My current ethnographic inquiry explores the ways in which British-South Asian and South Asian-American women attempt to decolonize their sexuality (i.e., Eroticism as founded in gender identity, presumed gender roles, sexual orientation, relationship expression and body image) and desire through embodied practice and craft. The creation of this ethnographic inquiry sprung from my personal journey of reconciling with my sexuality as a South Asian-American woman, making this inquiry partly autoethnographic as well. My decision to make this ethnographic inquiry semi-autoethnographic is massively influenced by Renato Rosaldo’s essay Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage.  In this essay, Rosaldo uses data from ethnographic fieldwork that he had conducted alongside his wife on the ritual of llongot headhunting between 1967–69 and again in 1974, in addition to the insights he gained about rage and grief while dealing with the experience of his wife’s death, to “talk about how to talk about the cultural force of emotions” (1994, 167).  In his attempt to understand the llongot practice of headhunting, which embodies a “rage, born of grief, [that impels the Ilongot] to kill his fellow human beings,” Rosaldo ends up criticizing the way in which anthropology has traditionally attempted to “objectively” understand cultural aspects of the “other”, and specifically the way in which anthropology has previously attempted to understand culturally affected emotions and traditional practices associated with death in non-Western cultures. (1994, 168)

Like many of his fellow anthropologists before him, Rosaldo lacked an understanding of the effect of his own subjectivity in his pursuit of the “objective” understanding of another’s cultural phenomena, stating that:

“When Ilongots told me, as they often did, how the rage in bereavement could impel men to headhunt, I brushed aside their one-line accounts as too simple, thin, opaque, implausible, stereotypical, or otherwise unsatisfying. Probably I naively equated grief with sadness. Certainly, no personal experience allowed me to imagine the powerful rage Ilongots claimed to find in bereavement. My own inability to conceive the force of anger in grief led me to seek out another level of analysis that could provide a deeper explanation for older men’s desire to headhunt.”  (1994, 168)

This inability to deeply understand the Ilongots cultural experience, however, only lasted until Rosaldo finally got to experience a taste of this kind of rage born from grief after the untimely and sudden death of his wife, Michelle. In reconciling with the death of his wife, the “Ilongot anger and [his] own overlap[ped], rather like two circles, partially overlaid and partially separate” (171).  the “rage, born of grief, [which] impels [the Ilongots] to kill his fellow human beings” (167) filled Rosaldo upon finding his wife’s dead body - this experience gave him a deeper understanding (if not perhaps the deepest possible understanding he could attain as an outsider) of the Ilongots rage born from bereavement that results in the practice of headhunting; an understanding that could not and likely would have come to him without such an experience. In consideration of this tragic experience and the anthropological understanding he gained from it, Rosaldo claims that anthropology has for too long attempted to explain answers to their lines of inquiry from an “objective” perspective, which in turn reveals an anthropologic rejection of the subjective experience and effects of the ethnographer and results in a loss of basic understanding of the cultural “other”. Ultimately, Rosaldo claims that anthropology should thus attempt to move towards a focus on the latter as explanations from a subjective being cannot be objective:

“All interpretations are provisional; they are made by positioned subjects who are prepared to know certain things and not others. Even when knowledgeable, sensitive, fluent in language, and able to move easily in an alien cultural world, good ethnographers still have their limits, and their analyses always are incomplete” (1994, 598).  

Upon reading Rosaldo’s argument, I seriously began to consider how – when ethnographers experience the cultural phenomenon at the center of their ethnographic inquiry themselves, or if ethnographers end up having some emotional experience that can deeply connect them to that particular cultural phenomenon – a similar subjectivity or subjective experience of the ethnographer to that of their ethnographic subjects not only makes it easier to understand the cultural phenomenon in question, but also allows for a more accurate or accessible interpretation of it. Initially, I did not want to include myself as a subject of my ethnographic inquiry. For as long as I’ve been creative, I’ve been afraid – the only thing that scares me more than inauthentically representing others is turning the camera towards myself. I used to believe it would be selfish to use my platform for a portrayal of something that connected back to my personal struggles – Rosaldo perspective on subjectivity, however, has made me realize that this is perhaps not the case. As someone who exists within the bounds of the community that my ethnographic inquiry explores, my attempt to understand the perspectives and experiences that have shaped my own sexuality and sexual self would only aid my attempts to understand the sexual perspectives, experiences, and practices of other South Asian women. In this way, Rosaldo’s ideas on the subjective self within the context of ethnographic inquiry have informed my desire to pursue this an ethnographic inquiry into my own culture from a semi-autoethnographic perspective. 

