a still from our film, a Chinese student’s family photo in Dutch national costume
The West has been fascinated by China but what does China think of the West? Increased affluence and relaxed Chinese and international travel restrictions has opened up the West to millions of Chinese so how does this new exposure to occidental values affect the Chinese who study, holiday and work in the West? What impressions of the West do people return with and how does it reflect on life back at home? Is life that different? And if it is different, is better or worse? We talk to students in Delft about their experiences, watch the film here.
Protesters converged on the City of London today as the G20 met.
What is the dress code for a demonstration?
First of all, don’t look like the sort of people the demonstrators are protesting against. Police have been advising city workers who usually wear suits to dress down for the day.
But what many bankers think is casual dress is very different from the younger, more counter-cultural crowd filling up the streets today. It’s pretty easy to guess who’s management and who’s not. (Different degrees of blending in illustrated above).
This is a classic example of how a generally understood term (casual dress) is interpreted in very culturally specific ways. Obvious? But how often are other, extremely wide terms such as ‘aspirational’, ‘cool’ or ‘desireable’ get used as a matter of course in briefs without properly clarifying what that actually means for the intended audience? Understanding the aesthetics and cultural reference points of your audience is key and getting orientated takes a rich, visual medium like film as well as culturally sensitive interpretation and recording. Missing this information means you strike the wrong note with your audience, like wearing a rugby shirt with clean shoes amongst trainers and hoodies.
Full disclosure here: we may be called Honest Films but that doesn’t mean we don’t understand how images can be seen as being ‘real’ when they, and the meaning imposed on them, can actually be very much constructed and misconstrued.
As the video illustrates, meaning is not intrinsic to an image but rather constructed through the production and interpretation of an image. The basic material (kittens) remains intact but the meaning “We’re wine bottles!” is clearly one the reader’s unique perspective has constructed - the kittens are not wine bottles nor are they trying to be wine bottles. The idiosyncratic interpretation here provides entertainment but becomes problematic when a film is meant to be representing a culture, a ritual, a person’s life.
This means labelling, context and production are crucial in creating visual documents that not only represent the subject accurately and without prejudice as is possible but also is supported and presented in a way that guides the appropriate interpretation. For us that means that we present the films we make as part of a wider debrief and discussion of our fieldwork, all done by the researchers themselves. We also involve participants in the production of the films and will always take into account, what is happening off camera, on camera and behind the camera in our process.
Those interested in food and anthropology should check out ‘Exploring food, Connecting Communities’, Sunday March 8th 10:30am -4:30 pm at the British Museum, London.
The event will bring together a range of perspectives from local food producers, teachers, students, social scientists and anthropologists, on food, culture and community. The event aims to raise public awareness of food projects that exist within different communities in the UK and abroad, and foster future collaboration between associated groups of individuals. A central theme of the event will be to explore how the International Slow Food Movement has inspired local food projects and the ways in which the movement’s ideas of local, sustainable food production have been adapted to suit different community needs. The event aims to address questions such as: How have food projects and healthy eating/cooking campaigns helped to generate awareness and shift consumer attitudes? What are some of the difficulties faced by farmers and others involved in food production? How can we address concerns regarding accessibility and affordability? What are some of the problems with our current food production system?
The event is free but booking is required.
To reserve your place please email: education@therai.org.uk or phone 020 7387 0455.
Yes, the contrast between the homes and the fans’ costumes is comedy gold but it’s the stories implied, the personalities that come through because and in spite of the costumes, the familiar situation simultaneously celebrated and subverted that makes this series so good for me. This is just the sort of thing we look for in our films too, to visit the familiar and average with a fresh perspective that renews the topic.
Do please have a look at the full series, it’s genius.
These are some stills from one of our recent films made over Chinese New Year in Lower Teir China. The top tiers of China may be more blasé about the annual festivals but lower teir observances remain a traditional affair. Rituals to bring prosperity and fertility are central, centuries-old core motivators marketeers should take note of.
For those wanting to know more about the different sides of Chinese New Year we have 3 films available: Chinese New Year in Rural China, Train Home - the trials of traveling at New Year and Getting Ready, a look at the Reunion Dinner.
Radio 4’s Hip-Hop China-style gives you some insight into what happens when Chinese rappers get stuck into the form. Guns? Gangs? Beefs? no, raps about food, amongst other things. And why not? They aren’t racially marginalised kids growing up in ghettos, or inheritors of NWA, they are middle-class Chinese only-children experimenting. Western marketeers could learn a valuable lesson here though: just because Chinese youth may share some fashions with their Western counterparts their values, motivations and aesthetics can be radically different. And that means Chinese hip-hoppers aren’t into aping gangsters, they are following Tawainese and Hong Kong pop-rap idols or writing conscious hip-hop about regional food differences.
Above: The Lovings, who won the right for interacial couples to marry in Virginia, USA in 1967.
When we make films we tend to concentrate on understanding the lives and issues of a few key respondents. We do this because we want to build trust and openess and that’s easiest to do when you identify and focus on a small number of key informants rather than skating over the lives of many. Our clients often have a question for us though, can a few people really represent a much larger majority or help understand an issue? We have all sorts of ways to ’scale up’ our findings but after seeing the films our clients never feel as if they are missing out. Ultimately, the respondents, just like ourselves, are all part of a wider society and culture and in the end our respondents act as guides to a wider experience, even at their most personal. Unfortunately we can’t show you those client films but the US radio show This American Life does illustrate what I mean. The show is all about personal stories that have more resonance than they may first suggest. In this episode, Take a negro home, a son of a divorced interracial couple talks about his parent’s marriage as he tries to unravel his own attitudes to interracial dating. As he investigates we learn about racial and social politics in the 60s, the influence of the family, Southern versus Northern urban American attitudes, the social impact of college life, racial norms and racial relations today. Not bad from a 27 minute portrait of a marriage.
