|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The above
describes an extract taken from a video diary made by
Ruth, a young, British woman. Ruth's admission to camera
(and within a video diary which she believes may well end
up being broadcast on national television) that she has
to whisper, because what she wants to say is very
personal, brings up some of the questions which I aim to
address in this piece. In particular, I want to discuss
some of the issues which arise both in relation to
treating (as I do in my own work) such video-diary
material as research "data", and in terms of notions
about "empowering" the research subject to "tell her own
story" so to speak. What is the status of the video
diary? Are we to think of video diaries as "factual" or
as works of "fiction"? As "captured" or as constructed
realities? As giving us more or less "reliable" research
data? As offering us something more "authentic" than
would say, a piece of standard observation? If the
diaries do not in fact, afford us access to something
more "real", more "authentic", then what is their value?
These are some of the questions upon which this piece
touches and although it deals centrally with the
development of a new research methodology for the social
sciences, in so doing, it also raises some more general
questions about storying lives, about fabricating new
visual fictions of femininity and about how particular
technologies of representation make for particular
constructions of the self. Questions
about the status and usefulness of the video diary are of
interest to me primarily because I am currently based
within a Critical Psychology department where I am
working towards the development of what can loosely be
thought of as a "visual psychology". In specific terms, I
am thinking through the possibilities for such a
development by examining data that was collected as part
of a longitudinal study looking at social class and
changing modes of femininity. The study from which this
data comes ("Project 4:21") was carried out by Valerie
Walkerdine (with whom I am currently working), Helen
Lucey and June Melody and it originally involved research
with a group of thirty (both working and middle class)
British girls, with their families and with their
teachers, in an attempt to chart how social class
location informs life trajectory.[1]
The girls were either four or six years old when they
were first studied, and the bulk of the existing data has
been generated by means of a variety of more traditional
data-collection techniques, including interviews and
observational methodologies. Within the last phase of the
project however, (when they were either sixteen or
twenty-one years old) the girls were asked to make their
own video diary. Of the thirty young women originally
involved in the study, twenty-three agreed to produce a
diary, but because almost all of these women were white,
a subsidiary sample of six black and Asian women was
added. At this point, Channel Four Television contributed
funding and later broadcast extracts from some of the
diaries, as ten three minute programs on prime-time
national television, in a series called Girls, Girls,
Girls. Principally,
the video diary idea arose in thinking about a less
invasive way of collecting research data. The research
team had several - both practical and more "political" -
reasons for wanting to develop an observational method
that did not depend upon the presence of what might be
experienced, by research subjects, as a watchful or
"surveillant" outsider. In practical terms, this was an
attempt at finding a way around the many well-documented
problems associated with research done by adults on
"youth", by representatives of a "parent generation" on
the young. Giving young people video cameras and
therefore, the means by which to frame and represent
their own lives, provided, it seemed, a way by
which many of these problems could be eradicated -
including problems around young people's reluctance to
discuss in front of adults, things like drug-use and sex,
the problems associated with gaining access to the
cultural spaces occupied by the young, and problems
relating to the self-consciousness or under-confidence
which young people can experience when being studied by
adults. Furthermore, in this study at least, it was found
that some of the working class girls were not
particularly confident about their literacy skills and
for this reason, asking them to produce visual rather
than written diaries appeared to suggest a
solution. In "political"
terms, the video diary project was seen as an
intervention into a long social scientific tradition
that, from a critical perspective, can be understood (in
its drive to observe, classify, sort, and otherwise know
people) as a form of population regulation and
management. That is, as a project whereby the categories
of the normal and the "other", the rational and the
irrational and so forth, are defined and reinforced.
