Film and Anthro Readings

Question 1

Gordon Cinema A Visual Anthropology

Answer 1

Highlights the relationships between anthropology and cinema even outside of ethnographic film, introduction into the history of cinema, the five theories, the production, distribution, and exhibition of cinema, and the context when a film is received

Question 2

Krasniewicz Round up the Usual Suspects

Answer 2

Describes Powdermaker’s research project where she conducted an anthropological study on Hollywood via participant observation. Basis of her project is that movies are cultural artifacts that shape how we answer cultural questions, a shared set of symbols and significant stories.

Question 3

Gordon Film Theories

Answer 3

Five are formalism (cinematography and visual/artistic elements), Marxism (class and power relations), Psychoanalysis (reactions in film and audience’s reaction to characters), feminist (how women are represented in film), structuralist (themes, tropes, tone, plot, storytelling, narrative elements)

Question 4

Butler Gender is Burning

Answer 4

Idea that self expression and actions are what recreate gender, so gender performance is experienced unconsciously as our “natural” selves. Also highlights that gender expectations are not natural or inherent.

Question 5

Althusser

Answer 5

The way in which you are received and addressed by others shaped your view of yourself and your behavior, main idea is that belief doesn’t lead to practice but rather practice leads to belief, you create your identity through practice, it is not fixed

Question 6

Butler’s Psychoanalytic Gender Theory

Answer 6

Human being are born undifferentiated, but we enter the world of signification where we understand rules/laws of society and those who do not fall in the dominant paradigm are outcasted, Judith Butler argues that Paris is Burning shows people who are conditioned to emulate white dominant norms

Question 7

Roberts Baraka World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry

Answer 7

Imperial gaze of viewing societies is an act of privilege in itself. Ethnography has been associated with commodification and Baraka in some ways critiques that but also arguably feeds into that. Another argument is that it presents a false universalism rooted in Western ways of viewing.

Question 8

Barthes Psychosociology of Food Consumption

Answer 8

Contemporary food consumption has a lot of sugar, food is a system with subdivisions between cultures and classes. Food also represented activity, work, leisure, celebration, and connecting elements. Food is integrated with civilization and now it is becoming viewed more as necessary to function rather than an element of culture and life

Question 9

Bourdieu Distinction: Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Answer 9

Contrasts “tastes of luxury with tastes of necessity,” food became viewed as a necessity with increasing commodification and as lifestyles changed. Saving time and labor correlates with using lighter and lower calorie products that are more efficient. Food is both a material reality and a symbol/ceremonial/cultural

Question 10

Berry Wolf Warrior II and the Chinese Century

Answer 10

Action adventure about foreign military powers, highlights this kind of cinema is rare. Highlights rebelliousness and individualism of the main character, new era of Asian masculinity

Question 11

Soft Power, film culture and BRICS

Answer 11

Role cinema has in perpetuating soft power, Hollywood’s motivation for movie making is financial while other nations aim to establish soft power. Specifically in China it serves as a way for China to rebrand itself as powerful. Desire for soft power also led to a crackdown on Chinese art.

Question 12

Fanon Concerning Violence

Answer 12

Believes both colonization and decolonization are violent/dehumanizing but that violence is needed for a better future

Question 13

Solarnas Towards Third Cinema

Answer 13

Third cinema as a revolutionary response against hegemony

Question 14

Obst Sleepless in Hollywood

Answer 14

Highlights differences between the Old Abnormal and New Abnormal in Hollywood, key differences is the New Abnormal is made up of franchises and other derivative stories rather than original works such as Forrest Gump that characterize the Old Abnormal

Question 15

Powdermaker Dream Factory

Answer 15

Anthropological study on Hollywood and its significance. Examines the social atmosphere of Hollywood and how status continuously shifts and how that shapes what works get produced. Has a unique set of values, built on the idea that anyone can be a star. Art, business, and entertainment are intertwined and also in conflict.

Question 16

Excerpt from Jia Zhangke

Answer 16

Talks about the shift in China from film being a tool of propaganda to an industry. Also highlights how a changing China served as an inspiration for the film and also a backdrop in the movie Ash is the Purest White. Revolutionary art and literature has been prominent in China, but in the film industry these sentiments were censored. People in the film industry are therefore a kind of jianghu on the outskirts of the propagandized film industry.

Question 17

McGrath Postsocialist Modernity

Answer 17

Later in the 1980s, more artistic films and Chinese art cinema became a kind of export. Many films emerged that were emblematic of a new kind of auteur cinema that emphasized post socialist realism rather than propagandized films, emphasized capturing street life in China as a way to document the realities of contemporary China and implicitly criticize it. Chinese artistic cinema was then integrated into the global art-cinema market which paints a different picture of China than state-sanctioned, propagandized films do.

Question 18

Thomas Indian Cinema

Answer 18

Indian cinema is defined in opposition to Hollywood and Western cinema and viewed as cheap entertainment and in opposition to “avant-garde” Western films. Indian cinema doesn’t fit with many assumptions by Western critics, such as the idea that Indian viewers are easily entertained. Hindi films can be compared to epics that span genres and contain many blended elements, known as “masala” filmmaking.

Question 19

Weston et al Anthropologists in Films

Answer 19

Study that examined the portrayal of films, ultimately found that more than half films that contained anthropologists were considered horror films and argue that they are viewed as experts and mediators for alien “others.” Shape public perceptions of the field and sometimes entrench discrimination. Anthropologists are commonly shown as having the moral high ground and viewed sympathetically even when they make mistakes, however in turn, the community the anthropologist is studying/encountering is viewed with less sympathy.

Question 20

Juaregul Cannibal Holocaust

Answer 20

Cannibal Holocaust is a graphic, controversial film directed by Italian Ruggero Deodato and is part of an Italian cannibal horror genre. Obsessed with cannibalism. For marketing purposes, the public was convinced actors had actually been killed on exposition. Team of white, American documentary filmmakers set out into Amazon to make a film about a “cannibalistic tribe.” Since they don’t return, an expedition headed by an NYU anthropologist is initiated to find them. Anthropologist views the reels and realizes that filmmakers fabricated the scenes and brutalized the crew first, anthropologist is discussed by TV executives.

Question 21

Hawkins Racial Politics of Candyman

Answer 21

Backdrop is Cabrini Green which is an urban renewal project, argues that the plot mirrors its racial criticism and the return to the status quo at the end of Candyman correlates with a return to White supremacy