Rosaldo takes his perspective on the subjectivity of the ethnographer one step further to argue for the notion of show and not as the reality of subjectivity at its core contends classic norms of anthropology like:

 “thick description, multi-vocality, polysemy, richness, and texture. The notion of force, among other things, opens to question the common anthropological assumption that the greatest human import resides in the densest forest of symbols and that analytical detail, or ‘‘cultural depth,’’ equals enhanced explanation of a culture, or ‘cultural elaboration’. Do people always in fact describe most thickly what matters most to them?” (1994,167)

In arguing against these classic norms of anthropology, Rosaldo argues for the force of anthropologic thinness, an idea that builds itself upon the notion of “thin description” as conceptualized by John Jackson.  Jackson’s influential book “Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem” (2013), critiques the limitations of ethnography by challenging Geertz’s popularization of the notion of “thick description”. Jackson argues for the notion of “thin description”, which Geertz deemed inadequate for meaningful interpretation almost 40 years prior. “Thinness”, according to Geertz as interpreted by Jackson, exists as “the necessary starting point for social investigation but not nearly enough all by itself” (2013, 13). Jackson counters this criticism against thin description by arguing that thick description is not always as thick as it is made to seem; that “thick description, in a sense, has always been thin” (2013, 5). Jackson’s discussion of the visual reality of this “thickened knowledge,” which materializes as ethnographers and their anthropologies embodying this idea of being “flies-on-the-wall” or “seeing through other people’s eyes” or even “simply going native”, quickly turns into a “talk of anthropologists turning into inconspicuous insects – or of peering out through other people’s eye sockets – [which] might suggestively be likened to an old-fashioned sci-fi and horror genre allegories of body-snatching, soul-stealing, and spirit possession.” (2013, 13-5) By likening the ethnographer’s desire to essentially become the “other” in pursuit of a thickened knowledge to a plotline of a horror film, Jackson identifies the thinness of thick description in its (un)ethical realities.

This desire to be a “fly-on-the-wall” or “see through other people’s eyes” or “go native” ties back to Rosaldo’s argument against thick description in that such a desire allows for the ethnographer to completely ignore their subjectivity and the effects of their subjectivity on their ethnographic inquiry, which according to Rosaldo is often what “can lend a false air of security, an authoritative claim to certitude and finality that our analyses cannot have”. (1994, 170) Thick description has then perhaps turned into an ethnographic compulsion for the anthropologist, to dig and dig so that they may answer their ethnographic lines of inquiry – working under the assumption that they can and must find some answers – so that their ethnographic inquires may attain some legitimate meaning not only in eyes of the ethnographic community at large, but also to themselves as the leaders of these ethnographic inquiries. This is why the notion of thin description is revolutionary force in the context of qualitative ethnographic research – an acceptance of the notion of thin description would mean an acceptance of the distance an ethnographer’s subjectivity puts between the ethnographer and the answers to their lines of inquiry, and thus the ethnographer must accept the “surprise at the answer to a[n ethnographic] question” instead of “revise[ing] the question until lessening surprises or diminishing returns indicate a stopping point.” (1994, 170) An acceptance of the notion of thin description also calls for a consideration of the idea that perhaps, in order to get answers beyond basic understanding, the ethnographer’s subjectivity must align with that of the ethnographic subject – meaning that ethnographers who exist outside their subject’s subjective realities will never be able to reach the deepest understanding or attain the most truthful answers to their ethnographic questions. As Rosaldo mentions when comparing his personal experience with rage born in grief to that of the cultural experience of the Ilongot: “they are not identical… alongside striking similarities, significant differences in tone, cultural form, and human consequences distinguish the ‘‘anger’’ animating our respective ways of grieving.” (1994, 171) While I was not aware of the notion of “thin description” when beginning my ethnographic inquiry, I immediately resonated with this notion once I began engaging with the works of John Jackson and Renato Rosaldo – I like to think that the ideas of thin description were one’s that I was subconsciously engaging with and considering at the back of my mind while building the bounds of my ethnographic inquiry, I just never had a name that encompasses these ideas until now.

The bounds and sites of my own ethnography inquiry, in conjunction with my subjectivities as the ethnographer, allows for an engagement with Rosaldo’s perspective on the notion of thin description.  Considering my ethnographic inquiry will materialize as an ethnographic film, or some form of visual media capture, considerations of ethnographic thinness or thin description in the context of visual inquiry and fieldwork is crucial. Jenny Chio’s “Theorizing in/of Ethnographic Film” (2020) is particularly influential in my consideration for the thickness of thin description as materialized in the form of ethnographic film. Considering Geertz’s notion of “thick description,” the thickness of film has often been questioned. Anthropologists like Franz Boas and Gilbert Riley have spoken out against the thick impact of film in their belief that “cameras could depict only the surface of reality on their flat screens, not true cultural depth,” (2013, qtd. in Jackson 15) and how the “camera’s lens [exists] as an example of something that renders reality thinly, marking the stuff of thick description as relatively ‘unphotographable’” (2013, qtd. in Jackson 15). In her article, Chio makes an argument for the thickness of the “thin” film image, which she supports by using Jackson’s argument for the thickness of previously perceived thin description and particularly Jackson’s point against Geertz’s thick description in the idea that “seeing through another person’s eyes is not the same thing as actually seeing that person” (2020, 15).  Chio contextualizes this argument within the cinematic genre of observational sensory ethnographic film and utilizes the works and perspectives of Lucien Taylor and Silvio Carta’s to support this contextualization. Taylor’s claim can be seen as a material extension to Jackson’s argument in his assertion that “film does not say but show… does not just describe, but depict…it offers not only ‘thin descriptions’ but also ‘thick depictions’?” (2020, qtd. in Chio 31). Carta’s perspective, which compliments Taylor’s perspective, notes that ethnography “gives us something of what is left out of any [thick written] description of the world” (2020, qtd. in Chio 32).

