I17
N Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980), 21.
(summer 1988): 390. Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 99.
<; Neale, 22.
4 Fierre Leprohon writesthat cinema ofexoticism "participe ala fois de l a s e i r n c i . i .In
rev. . . . Sa valeur documentairc cst lmcnt de connaissance; sa poOsir CM . i l m i . m
i As Gregg Mitman points out, Komodo dragn behavior is made into spectacle in
de rev" (participates at the same time in science and in dream. . . . Its donmii i i i < n y
museum dioramas through the combination of two distinct behavioral traits, both of
valu is the element of knowledge,- its poetry is the food of dream) (Pi n I < |iinlini| which appear in Burden's film: the Komodo dragon's dominant head posture and the
L'exotisme et le cinema [Paris: J. Susse, 1945], 1213). Ingagi (1930), .1 i IMHHI devouring motion of its jaws (Gregg Mitman, "Cinematic Nature: Hollywood Tech-
documentary hoax, used footage from an od Lady McKenzic c x p e d i i i o n h l i nology, Popular Culture, and the Science of Animal Behavior, 1925-1940," paper
featured the sacriflce of an African woman to a gorilla, a scene stagcd hv .u 1 1 < < presented at the Society for Cinema Studies Conference, New Orleans, La., 10-
blackfaceat the Selig Zoo (Gcrald Peary, "Missing Links: The Junglc ( >i 1.1:111 "I Ml| I 1 1 February 1993). Burden, who also later produced The Silent Enemy, founded Ma-
Kong," in The Girlin theHary Paw, cd. Ronalcl Gottcsman and I l.-in v ( . c . I n l . l | i i. .. r i ne Studios, Inc., in 1935, another pioneer venture (at least insofar as public specta-
York: Avon Books, 19761,41-42). i'lc is concerned). It was later renamcd Marineland.
5 Andr F. Liotard, Samivel, indican Thvenot, C.ini'niti d'fxploralion. < i / i n n . i ,m fniif j ( '.mol, I'hilosnphv of Horror, \.
cours (Paris: P.-A. Chavane, i y so), 61.
American Musciini of N a t u r a l I listory Folder on the Burden East Indies Expedition
6 Stephen Bann, The. Clothing <>l ('lio: A S t t i t l v o llif kL'prcsi'ntalion "I "' no. |. ()rigin.-il I )orumental ion.
I >nin;l.is Hu del I, / >iiiy\<m l.i.'iiiilsnl Ktnui>l- ''''''
256 Notes to Chapter Six
Notes to Chapter Six 257
Dutch East Indies (New York, London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1927), 103. Indonesian
women are portrayed as animal-like, sexy, naughty "creatures" (56, 170-71). See also Ranchero is carried to safety by Trader Horn. Trader Horn exploits Ranchero as a
Burden, "The Quest for the Dragn of Komodo," Natural History 27, no. i (fanuary- servantcalling him half-bulldog, half-watchful motherand has him perform such
February 1927]: 3-18; "Stalking the Dragn Lizard on the Island of Komodo," Na- menial chores as taking out chiggers from Trader Horn's toenails. When Ranchero
tional Geographic Magazine (August 1927): 216-32. dies, however, Trader Horn eradles him in his arms. This closeness is reminiscent of
24 See Dragn Lizards of Komodo, 40, 180-81, for Burden's characterization of Chu. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: Crusoe makes very little mention of his own wife,
25 Ibid., 112. but devotos pages to the physical appearance of Friday, and goes out of his way to
26 Rudy Behlmer, Foreword to The Girl in the Hairy Paw, ed. Ronald Gottesman and stress that Friday is not really black. (I am indebted to Robert Stam for this insight on
Robinson Crusoe.)
Harry Geduld (New York: Avon Books, 1976), 10.
27 Burden, Dragn Lizards of Komodo, 90-92. 47 Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrativo Cinema," in Nanative, Apparatus,
28 Behlmer, 10. Ideology: A Film Theory Readei, ed. Phil Rosen (New York: Columbia Universty
Press, 1986), 203.
29 I thank Greg Mitman for this insight.
30 Burden, Dragn Lizards of Komodo, 160, 53. 48 The hierarchy of observers watching Ann being filmed reinforces the subordnate
31 Ibid., 57. positon of Charlie: he is the lowest person on the ladder watching. Similarly, when
32 Claude Beylie, "La chasse du Comte Zaroff: la bte humaine," L'Avant-scne 295-96 Charlie muses about whether or not Denham might be willing to take his picture,
(1-15 November 1982): 4-5. another sailor replies, "Them cameras cost money. Shouldn't think he'd risk it." In
33 Thierry Kuntzel, "The Film-Work, 2," Camera Obscura 5 (spring 1980): 22. light of the fact that, more often than not, Chinese characters were played by whites
34 Ibid., 14. in Hollywood, this seemingly offhand comment is telling. "China" was a uscful
35 I thank Hazel V. Carby for bringing Island of Lost Souls to my attention. marker of time and difference, but not an image to be entrusted to Chnese-American
hands.
36 Zaroff and Moreau, however, are not without their "real life" counterparts: in t l n
nineteenth century, the grave-robbing medical doctor/anthropologist Robert Kno\ 49 King Kong opened at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles and sharod (he b i l
known for his motto, "Man's gift is to destroy, not to crate," was forced to loavr withanact withaprophesizingfortune-teller: GinChow, Chinese philoBOphci ("Gm
Chow at Chinese," Los Angeles Times, i April 1933).
Edinburgh because his dissections offended the local populace (Stocking, 64). so Wray, 017.
37 Telotte, 395.
38 Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 145. S i Leprohon wrote, "Devant l'Asie, on a l'impression d'un mur. On dcconviv un monde
39 Ibid., 182-93, 157. ferm, impenetrable" (Before Asia, one has the impression of , w.ill. ( ) n o discovns .1
closed world, impenetrable) (74).
40 Orville Goldner and George E. Turner, eds., The Making of King Kong: Thc SI<H\ a Film Classic (South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1975), 8o.
s?, David N. Rosen, "Race, Sex and Rebellion," Jump Cut 6 (March April i y / s ) : M m,
and Snead, 53-69.
41 Noel Carroll, "King-Kong: Ape and Essence," in Planks of Reason: Essays un < ' ' s i Snead, 64-66.
Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984), n.X
42 James Snead, "Spectatorship and Capture in King Kong: The Guilty Look," ('.un, ,il s ,| The bewilderment Indonesians present to the categories of race is prcsent oven today,
Quarterly 33, no. i (spring 1991): 58. as may be seen by the fact that V. S. Naipaul refers to Batak writer Sitor Sitomorang as
43 Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 229-30. a "Chinese-Negrito" and as "tribal," but never as Batak. See V. S. Naipaul, Among the
44 Fay Wray, "How Fay Met Kong, or thc Scream That Shook thc World," /Vci\/ Helievers: An Islamc fourney (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 305-17.
Times, 21 September 1969, 017. s \n also played a Chinese in The Mysterious Di. Fu Manchu, a Nubian in The
45 Merian C. Cooper, as quoted in George Turner, "Hunting 'The Most I >.ni);< mu Mummy, a Polynesian in MobyDick, a Persian prince in The Thief of Baghdad, and a
Game,'" American Cinematographer 68 (September 1987): 41-42. Cuban zombie in The Ghost Breakers (Goldner and Turner, 84). For more on fohn-
46 Likemost films of thegenre, however, TraderHorn dcpicts Africans as s n v i l . Inull son's company, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company which Johnson ran with his
evil cannibals, and bait for hungry crocodiles. Van Dyke uses thc irnnor.i.ii'ln ni lirothcr George, see Donald Bogle, Toras, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks:
anthropology to good effect in this film: wc see African "nativos" pouiulni)'. ' ' A u Interpietive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum Pub-
lislnng, 1991), 103, iro.
reconstruction of a "nativo village," and, in a scene n which Trailc-r I leu Imnl
unfriendly Africans, the camera frames thc Africans in anthropologk'al In .ni l".i \i. Michclc Wallaee, "Variations on Negation and the Heresyof Black Feminist Creativ-
panning from head to head. Thc homocrotic elomonts aro pronoumnl i l n I mil n y," in Invisibity Rlues: From Pop to Theory (London: Verso, 1990), 213-40.
bctwcen TraderHorn and tne Arican "gunboy/'asTradcr I lorn r.ills i l u ...I. m u i i l l s ' I 'cuma \, "The l'romisos of Monsters: A Regenorative Politics for Inappropri-
Ranchero, is cise, and as thoy aro tryingtocsr.apc t h o "angry savay.rs," i l n u i i . i l r / < l ()tliors," in Cultural Sliiilif, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula
[Yeichler (New York: Routledge, 199?.), }(> y.
258 Notes to Chapter Six Notes to Chapter Six 259

