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Thick Inscription and the Unwitting Witness: Reading the Films of Alfred Haddon and Baldwin Spencer

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08949468.2013.834790

1545-5920

Paul Henley,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

Abstract Due to the ability of a cine-camera to record more than the filmmaker realizes at the moment of filming—a quality referred to here as "thick inscription"—it is often possible, many years later and in the light of subsequent comparative ethnography or changing historical circumstances, to reinterpret the ethnographic significance of film footage in terms that go well beyond those imagined by the original filmmaker. In the course of a detailed analysis of their films and in combination with a comparison of their filmmaking practices, this article will show how this principle applies to the work of Alfred Haddon and Baldwin Spencer, two of the most important early practitioners of ethnographic filmmaking. The article concludes with a brief appraisal of their cinematographic legacy. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the many colleagues who have commented on this article or who have made suggestions regarding relevant literature. Among these, some have been particularly generous, including Philip Batty, Ian Dunlop, Michael Eaton, Jason Gibson, Anita Herle, Howard Morphy, Michael O'Hanlon and Alison Petch. However, I am all too aware that in rushing in where regional specialists may have feared to tread, I am likely to have committed all kinds of ethnographic errors. Of course, I take full responsibility for all of these. I am also particularly indebted to Mary Morris and Valerie Brown of Museum Victoria, Melbourne, and to David Atfield and Clare Norton of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia for making available the Spencer and Gillen images used in this article; as well as to Peter Blore of the University of Manchester Media Centre for drawing the maps and to Mark Dickerson and his colleagues at the Balfour Library in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, for the help they gave in tracking down some of the more obscure literature on which this research project has been based. Notes In older texts, including those of Haddon, the convention is to refer to the Straits in the plural, but here I have adopted the modern practice of using the singular, as in The Times Atlas of the World. The Strait is named after the Spanish seaman, Luis Váez de Torres, who was the first European to navigate through it in 1606. For a brief ethnographic account of the Torres Strait Islanders, see Beckett [Citation1987]. The Arrernte were then the largest Aboriginal group in Central Australia [Morton Citation1991]. Spencer referred to them in his writings as the "Arunta," and somewhat later they became known as the "Aranda" in the anthropological literature; but "Arrernte" is now the generally accepted name for this group. It was Geertz who first introduced "thick description" into anthropological discourse, borrowing this term from the linguistic philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Geertz [Citation1973] used it to refer to ethnographic descriptions in which the meanings of social actions are exhaustively interpreted. Meanwhile visual media, I suggest, provide an exhaustive "inscription" of the physical world in the manner of laboratory equipment, as described by Latour [Citation1987] in his studies of scientific practices. Spencer Papers H2, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford; cf. Long and Laughren [Citation1993: 35]. I am grateful to David MacDougall for first drawing the existence of Haddon's letter to Spencer to my attention, and to Elizabeth Edwards for pointing me in the direction of Long and Laughren's equally important short article. According to the late Stephen Peet, a well-known British documentarist whose grandfather was a missionary on Mer, Haddon also had family connections with the Torres Strait missionary Samuel Macfarlane, who also encouraged Haddon to go there [Michael Eaton, personal communication, January 12, 2012]. The photographic equipment included both half-plate and quarter-plate black-and-white negative cameras. Haddon also took along equipment for making color photos, based on the Ives and Joly system that had been patented only the previous year, 1897. However, he laments in his diary that this proved to be "of little practical value," suggesting that he could not make the system work; certainly no color photographs were ever produced by the expedition. The phonographs were of two different kinds, one an Edison "Home," and the other a Columbia "Bijou." They were used to make around 100 recordings, now deposited in the British Institute of Recorded Sound [Long and Laughren Citation1993: 34; Edwards Citation1997: 15, 30 n. 6]. This estimate of the running time is based on the following calculation: 30 rolls of 75 ft. gives a total of 2250 ft.; given that there are 16 frames per ft. in 35 mm film and the N & G Kinematograph was supposed to be operated at 16 f.p.s. ("silent speed," though the exact speed depended on the rate at it which the mechanism was cranked by the operator), this represents 2250 secs. or 37.5 mins. of running time. At £1 per min. the cost of this stock was the same as the weekly wage of a London dock-worker in 1898. See http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1898/jun/17/naval-stores. Cf. Philp [Citation2004: 106 n. 4]. The "Royal" adjective was added to the name of the Anthropological Institute when it was granted royal patronage in 1907. The screening at the Pathological Laboratory was reported in The Optical Lantern and Cinematograph Journal, [p. 64 of the January 1906 edition]. I am very grateful