I am particularly inspired by Lucien Taylor’s sensory ethnography films and their capacity for visual thickness.  The idea that sensory ethnography can exist as a proxy for ethnographic thickness in its “insistence on the crucial role of the body and the senses, the visceral and the palpable, in any engagement with and representation of the world” (Irina Leimbacher qtd. in Chio 33) deeply resonates as engagements with the visceral are a cornerstone of my own ethnographic inquiry. The visceral describes a tangible feeling, the physical manifestations of emotion - and the visceral, “as a logic of decolonization, interanimates the energies of both colonized and revolutionary affects within the physiological response of the racialized subject; it is imbued with the potentiality of a radical affective reconstitution.” (Khanna 2020, 3) Neetu Khanna (the biggest literary influence for my ethnographic inquiry), in her book “The Visceral Logics of Decolonization,” ultimately questions what it may mean to unlearn the visceral lessons of colonialism – the “colonial visceral habits of the mind and emotive reflexes (2020, 4). In the chapter “Compulsion,” Khanna directly speaks on how the colonial visceral has turned the female body into a site of “violent subjugation by both colonial regimes of discipline” – and because “each [author centers and shows that] the somatic life of the body as a fundamental site of colonial subjugation…, decolonial action comes not solely from mental transformation, but from a reconstitution of the sensorial nodes of the body.” (2020, 85) The need to unlearn the colonial visceral in order to experience and embody a new decolonized visceral exists at the center of Khanna’s arguments and has become a major consideration in my ethnographic exploration of the decolonization of South Asian sexuality. Khanna utilizes the writings of Ismat Chughtai to show the promise of visceral unlearning that comes with an embrace of “obscene gestures” and “the erotics of the disgusting.” Through this focus on the:

 “intensity of the draw of the disgusting but the distinct textures of the object of irrepressible desire: the stickiness, the gooeyness, the sliminess, and the viscosity of the mud and secretions cover her body, generated by her body, gliding down the digestive tracts of her body…through the textural terrain of the “gross and “gooey” Chughtai magnifies the intimacy of her bodily contact with the disgusting. We recognize these textural details that echo the viscous textures that saturate the aural and visual depictions as metonymic extensions of women’s sexual desire and pleasure.” (Khanna 2020, 105)

This focus on the body and its interactions with the obscene or with the disgusting is what allows for the visceral unlearning/relearning to take place.  The ability for the cinematic expressions of sensory ethnography to engage with and understand this visceral learning/unlearning, which again exists as a cornerstone to this ethnographic inquiry – in a similar way that engagements with and an understanding of rage born of grief was a cornerstone in Rosaldo’s ethnographic inquiry -, makes sensory ethnography one of the primary ethnographic methodologies for my ethnographic inquiry.

Considering that this project is semi-autoethnographic, my filmmaking will also engage with a “fly-in-the-soup” (instead of the “fly-on-the-wall” methodology that Jackson ripped apart) methodology of ethnographic cinema that allows me, as the filmmaker, to engage with my subjects in a way that accepts and embraces my subjectivity as the ethnographer. The “fly-in-the-soup” methodology will become evident in my engagements with the other participants on camera (ie. I will not try to disappear or hide myself during the interview or participant observation process). This “fly-in-the-soup” methodology is primarily inspired by the work of Jean Rouch and his engagements with cinéma verité. The practice of “cinéma-verité” – and particularly Rouch’s practice of the notion through which the “camera is capable of provoking people to reveal aspects of themselves that are fictional, to reveal themselves as the creatures of imagination, fantasy, and myth they are” –  reveals a certain, perhaps more raw or genuine, truth about the subjects of the camera’s lens, one that was not found in most film of early ethnographers like Edward Curtis. (Rothman 1997, 70) Rouch’s films were often stylized by a lot of hand-held camera work, quick cuts (in post), and collaborative narration/storytelling - which serves the practice of the notion of cinéma-vérité well in that it allows Rouch to deliver a visual experience that felt insanely intimate, almost as if the subjects themselves were telling their own story. Rouch’s concept of shared anthropology, in which “researcher and subjects exchange[s] are conceived as undergoing a radical transformation as each put on an almost theatrical performance for the other, thereby jointly creating a form of knowledge that is a direct result of the encounter itself”, seem to allow his anthropologic work to be genuinely produced and his informants to be truthfully represented on screen (Henley 2020, 252-53). In the context of my own ethnographic inquiry, I hope to collaborate with each of my subject-participants to create a visual representation of their words that they feel best fit their story and perspective. While the thin medium of film provides a space for visual thickness, ethnographic filmmaking has a history of erasure, of denying the ethnographers subjectivity when creating their work. Ethnographers who work on the planning, production, and editing of a film alone share only their perspective of the ethnographic inquiry through their personal subjectivity (whether that be via the style of pre-planning, shooting, or editing - but a subjectivity is shared nonetheless). This style, this subjectivity, will not disappear – it exists despite the ethnographic filmmakers’ greatest efforts to stay hidden throughout the history of ethnographic film work. However, in their attempts to ignore their own subjectivities, ethnographic filmmakers have in the past allowed for their subjective perspectives to muddle representation. I believe that true representation of an ethnographic subject can only happen through collaboration, through the approval of that subject to be seen and understood in the way that the ethnographic has captured them. Considering this personal perspective, I have spoken to each participant about the opportunity for collaboration in the creation of their visual representations. This collaboration may manifest in a short film, a photoshoot, an experimental piece, an animation, etc. - regardless of what it manifests as, it will manifest in a form that the subject themselves feels best represents their perspective on sexual decolonization and their sexual identity.

