{"id":47,"date":"2024-11-13T20:31:52","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T20:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2024-12-08T19:33:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T19:33:02","slug":"project-7","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/projects\/project-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Malia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gaines\u2019 Gaps: Political Mimesis in Racialized, Gendered, and Non-Human Bodies<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ABSTRACT<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I reflect on the readings I have enjoyed most in this course, I keep coming back to Jane Gaines’ essay on political mimesis. What I enjoyed most about this piece was the way that it encourages readers to inhabit the world\u2014or in this case, a screen\u2014in a way that mimics Escobar’s theory of world-in-formation (participation in addition to observation). This essay uses Gaines’ theory of political mimesis to make better sense of Choy and Tajima’s film Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em> as well as Livingston’s Paris is Burning<\/em> and Castaing & Barbash\u2019s Sweetgrass<\/em>. Examining these films through scholarly works by Jane Gaines, Judith Butler, and Kim TallBear, this essay considers how bodies\u2014both human and animal\u2014becomes an important tool in film for eliciting mimesis, the audience connecting with the film through this lens of shared body-ness\/shared humanity. This film also works to fill the gaps that Gaines\u2019 essay fails to acknowledge\u2014how mimesis works in settings where bodies are racialized and gendered, for instance. In all cases, this piece of writing aims to expose the ways in which mimesis makes that which is institutionally or culturally invisible<\/em> more ethnographically visible<\/em>, as the audience is put back in touch with the lives of others so as to humanize the big, political picture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Throughout the semester, I have been intrigued by Jane Gaines\u2019 1999 essay Political Mimesis<\/em> (published in Collecting Visible Evidence<\/em>). Here, Gaines defines political mimesis as a process that \u201cbegins in the body. Actualized, it is about the relationship between bodies in two locations\u2014on the screen and in the audience\u2014and it is the starting point for the consideration of what the one body makes the other do\u201d (Gaines, 90). Political mimesis is, effectively, a \u201cpowerful mirroring\u201d device\u2014one capable of \u201cproduc[ing] on the bodies of spectors an almost involuntary mimicry of emotion or sensation [as felt by] the body on screen\u201d (Gaines, 90). In countless course texts, particularly films by Christin Choy & Renee Tajima, Jennie Livingston, and Lucien Castaing & Ilisa Barbash (Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em>, Paris is Burning<\/em>, and Sweetgrass<\/em>, respectively), we have witnessed Gaines\u2019 theory in action\u2014this idea that ethnographic film can teach us that \u201cpolitics are not exclusively a matter of the head but can also be a matter of the heart\u201d (Gaines, 88).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 1: A 2019 study conducted by Kimora et al.\u00a0on the Emotional State of Being Moved Elicited By Films found that film \u201ccan successfully induce the emotional state of being moved” (Kimura). Analysis of audiences\u2019 emotional responses revealed \u201can increase in corrugator electromyography activity and skin conductance responses which in turn were modulated by the arousal level\u201d (either arousal moving, low arousal moving, amusement, attachment, calmness, neutral) in accordance with the anticipated intensity level of each film (Kimura). To echo Gaines point, mimesis\u2014and the emotional response it triggers\u2014does indeed begin \u201cin the body\u201d (Gaines, 90).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The body, which Gaines does not gender or racialize (but implies is human) in her argument, becomes an important tool for inciting emotional responses from a viewer because the depiction of an on-screen body reminds the viewer of her own body\u2014a moment of reflexivity where the audience is asked to connect with the film through this lens of shared body-ness\/shared humanity. And yet, because it was written two and a half decades ago, Gaines’ essay does not hold as much weight in today\u2019s world of representation as it once did. Now, films more frequently address issues of race, gender, and even filmmakers that contemplate what it might mean to be non-human or animal\u2014all identities for which political mimesis is not as universally accessible. To see the film most clearly, an audience then needs to be able to understand the consciousness that a filmmaker\u2014or that the camera itself\u2014holds. While Gaines\u2019 theory of body holds weight in the analysis of these films, it does not properly account for the ways in which cultural norms influence a camera\u2014even in the most objective attempts to observe truth. Ultimately though, political mimesis captures so much that is right, especially in its ability to model how one might inhabit the world\u2014or a screen\u2014in a way that mimics Escobar\u2019s theory of world-in-formation, making that which is institutionally invisible<\/em> more ethnographically visible<\/em>, as the audience is put back in touch with the lives of others so as to humanize the big, political picture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like the anecdotal story of Anita from Paul Farmer\u2019s essay The Anthropology of Structural Violence, each of these three films relies on the emotional connectivity of human story to transport audiences onto the screen itself. In Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em>, Choy and Tajima rely on human faces to achieve this effect, often juxtaposing scenes where Ronald Ebens\u2014Vincent\u2019s killer\u2014emotionlessly recounts the facts of his murderous act with moments of distraught Lily Chin\u2014Vincent\u2019s mother\u2014as she powerful mourns the loss of her son, whose photo-ed face also makes the occasional appearance (Choy & Tajima, 28:15).