Certain groups, like youth, the working classes,
colonised subjects and women have tended to be the
primary objects of such study, representing the problem
which psychology seeks to rectify, or the "other" which
anthropology seeks to know and explain. This phase of the
longitudinal study was viewed as a way of somehow
challenging this history. Giving over the means of
representation to research subjects themselves was
imagined as a way of somehow "empowering" these young
women; enabling them to frame their own lives,
tell their own stories, represent their own
situation, offer their own understandings of this
situation and so on. This phase of
project 4:21 started then, against a backdrop of belief
in the potentially subversive nature and empowering
potential of the video diary. This, it was assumed, would
allow for somehow more "authentic", or less "mediated"
(by an academic gaze) representations of self. And here,
the move towards the video diary is an understandable
one, paralleling in many of its aims, not only the
increasingly popular genre of "real people" television
(and the BBC had just broadcast a video diary series,
which is partly where the team's idea came from) but also
a far more established feminist push towards the
production of more "realistic", self-styled or
"authentic" representations of women, or of what we might
call "counter-fictions" of femininity. It is of
course, very easy to believe that what we are getting
with the video diary, is something more
"authentic". Ruth for example, speaks to us as
confidantes. We are being made privy to information that
not even the "walls" are allowed to hear. She whispers as
she builds to the disclosure of her "quite private" and
"quite personal" tale. The invite is indisputably
seductive. To adapt Catherine Russell (whose work on
auto-ethnography I shall discuss later) Ruth's piece is a
very clear reminder of the extent to which the
testimonial or confessional character of the diary
promises a site of veracity and authenticity originating
in the diarist's experience.[2]
We believe that what Ruth is about to disclose is
something which is not only "quite personal", but which
is also "true". The video diary simply promises a kind of
purity, not only because it tends to deal with "everyday"
people telling "personal", "everyday" stories (Ruth for
example is in fact, building to a very familiar, teenage
story about a fall-out with her parents) but also because
it speaks such a familiar language of realism. Most
usually, it deals with the domestic, the mundane, the
everyday, the seemingly inconsequential, with the passage
of real time and with a diarist's often quite
disorganised "streams of consciousness". The video diary
can just look so innocent. As Helen Lucey
(see Walkerdine, Lucey and Melody, 2001) explains,
because they have managed to do away with both elaborate
technology and a film crew, video diaries can make very
believable claims to authenticity. We can very easily get
drawn into thinking that because there is no film
crew present, people act as though they were not being
watched or as though the camera were not actually there,
and that what we consequently get, is something less
"mediated". Clearly such assumptions are highly
problematic. Certainly, from our own data, it very
quickly became obvious that to see this exercise as
somehow "empowering" our research subjects was very
naïve. So too was imagining that these young women
necessarily felt less like they were being watched,
studied or scrutinised. Although in
one sense, in the absence of an observer, the video
diarist can feel less as if she is being scrutinised,
this is by no means straightforward. The actual observer
may well be absent (and this clearly has advantages) but
she is very often brought back into play through the
diarist's own address and understanding of the camera -
which is often referred to as "you". "I'll take you with
me tomorrow so you can meet my mum" says one diarist. "I
don't know what else to tell you now. I've run out of
things to say" admits another. "Oh, I just thought that
was you come to collect the tape" says another as she
looks out of her bedroom window in an attempt to identify
the car that she has just heard pulling up outside her
door. The researcher may be physically absent from such
scenes, but she is still somehow present - and this is
obvious. Indeed, many of the diarists make it very clear
that they are intensely aware of being watched - and not
by just anyone, but by psychologists in particular. These
women are clearly not addressing just a general "you".
Rather, they address a very specific "you" - a "you"
researcher / "you" onlooker / "you" psychologist which is
seen to be embodied by the camera. To reiterate,
just because an actual researcher is not physically
present, this does not mean that the project, its
questions, its aims and its focus are in any sense absent
from the scene. Consider for instance, the following
extract: This is a
description of an extract from Rachel's diary. In the
extract, Rachel does not appear but she does speak
from behind the camera as she films her friend and
explains what she understands to be the point of the
exercise. Very obviously, the example problematises any
notions that we might entertain about Rachel feeling less
observed, or about this project necessarily giving us
somehow "purer" or less "contaminated" (by the research
process for example) data. For Rachel, we (as research
psychologists), our questions, our interests, our project
and even our methodology, are clearly present as she
films. Rachel's diary
is in no way unusual when it comes to references being
made to this study. Not only do many of the diarists
refer to the project, but - and as with Rachel - explicit
(and often critical) reference is frequently made to
psychology itself and to the gaze of psychologists - a
gaze which is often seen to be a particularly judgemental
or normative one. Removing a camera person, an observer,
a white coat and a lab for example, in no way means that
concerns about appearing "normal" or "strange" (as this
is imagined to be measured by psychologists) are not