Throughout my fieldwork process, I intend to engage with the “fly-in-the-soup” methodology as influence by the cinéma verité of Jean Rouch, which exists as a filmmaking and ethnographic data collection methodology that acknowledges the subjectivity of the ethnographer and embraces the notion of “thin description” (in all its thinness and thickness). While Rouch’s conceptualization and utilization of cinéma verité is a major influence in my ethnographic inquiry, it is important to consider the drawbacks to Rosaldo’s notion of “show and not tell” (or a rejection and thus lack of “thick description”) that can be seen in cinematic expressions such as cinema verité.  When watching most of Rouch’s films, one perhaps can’t help but feel confused and at times dissatisfied with the lack of explanation or cultural contextualization of what was being captured and shown on. Take the film Les Maîtres Fous (1953-4) for example – the mimicry of colonialism that leads to a spiritual possession by colonial idols, dancing raging wild, foaming at the mouth and falling to the floor, a spiritual death in the light of colonialism.  like many of the French anthropologists and African intellectuals who attended the premiere of the film in 1955, feelings of discomfort and queasiness are not far away when viewing the Hauka ritual captured in this film.  Its display of human behavior to many may be unsettling, embarrassing, racist and imperialist – without any cultural contextualization, any chances to dissipate this discomfort and other conflicted feelings walk out of the equation, which ultimately leaves the true value or meaning of such an emotionally volatile film lost in the audience members’ distracted desire to barf. This is not to say that such films should not be made by any means – Rouch was able to capture the true spectacle of the Hauka Movement in an arguably commendable way – however, the lack of contextualization and historization may leave one with many questions about the history and especially the cultural significance of the Hauka Movement.

In addition to feelings of dissatisfaction introduced by the lack of “thick description,” it is possible that the lack of explanation that comes with the notion of “show and not tell” may lead to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of truth that can lead to misrepresentations of the subjects of an ethnographic inquiry. Take the performances of Couple in a Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia, 1992-94) for example. At first a satirical performance art commentary on traditions of traditional (anthropologic) discovery, the impact of the piece changed once performers Guillermo Gómez -Peña and Coco Fusco (posing as two Amerindians, caged and on display) realized that many of their spectators believed and found truth in their fictional production. It may not necessarily be that surprising that people believed in some truth of their production, as ridiculous and deeming and unbecoming of the late 21st century it was, nor is it surprising that it was mostly white (western) people who expressed this belief. Performances like The Couple in the Cage may arguable be considered representations of Rosaldo’s concept of showing understanding of lines of inquiry as opposed to attempting to explain answers to them – it is perhaps the more exact visualization of Rosaldo’s perspective of thin description. Performances like The Couple in the Cage can also exist as a representation of the concept of “assumption” that exists as a consequence of rejecting the notion of “thick description”- the assumption of knowledge, assumption of truth, and how easily knowledge and truth can be manipulated and will be assumed. In their article “In Dialogue: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey”, Behar and Mannheim note that “some viewers were outraged that museums allowed such an event to be performed inside the walls of institutions (ie. Museums) supposedly dedicated to “science” and “truth,” which speaks to the western tradition of museums as a space to view history in a way that separates colonizing groups from their past mistakes, and on a larger scale on how colonizing groups - or individuals who belong to groups with a history of colonization - are still aloof or disillusioned (which is to imply a certain distance between themselves and history too) about the truthful knowledge or true history of the world and the consequential magnitude of what their predecessors have done. (Behar and Mannheim 1995, 123)

My ethnographic inquiry seeks a few different types of knowledge – none of which I hope to be assumed by the audience of my work. Engagements with posteriori knowledge, or a knowledge gained from personal experiences (my own as well as that of whomever else I will engage with on my exploration), situated knowledge, or a cultural knowledge that comes out of a specific (historical) context, and dispersed knowledge, or a knowledge that is spread out amongst a group of people, inform the kind of knowledge I specifically seek through my ethnographic inquiry. These types of knowledges may be hard to understand for those who do not gain posteriori knowledge from their personal experiences that come from situated knowledge - but my goal for this project is to prioritize giving space and an acknowledgement to those kinds of knowledge, and to the South Asian women who hold this knowledge. While my film is perhaps intended for a more specialized audience, I also don’t mean to produce an ethnographic understanding that is completely inaccessible to the non-specialized audiences either (especially since I would like to avoid any misinterpretations of my subject because I, as the ethnographer, decide to produce something that is inaccessible to audiences that may benefit from this knowledge).  Thus, my intended production seeks a knowledge that comes from many people, through their lived experiences as situated in cultural (historical) context, that will allow those living within this situated knowledge to feel seen and heard by both those within this situation and outside of it.