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 2: Juxtaposing faces<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These three images reveal not only the racial juxtaposition (between white and asian) within this film but also the different ways that camera works to frame these two types of faces. When examining Figure 2, we immediately recognize the more distanced view of Ebens that the camera establishes whereas the Chins faces are filmed so up-close that only part of their faces can fit on the screen. Through these juxtaposing shots, the camera already makes visible<\/em> its consciousness. By shooting Ebens\u2019 body from further away, the camera paints him as cold and distant, as less worthy of intimate, in-person connection, and the audience is less likely to establish a feeling of mimesis with him as a result.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 3: Reversing preconceived notions of race<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While subtle, the camera\u2019s framing technique in these scenes isn\u2019t accidental and is, instead, a strategic attempt to reverse an audience’s invisible<\/em> but preconceived, structural notions about what it means to be asian in America. As revealed in Figure 3, even today, people of color are far more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than their white counterparts. The two ways that the camera frames its white and non white characters (distanced and up close, respectively) encourages us to re-relate (relationality!) to the two racial groups presented. But it is not only through the up-close framing of asian faces that Choy and Tajima work to create mimesis but also through the bodily emotions that Ms. Chin expresses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 4: Body in states of emotion<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Choy and Tajima use Ms. Chin\u2019s body to \u201c…make struggle visceral, to go beyond the abstractly intellectual so as to produce a feeling of bodily swelling\u201d in viewers (Gaines, 91). Ms. Chin\u2019s grieving body is a potent site of mimesis not only because audiences are likely to know what it means to feel loss but also because they understand what it means to care for and love members of their own, individual families. Through Ms. Chin\u2019s pain, audiences learn to see her, first and foremost, as a mother and to see Vincent as a son rather than a victim\u2014the love between parent and child ultimately transcending the negative, institutional notions of asian-ness, which operate as an invisible<\/em> background to the film. While Gaines’ essay does not detail how mimesis works amongst racialized bodies, the techniques that Choy and Tajima use in their film help reveal how Gaines\u2019 theory can remain relevant in ethnographic films on race.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PARIS IS BURNING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jennie Livingston\u2019s film, Paris Is Burning<\/em>, and Judith Butler\u2019s essay, Paris Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion<\/em>\u2014are also important lenses through which to view Jane Gaines\u2019 essay and to make sense of its gendered shortcomings. We watch Livingston harness a similar body-based technique (mimesis!) in Paris is Burning<\/em>, but Livingston relies more so on the female body rather than the racialized body to humanize the film\u2019s political\u00a0 context and to empower the film\u2019s characters. In one scene, Livingston makes the concept of a sex change more visible<\/em> and, therefore, more relatable or human for the audience by framing the female body as familial, as communal, as connective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 5: \u201cAll she wants for Christmas is her two front tits!\u201d the Xtravaganza House sings, as they hug and kiss the body of their mother, Angie Xtravaganza (Livingston, 28:27).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here, Livingston relies on the sensual body\u2014Angie\u2019s exposed breasts, which look like any woman\u2019s exposed breasts\u2014to make the idea of a sex change less startling for an audience and more empowering. The family-like support for Angie\u2019s sex change only further humanizes the concept, as Livingston\u2014like Choy and Tajima in Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em>\u2014mirrors back to us (via mimesis) some semblance of how the audience traditionally imagines a family\u2019s matriarch, her body. This framing of the female body empowers Angie because it celebrates the parts of her that connect her back to the audience, that make her female and, therefore, human.<\/p>\n

