“Someone needs to do for film what William Ivins did for prints (1953) and Estelle Jussim did for photography (1983) – that is, explore the transformative potential of film on the human self-image. Now that human beings can see themselves in a way not possible with the unaided eye, what do they see and what are the consequences?
[…] I know of no scholarly literature dealing with the uses of image technology that does not suffer from a naïve belief in the objective quality of photographed data or concentrate on the technical […] For ethnographic film to succeed, audiences must understand that they are looking at an introspection – a thick description – by an ethnographer based on his or her experiences in trying to understand the social reality of those portrayed and not a ‘copy of nature’” (Jay Ruby)
“Reworking memory and tradition as fantastic forms of cultural desire – rather than sites of authenticity – ontologies of loss can become allegories of desire” (Catherine Russell)
“We believe that this issue [first CMC DVD special issue 2005] will break several bounadaries toward a better future of scholarship. It is a first of its kind but will not be the last” (Fuat Firat)
With the initiation of a videographic session at ACR in 2000, consumer research utilizing the audiovisual moving image has now traversed a journey over a decade long (Belk and Kozinets 2010). However, utilizing video as a way to produce ethnographic data in consumer research goes much further, in fact, to the very beginnings of CCT-oriented research approaches, as video cameras were present in the ‘consumer research odyssey’ (e.g. Belk 1987;
Sherry 1987; see also 2.3.3). In addition, the field of documentary-type videographic work has already spanned a period of close to a century, from when the anthropologist Robert Flaherty conducted his seminal film study Nanook of the North about the Inuit life near Hudson’s Bay (Belk and Kozinets 2005a; Kozinets and Belk 2006; De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009; Belk 2011). More recently, with the proliferation of affordable technologies and an emergence of a more video-oriented culture (Belk 2001;
Belk and Kozinets 2005a; Kozinets and Belk 2006), the submissions to the ACR ‘Film Festival’ have become increasingly internationally diverse and technically proficient (Belk and Kozinets 2010). Yet, to date, one is at a loss to find more than a handful of publications considering the methodological issues of this medium and its expression at academic venues (see Belk and Kozinets 2005a; Kozinets and Belk 2006; De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009; Belk 2011, for notable exceptions). Moreover, while these extant articles have been informative and useful, time still seems to await for a more thorough and systematic consideration about the medium’s possible ontological and epistemological potential as well as practical workbench approaches. This state of being became the driving force behind this work.
As we have seen, CCT embraces inquiry with diverse epistemologies and pluralistic methods and has already made inroads into potential alternative modes of expressing research than the proverbial ‘academic technical style of prose’. To go further, the fact that most research in the field has been
represented in a textual format alone is beginning to seem regrettable (De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009), and moreover, “even with fewer exceptions it has been silent” (Kozinets and Belk 2006: 335). It is certainly striking how little normative (not in the ‘there is one right form’ sense) work has been published on the workbench level of making of ethnographic research on video medium (Russell 1999; see also Marcoux and Legoux 2005 for a notable exception), probably a symptom (and perhaps a great opportunity) of the field’s continuing nascence and the difficulty of defining it.
In fact, accounting for the history of the videographic method in consumer research is a surprisingly irritating task, if one in looking to find any videographies dating before the first Consumption, Markets & Culture special issue in 2005 (see Appendix 2 for a table of the two CMC DVD issues [Vol. 8;
Vol. 10]). What seems that we are left with are some miscellaneous ACR addresses and personal conversations with the pioneers to go by (as I attended my first film festival as late as in 2008), together with the abstracts of the ACR and CMC special issue video submissions that often have very little to do with the making of the video itself (rather resembling ‘mini-articles’). Initial concerns, somewhat typical while indeed very pressing, concerned the possibility of peer reviewing videographic research and the ability of tenure track boards to evaluate them, but they also recognized the potential for video media to reach wider audiences, as compared to written research papers in academic journals (Belk 2001). Throughout the subsequent years, the international submissions were quick to outnumber the American-based, and a multitude of expressive approaches and increasing technical skills have emerged (Belk and Kozinets 2011).
While few in number, the publications in the field have outlined an easily approachable foundation to build on. The most pressing question is certainly why to engage in this type of methodology at all – what is that is different about video that warrants its utilization?
