Bad Ethnography

pixmaven:

henry darger documentary “in the realms of the unreal”

i saw two versions of jessica yu’s documentary. she screened a working draft at the isabella stewart gardner museum in 2004. really, little is known about darger. he was essentially recluse, his neighbors barely spoke to him, and much of his life was shrouded in mystery because he just didn’t interact with people. i felt that maybe yu’s draft film was a little thin, but that was due to the very nature of darger’s life. if anything, i would have liked to have seen a closer focus on the actual artwork and just let the man remain abstract.

then i saw a screening of the final version of the boston museum of fine arts… and i hated it. it was rife with odd musical choices, talking head commentary stopping shy of mocking darger, cutesy animated versions of his drawings, with voice-over by a young dakota fanning. that wasn’t a documentary. it’d become a fluffy yet derisive narrative- something you might see on MTV or TLC, but definitely not a documentary.

i’d just finished a round of coursework concerned with ethnography and anthropology. one has to be careful how a subject is observed, data is recorded, and both later represented. objectivity is often hard and it’s incredibly easy to project your own ideas and feelings onto the subject by the very nature of how the subject is presented. rather than subjective speculation, just present the information without embellishments.

yu wasn’t producing a dry anthropological report - her aim was to entertain, i assume, in the same way errol morris entertains with his documentaries - however yu’s final film went too far into subjectivity. the talking heads were obviously manipulated by leading questions and edited in that typical “reality tv” way to artificially enhance anything remotely suspect. while great looking, the animations did nothing to enrich the story of darger’s life. they only reinforced the notion of darger as sheltered, delusional crackpot. fanning’s narration was the nail in the coffin- a vivian girl come to life. darger had become a pitiable clown.