Anthropological or ethnographic documentaries are a type of visual anthropology in film making. According to an article by Clifford Geertz, anthropology is the study of human groups in a society. This mode of documentary “does not explain everything…but it still explains something; and our attention shifts to isolating what that something is.” Ethnography is a tool in both anthropological and communication research which consists of observing a culture within their natural habitat and chronicling what you find there without altering the significance or happenings in a specific place. This is a helpful tool because it allows researchers to observe cultures different from their own and make unbiased assumptions on how they live day to day. Ethnographic documentaries do this same thing. While they do not alter or change anything in the society, like in all documentary film, the presence of a camera alters how those observing act. According to Max Weber, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” This is an interesting way to explain this mode of documentary storytelling because it allows audiences to understand that these documentaries, while on the surface are objective, they do contain interpretation.
Some documentaries have more interpretation than others. For example Ilisha Barbash’s Sweetgrass documents life as a shepherd in the mountains of Montana in 2003. With slow languid images of sheep or farm life, there is not a lot of room for interpretation, Just observation. However, other more specific documentaries like Ax Fight, editing plays a role in how it is viewed. In this documentary a tribe is shown hosting another tribe in their territory. When there is a dispute among the two clans a fight breaks out amongst them. The film shows it in four ways: the first just observing them, the second with some context, the third with the background information and reasoning behind the fight, and then a final edited version. Each edited version takes on a new significance as the editing changes the meaning of the Ax fight itself.
For my 3rd documentary mode activity, I picked the anthropological/ ethnographic mode of film making because it is an extremely interesting way of delving into a world that is different than yours. I created a comic strip that depicts the evolving life and activity of those in a fandom. Fandom, for these purposes, refers to the unabashed obsession with television series, comic books, movies, etc that fanboys and fangirls feel all around the world. I chose this topic because I feel like it is an interesting culture that gets a lot of criticism in and out of the culture itself.
For the activity, I borrowed comics made by very talented artists on the internet, as I cannot draw at all, and added my own commentary. In my comic it shows a person in the beginning throws of an obsession. It begins by finishing a seven season television show in three to five days, for example. It then escalades into a need to know everything about the topic and people thinking you are crazy. My comic ends with them deciding to go to a convention in order to meet friends who also love what they love. If I were making a real documentary, it would obviously follow them to the convention and observe the fandom in their natural habitat so to speak.