playing their part in a woman's construction of herself
on video. That is, it in no way means that the observer,
the white coat, or the lab do not continue to signify and
to play central roles within this construction. On the
contrary, concerns about appearance (about appearing
respectable and "normal" for instance) are rarely absent
from the diaries which these young women make, and this
is particularly true of the diaries produced by the
working class white girls, who often appear to be acutely
aware of how their homes, their social lives or their
accents for example, might mark them out as "different"
(I shall return to the issue of social class
shortly). Reference to
the longitudinal study also emerges when diarists refer
(as they commonly do) to a kind of voyeurism which they
associate with the gaze of the researcher, saying things
like "see, this is how people like us behave" or
"see this is what black people do when they're at
home". The following describes for example, an extract
taken from a diary made by a young black woman. The
diarist herself is not filming, but her male friend
is: This extract
illustrates quite clearly how the imagined interpretative
gaze of the academic researcher is still very much a
reference point. Whether this is engaged with directly,
whether it is skirted around, or whether it is avoided or
ridiculed, such a reference is a major point around which
all of these diaries are structured. For a long
time, Valerie Walkerdine has, in her various works, been
critically addressing the ways in which mainstream
psychology has operated in "othering", pathologising and
regulating the working class. She writes: It is easy to
appreciate then, why Walkerdine and the other researchers
involved in the 4:21 team might have held out such hope
for the data generated by the video diary exercise. The
working-class girls in particular, it was imagined, might
feel freed up from the perspectives and judgements making
up mainstream psychology. Inevitably though, the team
have - since viewing this data - been forced to admit
that their initial expectations and assumptions were
rather naive. If imagining that the video diarist feels
somehow less scrutinised is over-simplistic then, so too
is thinking that actually making a diary is a necessarily
"empowering" experience for these young women. As I
indicated earlier, some of the working class girls in
particular, made it very clear that this was not a
project in which they felt less watched, scrutinised, or
judged. On the contrary, these girls often appear to be
quite concerned about issues of normality and
respectability, and seemingly very conscious of being
somehow "on show". Built into their diaries is
often the very hierarchy of cultural capital, the very
judgemental structure and the same normative gaze which
the researchers hoped to be side-stepping in handing the
means of representation over to these women themselves.
These girls, or members of their family will, for
example, often "posh up" their accents when they are
being filmed. Some awkwardly signal an awareness of how
messy their homes are likely to look to an audience.
Several hint at how uneventful or boring their lives are
liable to appear. Another approaches the whole issue of
social class and lifestyle by staging a clearly comic
mock-up of a middle-class breakfast. Along with her
friend, she has set the table with champagne and
strawberries and as the women eat, drink, laugh and sway
to the background music, they announce, in very obviously
affected upper-class accents, that for them, this is just
a normal, everyday, breakfast-time. Such are the kinds of
"resistances" which some of the women enacted in
constructing their stories. Some of the
working class girls in the sample thus indicate that this
really was not an exercise in which they felt less
observed or scrutinised. Furthermore, many were clearly
filming out of a sense of obligation rather than out of
any pleasure or sense of creativity which the exercise
might offer. And in later commenting upon the exercise,
several spoke about hating their accents because these
made them appear "common", and although they were asked
not to, several of these working class girls actually
erased much or all of their diary before handing back
their tapes. Indeed, far less data exists from the
working class girls in the sample. Within this
data, social class as a signifier, as a location, as an
inscription or as a marker does not simply or
occasionally suggest itself here and there, in a telling
accent or a particular outfit for example. As a location
it is inescapable and as a marker it leaves its trace
throughout almost every level of these diaries. In short,
social class thoroughly saturates each and every one of
these diaries. It speaks through bodies, in accent, in
composure, in dress, in a diarist's level of ease and so
forth. It speaks through objects, through a room's
decoration, through what hangs on a girl's wall, through
what shows through her window (a large green garden or a
crowded street or block of other flats for example). It
speaks through the mise en scene of the diary. In
short, it speaks itself through the whole feel, style and
theme of the diary. And although it would be wrong to
suggest that all working class diarists produced
one type of diary, while all middle class diarists
produced another, the following juxtaposition very
clearly suggests the extent to which it is impossible to
talk about things like "authenticity", like a woman's
"own" story, or like the "truth" of a diarist's video
without addressing much broader questions about social
situation and about the sense-making and storytelling
opportunities which such a situation offers. Having
finished the piece, the woman puts down the violin and
walks off screen, from where she begins to talk. "This
is actually completely typical" she announces, before
launching into a description of the many things which
she has to do. "I've got this Guild Hall deadline. My
English essay to write by Friday. I've got a
philosophy essay to write by Thursday. I've got a
