I chose to read the article Sins of objectification? Agency, mediation, and community cultural self-determination in public folklore and cultural tourism programming. Here are the two questions that I came up with pertaining to the article.
1. Baron mentions professionalism quite a few times in the article, talking about the role of a public folklorist in terms of career goals and advancement. This made me think about intentions and motivation connected to money. In my eyes this field school is much more about knowledge than any type of monetary or career boosting gain. So how do Baron’s themes here change when we, students are given the role of folklorist? Is there a chance that we may be taken less seriously than someone older with more experience? Or do you think that the community members will be more comfortable collaborating with those less informed who lack preconceived expectations about their culture? In other words do you think that we as students are able to represent the cultures of these people in a purer way than a professional, career oriented folklorist?
2. Baron devotes a section of the article to the idea of framing cultures when representing them. He talks about the power of the stage, stating that “While the elevated stage can be constraining for folk performers and thus limit their interactions with audiences, it nevertheless serves as a dominant context for performance in most contemporary cultures.” Baron also quotes Daniel Sheehy by likening the stage to “putting a picture in a frame and hanging it on a wall”. In other words, the stage becomes a tool to help legitimize the art (72). He continues to enumerate the ways in which this framing can be used to diminish the distance between the artist and the audience by “fostering interaction with them”. I am majoring in cinema studies and plan to use my camera heavily in documenting the cultural traditions we will be examining during our stay. I believe that many of the ways in which artists can be framed on the stage can apply to the use of framing in terms of film and cinema. One thing that stood out to me in Baron’s article was the seemingly simple decision on how high to place the stage on which the cultural artists were performing in order to encourage the idea of it being a participatory event. With this in mind, I began to think about the ways in which camera techniques can influence and dictate audience opinion. Everything from camera angles to positioning to color adjustments to use of sound can affect the way in which an audience perceives what they are seeing. What are some techniques that can be used to encourage interaction and eliminate distance between the subject and the audience? How similar do you think the idea of framing on a stage is to framing with a camera?
With regards to the concept of “professionalism” that Baron focuses on, I’d suggest that there is more to its history in public folklore than career goals, advancement, and money—especially when it comes to the ethical tensions and trajectories that he explores. That said, your question about the “legitimacy” of students vs. “seasoned” pros when it comes to representation is a good one. Our hope is that this field school experience–from the readings/orientation, on through the actual fieldwork, and into the post-residency content creation–serves to answer your question. In some ways, this is a “learning by doing” situation, but we might also think about it as “doing by learning”…wherein a serious student has as much “professionalism” as an established scholar!
Your thoughts on cinematography and the technical aspects of “framing” embedded in documentation are spot on, and I’m hoping we’ll continue to discuss this as we move toward taking video in the field. Framing a shot has both poetic and political dimensions, thereby connecting ethics and aesthetics in complicated ways, and this is especially so when it comes to “representing” people and cultural practices. A concept that has always stood out for me is that of “ostranenie” or “defamiliarization”; it emerged from Russian Formalist poetry/photography/filmmaking/visual arts and has to do with getting an audience to look at common things in an unfamiliar way such that meaning/value becomes formally reframed. You can read more about it here, and we might employ the concept in order to extend your questions.
Sam, interesting comments on the issue of professionalism and what it permits or doesn’t permit. I believe that new understandings and appreciation often occurs outside of the reified thinking that can occur within professional or discipline based discourse. From the beginning ChinaVine included scholars and students, in the US and China, from a variety of fields and professions. Those of us associated with this field school are diverse in that regard as well. I believe this variety will contribute to fresh and hybridized perspectives around common purpose.
Regarding framing. Consider putting the camera in the hands of some of the people we will meet and/or take direction from them as to how to visually document what is occurring.