Though I am also a subject of this ethnographic inquiry, as it is partly autoethnographic, I will not be conducting any sit-down interviews or participant-observation with myself. Instead, I will be recording some poems I have written in the past year about brownness, sexuality, and decolonization and creating 3-4 short videos of visual poetry.  This decision to explore my own journey of decolonization in terms of my sexuality and sexual self (in tandem to my inquiries about the sexual decolonization of other South Asian women) through poetry was particularly inspired by Renato Rosaldo and his notion of anthropoesía as mentioned in his essay “Notes on Poetry and Ethnography.” (Rosaldo 2014) Rosaldo proposes the idea of anthropoesía, or “verse informed by ethnographic sensibility,…not as an ornament; it does not make things pretty…instead it brings things closer, or into focus…it slows the action, the course of events, to reveal depth of feeling and to explore its character.” (Rosaldo 2014, 105). Since deciding to turn my ethnographic inquiry semi-autoethnographic, considered what would be the best way to explore and include my perspective into the larger narrative of my inquiry – where should this research on the self-start? When I arrived at University almost 5.5 years ago, I began to use the notes app on my iPhone as a digital journal, which has resulted in paragraphs on paragraphs and pages upon pages of rambling rants about my relationships, sex, the/my body, my Indian-ness (or lack thereof), sensuality, sexuality, my insecurities, and on and on. What I’ve realized about these writings is that they would be the perfect place to start – a lengthy archival work of fieldnotes detailing sexual journey.  The idea for visual poetry came the simple need to visualize the poetry so that it may be used in a visual medium like film as well as the desire to engage with and embrace (ie. not shy away from) my subjectivity as an ethnographer in order to work within the notion of “thin description”.

The ability to engage with the thickness of thin description to explore the sexual decolonization of South Asian women while minimizing the consequences of rejecting thick description, I believe, can be done through a combination of cinema verité style film, observational-sensory film, and visual poetry. This personal desire to engage with the notion of “thin description” comes primarily from the work of Renato Rosaldo, which is supported by the work of John Jackson.  Rosaldo’s argument for thin description addresses issues of ethnographic disillusion that comes with the embrace of thick description and the rejection of the consideration of the subjective reality of the ethnographer. This conceptualization of “thin description” by Rosaldo really appeals to my personal ethnographic sensibilities as I (as a photographer first) have always believed in the power of “show and not tell.”  Using a combination of cinema verité style film (which will allow me to practice a “fly-in-the-soup” approach), observational-sensory film (which will allow me to engage with notions of visceral learning/unlearning – the foundation of my ethnographic inquiry), and visual poetry (which will allow me to become a subject), I hope to be able to engage this ethnographic sensibility in the most productive way (ie. by focusing on the thickness of thin description, and thus minimizing the interpretive consequences of completely accepting either “thick” or “thin” description while completely rejecting the other).

Bibliography

Behar, Ruth, and Bruce Mannheim. “In Dialogue: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey.” Visual Anthropology Review 11, no. 1 (1995): 118–27. https://doi.org/https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/ruth-behar/wp-content/uploads/sites/408/2016/06/Behar-and-Mannheim-Couple-in-Cage-Visual-Anthropology-Review-1995a.pdf. 

Chio, Jenny. “Theorizing in/of Ethnographic Film.” The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video, 2020, pp. 30–39., https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429196997-4. 

Henley, Paul. “Jean Rouch: Sharing Anthropology.” Essay. In Beyond Observation: A History of Authorship in Ethnographic Film, 225–55. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020. 

Jackson, John L. Thin Description Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 

Khanna, Neetu. The Visceral Logics of Decolonization. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.

Rosaldo, Renato. “Introduction: Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage.” Essay. In Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis, 1–24. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. 

Rosaldo, Renato. The Day of Shelly’s Death the Poetry and Ethnography of Grief. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2014. 

Rothman, William. “Chronicle of a Summer.” Essay. In Documentary Film Classics, 69–107. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 

The couple in the cage. 1993. Produced by C. Fusco and P. Heredia. 31 minutes. Video Databank. Vide

In her article “Theorizing in/of Ethnographic Film” (2020), Jenny Chio contextualizes the genealogical relationship of observational-sensory films in the history of ethnographic film via the anthropologic debate of thick/thin or thick vs thin description.  The notion of ‘thick description’, as introduced by Clifford Geertz in his influential essay “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (1973), emphasizes the importance of analytical interpretation of the anthropologic observation and thereby claims that observation alone serves only as a thin starting point, a factual account devoid of meaning. 40 years after Geertz’s use of the notion of ‘thick description’, John Jackson, in his seminal book “Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem” (2013), critiques (the limitations of) ethnography in his contemporary challenge to “thick description”. He argues for the value in thin description that Geertz, in his assertions about thick description, deemed inadequate for meaningful interpretation. Thinness then, according to Geertz as interpreted by Jackson, becomes “raw and baseline empiricism, the necessary starting point for social investigation but not nearly enough all by itself” (13). Jackson posits, however, that thick description is not always as thick as it is made to seem; that “thick description, in a sense, has always been thin” (5). 

