Philosophy for a Diorama and Documentary

 

Hall of African Mammals, American Museum of Natural History, New York. Public Domain.

The diorama(often composed of taxidermied animals, props, and paint) has been a longtime staple of the museum-- often regarded as a “morality play on nature,” the diorama reflects ideological values, displays institutionalized messages, and invents nature through a rehearsal of scientific spectacle. I argue that the museum diorama and the documentary film are kindred art objects through Kracouer’s definition of the “material reality,” or as he also refers to it as,“nature.”

Encounters with both documentary and diorama engage power relationships between active viewers and passive objects; their displays reflect our curiosity. Animals and film are constructed entities that reflect ideology-based decorum- the focus on “nature” in both mediums creates an “authentic” experience in which viewers’ preexisting ideals are reinforced. The co-creation of truth and beauty that is the intent of diorama and film produce a “nature” in which a romanticized reality is the only acceptable way of learning. The artistic, and at times ironic, sub-genre of “rogue taxidermy” (also frequently known as bad taxidermy) is not present in museums, just as the self-aware, homemade, “bad” documentary film is not shown in theaters. There is no room for imperfect specimens. 

Both mediums rely on the myth of “Mechanical Objectivity,” as demonstrated by the early 1900s wildlife photographer Osa Johnson, who wrote, “the camera cannot be deceived…[and therefore it has] enormous scientific value.” Most diorama artists rely on this "mechanical objectivity" when utilizing images as references for their art. However, Johnson also distinguishes between a “snapshot” and a “photograph,” with a snapshot being undesirable when photographing wildlife, as it is in essence a “bad” photo- one where the animal was startled by the human’s presence, drawing attention to our imposition into their “nature.” Similarly, in documentary film, it is rare to see this “breaking of the fourth wall.” Both of these undesirable effects prove the falsity of mechanical objectivity- although the camera is an object, it is still at mercy of ideological and individual expectations of itself. 

Similar to sculptures, dioramas and film offer a material intrusion into the space of the viewer. However, the silence that they offer in return means that tangible intra-actions are an impossibility between the viewer and object. To quote Dr. David Getsy, notable art historian and theorist, “I have real relations with an illusion, or, if you prefer, my true distance from the block of marble has been confused with my imaginary distance from the image it represents.” In essence, the sculpture, as well as the diorama and the documentary film, are corporeal, spatial, and re-represented objects. 

The diorama and the documentary are both indistinguishable from the cultural confines that have led to its creation(for the taxidermied animal, its re-creation). Therefore, defining a “material reality” or “nature” that they both reflect is pointless as it does not exist. Film and diorama are no better than, or no more intelligent than, art or theatre, in fact, they are products of both of them. If film and taxidermy are not art, or the experience of engaging with a diorama or documentary is not theatre, then what is it?

Sources:

Giovanni Aloi "Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene." 2018.

Getsy, David "Acts of Stillness." 2014.

Johnson, Osa. "Prospectus to the American Museum" 1923.

Kracauer, Siegfriend. "Basic Concepts." 

Geography as Montage

 

Olive M Meadow

Professor Simpson

ENGL 342 – History and Theory of Documentary Film

1 September 2020

Response Paper: 2 September, How to do a shot analysis, “Beyond the Shot,” “On Editing,” and “Basic Concepts”

 

            The cityscape is a physical extension of the community’s history. The materials that make up roads, buildings, transportation take the citizen and tourist alike on a historical and geographic tour of the city itself. Wooden floors, better at retaining heat, may indicate a cooler climate, while stone tile is a symptom of warmer environs. In Juneau, as in Seattle, San Francisco, and Hong Kong, the steep roads climbing from waterfront tell of a time before motorized cars, when horse and foot traffic dominated the scene. City blocks in perfect squares or radials stand in opposition from older, meandering streets and alleys. One cannot extract function and history from single aspects, single frames of the city; together, however, the city is an urban montage.

            Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein examines the cinematic characteristics of Japanese script and art in his essay “Beyond the Shot,” an excerpt from the 1949 book Film Form. His first and foremost claim is simple: cinema is montage. The combination of representable objects makes the Japanese language, make the cityscape, make montage. These objects often have little to nothing to do with each other, and yet, they form a single, understandable thought: a mouth and a bird make song, a knife and a heart make sorrow, a workers’ charge and a butcher’s assault make defeat, a cathedral and a hill make a Catholic community.

            It is important to examine the capturing of these objects, however. German theorist Siegfried Kracauer explains the production and properties of film in “Basic Concepts,” taken from his 1960 Theory of Film. Photography is the predecessor to film. It was expected that film would replace photography, and that its main purpose would be to capture movement in nature: wind blowing in the leaves, ocean waves, a shrub growing over days and weeks. Thus, film is equipped to reveal physical reality. However, there are different realities: a stage play, a painting, and the world in front of us are all different, though they can all be perceived. Film is meant to portray our physical reality, our actuality. Film cannot do this, however; a camera simply cannot capture reality. It therefore only captures and reveals “camera-reality,” one similar to our own but altogether different. Realism is a part of social structure which the camera seeks to capture but cannot. This is the aesthetic of film, documentary or not: the collection of camera-reality is different from any other medium.

Movement and editing (montage) are the two most important aspects of this camera-reality. Movement is concerned especially with space: where is an object, and how does it interact with its surroundings? Montage, however, is concerned with the audience: editing is the deliberate guidance of the spectator. Vsevolod Pudovkin, another Soviet, examines this relationship in “On Editing” (1954, from Film Technique). Cinematographers are mainly concerned with directing the audience’s attention in one direction or another, and editors weave these directions together to tell the story both directly and with the psychological connections two shots may form.

I would like to draw attention, however, to the difference between Eisenstein’s interpretation of montage and Pudvokin’s. While Pudovkin claims that montage is simply a series, a chain of shots, a façade of bricks, that present an idea serially, Eisenstein claims that conflict is the heart of montage. Collision between shots, between geographies, is the basis of every art form and is the basis of any audience’s understanding of the montage itself. Therefore, to look at a city as if it were a Pudovkin-esque series would not expound any important meaning whatsoever: the city is a collision of geographies, of nature-cultures, of community interactions. The houses in front of me, climbing Mount Juneau and Starr Hill, seek height for reason of view or of safety from wind or waves or houseless Franklin Street inhabitants. These houses conflict with my own home, Mendenhall Tower Apartments, in a row on 4^th Street with the Dimond Courthouse, the Alaska State Capitol, and the Alaska State Office Building. Mendenhall Tower is tied for tallest building in Southeast with its sister building Tongass Towers Condominiums in Ketchikan. Further still, these “skyscrapers” (I’m not sure that 135 feet qualifies as a skyscraper…) conflict with the massifs of Mount Juneau and Mount Roberts towering over half a mile above, though built on the face and not below it, it might be argued that the city is a part of the mountain. The urban environment is a montage captured not on film, not in camera-reality, but within our hegemonic understanding of “reality,” but does that make it any more real?

Representing Juneau

In early June of this year, one of the largest anti-racist protests in Juneau was organized largely by word of mouth and reportedly involved "several hundred people."  Long standing racial discrimination issues--from public education to criminal justice--detrimentally effect life in this community and one of the repeated chants at this protest was, "Juneau is not immune."  Here, the biologic language of the pandemic intertwined with the social language of national solidarity against systemic racism, insisting that communities, too, are just as life-threatening as the virus.  This photograph, taken by a reporter standing above the protest, highlights the creativity of the signs at the protest--language, imagery, crowds, and song, remain vital instruments for imaging future social change through the expression of rage, anger, and grief.  What have been the most impactful representations of social change you have seen this summer and do they utilize traditional, experimental, or new forms of "documenting" reality?

Here are the links to the films we watched in class today: Feeling My Way, 7BPM, Everywhere at Once