to the early cinema researcher Tony Fletcher for this reference. Long and Laughren [1993: 35] suggest that Haddon may have taken the shot of Torres Strait pearl-fishing boats offered for sale in the Citation1901 catalog of the Warwick Trading Company (makers of the Bioscope camera that Haddon had recommended to Spencer). But this is impossible: first, because, as they themselves point out, the shot involves a pan, and Haddon did not have this facility on his tripod; secondly, the shot was taken on Thursday Island, the main pearl-fishing center in the Strait, and there is no record that Haddon used a cine-camera anywhere other than on Mer. It is even possible that the Aboriginal dance performance was filmed before the Islanders' dance. Although it comes at the end of the DVD of Haddon's material that is now distributed by the University of Cambridge, it is clear that in general the material on this DVD is not in the chronological order in which it was originally shot since the fire-making was the first thing that Haddon shot and it only appears midway through the DVD. Some evidence for the Aboriginal dancing having been shot first lies in the fact that all the Aboriginal dance shots and the first two shots of the Islander dance have been executed from more-or-less the same camera position [Figures 3, part A, and 4], whereas the third and final Islander shot has been taken from a slightly different camera position [Figure 3, part B]. The boat in the background has also moved further away in the final Islander shot, being now almost hidden by the foliage. The most economical explanation for all this would be that the Islander material was shot second; otherwise one would have to posit that having completed his filming of the Islander dancing with a shot from a new position, Haddon then moved the camera back to the initial position in order to shoot the Aboriginal material. This is clearly not impossible, merely less likely. Another circumstantial indication that Haddon might have started with the Aboriginal dancing, though equally inconclusive, is that in his personal journal entry for the week in question, he refers to the Aboriginal dancing as particularly important and does not even mention the Islander dancing [Long and Laughren Citation1993: 34]. It is possible that Haddon over-emphasized the degree to which the Malo-Bomai cult had been abandoned. Although it was certainly vigorously suppressed by the Samoan preachers of the London Missionary Society over the period when Haddon was visiting Mer, Jeremy Beckett reports that under the more tolerant regime of the Anglicans, who took over in 1915, some of the Malo-Bomai rites could come out in the open again as "ambiguous folklore" [Beckett Citation1987: 117]. [Herle Citation1998]; cf. also the excellent close-up sequences of the masks in the final section of Michael Eaton's film [Citation2010]. He is also said to have laid down "Malo's Law," which, among other things, established the principle of property ownership and therefore in recent times assumed particular importance in the legal case that the Mer Islanders brought against the Australian government in which they claimed that their land rights were based on customary principles [Sharp Citation1998]. Haddon refers to the first of these characters as "Malu," though in more modern texts he is referred to as "Malo." Haddon and Myers note the ambiguity about the identity of Malo-Bomai, but appear to favor the interpretation that Bomai was merely a more sacred name for Malo—even though elsewhere Haddon reproduces mythological accounts in which they are clearly distinguished [compare Haddon Citation1908a: 33–40, 42–46 with Haddon and Myers Citation1908: 281–282]. For a more recent view clearly distinguishing between the two characters, see Sharp [Citation1993: 29]. Michael Eaton [personal communication, January 12, 2012] reports that Ron Day, a prominent Mer Islander, told him that the leading zogo-le would place his foot on the head of the initiands, an action which Day suggested was analogous to the "laying-on of hands" in Christian ritual. But as Day also suggested that Malo was the Merian equivalent of Moses, one clearly has to allow for the fact that his account had probably been influenced by Christian ideas. It has to be said that the photos are really rather poor and taken from a considerable distance; cf. pl. XXV in Vol. 6 of the Expedition Reports. By the time of Haddon's arrival only Wasikor still existed; Nemau had been burnt during the course of a dispute between the Islanders and the Polynesian crew of a bêche-de-mer boat back in the 1860s, prior to missionization [Haddon and Myers Citation1908: 296]. [Haddon and Myers Citation1908: 306-07]. I am grateful to Anita Herle for drawing my attention to the existence of the photo showing the re-enactment of the Malo-Bomai dance at Gazir, in the Cambridge Torres Strait archive (catalog no. P.947.ACH1). [Haddon Citation1908a: 37 and 43; cf. Sharp Citation1993: 29; Citation1998: 183]. Yet another potential complication is that given that this performance was re-enacted for the camera at Kiam, the Malo mask should not have been present since, according to tradition, it should not have left Gazir on the opposite side of the island [Haddon and Myers 1908a: 306 n. 1]. [Haddon Citation1901: 47–48, 60]. Traditionally Merian men's genitalia were not covered, but they were not "nude" in that they wore many other forms of body decoration, including belts, leg- and arm-bands, necklaces and various ear and nose ornaments. Many of these were made on the mainland of New Guinea and imported through trade links [Haddon Citation1908b, Citation1912]. Compare Haddon and Myers [Citation1908: 289] with Haddon [Citation1912: 59–61, also pl. VIII and XVIII]. The Museum Victoria has prepared an excellent