Lesson 11: Lesson 11: What about that other Alien?What about that other Alien?

Professor Daniel Bernardi/ Professor Michelle Martinez

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In the last lecture…In the last lecture…– “Who are the reel

aliens?”– Science Fiction Genre– White hero vs. Alien

other– Alien invader as stand

in for Latino immigrant– Blade Runner (1982)

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In this Lecture…In this Lecture…• Documentary Films

-As anthropology-As self-representation

• “What about that other alien?”-Criminalization of

undocumented immigrants-Documenting the

undocumented

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Documentary Films Documentary Films

Lesson 11: Part 1

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DocumentaryDocumentaryDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one

fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies

shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions.

Documentary, as it applies here, works to identify a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries.

-Wikipedia

Click here for more information on documentary films.Click here for more information on documentary films.

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Paul EspinosaPaul Espinosa• Noted documentarian

• ASU professor

• Emmy award winner

• Many works aired on PBS

• PhD in AnthropologyClick here to read more about Paul Espinosa

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From AnthropologyFrom Anthropology

“Anthropologists, as many of us know, typically go someplace far away, like the South Sea Islands, and study what the

‘natives’ do. After they finish their fieldwork, they return home, usually to a

university in the First Worlds, and write up their observations about ‘what the natives

do’.”

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From AnthropologyFrom Anthropology

“I decided to go to a ‘village’ in southern California named Hollywood and study

what the ‘natives’ do. I thought it could be productive to study this ‘village’ and train the anthropological lens on media makers

themselves”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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To DocumentaryTo Documentary“As I surveyed the TV landscape in the late 1970s, another thing became glaringly apparent -- the way in which my own community, Mexican Americans and Latinos in general- were imaged in the media.

Either the presentation was very stereotypical-- where the only Latino characters you saw were gang

bangers, gardeners, maids or prostitutes -- or, Latinos were completely invisible. This reality, along with a budding relationship with the PBS affiliate in San Diego, led me to become actively involved in

producing content about my own community.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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Ballad of an Unsung Hero Ballad of an Unsung Hero (1983)(1983)

• Biographical look at Pedro J. Gonzalez– Telegraph operator for Pancho Villa– Spanish language radio program out of

Los Angeles, most successful of its time– Framed in 1934 and sent to San

Quentin

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Documenting the Latino Documenting the Latino ExperienceExperience

“I have come to appreciate the paramount importance of good storytelling. At the same time, I have also found so many absences in the media, in terms of stories about the Latino experience. I found myself wanting to pursue such stories, and finding often that these stories required a kind of excavation. You had to dig down, and often dig

deep, in order to recuperate these stories.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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The Lemon Grove Incident The Lemon Grove Incident (1986)(1986)

• Focuses on one of the earliest school desegregation cases in U.S. history.

• Utilizes a combination of dramatized scenes, interviews, and historical footage.

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Putting History on FilmPutting History on Film

“Of course, most of us know the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) and when we think about school segregation,

we usually think about it in black and white terms. But in fact, many early segregation cases occurred in the Southwest and they

involved not just African American children but Mexican American, Native American, and

Asian American children.”

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Putting History on FilmPutting History on Film

“The Lemon Grove Incident is the story of one of these cases. The film was part of a larger effort of recuperating

aspects of the Mexican American historical experience, since so much of

that experience had never made its way into the history book.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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Uneasy Neighbors (1990)Uneasy Neighbors (1990)

• A documentary profile of growing tensions between migrant worker camps and affluent homeowners in north San Diego

• Chronicles the life and death of the Green Valley camp

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Applied AnthropologyApplied Anthropology“In a general sense, my work is an example of

applied anthropology, taking insights about culture, conflict, and change and presenting stories with

meaning for a broad general audience. Perhaps the way in which my work has differed most from

traditional anthropology (whatever that is) is in the question of audience, my objective has been to

reach a broad public audience, and to inform them about relevant social and cultural issues.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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John CaldwellJohn Caldwell

• Professor of Film, Media and Television at UCLA

• Creative work centers on cultural investigations

• Particularly interested in “indigenism”

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Academia = TellAcademia = Tell“Blanket critical/theoretical prohibitions against representing the other are typically offered from positions of academic privilege. Most of these

intellectual taboos ignore the sad fact that othering habits frequently emerge as integral part of local socio-political systems and conflicts. In most of

these cross-cultural quagmires, indigenism is rarely evident in any pure, isolatable form; or accessible to

the filmmaker in a stable or clean state.”