folio to prepare on Saturday with five pieces of work
and I've only got two." The woman
comes back into view, pacing as she speaks and using
her fingers to count the different deadlines and
commitments as she lists these. As she
lists, her speech gets faster and her frustration more
pronounced. "And I'm babysitting tomorrow and I'm
babysitting on Thursday and ... She pauses, taking in
a deep breath before continuing. " and I'm having to
spend all this time ...Come home today, eat my dinner
because I'm going to the cinema, so I can't eat later,
so ... She looks down at her wristwatch " I've got two
and a half hours. I've just done forty- five minutes
practice, and I've already done two hours' practice
this morning. I've got to do another half hour. I then
have maybe an hour to ... Her speech becomes faster as
she continues to lengthen the list. "...write a
composition and write it up and put it in my folio and
I'm not going to do my English essay." Again she
pauses, raising her fingers to massage her
eyes. "...And
every day all I seem to be doing is practising. Every
single day. This is going to be a really, really bad
week." All goes
quiet as the young woman moves off screen. Moments
later she reappears once more carrying the violin and
bow. As she reaches centre-frame the woman stops,
sighs deeply and resumes her story. "Actually, not
only that, but I'm giving a talk tomorrow night. I've
got to go to the performing arts workshop production
on Friday 'cause there's no other time I can go, so so
that's two hours at home on Friday to do my practice
and not to do my folio. Thursday I've got to be at
college at lunchtime 'cause there's um ... Once more,
the young woman pauses. She stands and snaps her
fingers apparently trying to regain her train of
thought. She turns directly towards the camera. "This"
she says, "is really weird. Talking to the
camera". Just as
quickly the woman averts her gaze and continues her
story. "Oh yeah, it's reading week so we're having
people to come talk to us, so I can't do my homework
on Friday lunchtime either ...too late because I'll
already have missed my English lesson". The woman
is silent. She stands with her violin in one hand and
her bow in the other, staring off screen. Something
clearly catches her eye and her gaze fixates. "Oh" she
exclaims, "The Bell Jar". She moves off screen and
then returns from a bookshelf with a copy of the book.
"Yes. We were told to read this in English" she
announces. "Along with the seven other books I've got
to read" she adds, sarcastically, as she throws down
the book and places the violin back under her chin.
She moves to return to the music stand. (Extract
from a video diary made by Polly, one of the middle
class diarists) A young
white woman sits facing the camera from a bed in a
bedroom. The room is quite dark and above the young
woman, some rosettes hang on the wall. So too does a
poster of a cartoon cat. Directly behind her is
another single bed upon which lies a pile of
clothes. The woman
has just finished adjusting the camera, clearly
checking that she is in the correct position to begin
filming. She appears self-conscious as she sits still,
waiting to begin. "I've been
going out with Neil for four years and nearly one
month at the end of this month". The woman announces,
gazing directly into the camera. "...So that's quite a
long time. And we met at a club called X. My friend
and her mum used to go there. My friend's mum used to
know Neil's dad. He's called John. And that's how we
met." The woman pauses. "So I gave
him a letter and he said 'yes', and we started going
out and we've been going out ever since - four years
or so. So quite a long time." Again, the
woman pauses. She appears to be thinking about what to
say next. "And my friends ... She begins but stops and
begins instead on another topic. "I went to two
schools. One was in Dulwich and the other one was in
Catford. I left in 1990, so that's four years ago, so
... She appears
stuck as to what to say next. After a short gap, she
continues, "I left in June 15th 1990, so
that was it really." Once more,
she goes quiet. "Neil's
coming later, so I'll be able to show you him. And my
friend Sally, she's coming later." Another pause. "So,
that's about it really." "My mum's
just come in from work. She works down the local
laundrette, just down the road, which is about five
minutes away." The woman pauses. "And Grandma's just
come out of hospital 'cause she's just had her hip
done and And my sister's got a new job in Lewisham in
a security company, just office stuff and that sort of
thing. My dad had about five weeks off but he's got
about three left now." The woman
looks around her in silence. "And that's about it
really". (Extract
from video diary made by Sarah, a working class
diarist) This
juxtaposition is not intended to suggest that this middle
class diarist necessarily has some kind of "better deal"
than has her working class counterpart (her anxiety is,
for example, quite unmatched by any of the working class
diarists). The purpose is to illustrate how pointless it
is to imagine ever getting at (whether this be through
film, video, writing or talking) an "authentic"
autobiographical story which is somehow boundaried off or
separable from the wider conditions within which it is
situated and constructed. A diarist does not exist as an
intact, unified individual whose story can be considered
outside of its context. An autobiographical story says
more about the conditions of possibility which allow
certain tales to be told than it does about a subject's
"inner" reality. So what
are we to make of these video diaries? What is
their value? Was this whole phase of Project 4:21 in any
way useful at all? In this short final section I want to
briefly re-think the value of this project by indicating
a more useful set of questions from which we might
begin. One of the
major "problems" (or at very least one of the most
difficult questions) which arose from the project
concerns how we are to understand the status of these
women's videoed diaries. What exactly does the diary give
us? Fact? Fiction? Something "natural"? Something
