 |
|
    |
 |
||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Whither?I have now created a conceptual tangle. I have uttered a mouthful. However, one could write it as a single sentence: Shooting documents, reveals, validates, publicizes, mystifies, constructs, dramatizes, violates, (dis)embodies, and complicates. The sentence is probably a little dizzying, and this romp through shooting contexts may be too much like a roller coaster ride. But conducting field research and working among performing and media artists is like that, so if you feel disoriented, you have done a good job of stepping inside the zone that I sometimes inhabit as a field researcher and consultant. As if rites, by themselves, were not confounding enough, I have multiplied the complexity by considering rites as objects and contexts of photographic and cinematic activity. But to what end? With what implications? I conclude with suggestions and provocations—the beginning, not the conclusion, of a conversation or debate: 1. Shooting, and all that it has come to represent here, is not going away. Not only religious rites, but virtually everything on the planet, has, or will have, a recording device pointed at it, for good and for ill. 2. As scholars and teachers we should learn to think and act not only in or with media and art but also between the media and among the arts. 3. This between-space is infested with a thick knot of issues not neatly separable into ethics and aesthetics, economics and religion, or any of the other neat polarizations that usually give us comfort. 4. Because a neatly sectored model of culture is no longer viable, neither are curriculum models that over-value departmentalization. 5. Because shooting now regularly appears on both sides of the line that once separated practitioners and researchers, the models for research must necessarily be collaborative and interdisciplinary. 6. The false split between those who perform or participate, on the one hand, and those who think or theorize, on the other, is a major deterrent to good scholarship. 7. So let it be said: Scholars, rise up and seize the means of production. Forget television and shoot for the classroom. Learn to shoot and edit as you once, in the far-distant past, learned to use word-processors. As Martin Luther surely ought to have said, "Shoot bravely." ENDNOTES 1. Ronald L. Grimes, Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976). 2. Gathering up Again: Fiesta in Santa Fe, directed by Jeanette DeBouzek and Diane Reyna. VHS. (Documentary, 1992). 3. See Walter Edwards, Modern Japan Though Its Weddings: Gender, Person, and Society in Ritual Portrayal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989). 4. Reported by Paul Adjin-Tetty. 5. See Ronald L. Grimes, "Consuming Ritual: A&E's Sacred Rites and Rituals," in Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology, ed. Cele Otnes et al. (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004). 6. James Van Der Zee et al., The Harlem Book of the Dead (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgan & Morgan, 1978). 7. In the foreword of The Harlem Book of the Dead. 8. See Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974). 9. Triumph of the Will, dir. by Leni Riefenstahl (Documentary/propaganda, 1935). 10. Olympiad Part 2: Festival of Beauty, dir. by Leni Riefenstahl. (Documentary-art, 1938). 11. For an exploration of Riefenstahl's films and their behind-the-scenes dynamics, see The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, dir by Ray Muller. Documentary (New York, 1993). 12. See Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 13. Lucy R. Lippard, ed., Partial Recall (New York: New Press, 1992). 14. M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 15. Since this lecture is named in his honor, one might, for example, try to imagine Aidan Kavanagh's response to such photos. See his Elements of Rite: A Handbook of Liturgical Style (New York: Pueblo, 1982). 16. See Ronald L Grimes, "Ritual and Performance," in Encyclopedia of Religion and American Cultures, ed. Gary Laderman et al. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC Clio, 2003). 17. See chapters 2 and 4 in the "bonus materials" section called "The Journey of The Apostle" in The Apostle, dir. by Robert Duvall (Feature film, 1998). RECOMMENDED READING Banks, Marcus. "Representing the Bodies of the Jains," in Rethinking Visual Anthropology, ed. Howard Morphy et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Brown, Justine. Hollywood Utopia. Vancouver: New Star, 2002. Martin, Joel W. "Redeeming America: Rocky as Ritual Racial Drama." in Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film, ed. Joel W. Martin et al., 125-33. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. Morgan, David, and Sally M. Promey, eds. The Visual Culture of American Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Plate, S. Brent, ed. Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross Cultural Reader. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Sekula, Allan. "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning," in Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin, 84-109. London: Macmillan Education, 1987. Ron Grimes is Professor of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and holder of the Chair of Ritual Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (the Netherlands). One of the founding editors of the Journal of Ritual Studies, he is the author of several books, including Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage (University of California Press), Readings in Ritual Studies (Prentice Hall), and Rite Out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts (forthcoming, spring 2006, Oxford University |
||||||
 |
||||||
|
Academics | Admissions | Alumni | Works | Listen | Look | Contact | Index | Home | Yale University
|