In extant work on videography, CCT scholars have attempted to establish an initial foundation regarding a general need for video as a medium via which to express research. Kozinets and Belk (2006) noted the life of consumers to be distinguished “not merely by thoughts, attitudes and concepts, but by the colors, shapes, noises, motions and sounds of people and things in constant interaction […] consumer culture is bright and noisy” (p. 335) and video “can be resonant, emotional, vibrant and humanizing [providing audiences a]
vicarious sense of experience that deepens understanding and fosters empathy” (p. 340). Likewise, it has been noted that while ethnographic data production makes wide use of visual aids and contextual settings, researchers have commonly only included such images in the appendixes of published textual work, almost as an afterthought (De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009;
see e.g. Peñaloza 1998 for a notable exception). Some have made inroads into other videographic approaches as well, utilizing multi-methods for the consideration of more metrics-oriented research on how to better produce
‘accurate’ representations (Spanjaard and Freeman 2007), and while not exactly in line with the CCT underpinnings of this study, illustrate the multiple ways of how video could be utilized in research stemming from diverse ontological and epistemological underpinnings.
The problematic epistemic nature of the video medium has also become widely recognized. Kozinets and Belk (2006) raise this issue by acknowledging an inherent dualism regarding the medium: “As a grounded reality, videography could be thought to be much more like the real world […]
these arguments tend to mistake videographic simulation for reality […]
videographies are narratives just as surely as are written texts” (p. 339). Thus for them, the comparison of video work with the realm of art rather than of science does not constitute much of a menace; in fact “seeing research as equal parts art and science can be extremely liberating” (p. 343). Then again, along with some ‘positivist’ notions of CCT as “entertaining esoterica”
(Arnould and Thompson 2005: 870; see also Belk and Kozinets 2005a), or as the ‘appetizer’ (Belk 2009; see also Sunderland 2006) for ‘real’ science, this is hardly a surprise. Legitimization may have to be arrived on by internally expanding the field together with the ever-intensifying proliferation of video technologies, as we seem to have firmly come past the adoption-of-positivist-trappings by now. Where might this acceptance of artistic pluralism take us?
Is there any rescue from our academic practice becoming art? Should there be? Many contemporary scholars have begun to reject this ‘danger’ and are starting to embrace it (e.g. Belk 1998; Denzin 2001b; Sherry and Schouten 2002; Ellis and Bochner 2003; Kozinets and Belk 2005a; Kozinets and Belk 2006; see also Van Maanen 1995; Russell 1999). We have seen from the modernistic and realist inclination of some visual anthropologists, that a historical commitment to objectivity renders the moving image too easily into the realm of ‘empirical evidence’ alone (e.g. Russell 1999). The same would seemingly be the case regarding some of the lingering realism in CCT and the ideas to ‘better capture the reality’ in terms of videographic work. Certainly, there will be no conclusive pragmatic solution to these issues here – rather, how can we maintain our philosophically intricate positions in the future, while remaining relevant in a world (still) seemingly too hesitant to accept them. What seems to be sometimes insufficiently discussed is that such a movement for gaining political ground for relevance is perhaps not one of argumentation or articulation, but of carving our own established positions in academic auspices. Let us be reflexive when undertaking such uninvitingly hegemonic pursuits.
As we have seen, at a workbench level, Kozinets and Belk (2006) crafted four criteria as a stating point for discussions to assist CCT videographers in their work – the 1) topical criterion the 2) theoreticality criterion, the 3) theatreticality criterion and the 4) technicalty criterion. Their concerns were that videographies in CCT need to focus on consumption phenomena (while the field is certainly broad), that the finished works should go beyond mere descriptions and also incorporate theory-building, that videos need to take advantage of the medium by telling convincing and evocative stories, and that the technical expertise needs to be sufficient so as to not undermine the potential insightfulness of the work (as is surely the case with textual expression as well). They go on to recognize that such criteria are intended as liberating rather than restricting – something of guidance and on which to build – as we will later attempt (see 3.3.1).
