One aspect of the ethnographic study of Kayapo filmmaking that I couldn’t help thinking about, maybe because the other chapters I read in Media Worlds were in some way about this, was its tactile, corporeal properties. Similarly to how Zambians in the 80s and 90s conferred a certain social presence to radios and tape decks, which transferred to whoever was operating it at the time, cameras for the Kayapo seemed, at least through Turner’s Media Worlds article, to confer a degree of responsibility, although with the videographer retaining this responsibility through the tenure of his/her videographer position.

On another level, similarly in this case to the proliferation of corpothetic visuality via Indian chromolithography, cameras act as an extension of Kayapo cultural practices, and as a vehicle for the continued social creation which is notable of Kayapo culture.

Considering both of these connections, it would be easy to argue that cameras (and other recording devices, like the tape recorder on which the Kapot chief admonishes the Gorotire) were imbued with cultural and social meaning the moment they were introduced to the Kayapo, and were quickly integrated into Kayapo culture.

We talked a lot last class about the scene of the videographer in the center of the circle of a cultural performance. It would be interesting to tease apart the two elements in the center of the circle—the videographer, and the camera. Thinking specifically about the camera, as a recording device, in the center of the circle could provide a new perspective on the question of how videography itself fits into contemporary Kayapo culture, and whether it represents a disruption or a continuation of the “authentic” cultural practices which were there before it.