Chio then contextualizes arguments made for the thickness of the film image within the larger debate on thick/thin description, as supported by Jackson’s argument for the thickness of previously perceived thin description and particularly in consideration of Jackson’s point against Geertz’s thick description in the idea that “seeing through another person’s eyes is not the same thing as actually seeing that person” (15).  Chio primarily considers ethnographic filmmakers Lucien Taylor and Silvio Carta’s perspectives on visual anthropology. Taylor argues a material extension to Jackson’s argument, that “film does not say but show… does not just describe, but depict…it offers not only ‘thin descriptions’ but also ‘thick depictions’?” (qtd. in Chio 31). Carta’s perspective, which seems to compliment Taylor’s perspective on the thickness of the visual, notes that ethnography “gives us something of what is left out of any [thick written] description of the world in purely third-person terms” (qtd. in Chio 32). In pointing out the natural grouping of Jackson’s, Taylor’s, and Carta’s perspectives on the thickness of the visual, Chio is able to argue that the “wide-scale disciplinary adoption of” observational cinema and “the filmic version of sensory ethnography…as the new ‘thick description’ of ethnographic filmmaking” have allowed these two visual genres to become the “dominant conventions of what constitutes a visual representation of ethnographic fieldwork and knowledge” (32). 

Both borne from a tradition of observational documentary, the genres of observational cinema and sensory ethnography share filmic conventions such as the long take, an avoidance of interview or voice-over narrations, and a meticulous focus on detail. Given their related conventions, Chio also notes their differences. Chio utilizes Anna Grimshaw’s and Amanda Ravetz’s perspective on observational cinema, as iterated in their book “Observational cinema: Anthropology, film, and the exploration of social life” (2009), to contextualize and theorize the conventions of observational cinema and its dominance in the field of ethnographic film. Grimshaw and Ravetz note that observational film “emphasizes unassuming, modest and painstakingly detailed depictions of humanity and the everyday” and the acts of observation that create such depictions are also deeply embedded in the understanding of a cornerstone mode of ethnographic fieldwork: “participant-observation” (Chio 33).  In their conceptualization of the notion of observation within both ethnographic film and ethnographic fieldwork, Grimshaw and Ravetz note that the art of (ethnographic) observation may open into an “observational sensibility”, or a reflection of “the relationship between observer and observed” (Chio 33). Chio herself then notes a connection of Grimshaw and Ravetz’s conceptualization of such a “reflexive praxis, a way of doing anthropology that has the potential to creatively fuse the object and medium of inquiry” (qtd. in Chio 33) to Jackson’s ideas of thin description and Carta’s “argument for film as a ‘subversive empirical practice’” (qtd. in Chio 33).  Grimshaw and Ravetz ultimately “propose that observational cinema be considered an example of phenomenological anthropology, with a focus on lived experience” (Chio 33). Thus, conventions of observational cinema, like the long take and an avoidance of interview or voice-over narration, reveal an expected benevolence in the true depth of the relationship between the observer (as both the filmmaker and the film audience) and the observed (as the profilmic world). 

Chio utilizes Lucien Taylor’s professional work as an ethnographic filmmaker and as the director of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) at Harvard University to describe the institutionalization of the genre of sensory ethnography. Like observational cinema, Chio also notes a connection between sensory ethnography and a phenomenological anthropology via Taylor’s arguments on the thickness of the visual as well as his engagements with SEL, “each [of which] insist on the crucial role of the body and the senses, the visceral and the palpable, in any engagement with and representation of the world (Irina Leimbacher qtd. in Chio 33). Thus, Sensory ethnography, while it shares many of its conventions with the genre of observational cinema, differs as it extends its observations to consider the humanity of the non-human via its cinematography and places greater emphasis on the role of sound in the creation of tension and execution of disclosure (34). These differentiating filmic aspects were conventionalized namely by films of Taylor such as Sweetgrass (2009) and Leviathan (2013) – both of which were made in conjunction with SEL, and the latter of which “cemented SEL as a recognizable name with a recognizable aesthetic” (that aesthetic being the genre of sensory ethnography). Visually, Leviathan was focused moreso on the process and materials of fishing, and less so on the people who were doing the fishing – in this sense, Taylor embodied this convention of considering the humanity of the non-human via the painstaking depiction of the detail of his (non-human) subject. To capture this painstaking detail, the use of body-cameras and underwater cameras allowed for the capture of close-up shots, or shots that really got in the middle of the mess of commercial fishing, allow for the capturing of the chaos of the process. In addition, the constant unplaceable yet uncomfortable sound of what seems to most appropriately be heavy metal in the middle of the ocean befits the visual turmoil and creates an insane tension within the viewer, and thus and immersive depiction of chaos. 