58 Quoted in Gottesman and Geduld, "Introduction," 22. Indeed, King Kong has become a sort of national monster fetish, everywhere re-
59 Harold Hellenbrand, "Bigger Thomas Reconsidered: 'Native Son/ Film and 'King produced and adored: King Kong ames a ride in the MGM tourist park as well as a
Kong,'" Journal of American Culture 6, no. i (1983): 88. Hellenbrandbelieves that recent sculpture on the Empire State Building. Kong is its own pcrfect Ethnographic
Native Son by Richard Wright is a meditation on the film King Kong and racial simulacrum, or, as Jean Baudrillard would say, an instance of the "hyperreal" (Jean
Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," in Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul
stereotyping.
60 See, e.g., Human Apes from the Orient (American Mutoscope and Biograph, 1906), ai Patton, and Philip Beitchman [New York: Semiotext(e), 1983], 25).
JeanLvy, "King-Kong," Minotaure 5 (1934): 5.
the Lihrary of Congress.
73 Ibid.
61 Peary, "Missing Links," 39-40.
62 See, e.g., D. W. Griffith's Man's Gnesis (1912) for an example of a Grifith prehistorii 74 Theodor W. Adorno, "Looking Back on Surrealism," in The Idea of the Modern in
film, or Broken Blossoms (1919) as an example of a Griffith racial melodrama. Literature and the Arts, ed. Irving Howe, trans. S. P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn (New
63 Jay Ruby, "A Reexamination of the Early Career of Robert J. Flaherty," Quartcrlv York: Horizon Press, 1967), 220-24.
ReviewofFilm Studies 5, no. 4 (fall 1980): 454. Emmett J. Scott's TheBirthof a Rucr 75 Perhaps another reason for the attention paid to King Kong by the surrealists is the
(1918) was an African American responso to TheBirth of a Nation (Bogle, 102-3). film's status as a lowbrow Hollywood production. The same sensibility led foseph
64 Jean Boullet, "Willis O'Brien, or the Birth of a Film from Design to Still," in The (,'n I Cornell to make Rose Hohart (1936), a film constructed from snippets of footage
in the Hairy Paw, ed. Ronald Gottesman and Harry Geduld (New York: Avon Books, taken from the exotic Hollywood film East of Borneo (1931), and led Michel Leiris to
praise Fox Follies (1929) as a spectacle which did not have "the slightest hint of an
1976), 107-10.
65 At the time King Kong was made, O'Brien was already famous for dinosaur films l i l ' < aesthetic," a film which was "all popular, wonderfully cheap" (Michel Leiris, "Fox
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link (1916) and The Lost World (1925), as wcll .r, Movietone Follies of 1929," Documents i, no. 7 [December 1929], repr., October 6o
for his 1930 semidocumentary film about evolution, Creation (Joseph E. Samlnv [spring 1992], trans. Dominic Faccini: 43-46). As Ado Kyrou recommends in l,c
"O'Brien and Monsters from the Id," in The Scope of the FantasticCulture, Hiay.iii surralisme au cinema, "The best and most exciting films [are] the films shown in
phy, Themes, Children's Literature: Selected Essays from the First Interna! mu,I local fleapits, films which seem to have no place in the history of cinema.... Lea rn t o
Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, ed. Robert A. Collins .un go see the 'worst' films,- they are sometimes sublime" (cited in f. Hoberman, "Hail
HowardD. Pearce [Westport, Conn.: GreenwoodPress, 1985], 11:207-9). Movies," in Vulgar Modernism [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 19911, i \).
66 Claude Ollier, "A King in New York," in The Girl in the Hairy Paw, ed. K n i u l . l To praise a film like King Kong was to defy good taste, to embrace the common, and
Gottesman and Harry Geduld, trans. Roy Huss and T. J. Ross (New York: A \ H to experience the sublime and oneiric in popular culture rather than in high art
venues.
Books, 1976), 115.
Lvy, 5. Joseph E. Sandcrs saw Kong as "a monster from the Id" (214). William Grimes
67 Carroll, "King-Kong: Ape andEssence," 217.
68 Ibid., 219-20. Carroll, as well as Terry Heller and Gerald Peary, arge that i l u | i m r l > sees the film as a metaphor for "repressed sexual drive." See William Grimes, "Buried
o King Kong is a metaphor for the capitalist, "eat orbe caten" consumcrist irom mu Themes: Psychoanalyzing Movies," New York Times, 23 December r99i, Cu.
Peary also sees Kong as a metaphor for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a represen!.u i,, James Clifford, "On Ethnographic Surrealism," in The Predicament of Culture:
of the then newly elected president as a destructive forc (Terry Heller, 77ir / V / M ' / I I Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
of Terror: An Aesthetics of the Tale of Terror [Urbana: University of l l l i i i m s l'im*, University Press, 1988), 119.
19871,46; and Gerald Peary, "The Historicity of King Kong," JumpCut 4 | N o v i m i " . Ibid., 120.
"King Kong," Films in Review (June 1975): 61. Cooper was anti-Communist and a
December 1974]: n-ia).
69 fudith Mayne arges that the savage forc of the environment Kong r i r . u r s I* | war fanatic; he later became the president of Pan American Airlines. For King Kong,
metaphor for an image of Manhattan as chaotically destructive. Seo " 'Kmr, K n n r u , . I Cooper and Schoedsack arranged to borrow four planes from the U.S. Navy, and
the Ideology of Spectacle," Quarterly Review of Film Studiex i, no ,| ( N m . mi.. > twenty-cight different scenes in the film include footage of actual aircraft maneu-
vers. See Lawrence Suid, "King Kong and the Military," American Classic Screen
1976): 373-87.
70 The "entertainment of violated boundaries" occurs when elements c i > i r . t n n i . ! i ()uly-August 1977): 14-16.
inherent oppositesnature and society, the Primitive and the Modem .m i n - t i |ohn Sccleye, "Mohy-Kong," College Literature 17, no. i (1990): 39.
posed. Haraway writes that the Kayap with the camera is no longcr "an f i n e See carlier discussion in this chapterat n. 30.
contradiction," if one no longer conceives of the world as a polari/.ed i r . i l m U i l.otluop Stoddard, The Revolt aganst Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man
nature and society. She contines, "Where there is no nature o s o i - i r t v , i l n i ' l III (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), 5-6.
pleasure, no entertainment to be had in represen! i ng the violation <>l i l n l u m m U i l " i ll is jntcrcstmg to note that the term so reminiscent of King Kongthe "Viet Cong"
between them" (Haraway, '/'/ l'ntinini-s <>l Monstrrx, \. w.is ni i i i v r n l e d liy the Vietname.se theniselves, but by the Kand Corporation.
26o Notes to Chapter Six Notes to Conclusin 261
84 See Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," 1-80. people have had contacts with other outsule groups for centuries. Like Nanook of the
85 Elizabeth Alexander, The Venus Hottentot, The Callaloo Poetry Series, vol. 9, ni North, The Hunters gives center stage to the importance of the all-male hunt. Bill
Charles H. Rowell (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 6-7. Nichols has called this macho, Ernest \e preoccupation in the works
86 Another writer who explores the voice of the African American woman exploited liy of Flaherty, Rouch, and others the "bullfight syndrome" (Bill Nichols, Ideology and
anthropology is Toni Morrison, whose protagonist in Beloved (New York: Sigm-l, the Image: Social Representation in the Cinema and Other Media [Bloomington:
1991), is physically studied by anthropologists as a slave. Another writer who li.r. Indiana University Press, 1981], 275). Marshall himself, however, later repudiated
explored the subjectivities of the person being flmed or studied by whites witlinu The Hunters when he became aware that the film and related commercial films such
their permission is Toni Cade Bambara in her wonderful short story "Blues Ain'i u as Jamie Uys's The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) were being used by the South African
Mocking Bird," in Carilla, My Love (New York: 1961; repr., Vintage Books, i ys i ) andNamibiangovernments to justify the land dispossession of fu/'hoansipeople. As
127-36, which describes the response of a black family to being fllmed by docunu-n Tsamkxao#Oma, a Ju/'hoansi man, has explained, there are two kinds of cinema:
tary filmmakers without their permission. "[One shows the fu/'hoansi as] people like other people, who have things to do and
87 Reactions to the shows were often troubled and confused, relates Fusco. At Irvim plans to make. This kind helps us. The other kind shows us as if we were animis,
some people thought they were "real" Aborigines and became upset, or were troulilnl and plays right into the hands of people who want to take our land" (Megan Biesele,
at the sight of humans in a cage. Also, many brought little gifts and food to thcm ( K u 11 "Reclaiming a Cultural Legacy: The Ju/'hoansi of Namibia," Aperture 119 [1990]:
Sawchuk, "Unleashing the Demons of History: An Interview with Coco Fusco .iml 50). Marshall attempted to correct the myths that he himself helped propgate in The
Guillermo Gmez-Pea," Parachute 67 [September 1992): 24). Hunters in his later film N!ai, The Story of a IKung Woman (1978), believcd to be
Fusco relates that in Europe "people's behavior regressed": in England, somr I n among the first ethnographic films to portray indigenous peoples as historical beings
glishmen made gorilla noises to them, in Spain many spectators were verbally ;y,y. i I living in the present, and in his advocacy videos for the Ju/'hoansi which protest
sive, and Latin American tourists worried about the "negative images" o I . . M I H their relegation to "homelands" (reservations), the taking of their lands, their lack of
America that they were portraying (C. Carr, "Is It Real or Is I t . . . ? Identity and 11 political rights, and their great poverty and despair (Toby Alice Volkman, "The
Eye of the Beholder," LA Weekly($ July-9 July 1992). Hunter-gatherer Myth in Southern frica: Preserving Nature or Culture?" Cultural
8 8 Gmez-Pea, quoted in Sawchuk, 2 5. Survival 10, no. 2 (1986): 25-32).
Some have argued that Sol Worth and John Adair's project in the igos to study films
Conclusin made by Navajos initiated this trend, but Worth and Adair's "experiment" was in
keeping with the classic anthropological method of using visual media to understand
1 The Passion of Remembrance is the titlc of a 1986 film by Isaac Julien and M. ..... indigenous thought, just as Mead, for example, had earlier used stills from Flaherty's
Blackwood who were part of the black British film collective Sankofa. This l i l i Moana to try to elicit information from Samoans in her 19205 fieldwork (Margaret
one of many recent media works which have exploded "race" as a fixed, slablr ' . Mead, Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years [New York: William Morrow, 1972], 154).
gory, creating new vocabularies for confronting the politics of race and i d r n u \ as gender, sexuality, and desire.
There is no acknowlcdgement of the political and ethical necessity of image sov-
ereignty.
2 James Baldwin and Margaret Mead, A Rap on Race (New York: Dell, 197 1 ), i K(I Timothy Asch, who made ethnographic films among the Yanomami in the 19608
3 Ibid., 157. and 19705, has recently written that it never occurred to him to give the camera to
4 Ibid., 174. the Yanomami when he first began to make ethnographic films, but he has since
5 Ibid., 187. reflected that films and video by the Yanomami would provide more accurate records
6 Ibid., 190. of contemporary Yanomami life. Interestingly, Asch asserts that ethnographic films
7 Frantz Fann, Black Skin White Masks: The Experiences of a Black Man in i Wl hy indigenous peoples are likely to be of greater scientific valu than films by anthro-
World, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 1 1 2. pologists (Timothy Asch et al., "The Story We Now Want to Hear Is Not Ours to Tell:
8 Baldwin and Mead, 208. Kelinquishing Control over Representation: Toward Sharing Visual Communication
9 See, e.g., David MacDougall, "Beyond Observational Cinema," in l'ntit i>li- . ni Skills with the Yanomami," Visual Anthropology Review?, no. 2 [fall 1991): 102-6).
sual Anthropology, ed. PaulHockings (New York: Mouton, 1975), 109-24. U I|ay Ruby, "Exposing Yourself: Reflexivity, Anthropology and Film," Semitica 30,
10 The effects of anthropology's "crisis" are reflected in the career trajccimv " I > i l > nos. 1-2 (1980): 15.1-79.
nographic filmmaker John Marshall. Marshall's classic The Hunte.ru ( i ' > s ' ' l '! I I W.ml Churchill, Fantasiesofthe Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Coloniza-
the Ju/'hoansi peopleof Nyae Nyae in southern frica (categorizcd as " l i i r . l i n i i nuii itfAnicricin Indiana, ed. M. Annette Jaimes (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage
happy, isolated, pastoralist hunter-gatherers, and ignores ilu- l.icl t h a t t l n - |n, : l l'icss, 1992), 2,4 s 46.
2,6a Notes to Conclusin
Notes to Conclusin 263
14 Ibid., 246.
36 Quoted from Sally McDougall, "Author Plans to Upbraid Own Race," New York
15 Phyllis Rose discusses a number o the different interpretations of Baker in Jazz World Telegram, 6 February 1935.
Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1989).
37 At one point in her notes Belo compares a young African American man "in trance"
16 "Candide," quoted in Josephine Baker and Jo Bouillon, Josephine, trans. Mariana
with the Balinese. (Jane Belo, "Notes on a Meeting on Sunday night at the Sanctified
Fitzpatrick (New York: ParagonHouse, 1988), 55.
Elected Church, Beaufort, April 7, 1940," manuscript in the Margaret Mead Collec-
17 Ibid., 88, 101. tion, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress, 9 April 1940).
18 Baker was even nominated the Queen of the Colonial Exposition in 1931, a nomina-
38 Among the recordings made were the study of religious ecstasy patterns among a
tion from which she had to withdraw because she was not French. In one act, Baker
Baptist congregation in Beaufort; the recording of songs at Yamacraw Village in Sa-
crooned to a white Arctic explorcr, "Sail with me on a snow-white ship / To un-
vannah, Georgia to study how pornography in song and story developed; and singing
discovered seas" (ibid., 108). Baker also performed at the Folies-Bergre as the "native
by fish cannery workers on an island near Beaufort as well as a Baptist church in Sa-
woman" Fatou who falls in love with a white colonialist (Rose, 23).
vannah for comparison with the Commandment Keeper Church in Beaufort. (Letter
19 Baker and Bouillon, 84.
of March 20, 1975 from Norman Chalfln to Joyce Aschenbrenner in the Margaret
20 Ibid., 55. Mead Collection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress.)
21 Janet Flanner, Pars Was Yesterday: 1925-1939 (New York: Viking, 1972), 72-73,
39 Zora Neale Hurston, "Rtualistic Expression From the Lips of the Communicants of
quoted in Rose, 151-52.
the Seventh Day Church of God, Beaufort, South Carolina," manuscript in the Mar-
22 Homi Bhabha, "The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination and the Discoursc
garet Mead Collection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress. See also Zora
of Colonialism," in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed.
Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church: The Folklore Writings of Zora Neale Hurs-
Russell Ferguson et al. (New York and Cambridge, Mass.: New Museum of Conten ton, (Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1981).
porary Art and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990), 85.
40 Zora Neale Hurston, "Ritualistic Expression From the Lips of the Comrminicanls o
23 Ibid., 84.
the Seventh Day Church of God, Beaufort, South Carolina," manuscript in i lie M.H
24 Remarque, quoted in Baker and Bouillon, 86. garet Mead Collection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress.
25 Michele Wallace, "Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problem of the Visual ni
41 Zora Neale Hurston, untitled manuscript in the Margaret Mead Collct:lion, M.mu
Afro-American Culture," in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cu I script Divisin, Library of Congress.
tures, ed. Russell Ferguson et al. (New York and Cambridge, Mass.: New Museum o 42 Ibid.
Contemporary Art and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990), 45. 43 Ibid.
26 Zora Nealc Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (Urbana: The U n
44 Interview of Zora Neale Hurston by Alan Lomax as quoted in l l i - i n r n w . i v , <*
versity of Illinois Press, 1984), 174.
45 Zora Neale Hurston, letter to Jane Belo, May 2, 1940. Manusrnpl m i l i c Maij;.nci
27 Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), i. Mead Collection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress.
28 Hazel V. Carby, "The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Nr.il. 46 Interview with Norman Chalfen, 14 September 1995, by the auilior.
Hurston," in NewEssays on The.iiEyes Were Watching God, ed. Michael A w k w . n . l
47 Zora Neale Hurston, "Ritualistic Expression From the Lips of the Communicants of
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 79.
the Seventh Day Church of God, Beaufort, South Carolina," manuscript in the Mar-
29 On Boas's study of isolable body movements using film, see Jay Ruby, "Fraiv/ Hu.r. garet Mead Collection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress.
and Early Camera Study of Behavior," Kinesis 3, no. i (fall 1980): 6-11, 16.
48 These films of 1940 appear to be Hurston's last. In 1944, Hurston was not successful
30 Elaine S. Charnov, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Pioneer in Visual Anthropology," ||'.i|" i
in her attempt to request from Jane Belo the use of a motion picture camera for her
given at the Second Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival o the Arts and H m 11. i n 1 1 1
trip to Honduras. In her letter to Belo, she wrote, "Together we can do something that
Eatonville, Florida, 1991). I am indebted to Charnov for introducmg me to i l i r . \\\f work.
will make Dr. Margaret Meade's sc] 'SAMOA' look like the report of the W.C.T.U."
Letter from Zora Neale Hurston to Jane Belo, October i, 1944, Margaret Mead Col-
31 Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography (Urbana .un i In lection, Manuscript Divisin, Library of Congress.
cago: University of Illinois Press, 1977), i n , 118. .|u Hurston, Mules and Men, 2.
32 Ibid., 120-22.
su Like Hurston, Dunham violated the boundaries of Primitive versus Civilized in her
33 Ibid., 122.
work and in her persona. In 1935-36, Dunham was encouraged by her mentor, an-
34 Ibid., 116.
thropologist and former Boas student Melville Herskovits at the University of Chi-
35 Ibid., 115, as quoted from Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughcs, A p n l
cago, to take photographs and films of Afro-Caribbean dance. Dunham's films are
(James Weldon Johnson Collection, Yalr) ; "The Florida Expedition" | i v | >
s t r i e t l y rescarch films in the Boasian tradition: her films of dances, shot from a
American Philosophical Society Library).
distincc, were meant toprovide positivist records of the motor hehaviorof particular
264 Notes to Conclusin