While Gaines\u2019 theory of body works here, it does not, Butler argues, get at the whole picture, especially once the film starts digging more deeply into these more invisible<\/em> ideas of gender. Butler argues that this is because the scope of the camera is actually gendered and presides over the film\u2019s female bodies as much as it empowers them. Butler imagines the camera as a tool that embodies patriarchal notions of surveillance and control. She writes: \u201cThe camera itself is empowered as a phallic instrument. Moreover, the camera acts as a surgical instrument and operation, the vehicle through which the transubstantiation occurs. Livingston thus becomes the one with the power to turn men into women who, then, depend on the power of her gaze to become and remain women\u201d (Butler, 135). Butler, put simply, is imagining the camera as having a consciousness or a body of its own\u2014a gendered body\u2014that mimics the male gaze, which can be defined as a man\u2019s ability to control how society perceives the body of a female.<\/p>\n

The consciousness of the camera as Gaines and Butler both imagine it\u2014its ability to empower and disempower the female body\u2014is best exhibited in Venus Xtravaganza\u2019s final interview where it becomes clear that the way in which the camera captures Venus\u2019 body\u2014as powerfully feminine\u2014is also what kills her, her death an erasure not only of what makes her feminine but also of all the cultural progress that she made through her body when she was alive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 6: The camera first frames Venus\u2019 female body as powerful, as capable of destabilizing society\u2019s definition of masculinity: \u201cI\u2019m so petite. I’m tiny\u2014the blond hair, the light skin, the green eyes, the little features\u2026The client\u2019s features are bigger than my hands. Mine are perfect and little\u201d (Livingston, 53:53). And yet, Venus\u2019 body also entraps her: \u201cI was with a guy, and he was playing with my titties until he touched me down there\u2026He said you\u2019re trying to give me AIDS\u2026I should kill you\u201d (Livingston, 55:00).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An audience then needs to be able to understand the consciousness that a camera itself holds is what ultimately permits or prevents mimesis from occurring in this film. While Gaines\u2019 theory of body holds weight in the analysis of this film, it does not properly account for the ways in which gender influences a camera. Female bodies, Butler seems to argue, cannot be framed in the same ways that a male body can be, proving that Gaines\u2019 theory of body is not as universally accessible as she originally imagined. And yet, while political mimesis, in the context of Paris is Burning<\/em>, does not fully free a gendered body from societal trappings, Livingston’s use of political mimesis\u2014its body-based connectivity\u2014does grant her characters pockets of freedom\u2014whoops of laughter\u2014in moments that both move the audience and make all that the subjects risk worth risking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 7: In Paris is Burning<\/em>, members of the Xtravaganza house feel free on the beach. In Sweetgrass<\/em>, herders celebrate the return from the mountains in similar (bodily!) positions of joy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SWEETGRASS<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sweetgrass<\/em> is filmed more in a cinema verite style than Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em> and Paris is Burning<\/em>\u2014Lucien Castaing and Ilisa Barbash adopting a fly-on-the-wall approach to filming. But still, Sweetgrass<\/em> is not a strictly observational film. Instead, it is aware of its own relationality, its own use of political mimesis to establish connections between the audience and the film\u2019s animal bodies, its herders, its landscape\u2014creating an \u201cinterspecies community\u201d (TallBear, 1). But Castaing and Barbash don\u2019t just use mimesis to establish bodily connection between audience and subject. They also use it as a tool through which the film\u2019s viewer might emotionally submerge herself within another species\u2019 life. Because Sweetgrass<\/em> deals with a whole series of non-human bodies (sheep, dogs, natural landscape), mimesis becomes, in this film, a kind of world-in-formation where viewers \u201ccan imagine [herself] in the first place as a participant, immersed with the whole of [her] being in the currents of a [world]: in the sunlight we see, the rain we hear and the wind we feel in\u201d (Escobar, 87). Ultimately, the use of cinema verite\u2014the perspective shots it offers, its insistence that we see (and participate in) the world as animals