In reading this last chapter of Transcultural Cinema, I was most struck my MacDougall’s discussion of the difference between ethnographic writing and film. Part of me is always frustrated by these comparisons because they often feel like an either or situation in which someone is trying to prove why one medium is better than the other. This was definitely true at the What is Radio? Conference. There was a lot of discussion about why radio is superior to all other mediums, which I found elitist and hindering to interdisciplinary work. This connects directly to projects we are looking at this week as many of them focus on cross-discipline working environments and transmedia products. I’ve mentioned this before, but I think in today’s environment, arts organizations need to be talking in terms of collaboration instead of competition. I remember at the Oregon Arts Summit there were many talks about how to compete for resources in today’s economy, but no one ever mentioned sharing resources. I believe it is these transmedia interdisciplinary projects that will thrive today.
However, it seems that MacDougall’s aim is not to prove that film is better than writing, but to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each. According to MacDougall, the main advantage of film is that it can capture all the details, including the everyday life, which is difficult to cover in writing because of economy. He also states that “Written descriptions express what can be grasped in their own languages” (p.246). I found that second point particularly poignant because images do not need words to have power. This reminds me of the movie Babies, which had no narration or dialogue, but was able to compare the environments of children growing up in different countries purely through visual elements. Furthermore, the filmmakers were able to direct the viewers’ attention to observe the environment from the babies’ perspectives by composing the shots to focus on the babies only. This demonstrates how film can attempt to get viewers to think outside of their perspectives. However, I also think that many assumptions can be made when viewing a film based on personal experience especially without further description. To quote Diane Arbus, ““A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” Or Lynn Hershman Leeson: “The closer you get to what you think something is, the more evident it becomes that it’s also an illusion.” Thus, I would caution against assuming that a picture is self-explanatory and posit that further description through narration is often necessary. Furthermore as a poet, I find that writing can often get to the heart of the matter quicker than a visual medium. I believe the power of a visual medium is an understanding that builds rather than digs. This is connected to MacDougall’s description of the value of the “quick” as tender, alive, sensitive, and exposing nerves. I believe all of these things can be captures by both writing and visual mediums. However, as stated, this isn’t a superiority contest, thus these two mediums can be used to complement each other so that understanding comes from both an observational and personal level. I hope this is what we can achieve with our projects,though I feel the multimedia elements would need to be more integrated (rather than just video supported by text) to really gather a fully sensory response from visitors.