We just spoke of genre conventions, or the filmic elements that commonly occur within a genre of film, but for a genre to be conventional itself means that the genre must commonly occur within a certain scope. Chio considers the genres of observational cinema and sensory ethnography as conventional within the world of ethnographic film as she believes them to be the type of “ethnographic filmmaking and ethnographic film theory dominating anthropological discourse at the moment” (30).  Chio argues that the “conventions of “observational-sensory” film continue to dominate discussions of ethnographic filmmaking and theorizing at the expense of other possibilities”, thus making “observational-sensory” film itself conventional within the field of ethnographic film (37). Chio utilizes the films of Maurizio Boriello, Jennifer Deger, Ben Russell, and Alisi Telegut to exemplify the potential in non-conventional modes of visual representation of the ethnographic, which she argues are just as thick as the “observational-sensory” convention.

Chio’s ultimate intention is to “illustrate in what follows how the “observational-sensory” convention now constitutes a terrain upon which new experiments, and new insights, in ethnographic filmmaking have emerged” (33) – in other words, she means to challenge the current conventions of the dominant form of ethnographic filmmaking (that is observation-sensory film) to explore how alternative films can engage (new) ethnographic knowledge. Take Alisi Telegut and her hand-painted animations of Mongolian ethnography, for example. Chio argues that Telegut’s animated films - while existing far outside the conventions of “observational-sensory” film, particularly in the mediums inability to engaging with the long take – are by no means lacking in thickness as the lack of the long take, which is instead replaced by numerous hand-drawn frames that require an “extensive engagement from both the artist and the viewer”, actually reveals the depth of Telegut’s engagement with ethnographic description in the “thickness of the textures and edges of every painted mark making up a single image that quite literally resonates and radiates when animated” (37).  Chio maintains throughout her argument that “theorizing ethnographic film should result in boundary pushing, not boundary maintenance” (37). In an effort to push the boundaries of ethnographic film as we understand it today, she challenges the dominant conventions of ethnographic film, which she deems is “currently encapsulated within what I have dubbed an “observational-sensory” mode of filmmaking”, in order to make an argument for the thickness of and create space for a more diverse breadth of ethnographic visual representation (37). 

Works Cited

Chio, Jenny. “Theorizing in/of Ethnographic Film.” The Routledge International Handbook of Ethnographic Film and Video, 2020, pp. 30–39., https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429196997-4. 

Jackson, John L. Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Harvard University Press, 2013.

“The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

― John Milton

Notions of Heaven and Hell are often explored in Western films, particularly (and perhaps most obviously) through the Utopian and/or Dystopian genres.  The concept of a utopia is often interchangeable with the general notions of heaven; conversely, the concept of a dystopia is also often interchangeable with the general notions of hell. A utopia is an imagined version of society that exemplifies the ideal - “imagined ideal” being the key phrase in this definition as the ideal represents what is perfect or most desirable, but unachievable or unrealistic. While a utopia may look (slightly) different in the eyes of each individual, imagined utopias in literature and film tend to come from one of three grounds: speculation, practicality, or satire (“Utopia”).  On the other hand, a dystopia exists as the polar opposite of a utopia, or an imagined version of society that exemplifies what is most flawed and undesirable (“Dystopia”). Given the lack of realism in utopian and dystopian concepts, these films often take the form of science fiction or fantasy narratives. Though most science fiction/fantasy narratives may direct focus to only one of the two concepts or to the strict dichotomy between the two, some films stray into a realm that blurs the line between utopia and dystopia. The film Yesterday (2019) utilizes pop songs to question this dichotomy between utopia and dystopia, or heaven and hell, by exploring points of intersection between the heavenly and the hellish.

The film follows protagonist Jack Malik, an English man in his late 20s of South Asian descent who aspires to be a musician. Jack lives with his parents in his childhood home in Suffolk, England and works at the local discount-store after giving up his full-time job as a schoolteacher in order to pursue his dream of singing and songwriting. After years of persistence with less than commendable success, however, Jack is nearly ready to give up on his dream when suddenly he gets hit by a bus while riding his bike home from another unsuccessful gig. Jack wakes up in the hospital to a seemingly normal life, until he realizes that he has woken up in a world without his favorite band, the Beatles.  Armed with all the Beatlemania knowledge he can remember, however, Jack soon finds himself on a path to success. The juxtaposition between Jack waking up in an alternate reality where a lot of things that were once grounded in normalcy no longer exist and Jack eventually finally finding massive success in a musical career places him in a state of confusion - Is he in hell or is he in heaven? Has he landed in a utopia or a dystopia? While Jack’s perception of this alternate reality may sway between hell and heaven from time to time, there is a case to be made for the idea that the pop songs used in Yesterday actually function to establish a musical dystopia with the potential for a utopian outcome (as opposed to the inverse statement found in the prompt).  It is the subtlety of the way in which the pop songs are woven into the sound design and larger narrative, however, that help to establish this utopia/dystopia dynamic within the storyline.