cultural groups. There is little in her film work to suggest the kind of deconstructive
self-reflexivity at times present in Hurston's films. However, as a dancer, choreogra-
pher, scholar, and teacher of both dance and anthropology, Dunham has provided, as h- BIBLIOCRAPHY
Hurston did through her innovative writings, a space for a new kind of ethnography,
one which she has termed "dance anthropology." Yet, as Joyce Aschenbrenner points
out, Dunham could not escape the racializing criticism of white media critics. She
was stereotyped like Josephine Baker as the sexy African queen. But some also re-
ferred to her as a combination of Margaret Mead and Mae West, an impersonator of a
female impersonator (Joyce Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham: Reflections on the
Social and Political Contexts of Afro-American Dance, Dance Research Annual 12
[New York: Congress on Research in Dance, 1981], 58). Dunham herself was per-
ceived by dominant society as a "primitive," and her own work was labeled "primi
tive" dance (Aschenbrenner, 49-50). I am indebted to VV Clark, who lectured on "Le pied prhensile chez les alienes et les criminis." La natura 1065 (28 October 1893):
Katherine Dunham's films at Yale University on 4 October 1989, for drawing my 339-
attention to this body of work. "Un village ngre au Champ de Mars." L'iHusra'on 2729 (15 June 1895): 508.
51 Zora Neale Hurston, "What White Publishers Won't Print," in / Lave Myself Whcn I Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?" Women e> Performance: A
Am Laughing . . . And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive, c-d Journal of Feminist Theory 5, no. i, Issue #9 (1990): 7-27.
Alice Walker (Od Westbury, N.Y.: Fetninist Press, 1979), 170. Trinh T. Minh-ha h;r. Adorno, Theodor W. "Looking Back on Surrealism." In The Idea of the Modern m I.HCKI
an interesting essay on Zora Neale Hurston. See "Outside in Inside out," in Qi/r-, ture and the Arts, cd. Irving Howe, 220-24. New York: Horizon Press, i 967.
tions of Third Cinema, ed. Jim Fines and Paul Willeman (London: British Film In Alexander, Caroline. "The White Goddess of the Wangora."New Yorkcr (u A p u l H><H )
stitute, 1989), 133-49. 43-76.
52 Hurston, Mules and Men, 245-46. See also Barbara Johnson, "Thresholds of Dille i Alexander, Edward V. MuseumsinMotion: An Introduction tothe Hi \ioiv <nnl l-uii, innr.
ence: Structures of Address in Zora Neale Hurston," in "Race," Writing, and Ditlfi ofMuseums. Nashville: American Association for State and Local I l i s t n y, m / ' i
ence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 317-28. I agree with Johnsun'-. Alexander, Elizabeth. The Venus Hottentot. CallalooPoetry Series, al. ( ' l i . u l r s I I Kowc II
reading of the conclusin of Mules and Men as a sly, deconstructive positioninr, ni Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.
Hurston as anthropologist and as woman of color. Ames, Michael.Mu.seums, the Public, and Anthropology: A .S'/i//v /u / / i r AnthfOpology ni
5 3 Conversation with Mugambi, 13 June 1995. Anthropology. Vancouver: University of Britisb Columhia l'rcss, i ijHi,
54 See Sol Worth and John Adair, Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film (.'un Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on f / i r ()ny.iii un S/in'<iil <>/
munication and Anthropology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 197 '), i s / Nationalism, London: Verso, 1983.
6o. The awkwardness of the Tsosie sisters reveis thegaps causedby cultural ilr.i n|> Armes, Roy. Third World Filmmaking and the West. Bcrkclcy: IJm'vcrsiiy o California
tion, an awkwardness which anticipates Navajo filmmaker Arlene Bowiu.in' 1 . l i l i " Press, 1987.
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"King Kong Lives Again." New York Times, 17 August 1986, 10:3.
"Museum Shreds Nude Photos of Former Students at Yale." New York Times, 29 January
1995, 14-
Review of Chang, New York Times, 30 April 1927, 25.
Review of Goona Goona. Variety, 17 September 1932,18:4. INDEX
Review of Grass. NewYork Times, 31 March 1925, 17.
Review of IslandofLost Souls. Afro-American, i March 1933.
Review of King Kong. Afro-American, 27 April 1933.
Review of King Kong. Journal and Cuide, 3 fue 1933, 13.
Review of King Kong. London Times, 1933.
Review of King Kong. NewYork Times, 2 March 1933, 12:1.
Review o King Kong. Newsweek i (n March 1933): 27.
Review of King Kong. The Pittsburgh Courier, 6 May 1933.
Review of Roosevelt in frica. The Moving Picture World 6:528-29.
"Thrills in Store." Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1933. Abraham, 105
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 12 78; and film, 46-48, 66-71, 211-12 (see
Accused/Blowtorch/Padlock (1986), 216 also Cinema, ethographic; Film, eth-
Adair, John, 211 nographic); and Zora Neale Hurston,
Adams, Charlie, 123 198, 203-208; and fear of hybridty, 27,
Adorno, Theodor W., 185 187,- and medical imagery, 29, 31-35, 46;
frica, as one pole of an oppositional para- and museums, 63; and notion of vanish-
digm, 24 ing native, 90-91; and romantic primi-
African American(s): Josephine Baker as, tivism, roo,- and idea of redemption,
199-203; Hurston's research, 203-11; 131,- views of race, 27 (see also Race(s)) ;
Other, 18o and seeing, 79,- through spectacle, 36-
African(s), 4-5, 14, 21-26, 28, 41-42, 65, 43; treatment of time, 10, 144. Sen nls
83-90, 129-30,189, 216; and chrono- Boas; Ethnographic, the; Mead;
Museum(s)
photography, 48-59
Akeley, Cari E., 87, 102 Anthropometry, 225-26 n. 42
Alexander, Elizabeth, 189-90 Archive(s): of films, 48, 62-63, 67-71, 79-
Allakariallak, 101-4 90, 236 n. 67,- ideology of, 67-71
Allegret, Marc, 200 Archives delaplante, 8o, 82, 195
American Museum of Natural History, Argonauts ofthe Western Pacific (1922),
14, 117
86-87, 94-95, 98, 102, 157, 164, 210,
213 Art: "Art Science," 92; ethnographic real-
American Museum of Unnatural History, ism, 243 n. 52; historical evidence of pa-
210 thologies, 33,- representation and race,
Animality, 28, 114-15, 137 39, 203, 227 n. 53
Anthropographie, 33 Arunta, 65
Asch, Timothy, 196-97
Anthropologist, as redeemer, 138. See also
Bateson; Boas; Hurston,- Mead; Stocking Asia, in cinematic imagination, 175-76
Anthropology, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 24, 26, 28- Authenticity: and E. S. Curtis, 91,- and the
30,61-64, 161, 196 98; crisis in, 197; ethnographic present, 68; of Grass, 135;
Culture>nd PenotulitySchool, 147; and work of Zora Nealc Hurston, 2oy ;