website, Spencer & Gillen: A journey through Aboriginal Australia, that "showcases notebooks, films, audio recordings, illustrations and photographs collected during Spencer and Gillen's studies in anthropology between 1875 and Citation1912" [http://spencerandgillen.net/]. The stock is reported to have cost £50 [Cantrill and Cantrill Citation1982: 29] and on the basis of the calculation made in relation to Haddon's footage (note 7 above), I estimate that 3000 feet of stock (i.e., 20 × 150 ft rolls) would have amounted to approximately 50 minutes of running time. In addition to the cost of purchasing the stock, one should also add the cost of processing which, in fact, was more than double the cost of the stock itself. I know of no direct records of the processing charges, but Gillen refers to a bill for almost £84 for processing 2000 feet, i.e., around 33 minutes [cf. Griffiths Citation2002: 150, 371 n. 62, 372 n. 69]. To my regret, I have not had an opportunity to view Spencer's Citation1912 film material but, judging by the images reproduced in Batty et al. [Citation2005], I note a similarly striking decline in the quality of the photos that Spencer took on this expedition compared to those he had taken earlier. Spencer explains that the term "corroboree," derived from an Aboriginal language spoken around Port Jackson, New South Wales, early in the colonial period, had come to be used throughout Australia to refer to this kind of ceremony. The Arrernte term for events of this kind he gives as altherta or indada [Spencer Citation1928: 230]. Spencer and Gillen themselves suggest [1912: 237] that this filming took place in the first few days of June 1901, but this is certainly an error. [Batty et al. Citation2005: 46–51; Spencer and Gillen Citation1912: 239–240]. I am grateful to Jason Gibson for pointing out [personal communication, Febuary 13, 2012] that although Spencer and Gillen also made recordings of tjitjingalla songs on the wax-cylinder phonograph, these were not made in Alice Springs at the time of filming but rather at their camp on Stevenson Creek on March 22, 1901, several weeks beforehand. [Spencer Citation1928: 235]. Alison Petch [personal communication, January 16, 2012] reminded me that the source for this figure of the number of people present was written almost three decades after the events to which it relates, and should therefore be treated with a certain degree of caution. Even so, I think that one can still make the general point that Spencer's audiovisual record would have been only weakly representative of the real event. Both the ordering and the number of dances shown on the Museum Victoria DVD are rather different from the sequence described by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill on the basis of a viewing of Spencer's material deposited in the National Film Archive of Australia [Cantrill and Cantrill Citation1982]. In total, the Cantrills describe eight shots, two dedicated to the preparation scene and one to the relaxation scene, as on the DVD supplied to me by Museum Victoria. But there are then five shots of dancing, whereas the DVD offers only three. From a careful comparison between their descriptions and the material on the DVD, particularly in relation to running times and camera positions, it is possible to match three of the dances that they describe with those on the DVD. However, for two of the dances that the Cantrills describe there are no corresponding dances on the DVD. Unfortunately, although their technical descriptions are very precise, the Cantrills give very little ethnographic information about form and nature of the dancing in these two additional shots. Regrettably, I am therefore unable to include them in this analysis. Cantrill and Cantrill [Citation1982: 33] surmise that the man approaching in the background is being instructed to remove himself from the shot, while Alison Petch [personal communication, January 16, 2012] speculates that the action happening off-screen to the right might have been Gillen telling the man to do just that. Spencer collected two of these dance sticks, now held at Museum Victoria. Images of them can be seen on the website of Jason Gibson, Senior Research Coordinator at the Museum [http://museumvictoria.com.au/about/mv-blog/sep-2011/following-the-travelling-tjitjingalla/]. See Morphy [Citation2005] for similar arguments regarding Spencer and Gillen's photographic methods. [Spencer Citation1928: 235–236]. Roth provides a less vivid but very similar account of this phase of the ceremony [Citation1897: 124–125]. For a brief ethnographic account of the Dieri and Arrernte, see Morton [Citation1991: 16–19 and 49]. It is perhaps on account of the gender of kánini that the Pitta-pitta performance of this ceremony, as described by Roth, concluded with a single performer dancing while holding a flat, oval-shaped piece of wood, covered with feather-down on both sides, that he swayed before him and which was intended to depict female genitalia (Roth Citation1897:125: see also Figure 9, part B, no. 308). In a later account Spencer adds that this dance step was "exactly like a goose step" [Citation1928: 233], but here it would appear that his memory is betraying him since, in the film material, the performers merely move their legs up and down vertically and do not fling their lower leg forwards at the same time, as is normally associated with goose-step marching. Additional informationNotes on contributorsPaul Henley PAUL HENLEY is a social anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. He has been the Director of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester since its foundation in 1987. Recently he published a major study of the cinematographic methods of Jean Rouch, The Adventure of the Real [University of Chicago Press, 2009].