"scripted"? Something "real"? Something
"performed"? It is of
course, only if we allow such distinctions to continue
making sense that we are left grappling with the kinds of
questions about empowerment, authenticity and access, and
left struggling along the kind of blind alleys which I
have touched upon in discussing this phase of Project
4:21. To think of this project as "enabling" or
"empowering" girls to tell (in some kind of "pure" or
strictly "personal" sense) their own, "authentic" stories
is naïve. This is not to say that such notions are
not understandable. After all, the idea for this part of
the project did come from a television programme and it
did share many of the hopes and expectations which have
long been invested in television's capacity to somehow
capture the "real". And when we think of the "real", the
factual or the "everyday", we tend to think of something
which is other to fiction, which is somehow unscripted,
un-performed and otherwise unrehearsed. Clearly, it is
precisely such myths which are the problem. We have to let
go of questions about "authenticity" and over-simplistic
ideas about "empowerment". These are redundant concerns.
And we have to find new, more critical ways of thinking
about the performances of the "personal" which are the
basis of not only the video diary, but also of the
increasingly popular genres of "reality television"
(including programs like Big brother for example)
and "confessional" television (as indicated by the
confessional chat-show for instance). The emergence,
growth and popularity of this kind of television makes it
virtually impossible to maintain the kinds of
distinctions between the private and the public, the
"natural" and the scripted or the factual and the
fictional within which we once placed such faith. Such
distinctions may well have always been mythical, but now
the illusion is far more obvious. Selves are narrated
into being. Doing the personal is a practice and an
increasingly public performance. If once we looked to
poststructuralist theory for a problematisation of a fact
/ fiction divide, now we need only look to daytime
talk-television. The point for the present however, is
that all of the young women involved in Project 4:21 come
from a cultural context within which registering the
"personal" is a familiar, even fashionable practice.
So-called reality television is becoming the television
genre of the early twenty-first century. With this in
mind, the invitation to take part in this video diary
exercise starts looking far more like a invitation to
take up (or indeed to refuse) a particular pre-scripted
part, than it does an invitation to tell one's personal,
"authentic" story. If we have to
find new ways of addressing the breakdown of a fact /
fiction divide then we have also to find new, more
critical ways of thinking about the issues of access and
empowerment which accompanied this particular project
from its start. As I have already indicated, just because
a young woman might hold a camcorder, this in no way
means that she is now "free" to tell just any story about
herself, or that she is the scriptwriter of her text.
Neither does it mean that she has completely escaped the
interpretative frameworks, the cultural hierarchies and
the gaze of an "observer". The "observer" is as much
internalised as external, and in many respects, the same
interpretative dynamics are at play. Finally, we
have to dissolve the familiar associations between
certain types of filmic reproduction and notions of
"authenticity". When it comes to video diaries, one way
of thinking in this direction is suggested within
postmodern and postcolonial ethnography where
increasingly, moves are being made towards the use of
film and video in the development of a "visual
ethnography", or what Catherine Russell calls an
auto-ethnography. Although it is not the only way to
critically approach this video diary material, Russell
does provide us with some useful starting
points. Russell
focuses primarily upon the work of artists and theorists
who are formally involved in the production of
Avant-garde or otherwise experimental autobiographical
film work. Nevertheless, even though these diarists are
not critical film makers the video diaries can
still be usefully considered in parallel to such practice
because, and as Russell explains: autobiography
becomes ethnographic at that point when the film - or
video - maker understands his or her personal history to
be implicated in larger social formations and historical
processes. Identity is no longer a transcendental or
essential self that is revealed, but a "staging of
subjectivity" - a representation of the self as
performance. (p. 276) Despite the
fact that the diarists are not intentionally or formally
setting out to conduct "visual ethnography", they are
nevertheless on an ethnographic journey. They are invited
to take a particular "ethnographic" position in relation
to themselves and their situation. Furthermore, they
do understand themselves to be "implicated in
larger social formations and historical processes". They
know that this is a study about class and
femininity. They know that they are the subjects
of this study. They are therefore invited to recognise
themselves in-situation, in-history and in-culture. They
are thus invited to take up a position as observer of
themselves. We can now
return to our data and also to our questions about social
class, and think not about how "authentic" are the
representations which these women produce, but rather,
about how social class seems to inform the different ways
in which the women take up the dual position of observer
and subject within the "personal" stories which they
produce. We can start then, by thinking about the video
diaries, not as taking us closer to some kind of
"innocent", "authentic", less scripted or somehow less
mediated truth about a diarist's subjectivity but rather,
as offering us a view of the different material,
linguistic, social and interpretative resources which
differently situated - and therefore differently
privileged - subjects have access to in fabricating a
visual fiction of self. Russell, C.