I and decolonizttion, n>/; .un l l i c c l l i indigciious peoplt cmbodyinj;, i gs; i'l


I,,,,., .,:.!.- --
r
288 Bibliography

"King Kong Lives Again." New York Times, 17 August 1986, 10:3.
"Museum Shreds Nude Photos of Former Students at Yale." New York Times, 29 January
1995, 14.
Reviewof Chang. NewYork Times, 3oApril 1927, 25.
INDEX
Review of Goona Goona. Variety, 17 September 1932, 18:4.
Review of Grass. NewYork Times, 31 March 1925, 17.
Review of Island ofLost Souls. Afro-American, i March 1933.
Review oKingKong. Afro-American, 27 April 1933.
Review of King Kong. fournal and Guide, 3 June 1933, 13.
Review of King Kong. London Times, 1933.
Review of King Kong. NewYork Times, 2 March 1933, 12:1.
Review o King Kong. Newsweek i (n March 1933): 27.
Review of King Kong. The Pittsburgh Courier, 6 May 1933.
Review of Roosevelt in frica. The Moving Picture World 6:528-29.
Abraham, 105
"Thrills in Store." Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1933. 78; and film, 46-48, 66-71, 211-12 (see
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 12
Accused/Blowtoich/Padlock(9&6}, 216 also Cinema, ethographic; Film, eth-
Adair, John, 211 nographic); and Zora Neale Hurston,
Adams, Charlie, 123 198, 203-208; and fear of hybridity, 27,
Adorno, TheodorW., 185 187; and medical imagery, 29, 31-15, 46,-
frica, as onepole oan oppositionalpara- andmuseums, 63; and notion of v a n i s l i
digm, 24 ingnative, 90-91; and romantic p n m i
African American(s): Josephine Baker as, tivism, loo,- and idea of rcik-mp ion,
199-203,- Hurston's research, 203-11; 131; viewsof race, 27 [ser nl\u K.u r(s)) ;
Other, 18o andseeing, 79; through SJHX l.u Ir, i(>
African(s), 4-5, 14, 21-26, 28, 41-42, 65, 43; treatment o time, m, i.|.| ,s'<Vf/\<>
Boas; Ethnognipliic, lhc ; Mc.nl,
83-90, 129-30, 189, 216; and chrono-
Museum(.s)
photography, 48-59
Akeley, Cari E., 87, 102 Anthropoinelry, ? z s ?<> "- I.'
Alexander, Elizabeth, 189-90 Archivc(s): of f i l m s , ,|S, <->t. ( > ! , < ' / / i , / i >
Allakariallak, 101-4 90, 236 n. 67,- IdeolQgy o, 67 / i
Allegret, Marc, 200 Archives de la planclc, Ko, 82, i ys
American Museum of Natural History, Argonauts oflhc Western l'nci/ic (1922),
14, 117
86-87, 94-9S, 98,102, 157, 164, 210,
213 Art: "Art Science," 92,- ethnographic real-
American Museum of Unnatural History, ism, 243 n. 52; historical evidencc of pa-
210 thologies, 33; representation and race,
39, 203, 227 n. 53
Animality, 28, 114-15, 137
Arunta, 65
Anthropographie, 33
Asch, Timothy, 196-97
Anthropologist, as redeemer, 138. See also
Bateson; Boas,- Hurston,- Mead; Stocking Asa, in cinematic magination, 175-76
Anthropology, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 24/ 26, 28- Authenticity: and E. S. Curts, 91; and the
30, 61-64, !6i, 196-98; crisis in, 197; ethnographic present, 68; of Grass, 135;
Culture and Personality School, 147; and work of Zora Neale Hurston, 209;
and decolonizatinn, 197; ail thc eth- indigcnous people cmhodying, u;s; of
nographic-, u)6; cthnographization of, Inuit video, 124-26; and Kn,v Kong. i 8 M ,
in Nutiook of I/ir N o i i / i . im m<>, i i i,
F Index 2,91
290 Index