In the literature, one also finds a more pragmatic backdrop. It is not only that video opens new avenues for producing, analyzing and expressing research, but it also seems that many companies have increasingly become interested in using it both for internal communications and for learning about the contexts of consumers’ consumption practices, not to mention that video has become virtually expected as a teaching aid in classrooms (e.g. Belk and Kozinets 2005a; De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009). Yet, there is still no firmly established, respected and citable repository (or ‘journal’) of quality videographic work in consumer research, and the field is still in its early stages in terms of making its voice heard and in building its influence from within (Kozinets and Belk 2006; De Valck, Rokka and Hietanen 2009). This renders extant work to offer very little academic traction – and even a persisting ephemerality (Belk 2011). But while printed work may have more physical gravitas, we may remind ourselves of Cubitt’s (1991) arguments and reconsider the nature of the medium, so that it does not compete with text in a futile attempt to mimic, for example, journal publication structures, but rather, to embrace the potential differences and put them to full use.
Contemporary videography, by its very digital nature, is not confined onto pages or within incumbent journal institutions – it is free to express and popularize academic research through the Internet. Video is not text, it is not a faithful image of reality, and it will most certainly resist a lockdown by the modern gatekeepers of academic knowledge production. It is of pure illusion, but has the potential to be very convincing due to its inherent experiential, resonant and vibrant nature. Video is not a ‘representation’ or ‘reproduction’, it is an expressive ‘encounter’ (see also Deleuze 1994a). The question is how we can understand what this encounter is like (the ‘bright and noisy’ the
‘more real’ etc.) and how this nature can be put to use for it to be convincing in whatever pragmatic sense we are striving for.
Let us conclude this section by briefly considering the two special DVD issues of Consumption, Markets & Culture (see Appendix 2 for a table of the two CMC DVD issues [Vol. 8; Vol. 10]). These constitute some of the first examples of videographic work in consumer research that have been published in a refereed academic journal. The form (from what I hear due to publication reasons) was the following: the authors were instructed to produce brief ‘printable’ textual accounts of their videographies that were published in the issues alongside a DVD disc. However, perhaps due to the nascence of this form of publication, a distinct separation between the textual accounts and the videographic works seems to have emerged. The brief textual accounts seem to resemble ‘mini-articles’, where the role of the video is not brought to the forefront. There seems to be a considerable emphasis on presenting the video only as a part of the research, or seeing the videography as a supplement to the textual account (again as something of an
‘afterthought’). In fact, in many of these studies, ‘videography’ is not included in the keywords at all. Only a few studies reversed this practice and gave predominance to the videography by giving the text a more explanatory role – usually for establishing descriptions of background information (Henry and Caldwell 2007; Smith, Fisher and Cole 2007). Some went even further to problematize the nature of videography itself in the textual account (Marcoux and Legoux 2005; Smith, Fisher and Cole 2007).
In fact, only Marcoux and Legoux (2005) make their concerns explicit regarding the reasons for conducting videographic research in academia.
Instead of a companion or an account of theoretical or conceptual background information, their text provides an interestingly detailed description of their practices of videography production, from the in situ empirical work to their decisions on the editing table. In their descriptions of video practice, the emergent and iterative (even haphazard) nature of video work takes precedence, as their original visit to the site was not initially intended to become the videographic production under review, the idea for which emerged from only three minutes of data through sudden realization facilitated by the “show up effect” (Marcoux and Legoux 2005: 243) of video material (see also Hastrup 1992). As video expresses contextual relations it goes beyond the reflections in fieldnotes, thus making for the possibility to foreground unconsidered contextual relationships post facto. MacDougall (2001) sees similar advantages to video contra costly and cumbersome film production, as “This kind of unexpected by-product – the possibility of going off tangent – is, I think, one of the further benefits of the turn to video” (p.
20). This difference in the medium contra other expressive forms will be further developed as we proceed, and concluded in chapter III. Practical considerations regarding utilizing the special properties of the medium will be further considered in the Production chapter (see IV).
To move on to consider how producing and viewing videography can provide convincing illusions and experiences, let us finish this chapter with two quotes from Deleuze, whose work on ontology, epistemology and cinematographic film we will turn to next, in order to further our perspectives on what aesthetics videographic researchers in CCT could employ to make video in consumer research an ever more convincing medium.
“What the artist is, is creator of truth, because truth is not to be achieved, formed or reproduced; it has to be created” and “Like the cathedral, its only quality is to have been made by men. Thus it is not hidden by appearances; it is, on the contrary, which hides appearances and provides them with an alibi” (Deleuze 1989: 146)
“Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but a fundamental encounter” (Deleuze 1994a: 139)