do\u2014enhances the mimetic effects of this film, making the lives of non-humans, which are not just invisible<\/em> but more often completely inaccessible to the human eye, ethnographically visible<\/em>. To counter TallBear\u2019s worry that \u201canimal studies or the rhetoric of human\/nonhuman may be an inadequate construction for capturing relations between beings and across cultures, be those Aboriginal, national, or disciplinary cultures,\u201d Sweetgrass<\/em>, as a mimetic ethnography (while not as indigenous-orineted as TallBear advocates for) still does a better job of getting at the essence of an animal\u2014how it sees and moves through the world\u2014than the non-ethnographic film does (TallBear, 5-6).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0\"\" \u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 8: Meeting the sheep<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From its beginning, Sweetgrass<\/em> puts the audience in touch with a visual\/audio perspective of what it means to be a non-human. Figure 8 offers three thumbnails of our first introduction to the film\u2019s animal subjects. First, we see them from a distance\u2014as a human would. Next, we are no longer observing the sheep but, instead, become the object of the animal\u2019s stare. The scene becomes both comical and unsettling because, while the sheep is really staring at the cameraperson behind the lens, it feels as though the sheep is actually staring at us. Castaing and Barbash then become part of the mimetic process\u2014something that we and the sheep both look and emote through. They become a part of the landscape that, invisible<\/em> to the audience\u2019s eye, allows for a new set of relations between audience and animal to take place, for the film\u2019s human audience to begin viewing the animal as more of an equal\u2014and for the camera to begin taking on a consciousness of its own. The third and final thumbnail camera encourages the audience to immerse itself in the body of the animal\u2014for the audience to view the ground, the process of eating as a sheep would. This progression of thumbnails\u2014which appear so early on in the film\u2014offer a preview for the kind of work Sweetgrass<\/em> hopes to get done. Like Castaing, who wears a camera on his head for parts of the film so as to make the camera an extension of his own body, Sweetgrass<\/em> understands that \u201cthe world is not something that is given to us but something that we engage in by moving, touching, breathing, eating\u201d and that through this act of participatory viewing\/hearing we can more easily become a part of this new world that we are observing (Escobar, 82).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 9: Zipple et al\u2019s 2023 study on Animal Emotions and Consciousness: Researchers\u2019 Perceptions, Biases, and Prospects for Future Progress<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps Castaing and Barbash offer this perspective of eating because it is also an act that we, the human audience, partake in. The filming of human-like acts encourages an audience to connect with the film\u2019s non-human subjects in the same way that Choy & Tajima and Livingston use familiar, human body parts to create mimesis (ie. faces, breasts). As seen in Figure 9, Zipple et al\u2019s 2023 study on Animal Emotions and Consciousness: Researchers\u2019 Perceptions, Biases, and Prospects for Future Progress<\/em> actually reveals that humans are more likely to have an emotional response to a non-human species if the animal revealed its ability to act as a human does\u2014to socialize, group live, show facial expressions, and more.* Put simply, by revealing what makes an animal a living, sentient being\u2014such as eating\u2014Castaing and Barbash were more likely to inject the feeling of mimesis into their audience, moving them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 10: The visible<\/em> relationship between farmer and sheep\u2014how close he must get to it in order to shear it and care for it\u2026and how connective (and parent-like) this work is as a result.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps this is also why Castaing and Barbash focus so much on the parent-like relationship that occurs between sheep and farmer, especially in the first few days of a sheep\u2019s life (Figure 10). We see this dependency play out in several scenes, such as when the farmers actually nurses a lamb back to life. In many ways, the birth of these lambs\u2014their very coming into the world\u2014is mediated by humans, who almost play a mother-like role to the lamb, which the audience connects with more easily as a result of its baby-like qualities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 11: Parental relationships among humans<\/p>\n