-John Caldwell

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Academia = TellAcademia = Tell

“We called attention to the privileged position which anthropologists has

traditionally held- knowing that they usually came from First World countries and

studies in Third World communities which were relatively powerless in comparison to

where they came from”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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Documentary = ShowDocumentary = Show

“Filmmakers, academics, and activists owe it to themselves and their constituents to

more carefully pick apart the layers of outside interest that typically broach,

exploit, and manage indigenous racial identities in public”

-John Caldwell

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Kuije Kanan: Managalase Kuije Kanan: Managalase Tattooing (1985)Tattooing (1985)

• Ethnographic documentary

• Explores the prohibition of an ancient practice/art through interviews and re-enactments

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Documenting Culture as Documenting Culture as PreservationPreservation

“The documentary represented a rather simple and direct attempt to allow the surviving elders to demonstrate and

resurrect this culture-defining practice for other villagers, their families and children.”

-John Caldwell

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From Freak Street to GoaFrom Freak Street to Goa

• Freak Street

-Released in 1989

-Filmed from 1980-1986

• Tracks privileged westerners as they explore and “reverse immigrant” to third world cultures.

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Filming UpFilming Up

“With nationalism and colonialism apparently at passe, indigenism has

emerged as a favored rhetorical ploy that is used and misused by all sorts of cross-

cultural players. Earnest free-thinkers invoke ‘their’ indigenism to ‘counter’

exploitive U.S. culture, European commercialism, and globalization.”

- John Caldwell

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Rancho California (por favor)Rancho California (por favor)• Exposed how the suburban migrant

indigenous lived in the San Diego margins• Chronicles the struggles and attempts to

maintain culture, rights in third world conditions in heart of first world neighborhood

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Visualizing the InvisibleVisualizing the Invisible

“Several of my UCSD students from the area denied that such camps existed.

These (fairly symptomatic) denials made me look for how racial identities were

being conventionalized as natural phenomena in Southern California’s

‘picturesque’ landscape.”

-John Caldwell

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The Big PointThe Big Point

The use of documentary becomes a means to speak alternatively about what

society and mainstream media keeps ‘invisible’ such as issues of ‘otherness’, anything that may upset the status quo. Documentary filmmaking allows for self-

representation and criticism of power structure in a media available to a wide

audience.

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The “Other” AlienThe “Other” Alien

Lesson 11: Part 2

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Uneasy Neighbors (1990)Uneasy Neighbors (1990)

• By Paul Espinosa• Profiles growing tensions between

migrant worker camps and affluent homeowners in north San Diego

• Seeks to de-criminalize and subvert the notion of immigrant as alien

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Rancho California (por favor) Rancho California (por favor) (2002)(2002)

• By John Caldwell

• Exposed how the suburban migrant indigenous lived in the San Diego margins

• Highlighted the differences regarding indigenous migrant vs. Mexican migrant experience

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From HeatFrom Heat

“Back in the early 1980s, and even today, the topic was often framed around the

issue of criminal activity. And the media contributed to this framing by generating a large amount of coverage of immigrants

being apprehended at the border.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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To LightTo Light“The iconic image was a nighttime scene of poor Mexican immigrants, hands held high, as border patrol agents with night scopes and helicopters arrested them and sent them back to Mexico.

This was a classic case of media shedding lots of heat but no light on a topic. I believed that to gain even a basic understanding of immigration,

you had to know who these people were and why they were coming north.”

-Interview with Paul Espinosa by Dr. Daniel Bernardi

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A Third World Hidden within A Third World Hidden within the Firstthe First

“Third world conditions were the norm and

pervaded scores of camps throughout north San

Diego county. But by what logic had these conditions

been made socially acceptable in the region?”

-John Caldwell

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Managed OppressionManaged Oppression

“In Rancho California (por favor), I decided to shift away from any attempt at creating a pure ethnic space for expression in order to try to

articulate the many material layers and symbolic boundaries that the public uses to construct and assign race. What emerged, on camera, and in interviews, was a very real sense that the rural-suburban landscape in the area of the camps

was meticulously managed.”

-John Caldwell

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The Other within the OtherThe Other within the Other“Anti-immigration rhetoric demonized all migrants as

“Mexicans” and “illegals”. At the same time, resurgent, flag-waving Mexican nationalism evident in the anti Prop-187 rallies in Los Angeles and San Diego totalized immigration in a different way -- one

that created a monolithic nationalist block that covered over all sorts of cultural heterogeneity within the migrant worker communities. Yet, the Mixtecos we interviewed in the camps saw themselves as a

self-governing and indigenous -- not as Mexicans.”

-John Caldwell

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The Big PointThe Big Point

By filming their documentaries, Espinosa ad Caldwell use the media to expose societies

criminalization and participation in the reinforcement of racial and social

stratification. Both filmmakers show how complex and fluid the construction of the

‘other’ can be and seek to show an accurate portrayal of an issue that often gets

demonized in the mainstream media.

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End of Lecture 11End of Lecture 11

Next Lecture:

Is Authenticity Possible?