Representation in Les maîtres fous

In Les maîtres fous and Of Mimicry and White Man: A Psychoanalysis of Jean Rouche’s Les Maîtres Fous, what I found very thought-provoking (aside from the obvious subject matter), was the issue of what medium to use when conducting anthropological research. The article discusses Rouche’s choice of using film to document the Hauka movement, and it brought to mind the question: how do anthropologists decide what medium to use when conducting research? Surely they weigh the options (film, written, voice recording, etc.) to determine what will give them the most fair representation of their research, but how do they ultimately know what will represent their study most accurately? And how can they be certain that their own input isn’t taking away from the subject they are describing?

In the case of Les maîtres fous, what struck me as the most frustrating was Rouche’s simplification of the Hauka movement in his commentary. As the article put it, it seemed as though the Africans were “laboratory subjects and insects.” If Rouche felt so convicted about film being the right medium for this project, why did he feel he needed to insert his own ideas and analyses into the project? I feel that if the film would have been presented without the steady stream of commentary attempting to describe what was going on, it would perhaps have allowed to viewer to form their own thoughts regarding the very intimate event shown.

I was also interested in the fact that Rouche chose only to film a single event from a very complex culture. Had he chosen a macroscopic view and focused on studying the entire culture of the Africans in the film instead of just one event, I think it would have been more respectful to the people being observed and perhaps allowed to viewer to gain a broader sense of understanding of who these people were and why they did what they did. When we are only shown a specific instance of something from a foreign culture, and that instance happens to be very different than social norms from our own culture, we will likely not be as open or willing to understand that culture as a whole. We automatically draw our own conclusions and our guards go up. However, if we are given a chance to understand who these people are and see what moves and drives them, we likely won’t be so quick to dismiss something they do that seems strange to us.