Authenticity (cont.) Braun, Marta, 47 monsters, 189; early-twentieth-century, Comte, Charles, 21, 22, 48-49
116-17, 123-24, 126; politics of, 92, Bride ofKong, 17, 177-78 9; andpositivist science, 46-47, 63; and Congo (1995), 197
95,97 Brng 'Em Back Alive (1932), 171 idea of redemption, 131; Regnault's Consciousness, double, 4
Autochromes, 81 Broca, Paul, 25-27, 30, 162 views, 46-47, 62; and the return gaze, 43; Contamination, 144-45, J 49
Broken Blossoms (1919), 176 successor to exhibitions, 108; as taxi- Cooper, Merian C., 133-37, I 58-59, 165,
Baartman, Saartjie, 17, 189, 226 n. 45 Brunhes, Jean, 8o dermy, 88,102; as teratology, 160. See 172
Bagus, Dr. Ide Gde Ing., 146 Buck, Frank, 171 also Cinema, ethnographic; Film Costner, Kevin, 5, 197
Baker, Josephine, 198-203, 215 Buffon, Comte, 7 Cinema, ethnographic, 6-9, 12; usingar- Craniology, 27, 30
Baktiari, 133-35 Burden, Katherine, 164-65 tifice to convey truth, 116; its context, Criticism, film, 12
Baldwin, James, 193-94, 218 Burden, W. Douglas, 164-65, 187 24; recent examples, 220 n. 16; golden Croisire noire, La (1926), 132-33
Bali, 145-48 Bureau of American Ethnology, 68 age, 153; and horror film, 163; observa- Culture and Personality School, 147
Balibar, Etienne, 32 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 182 tional, 196; locus of the race of history, Culture(s): southern black, 206-11 indig-
Balikci, Asen, 99, 108, 116, 120, 133 170,- and self-referentiality, 171,- themes, enous surviving under colonialism, 91,
Bann, Stephen, 101 Cambridge Anthropological Expeditions, 16; and visualization, 184,- compared 98; living, 206-7; as presented on film,
Barsam, Richard, 114 64 with zoos, 154. See also Cinema,- Film 43, 66-67,- pur and authentic, 68
Batak, 3-4 Camera, as rifle, 165 "Cinema of Exploration, The," 16 Curts, Edward Sheriff, 14, 70, 90-98,
Bateson, Gregory, 67, 71, 145-47 Camp de Thiaroye (1987), 73, 215 Cinmatographe, 47 214
Bazin, Andr, 16, 131-32, 153 Cannibalism, fascinating, 9-13, 15, 24, c>i>, Cinmatoscope, 47 Cuvier, Georges, 17, 189
Bear Claw, Dean Curts, 213 183, 190, 217 Grele Dance (1898), 83
Beautiful Bermuda (1921), 84 Cannibals ofthe South Seas (1917), 89, Civilization: as goal of race of history, 170,- Dahomeyan Ethnographic Exposition
Belo, Jane, 206, 208 152 in King Kong, 165, 186; in Trader Horn, (i893),39-40
Benga, Ota, 157-58, 189, 213 Canudo, Ricciotto, 115 173 Dance, as spectacle, 65-66
Benjamn, Walter, 9-10, 46, 58-59 Captain's Chair, The(i9?,8), 121-22 Civilized, the, 3,213. See also Modern, the Dances with Wolves(i<)<)o), <,, 197 yN
Brenger-Fraud, L. J. B., 27 Captured byAborigines (1913), 8 5 Clansman, The (1905), 180 D'Anglure, Bernard Saladin, i 10
Bhabha, Homi, 201-02 Carby, Hazel V., 204 Clemente, Steve, 177 Danzker, Jo-Anne Birnie, 110
Binarisms, 84 Carelli, Vincent, 197 Clifford, James, 68, 118, 186 Darwinian link, Kong as, 179
Birth of a Nation, The, 11-12, 180 Carroll, Noel, 169-70, 182 Close-up, the, 212 Darwinism, Social, 182
Black Skin, WhiteMasks, 5, 16 Cartwright, Lisa, 232 n. 25 Collage, a technique in King Kong, 182 Death: of Inuit, 106, 109; in Nanook, 115-
Blonde Venus (1932), 172-73, 183 Carver, H. P., 141-42 Colonial Exposition (1931), 62 16, 131; and vanishing races, 8o, 86-88,
Boas, Franz, 66-67, 69; compared to Cur- Censorship, 148, 212, 253 n. 46 Colonialism: in America, 143; colonializa- 9i,97
tis, 93-94; and treatment of Eskimos, Centaur, image of, 167 tion ongoing, 198; and contamination, Decolonization, 197
104-05; and Zora Neale Hurston, 203- Ciang(i927), 15, 133, 135-37, ' S-1, ' 19 144-45; DutchinBali, 146-47/153; and Degeneration, 28
7, 209; comments on Nanook ofthe Charnov, Elaine, 205 exploitation, 91; film and colonializa- DeHeusch, Le, 100, 116-17, 122
North, 77-78 "Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kw;il< u n I tion, 72, 84, 217; French, 56, 72-73,- and De Mortillct, Gabriel, 28
Bcklin, Arnold, 181 Potlatch," 98 guilt, 131; and Mead, 146; denied in Denis, Armand, 145, 148
Body(ies): anthropological interest in, 27- "China Girl," 232 n. 25 Moana, 141,- and Orwell, 42-43; and Deren, Maya, 210
28; Josephine Baker as, 199; cinema of Chippewa, 141-42 stereotyping, 202; in Tahiti, 144-45; and Dinosaurs, 180-82
the, ni; Ethnographic, 62, 72; French, Christ, imagcryin The Silent l'.ni'tin i i i travelogues, 85,- and writing, 152. See Disappeaiing World, 70
58-62; landscaped, 79, 82; andMa- See also Rcdcmption also Imperialism Discourse of the self, 12-13
sayesva's film technique, 212-13, 215- Chronophotography, i 3 - i s, ?.', M, I H ' i Corning of Age in Samoa, 138 Disneyland, 184
16; of Native(s), 195; and racialization, 195-96 Commandment Keeper Church, 203, 206-9 Distance, viewer from image, 62
71, 215; and Regnault's work, 25-26, 49 Church, African American, ;,<>/ n Comment en marche, 59. See also Marche Dixon, Joseph K., 92
Boundaries, performer/observer, 39-41, Churchill, Ward, I M / en flexin Doane, Mary Ann, 62
169-70; violations of, 1 5 5 , 165-66, 200 Cinema: dcfined, K y ; hogiiiiiniv. "I ". " Committee for the Research into Demen- "Docteur Regnault marche," 61
(see alan Hybridity) contfollingmcflning, 90; And cfcatii ' tia Praccox, 146 Documentaircs romances, K S
2y2 Index