 Though it may seem as if music, especially non-diegetic music, is the most unrealistic, or ‘non-realist’, component of most films, in the case of the film Yesterday, the music is actually the most important film technique used (Finch 83). The reason for this is that the pop music in Yesterday embodies the theory of emotional reality, or the idea that “music can convey and clarify the emotional significance of a scene, and the true, ‘real’ feelings” Jack (Frith 83). The pop music, especially the music by The Beatles, sung by Jack speaks for him and reveals emotional truths about his character. The biggest example of a pop song functioning under the notion of emotional reality is the song “Yesterday”, which actually foreshadows the trajectory of emotions that Jack will encounter and grapple with until the resolution of the film.  The fact that the title of this song also functions as the title of the movie already suggests its importance, but what we can interpret from the song that Jack sings is:

Yesterday

all [his] troubles seemed so far away

now it looks as though they’re here to stay

Suddenly [he’s] not half the man [he] used to be

there’s a shadow hanging over [him]

Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Yesterday

Love was such an easy game to play

Now [he] need[s] a place to hide away

Oh, [he] believe[s] in yesterday

Why she had to go, [he doesn’t] know, she wouldn’t say

[He] said something wrong, now [he] long[s] for yesterday

Yesterday

Love was such an easy game to play

Now [he] need[s] a place to hide away

Oh, [he] believe[s] in yesterday

This song speaks of one man’s sadness, sorrow, distress, and regret; within the context of this film, that one man is Jack. Jack feels sadness because he is “here to stay” in an alternate reality that he didn’t choose and one that he does not know how to escape from. He feels sorrow because “he said something wrong” and messed up his chances with Ellie, the love of his life.  He feels distressed as if there’s a “shadow hanging over” him because he feels as if his success in this alternate reality is based on a lie (which in many ways it is).  He feels regret for how he is leading his life in this alternate reality, and at his lowest point only “believes in [the] yesterday” of his previous reality. 

The truth that music can reveal under the notion emotional reality is “a different sort of reality than that described by visual images… as it signals what is underneath a film’s observable gestures” (Frith 83-84).  As much as the film could have attempted to convey Jack’s emotions via the images on screen - most likely via mise-en-scene and acting - this song is able to relay that emotional information to the audience in a way that the image never could because this song has an existing connection with the audience that the image never will. Everyone can relate to feelings of confusion about where one stands in the present while yearning for a better time from the past, but to be able to relate to those themes through an established and comfortable medium like a famous song is incomparable. Thus, one could say that the utilization of pop songs, especially widely known and beloved songs, under the notion of emotional reality functions as a very subtle yet effective action meant to establish a deeper emotional connection with the audience - something that the image could not do. 

In addition to functioning under the notion of emotional reality, the song “Yesterday” functions as a potential counterargument to the idea that the pop songs in the film function to establish a kind of musical utopia with the potential for a dystopian outcome.  Jack’s initial realization that he may be in an alternate reality immediately places Jack in a potentially dystopian state - his own personal hell - as he is the only one who seems to remember who The Beatles are. Similar to how The Graduate combined rock and roll and film proper, Yesterday combines pop music and film by allowing “diegetic sounds to overlap a recording, interfering with the audience’s perception of the song” (Knobloch 62). As he spirals into a rabbit hole of google searches on the internet, a comically hellish non-diegetic score plays in the background periodically overlapping with Jack’s diegetic expressions of exasperation and disbelief. If Jack’s initial experience with this alternate reality is hellish, or flawed, and if Jack’s emotional journey function as a reflection of the larger mood of the world around him, then it may appropriate to argue that the pop songs in the film function to establish a musical dystopia of Jack’s own making. Furthermore, if the song “Yesterday” foreshadows Jack’s emotional journey until the resolution of the film, then it may not be so far-fetched then to suggest that the massive lie that Jack was hiding behind in terms of passing the music of The Beatles as his own is the source of the dystopian hell that Jack is living through.  It is only once Jack decides to share his truth with the world and release all The Beatles music for free that he is able to find happiness in his own identity as an artist and as an individual. The use of Ed Sheeran’s song, “One Life”, as non-diegetic music while Jack gets his happy ending, functions to solidify this idea of release from his lies and interdependence on the music of the Beatles to feel successful in life. 

Yesterday shows that, ultimately, the utopia/dystopia dynamic is a matter of choice as much as it is a matter of circumstances. The pop music in this film, particularly the songs of The Beatles, function to establish this choice as a musical dystopia of Jack’s own making with the potential for utopian outcome. Though circumstances beyond his control led Jack this alternate reality, it was his own choices that led to the cataclysmic dystopia that made him feel as if “Now [he] need[s] a place to hide away… [because he] believe[s] in yesterday.”  However, it was also Jack’s choice to break away from the hellish circumstances and create a heavenly space (or a space that he felt free) amongst the chaos. 

Bibliography

“Dystopia.” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, 2020, www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/literature-english/english-literature-20th-cent-present/dystopia.

Frith, Simon. “Mood Music: An Inquiry into Narrative Film Music.” Screen: Incorporating Screen Education, vol. 25, no. 3, June 1984, pp. 78–88, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/25.3.78

Knobloch, Susan. “THE GRADUATE AS ROCK’N’ROLL FILM.” Spectator (Los Angeles, Calif.), vol. 17, no. 2, University of Southern California, Division of Critical Studies, Spectator, Apr. 1997, p. 61–73.

Yesterday, Directed by Danny Boyle, performances by Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran, Kate McKinnon, Joel Fry, Sophia Di Martino, Harry Michell, Sanjeev Bhaskar, and Meera Syal, Universal Pictures, 2019. 

“Utopia.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/utopia/Satirical-and-dystopian-works.