Carrie Reese
In "The Dreamworld of Cinematic Travel," Jennifer Peterson cites Marie Louise Pratt's idea of "contact zones" defined as "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other (Pratt in Peterson 8). This idea of the contact zone is useful in two areas of study: the contact of mass audience with elite, aesthetic beauty and the contact between levels of the racial, cultural hierarchy, especially during travelogue production. I want to analyze these contact zones to try and place the conception of Benjamin's "dreamworld" into the literal landscapes that actually provide an aesthetic purpose rather than educational one. Like Peterson, I agree with the idea that the travelogues actually function to promote mythical views rather than realistic ones; however, with study, these myths may reveal more about early film culture than any 'realist' piece of non-fiction footage. However, instead of revealing information about the culture they feature, they reveal information bout the culture that made them.
To begin, I want to address the production confrontations between euro-centric filmmakers and the "ethnic other." While the Exotic Europe travelogues we briefly saw in class included portraits of Italy and France, these western cultures are made exotic through marketing and a focus on their differences from the US. One might contrast these against war pictures that are shot in France or Germany which do not make the cultures exotic; in fact, to the untrained eye it is difficult to distinguish the difference between a British, French, German, or US army. However, the landscape portraits of Europe are unquestionably European and provide scenes of city centers that are based around rivers—an old-world tradition that is not as common a scene in the US.
Travelogues focus on creating difference rather than exploring similarity. While landscapes might be the focus of the dreamworld, the land represents territories, which then represent people and culture.Song of Ceylon and Grass do not fit into the distinct definition of Peterson's travelogue genre, but they are examples of cultural exchange and the creation of impression through a camera-culture contact zone.Song of Ceylon "silences" the Ceylonese and reduces them to an image (Guynn) while Grass is a more politically correct story. Instead of silencing a culture, it gives the people a voice. This is especially effective through the more distant, removed filmmaking rather than the process of "assimilation" which Basil Wright tried with his portrait of the Ceylonese. The concept of othering might be applied to the early travelogues as they assume exoticism of any culture that is not American (at least in Peterson's writing, which focuses on US audiences). Ironically, especially in the case of early Pathe films, French-produced travelogues might have 'othered' their own country so that it is marketable in the visual tourism market of US filmgoing.
Cultural clash or "othering" also occurs within the cultural consumption of US audiences. Pierre Bourdieu wrote that "art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating differences" (Bourdieu in Peterson 10). While differences between so-called exotic, ethnic cultures and the audience that watches them on film might be significant, the difference between US "elite" audiences and "mass" audiences create equally impressionable distinctions. (The elitist quality of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's writing on the culture industry especially speaks to this idea.) When introduced to new exotic lands through filmic tourism, the mass audiences of the US create the idea that the once aesthetically distinguished images of landscape in travelogues are now commonplace. They become commodified through film distribution. Likewise, the people of these landscapes become commodities. Peterson writes that "The chaos of the real, it seems, is managed by the rigid formulas of the genre." (18) But, however real the original pictures of landscape and people might be, the formulations of the genre in fact mythologize the land and people. Putting labels on culture—like calling the peoples in Grass Iranian—begins to create stereotypes (even despite efforts to be politically correct). Through this attempt to create categories, the idea of "the real" is erased. The indexical link to reality is broken and instead, dreamworlds appear. Instead of educating the mass public through an understanding of visual tourism, a 'taste of sense' takes over where the 'taste of reflection' is lost (Kantian idea in Bourdieu's, Distinction). Generic conventions shaped these films and their viewers' expectations. What may have begun as an educational genre turned into a genre of aesthetic appreciation. Travelogues placed the idea of aesthetic form over the function of cultural understanding. A further look into audience reception and response to these films might reveal more about this idea. However, with the ideas I have gleaned from Peterson's article, this is my understanding of the audience reception of early travelogues.
Peterson categorizes travelogues as dreamworlds. So what is the significance of studying these films and their reception? The indexical link to early cultures in these early films is perhaps not the most forthright way to study "other" cultures' histories. (Understandings of our own cultural history through "local" films would, on the other hand, be an appropriate way to examine cultural evolution). Instead, the idea of "awakening from the dream" (8) might provide a better metaphor for how to study this early genre. Emphasizing dream over world places travelogues into a borderline category somewhere between non-fiction and fiction. They seem to fall into the same aesthetic traditions that allowed Tom Gunning to associate early cinema with the avant-garde; in this sense of association, Peterson's idea of the travelogue as unconscious "minor cinema" might be relevant in this sense. The idea of minor cinema is especially useful if studying travelogues from a historical position; the generic conventions might provide a framework of cultural exchange that can be followed to read which ideas about certain cultures form impressions on both the filmmakers and audiences. Studying the generic patters, one might also discover the levels of cultural translation and stereotyping that occur within the borderline "contact zones."
The multiple levels of cultural contact that are contained within the study of early travelogues provide a multifaceted portrait of history that might contribute to a greater understanding of early cinema audiences and how they formulated ideas of nationhood and culture. The encounter with other lands and people becomes centered on aesthetics rather than function. Perhaps this is seen in the struggle to define documentary—what are the educational implications of aesthetics? Can aesthetics bring a message to an audience without disrupting their original purpose of beauty? Additionally, aesthetics might problematize the idea of culture: can a territory/landscape define a nation? As Peterson acknowledges, travelogues still do bring an educational aspect to the audience (21). Some might even be compared to the 'city symphony'. But despite this, there are many questions that arise in these early cinematic portraits that are left to be explored.
I am particularly interested in this topic because of my interest the idea of "contact zones" along the various levels of filmmaking. The director I am interested in investigating, Francois Reichenbach, has filmed several modern-day "travelogues" that might be seen in light of the cinema verité tradition. His film L'Amerique Insolite (1960, aka Bizarre America aka America as Seen by a Frenchman) includes portraits of an exoticized America. This is amusing in some cases as he reads the "exotic dreamworld" onto the American culture--I have included captioned stills below that might provide an idea of the "bizarre America" he has developed. (Not all of his film revolves around food but these are perhaps some of the more stereotypical images.)
"The children are not happy unless they get their dessert"
"The little American's first encounter with love"