Documentary, the: and authenticity,


116-17; term coined, 139. See also Ethnographic Exposition (1895), 4,15, 36,
Cinema, ethnographic; Film, ethno- 39-40, rgs, 215
Film, ethnographic, 7-8, u, 43, 196; and Inilrx jpj
graphic Ethnographicization, 78
Dor, Gustave, 181 Ethnography, 6-7, 38; radical forms of, anthropological knowledgc, 100; as .1/1,
14; Boas and, 77-79,- as entertainmcnl,
;:'"';" '.....">'",,,
' '"''"">:. < . ) , , ,,
Douglas, Mary, 161 2io; romantic, 99-126; salvage, 78, 90-
64-65; expedition film, 164-65,- as a ''"''"".'.. K . V r . M
Dragn Lizards of Komodo, 164 98,126, 143. See also Ethnographic, the
Dubois, W. B., 4 Evolucin: in Boas's thought, 78; evolu- genre, 219-20 n. 14,- Germn stylc, ?, v/
Du Chaillu, Paul, 179 n. 73;grammarof, 212,- andhybridity,
tonary hierarchy, 27, 175,- narrative of,
Duchet, Michle, 7 163-64,- and iconography of race, 7 i ,
25, 41, 83, 195, 215; native(s) as existing
Dunham, Katherine, 67, 210 KingKong, aboutmaking, 159; Mauss's
in evolutionary time, 194-95,- typology,
14. See also Missing link views, 69; to inspire memory, 214 / s,-
Dutch, the, inBali, 146-47, 153
Exotic, the, 6, 90,132. See also Picturesquc implied narrative n, 25,- origin, 14,- rt'iil.
I2i; themes, 63,- justifying theories, 46
Easyfoi Who to 27(1989), 72, 215 Exotisme etle cinema, le, 16, 100, 137
Edison, Thomas, 108 48, 63, 69,- and third eye, 210,- as time
Expedition film. See Film, ethnographic
Eliade, Mircea, 244 n. 14 machine, 43,- as tool, 78; as voyeurism,
Exploiationsin Equatoralfrica (1856),
179 82. See also Cinema, ethnographic 17 8
Empire State Building, 170, r86
Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, 69 Explorer(s), n Flaherty as, 119-22,- and
Filmmaker(s): and censorship, 212,- as
flneur, 59,- as hero, 90, 170-71,- as rc-
9, ;16,1S9
Eskimos, imagery of, 104-5, 107-8 treatment of Inuit, 1057,- Lvi-Straim'l
views, 219 n. 8 deemer, 138; andproblems of reprcsen-
Esquimaux Game ofSnap-The- Whip, 246 tation, 216,- as surgeon, 46. See also
n. 32 Exposition Ethnographique de l'Afriqur r, Jacob w., 9I
Asch; Balikci; Burden; Costner,- Cooper;
Esquimaux Leap Frog, 246 n. 32 Occidentale (1895), 21, 36-37, 40, 4 s,
Flaherty; Griffith; Holmes,- Hurston;
"Esquimaux Village," 108, 246 n. 32 72,- and chronophotography, 48-59
Ethics, 178 Johnson,- MacDougal; MarshaJI, John,-
Expositions, ethnographic, 21-42; and
Mead,- Murnau,- Poisey,- Regnault; Haeseler, J. A., 70-71
Ethnicity, in Hollywood productions, 177 dominance, 68; and race, 36-43. ,SVr ,il;< >
Ethnie, 227 n. 47 Rouch; Schoedsack; Sternberg,- Van Hansen, Ann Mikijuk, 124
Dahomeyan Ethnographic Exposiiion. Dyke,- Van Valin
Ethnographer, the, 118, 120 Hansen, William, 124
Exposition Ethnographique; Exposi i mu
Ethnographiable, 7-8 Films, individual. See individual titles Haraway, Donna, 102, 179
Universelle,- Pan-American Exposiiicui
Flaherty, Robert J., 11-16, 98-126, 138- Harrison, Marguerite E., 133-34
Ethnographic, the, 6-10, 15, 59, 71, 78, World's Columbian Exposition
Exposition Universelle (1878), 37 |i> 40, 195-96; as Explorer/Artist, 119, 126; Hays Office, 253 n. 46
104, 126, 130, 213; and anthropology, asinnovator, 109-10 Heart ofDarkness, 121
196; Josephine Baker and, 198-203,- epis- Flneur, 58-59
Heart of Whiteness, 121
teme, 197; in expositions, 41-42,- and Fabin, Johannes, 10, 30, 67, 102, i 18. i p < Flanner, Janet, 200
Fann, Frantz, 4-6, 16-17, 194 Hellenbrand, Harold, 179
Zora Neale Hurston, 204; indigenous Franco-Prussian War, 61 Hemenway, Robert E., 206
people as, 194; and innocence, 254 n. 50; Fascinatingcannibalism. See C ' a n i n l i . i l i - . i M Fraser, Sir James G., 14
Fienup-Riordan, Ann, 107 Herskovitz, Melville, 67
andKingKong, 177, 186, 189,-monstros- Freeman, Derek, 146
Film: artiflcein, 116; conven!ions ni III Hilton-Simpson, M. W., 70-71
ityas, 159, 161-63, 191,-objectification Fusco, Coco, 190, 215
as, 5; Other, 58, 117, 166 (see also 12; chronophotography as, > i, .1-. n l i Historical/Ethnographic, 68, 78, 144, 153
55, 188, 196, 213
Other); present, 92, 102,- three modes of nographic too), i] forrecording i.n ti Gardner, Robert, 196
representaton, 195,- spaces of resistance 193,-inappropriate, 'S,?." 1 , M / , .mil Historical Same/Ethnographic Other, 13,
Gaze: allied with camera, 175-76; colonial 58, 166
in, 217,- lacking subjectivity, 203; Navajo, 21 1-12,- as thi 1 redcmptl I
protection from, 8o; returned by colo- Historifiable, 7-8
through text alone, 89; themes in, 159; physical reality, i ; i; and p n l i i n . i l
nized Nativefs), 39-43,- and racial iden- History: banished, 109-110, 115; defi-
and trance in Bali, 146-47. See also Cin- physics, 144; "racial," i \ i ."j MI ' i - tity, 55
ema, ethnographic; Film, ethnographic 141 -44, 1 5 4 , i S1-), i /'' /*, i ')'. "' r nitions of, 193-94,- evolutionary con-
Geertz, Clifford, 118
Ethnographic/Historical, 68, is}-ss, 188, nault's views, 45 .\K; .is s( n m i i n i (chrts, Meg, 88 ception of, 25,- and race, 194; as (a) race,
196, 198 i( I.|,4S ,)8. , S V ' i ' ( / / M i l ' l i n i i i n i ' l
25-30,- as "sovereign scicncc," 9,- as
Grmc, Jcan-Lon, ;8
phy; 'riH'ili.i; l'ilni, rl iriii)'.r.i|>li ii story-tclling, 194-98; writingo!, 218.
Gesture, language of, 1 4 , 5 7 s8. Siv also .SVv ti Isa Time
l.diiKiiKi' 'u y,c\tf.\, Alfred Cort, 63, 65-66 I l o l l l U ' S , H u M i i " "
2,94 Index