Even in this moment above (where technology permeates the natural bubble of the mountains), Castaing and Barbash promote a sense of nature-based relationality, highlighting\u2014still\u2014the connections between human and non-human, as this farmer turns to his own mother in the same way that the sheep\/lambs turn to the herders in earlier scenes for mother-like comfort, a feeling that the audience can also relate to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 12: Cacophony of sound across distance<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gaines writes that \u201cfilms often make their appeal through the senses to the senses,\u201d a statement that feels most true in the context of Sweetgrass<\/em> (Gaines, 92). Instead of music, this film uses equal layers of human and animal voice to achieve the feeling of relationality through sound in addition to visuals. When filming, Castaing and Barbash also actually attached microphones to the film\u2019s animals, allowing the filmmakers to capture animal noises across distance. As a result, many of the sounds that we hear in Sweetgrass<\/em> are body-based\u2014that of humans, of animals, of the landscape itself. This disconnect between what we hear and what we see\u2014across distance\u2014 teaches us, I think, to not only relate to the film through sight but also through what we hear. This new way of seeing and hearing often across distances counters the audience\u2019s typical mode of exploring the world, and in this sense, the film is asking us to newly experience the west and to trust the filmmaker throughout this process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

CONCLUSION<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Sweetgrass<\/em> also relies on images of bodies to evoke a mimesis, because this film also relies on non-human subjects, it must also use other, more immersive, mimetic techniques in order to truly establish emotional connection between on-screen animal and off-screen viewer. Castaing and Barbash\u2019s use of camera consciousness (seeing as an animal would), mother-child-like parallels, and animal voice all work together to establish a deeper, more meaningful mimesis, which spans more than Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em> and Paris is Burning<\/em>. Sweetgrass<\/em>, like its counterparts, uses mimesis to sew closed the distances between screen and audience as well as kinds of human difference, but most importantly, it works across species, putting us back in touch with the lives of lifeforms so utterly different than our own. But ultimately, in all three of these films, Gaines’ political mimesis achieves something similar. By making that which is institutionally invisible<\/em> more ethnographically visible<\/em> (in the contexts of race, gender, and non-humans), mimesis moves audiences, spurring them to act\u2014or at least to pursue the bigger, more honest political picture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BIBLIOGRAPHY:<\/p>\n

Butler, Judith. 1993, \u201cParis Is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion,\u201d Ch. 4 in Bodies that Matter.<\/p>\n

Castaing-Taylor, Lucien & Barbash, Ilisa. 2009, Sweetgrass<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Choy, Christin & Tajima, Renee. 1987, Who Killed Vincent Chin?<\/em><\/p>\n

Escobar, Arturo. 2017. \u201cThe Background of Our Culture: Rationalism, Ontological Dualism, and Relationality,\u201d<\/p>\n

Fleck, Anna. \u201cInfographic: U.S Hate Crimes Overwhelmingly over Race in 2023.\u201d Statista, 21 Oct. 2024, www.statista.com\/chart\/33300\/number-of-hate-crime-incidents-reported-in-the-united-states\/.<\/p>\n

Gaines, Jane. 1999, \u201cPolitical Mimesis,\u201d in Collecting Visible Evidence<\/p>\n

Kimura, Kenta, et al. \u201cEmotional State of Being Moved Elicited by Films: A Comparison With Several Positive Emotions.\u201d Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/fpsyg.2019.0193.<\/p>\n

Livingston, Jennie. 1990, Paris Is Burning.<\/p>\n

TallBear, Kim. 2011, \u201cWhy Interspecies Thinking Needs Indigenous Standpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zipple, Matthew N, et al. \u201cAnimal Emotions and Consciousness: Researchers\u2019 Perceptions, Biases, and Prospects for Future Progress.\u201d Pic, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 17 Oct. 2023, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC10638804\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gaines\u2019 Gaps: Political Mimesis in Racialized, Gendered, and Non-Human Bodies   ABSTRACT   When I reflect on the readings I have enjoyed most in this course, I keep coming back to Jane Gaines’ essay on political mimesis. What I enjoyed most about this piece was the way that it encourages readers to inhabit the world\u2014or<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":0,"parent":10,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-47","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47\/revisions\/260"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/ant252-f24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}