Description
Book SynopsisCharting the intersection of technology and ideology, cultural production and social science, this title explores early-twentieth-century representations of non-Western indigenous peoples in films ranging from the documentary to the spectacular to the scientific.
Trade Review“
The Third Eye is an extraordinary contribution to both film history and the theorization of the ethnographic gaze. Informed by Rony’s close involvement with contemporary art practice and documentary film production, this fascinating book breaks with familiar genres of academic writing to provide an exciting new take on practices of ethnographic looking, the cultural history of the body, and the racial and sexual politics of visual culture in colonial science.”—Lisa Cartwright, University of Rochester
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction. The Third Eye 3
I. Inscription
1. Seeing Anthropology: Felix-Louis Regnault, the Narrative of race, and the Performers at the Ethnographic Exposition 21
2. The Writing of Race in Film: Felix-Louis Regnault and the Ideology of the Ethnographic Film Archive 45
II. Taxidermy
3. Gestures of Self-Protection: The Picturesque and the Travelogue 77
4. Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert Flaherty's
Nanook of the North 99
III. Teratology
5. Time and Redemption in the "Racial Film" of the 1920s and 1930s 129
6.
King Kong and the Monster in Ethnographic Cinema 157
Conclusion. Passion of Remembrance: Facing the Camera/Grabbing the Camera 193
Notes 219
Bibliography 265
Index 289