Hoodoo, 206 Index 295


IslandofLost Souls, 7720(1933), 159, 167-
Hopi, and filmmaking, 212-13 Langage par gestes, le, 48, 57-58, 62, 65
69 Mlis, Gastn, 5
Hopi Snake Dance, 92 78,80,195
Isle ofthe Dead, The (1880), 181 Michaelis, Anthony, 70-71
Horror fllm(s), 161, 163; and hybridity, Itam Hakim, Hopiit (1985), 212 LastoftheMohicans, The (1992), 197
170,- and King Kong, 166-70; and The Latour, Bruno, 45 Mgration, and hybridity, 187
Itivimuit, 99
Most Dangerous Game, 167 Leacock, Richard, 126 Military Drills ofKikuyu Tribe and other
IWF [Institu fr den wissenschaftlichen Ceremonies (1914), 87
Hudson's Bay Company, 109 Film], 69 Leprohon, Fierre, 16, 100, 132, 137, 153-
Hughes, Langston, 206 54, 159 Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Mod-
Humor, in travelogues, 84-88 Leroi-Gourhan, Andr, 66 ern World (1992), 197
Jacknis, Ira, 67, 93-94
Hunt, George, 94-95 Letourneau, Charles, 28 Mindof thePrimitiveMan, The{i<)ii}, 78
Jarneux, Charles, 151 Minotaure, 184
Hunting, big game, 86-88. See also Most Johnson, Noble R, 177 Lvi-Strauss, Claude, 5, 7, 131
Dangerous Game, The Lvy, Jean, 184-86 Misfortunes ofMr. and Mrs. Mott on Their
Johnson, Osa and Martin, 88 Trip to Tahiti, 85
Hurston, Zora Neale, 67, 198, 203-11, Jomard, Edm-Francois, 38 L'exotismeet le cinema, 16, too
215-16 Liotard, Andr F., 154 Missinglink, 157, 179, 182. SeealsoEvo-
Ju/'hoansi, 260-61 n. 10 lution
Hussey, Christopher, 79 Locomocin studies, 33-35
Jungle, as metaphor, 181-82
Hybridity, 27, 159, 162, 164, 166, 187; Lomax, Alan, 195, 208 Mixed race(s), 27, 162,165-66, 200, 230
Josephine Baker and, 200; as impure, London, Jack, 88 n. 85. See also Racism
Kahn, Albert, 68-69, 80-81, 195 Mixture, producing monsters, 163
i6i:inTheIslandofLostSouls, 169-, Kaler, IMade, 146 Long Lance, 142-43
and King Kong, 181, 196; of technology Loos, Adolf, 38 Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age
Kane, Elisha Kent, 106-7
andstyle, 148 Lost World, The (1921), 180 (1926), 15,99, 131-32, 137-43, 153, I S S ,
Kearton, Cherry, 86
Lucas, George, 197
163
Kildea, Gary, 197
Images, and sovereignty, 211-16 Lyman, Christopher, 93 Modern, the, 132, 141, 144, 153; OppOMd
King Kong, 2, 3, 13-16, 17, 88, 133, 137,
Imperialism, 26, 29, 85. See also Colo- to tradition, 24. See also Civili/cd, i l u - ,
T 54~55, I57-I9I, 196; andaudience, Modern/Primitive
nialism MacDougall, David and Judith, 8, 197
182-86; andDragon Ltzaids of Komodo
In Borneo, Lana of the Headhunters Madagascar: Manners and Customs of the Modern/Primitive, 144, i s i s i, >>, i ' " >
164-65,-and horror films, 159-61, i c > f >
(1916), 241 n. 29 Sakalava (1910), 83 Monster(s): Josepbine Hakei as, i >)<;, as mi
68; and imperialsm, 186-89; represen
In the Landof the Headhunters (1914), 14, Male, White, 15, 28, 144-45, i69-7i/ r 75- ema creations, i H y ; ethnOfTOphlablt,
tation of nonwhites, 175-79; an<l 15; in horror f i l m s , if>> /o; ni A/.I;
93-98, 131, 151,214 See also Great White Hunter
Woman, 171-75. See also Kong
Indigenous, the, 13 Malekula, 89 KOng, 1 5 9 - 6 4 , I 7., I K K Xl>; p l d l l l K Vil l i y
Knowledge, anthropological, 100
Indigenous people(s), 79, 85, 90, 142, 176- Malinowski, Bronislaw, 14, 117-18, 120- mixture, i6 ; sul)|ci'l o reprsenla!ion,
Komodo dragn, 159, 164-65 (59
77, 194-95, 197- See also African(s), Na- 22, 161
Kong, 179-89,- asDarwinian link, i m, .1-.
tive American(s) Man the Hunter, 139 Monstrosity, 149, i s i , i s i, 196,-as cth-
monster, 159-64, 182, 188-89. Sec.iKn
/Hgagj(i933), 159 Mann, Michael, 197 nographic, i S9; and horror films, 163;
King Kong
Inscription, 45, 6162, 79, 195, 234 n. 39 Marche en flexin, 49, 59-61, 72, 77, 215 in King Kong, 160; as visual, 161,- in (civ-
Kracaucr, Siegfried, 100, 103, i } i ilized) white man, 169. See also
Institu fr den wissenschaftlichen Film Ku Klux Klan, 12 Marey, Etienne-Jules, 23, 25-26, 47, 59
[IWF], 69 Marshall, Frank, 197 Teratology
Kulturkreis school, 237 n. 73 Moreno, Fidel, 213
Inuit, 77, 99-111, 113, 122-26, 138; in Kunuk, Zacharias, 124-26 Marshall, John, 196, 260-61 n.io
Nanook, 77-78, 104, no-n, ri5-i8, Masayesva, Victor Jr., 212-13, 2 I 5 Most Dangerous Game, The (1932), 87,
Kuper, Adam, 27
T 59, 166-69, J 77
120, 123, 126; in Pan-American Exposi- Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl), 67, c; i UM Masn, Mrs. Charlotte Osgood, 204-5
tionjigoi), 108; video producedby, 123- Massot, Claude, 122 Mould, David H., 133
214
26 Mauss, Marcel, 69 Movement, 33-35, 47
Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, 123-24, Maybury-Lewis, David, 197 Mudimbe, V. Y., 9, 24
l.a cmixiere noirc, 250 n. i i
215 Mead, Margaret, 67, 69, 71, 138, 145- Mugambi, Helen Nabasuta, 211, 216
Ladil, Edwarcl, 21 }
Invention of frica, The, 24 47, 193-94, 197, 206, 208, 216, 236 MulesandMen(K)T,*,), 204, 209-11
Lafitau, Joscph Prancois, / Mulvey, Laura, r 7 5
IslandofDr. Morcan. The (i 8i>6), 167 n. 63
I.andM-api-(.s), x->., i i s
Medicine, 7.5, ?u (,, 46 "Murders in the Ru Morgue," i 71)
Muan, P. W.. 1.1 *"
296 Index
I,, I, | ,
Museum(s), ethnographic, 38, 85, 210-11; Nature, La, 62 Pasolini, Picr Paolo, >..] > n i.|
and anthropology, 63,- Boas and, 94-95; Navajo, 92, 211-12, 214 "'""' " ,
Pathology: monslcrs ,is |>.ilhulof.ic . i l , i ' . i ,
community, 98; display, 95, 112, 181, Nayoumealuk, Charles, 123 and race, 29-32
189; of ethnographic film, 63; a time ma- Neale, Stephen, 163 Peary, Robert, ios 6 " " - 1 " 1 '.....l*WHll| ...... | .
chine, 129; world as, 32. See also Ameri- Nederlands Filmmuseum, 240 n. 23 Performance, as spacc o u-sisiamv, > \ I ' . II I lo ,
can Museum of Natural History; "Negative scene of instruction," 203 Phillips, O. R, 68 ' ' ...... -I II ,.
Archives Ngres, 39 Photography, 9, 33-35, ftft, KK Xi>, i >,<>, l>v 1 ........ "'''" . ...... , I
Musser, Charles, 83 Nas, 177 Curts, 90-94. See also Chronopho '........'"......... .....
Muybridge, Eadweard, 25-26 Noble Savage, 72, 97, 180, 194. See also tography '.....'' "' " "llll ...... II II
">!, i i . m . i i i v , ,.| ,
MyEskimo Friends: "Nanook ofthe Savage(s) Physics, political. See Poltica! physics 1 l i mi ..... mi,
i i - i i l n i v ih-., ..... , ,
Nortj"(i924), 120-21 Noogooshoweetok, ni Physiologie ethniques compreos, \, the, 78-80, 84, Ky yo, i>........... \ mH ' U I n . l , .1
Mythic, the, 242 n. 14 Nordau, Max, 28 w ...... '"''"'"v ...... i .......... , ...
Myth of first contact, 7 Nordic, the, 108 Pitseolak, Peter, 110 ' ..... "-'-I' 1 "'-' >H ........ .......
!> w i i i i r . . . . . 1 , 1 , , .
Normal and the Pathological, The, 160 Poch, Rudolf, 64-66, 71 " I M .. . , i / .. I , ) , , ,

Nanook of the North (1922), 11-16, 93, Normality, defined, 160-61 Poe, Edgar Alian, 179 ''"'i' l( -'t-l. l'.l, ,.,,,,
"""''"I A - V . I M . , , , h , | ( ...........
99-105, 109-126, 130, 132-33, 138, 153, North American Iridian, The, 90, 92 Poirier, Len, 132, 153
160, 178, 186, 195-96, 214; analysis of Northwest Coast Indians, 95 Poisey, David, 124 123 '"' '"'' .......... Khdl .....
scenes, 111 -16; authenticity of, 116, Nowkawalk, Moses, 12324 Political physics, 144-45, 153, 155, i8K "^Porii.....[.),, ,vn .........
123-24; Boas's comments, 77-78; Heart Nunaqpa/Going Inland (1991), 124-26 Pollman, Tessel, 146 l l r y t yi x > l "Ky-M. >,..,, ......... ,. ,.
ofWhiteness, 121; history banished, Polygenist doctrine, 27 ^I^gnauh'svu.ws,,, J ,
no, 115-16; inaccuracies of the film, Objectification, 5. See also Other; Self-
vanishing \' , ' <i i,. "*, '> 'i.|. I I D ,
Portrait o/a Friead (1978), 194
1 ' (/ ' 4 ' , is.|, i i ) s
123; landscapein, ni, 114-15; com- alienation Postmodern, the, 188
Kacialism, i 6 H <n> , H n
pared with Moana, 139-41; and Objectivity, 210-11 Posture, 33-34
participant-observation, 116-19; seal O'Brien, Willis, 181-82 Pratt, Mary Louise, 82 Rcklltlon,8,7i r3,iiS;Humon'i
hunt, 114 VCWS, 210-,,, , , , 1 ( M ; . | l l l | l n | s
Observer/Observed, 216-17 Preloran, Jorge, 162
Nanook Revisited (1988), 122-23 recognition, 32
Ojibwa Indians, 141-42 Primitive, the, 10, 71, 78, 112, 132, 141,
Narrativo, implied, 25 Ollier, Claude, 181 ,.^
153, 195,-and Josephine Baker, 199-203;
Nation, nineteenth-century discourses on, Ontological realism, 117 body, 28; as a film genre, 12,- Other, 160, 3^-35; ofW.Dougl a s B u r den,, 65-66-
26 Oriental, 5 mfilm,8 4 ,i62, I 7 ^ 8 o . M a r g a r e t
253 n. 44 [see also Other); as patholog-
National Geographic, 7, 10 Mead'sviews, I93;ZouZouasfetishof
Origin ofthe Species, The (1859), 2>, r 3 ical, 27, 32-33; Zou Zou a sign of, 202. 202
Native American(s), 68; photographed by "Ornament as Crime," 38 See also Primitive/Modern; Primi- Rango (1931), i 5 / I37
Curts, 90-98; in Dances with Wolves, Orwell, George, 42, 87 tive(s); Savage, the
197-98; filmingby, 211-14,- surviving Other, the, 4-6, 10-11, 13,- African Amen Primtive/Modern, 144, 151-53, 194, 196, Reconstruction, cultural 93-94
European encroachment, 91. See also canas, 180,-coexistence with, T 9 i ; c t h 198 Redemptton: anthropolOgist's ro]e m 8.
Chippewa; Inuit; Navajo nographic, 17, 28 (see also Ethnographic and "racialf i l m s / 'I 3 I _ 3 2 / I 4 J ^ '
Primitive(s), 7, 126, 139; Zora Neale
Native Tribes of Central Australia, The the); in Hollywood films, 177-78; posi Regna U lt,Flix-Louis, 4/I3 ^ l6/2I 3O
Hurston as, 205; Inuit as, 99-100,- Irish
(19121,64 colonial, 15,- and surrealism, 186; as as, 223 n. 22; Nanook as, io4;ln tme- 77-79, 195, "5;andchronoPhotogra-
Native(s), x, 5-6, 86-88; as authentic, 43; third eye, 217; vales concerning, 24 less picturesques, 13 Phy, 48-63, and themesof ethnographic
cinematic types, 177-78; devoted, 120- Ousmane, Sembne, 73 Primitiveness, 24 film, 63; ideas of race, 39-40,- vlews on
2i; in evolutionary past, 194-96 (see Primitivism: art movement, 138, 186; and , 49, 56-58; and scientific in-
also Evolution); returned gaze, 42-43; Pan-American Exposition (1901), mH .
King Kong, 186; romantic, 100, 137
implicit violence toward, 86-88; in King Paradise, the lost, 147 Princess Tana Tam (1935), 203 teratolog y , I 6o,.worksdcscribed2 9
Kong, 176-78; "native villages," 36-40, Reinhardt, Max, 202
Paris Ethnographic Exposition ( i H y s ) .SVr Propaganda, travelogues as, 85
Religions, 207 See tilvn u i
43; vanishing, 91. See also Primitivc(s),- Exposition Ethnogrtphique Puputan, 153 ' c a y ' s "K(.-dempti(ni ; Spir-
ituality
Racc(s), vanishing,- Savagc(s) Participant observation, r i 6 11) Purity and Danger (1966), 161
Remarque, Liricl, Mara, I(,,.
298 Index