Experimental ethnography: the work of film in the age
of video (Durham: Duke University Press,
1999). Walkerdine, V.
Lucey, H. Democracy in the kitchen: regulating mothers
and socialising daughters (London: Virago Press,
1989). Walkerdine, V.
Daddy's girl: young girls and popular culture
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997). Walkerdine, V.
Lucey, H. and Melody, J. Growing up girl: psychosocial
explorations of gender and class (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 2001). (To
return to your place in the text, simply click on the
endnote number) [1]
For details of how these young women were initially
chosen, and of how the sample was stratified in terms of
social class, see Walkerdine and Lucey (1989). [2]
See Russell, 1999, p. 27
5,659 words
Abstract
A
young black woman sits in her bedroom adjusting the
video camera which she has balanced on her bed in
front of her. "I'm literally whispering now 'cause the
walls in my house have ears" she says into her
hand-held mike. "This is quite private. It's quite
personal, 'cause I don't really talk to anyone about
this sort of thing in my family. So most of the time,
they don't know what I'm thinking or what I'm planning
or anything." The woman pauses, cupping her hands
beneath her chin and looking off into the distance.
"So I got to keep it down" she continues, turning once
more to face the camera.
Background to
Project 4:21
The invisible
observer: problematising ideas about access and
empowerment
a
young white woman sits in front of the camera smoking
a cigarette. She is being filmed by somebody else.
"What's it all for?" she asks the invisible camera
person, who does not respond immediately. The woman
continues, "it's all a bit voyeuristic this you know.
Being watched. I feel quite " She hesitates. "Quite
looked at?" the camera person - obviously another
woman - asks. "Yes" replies the young woman. "Well"
the camera person explains, "I've been studied since I
was four you know. They've given me this camera to
make a video diary of myself. It's a longitudinal
study of social class and femininity in the nineties
and I'm supposed to film myself everyday. They want to
understand how middle class and working class girls
live differently in nineties Britain. When I was four,
I had a microphone attached to me and they listened
and observed because they were interested in how our
mothers - middle class and working class mothers -
treated us differently. They're still studying those
kinds of questions". She pauses. The young woman nods,
saying "it's interesting". "Yes", continues the camera
woman "but it's not very objective is it? I mean
they've explained it all to us and we know exactly
what they're looking for. But I suppose that's what
they want, you know. See, they're not really
interested in those kind of science models of
research. So they don't mind that we know exactly what
they're looking at."
the
camera pans a room full of young, black people - women
and men who are talking, laughing and nibbling at
snacks which they take from the coffee table which
sits in the middle of the floor. The panning slows,
resting momentarily on individuals, couples or smaller
groups. "See, the jungle" comes the voice from behind
the camera. The camera person has obviously adopted a
David Attenborough voice, and describes the scene as
though narrating a wildlife program or an
anthropological documentary. He stops and zooms into
one woman's face, "here, this one's from central
Africa". He then pans further, stopping to zoom into
the couple of women sitting next to her. "Here, a
couple from the depths of darkest Africa".
Speaking out?
Social class, surveillance and psychology
in a
number of domains, middle-classness has become
synonymous with normality and working classness has
been viewed as a deviant pathology, to be corrected if
possible by correctional strategies that will make
working-class subjects more like their middle-class
counterparts. (1997, p.29)
A
young white woman stands, appearing completely
absorbed, as she reads music and plays a violin. The
room, obviously a living room, within which she plays,
is large, bright and spacious.
Conclusions:
moves towards a rethink of video diaries
References
Endnotes