Representation(s), 213; art and race, 227 Index 299


Schomburgk, HansHermann, 241 n. 33
n. 53; of the Ethnographic, 160-61, 195; St. Louis Fair (1904), j i ?
: Science: and Inuit, 105-7; and langagepar Tourist, x, 83-84
of femininity, 62; media, and scholar- Stocking, Georgc W., Jr., 7, 27, 78, 138
gestes, 57-58; and race, 29-30, 46-48. Trader Horn (1931), 88, 172-73
ship, 216-17; of Samoans in Moana, Stoddard, Lothrop, i 88
See also Anthropology,- Cuvier,- Exposi- Tradition, 24
140-41; scientiflc, 45; of travel, 82,- of Story-telling, 194-98
tions; Mead; Pathology,- Racism;
Woman, 226 n. 45. See also Art; Pictur- Studies, time motion, 23 Trance and Dance in Bali (1936), 146, 208
Regnault Transformations, 206-7
esque Subject/Object, 207, 209-11
Seeing, 23, 41, 79, 181, 184. See also Gaze; Suleri, Sara, 8o, 90 Transformisme, 26, 223 n. 20
Resistance: acts of, 70; a mode of the third Representation,- Third eye
eye, 213-14; spaces of, 217 Surrealism, 184-86, 259 n. /s Travelogues: commercial, 82-83,- and
Self/Other, 4, 6, 12-13, 41. See also Other,
Return ofthefedi, TAe(ig83), 197 the dominance, 82; Kahn archiva! footage,
Revillon Frres, 109, 113 Tab: A Storyofthe South Seas (1931), 15, 8r ; racial content, 84
Self-reflexivity: in anthropology, 7; in
Revolt against Civilization, The, 188 99, 144, 149-153, 155, 162, 173, 178, Tristes Trapiques (1955), 5, 131, 162
Reyna, Diane, 213 Dunham's work, 263-64 n. 50,- and Zora 186 Tsosie, Maryjane, 212
Neale Hurston, 210 Tupi, 6
River of Doubt, The (1913-14), 241 n. 29 Tahiti, 144-45
Sembene, Ousmane, 215-16 Turner, Terry, 197
Robeson, Paul, 203 Taqramiut Nipingat, Inc., 123
Senungetuk, Joseph E., 99 Tylor, E. B., 63
Roosevelt, Andr, 145, 147-48 Tarzan, 5, 10
Sex and the hunt, 165 Types, anthropological, 66
Roosevelt, Teddy, 86 TarzanoftheApes(igi2l 180
Sexuality. See Gender,- Voyeurism
Roosevelt in frica {1910}, 86 Taureg, Martin, 63
"Shooting an Elephant," 42 U'mista Cultural Centre, 98
Rosen, Phil, 9 Taxidermy, 14, 195,- cinematic, 79, 88; the
Sights o/Suva (1918), 84
Rouch, Jean, 8, 73, 116, 122, 126, 194, 197 irony of reality, 116; vs. the monster,
Silent Enemy, The (1930), 141-43 Van Dyke, W. S., 144, 172
"Round the World Films," 85 !53~54; Nanook ofthe North as, 100-
Simba, The King of Beasts, A Saga oflln- Vanishing races. SeeRace(s), vanishing
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 7 104; and redcmption, 131,- as representa-
Afrcan Veldt (1928), 88, 90 Van Valin, William, 108-9
Ruby, Jay, 7 tion, 101-2, 244 n. io; and teratology,
Simpson, Loma, 72, 215 166 Varanus komodensis, 164
Sitien und Gebrauchen am Senegal Veeder, Gerry, 133
Said, Edward, 5 Teratology, 159-60, 166-67. See also
(19101,83
Salvage ethnography. See Ethnography, Monstrosity Ventriloquism, ethnographic, i $4- s s
Slyomovics, Susan, 6 Verne, fules, 182
salvage; Race(s), vanishing Themes, o ethnographic film, 63
Social Darwinism, 233 n. 37 Verner, Samuel P., 157
Samoa, 139-40 Third eye, the, 6, 13, 16-17, r98, 213-15,-
Socit d'anthropologie de Paris, 26 > . / , i Visualism and modernity, 30
Savagc, the, 9, 71, 162, 213,- in expositions, fames Baldwin possessing, 194; defined,
Socitprhistorique francaise, 2; Visualzation, in King Kong, 184-86
37, 41; and female gender, 172-75,- and Sorcerer, 94 4; and ethnographic spectaclc, 41;
movement, 49, 77,- as a term, 222 n.3; Hurston's, 207, 209-11; as Other, 217 Visual media. See Chronophotography,-
Sovereignty, image, 211-16
vanishing, 91. See also Primitive, the; Third World, 71 Cinema; Film,- Photography
Sound, in film, 142-43
Savage(s) Thompson, Samuel, 206 Voyeurism, 39, 66, 82, 113, 140
Specimens, people as, 25
Savagery, 3; and Asia, 175-76; and dark Through Navajo Eyes, 211-12
Spectacle, 63, 89, 154, 189-91 Wallace, Michele, 203
skin, 177; in The Most Dangerous Spectatorship, 207 Time: controlled by film, 48; as creator of
Game, 166 meaning, 130; definitions of, 193; Wallace, Mink, 106-7, 157, 178, 189, 213
Spencer, WalterBaldwin, 64- 6s Washington, Reverend George, 207
Savage(s), x, 3-5, 7, 10, 12, 23, 36, 59-61, mourned in Tristes Trapiques, 163,-
Spirituality, 212-13, 215-16 Waterton, Charles, ro, 116
i6i ; Australian aborigines as, 64-65,- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, ?..| "naturalized-spatialized," 130,- andpo-
Josephine Baker as, 200, 202,- in King litical physics, 144,- timelessness, 68, 78, Webster, Gloria Cranmer, 98
Spotted Elk, Molly, 142 43 Wells, H. G., 129-30, 135, 179
Kong, 176-77; people of color as, 217,- Stark Lava (1927), 1 3 1 32, and redcmption, 129-155. See also Eth-
Regnault's views, 49, 56-58; undanger- nographic, present; Evolution; History West Africans. See Afrcan(s)
Starting Vire with (iiinpowili'i ( i w 1 1 . i > i Western, the, 13
ous in travelogues, 85. See also Primi- Time Machine, The(i8g6l 129-30, 179
Steepleehase, as mclaphor, ?.8
tive(s); Savage, the Time motion studies, 13-14. See also Westernization, and contamination, 149
StL'fannson, V i l h j a l n u i r , 1 1 6 1 7
Schoedsack, Ernest B., 133-37, i s N - s y Chronophotogniphy Where do we come from! What are wc'
Stercolypc(s), 72, i>y, i y / , .m i, > i n
Scholanhip, media, 2 1 6 17 Tirailk-iirs, 7 2 - 7 3 Wheieoiewegoing{(1697 98), i.|<>
g, (osel Von, i / l 7 | Whili' (,'<>tlilt'fifi o Wingoiii. 'Un' ( i o i i),
Tourisrn. ,SVr Travclogm-s
~) /I I n '
Cultural studies/Cinema studics

Charting the interscction of technology and ideology, cultural produe-


tion and social science, Fatimah Tobing Rony explores early-twentieth-
century representations of non-Western indigcnous peoples in films
ranging from the documentary to thc spcctacular to the seientific.
Turniig thc gaze of the ethnographic camera back onto itsclf, bringing
the perspective of a third eye to bear 011 the invention of the primitivc
Other, Rony reveis the collaboration of anthropology and popular
culture in Western constructions of race, gender, nation, and empire.
Her work demnstrales the significancc of these constructionsand,
more generally, of ethnographic cinemafor understanding issues of
identity.
In films as seemingly dissimilar as Nanook of the North, King Kong,
and research footage of West Atricans from an 1895 Paris ethnographic
exposition, Rony exposes a shared fascination withand anxiety over
race. She shows how photographic "rcalism" contributed to popular and
scicntific notions of cvolution, race, and civilization, and how, in turn,
anthropology understood and critiqucd its own use of photographic
technology. Looking beyond ncgativc Western images of the Other,
Rony considere performance strategics that disrupt these imagesfor
example, the use of opcn rcsistancc, rccontcxtualization, and parody in
the films of Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston, or the perfor-
mances of Josephine Baker. She also draws on the work of contcniporary
artists such as Loma Simpson and Victor Masaycsva Jr., and writers
such as Frantz Fann and James Baldwin, who unveil the language of
racialization in ethnographic cinema.

Thc Third Eye is an extraordinary contributio film history


and the theorization of the ethnographic gaze. Informed by Rony's cise
involvement with conlemporary art practice and documentary film
production, ibis fascinating book breaks with familiar genres of aca-
demic writing to provide an exciting new take on practices of ethno-
graphic looking, the cultural history of the body, and the racial and
sexual politics of visual culture in colonial science."Lisa Cartwright,
Univcrsity of Rochester

Fatimah Tobing Rony teaches in the Asian American Studics Depan

ISBN ^a-o-flE3-iam]-ft

Box 90660
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0660 9 I I 780822 I I 31840

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