I think the question of authenticity is a complex one, and as for our discussion of whether the depiction of the Kapot or the Gorotire is more authentic–I still find myself unable to answer this question, because I don’t believe that either answer is correct. I think that Rei hit the nail on the head by proposing that the ways in which we conceive of and discuss authenticity are rooted in Western philosophies, and that outside of Western influences our concept of “authenticity” wouldn’t necessarily exist or at least wouldn’t exist in the same way. I am reminded of the Mitchell reading and how we discussed similar ideas about the concept of and vocabulary surrounding “bias”. 

But setting aside questions about whether authenticity even exists and how it might be defined or understood, I’d like to think about how authenticity might be represented through the medium of film, and how a filmmaker might try to depict or convey authenticity to other people (and in this process, perhaps reveal some of his or her own conceptions of what authenticity actually is). 

Questions about representing authenticity in film make me think about my recent viewing of Tokyo Story, a Japanese drama film published in 1953. Although Tokyo Story is a work of fiction, it is also a film preoccupied with questions of authenticity and how best to represent relationships, landscapes, and trauma most authentically. Ultimately, director Yasujiro Ozu’s answer was that the best way to maintain authentic representation was to avoid representation at all. Because the reality of Tokyo was too vast and complex to reduce to a scene of a film–he attempted no comprehensive representation of Tokyo. Rather, the city only occasionally appears in snapshots and otherwise doesn’t visually appear at all, even though its presence pervades the text. The characters in the film gaze at and admire landscapes and scenes of Tokyo, but the external audience is only able to access and look at the people who are looking at Tokyo. For Ozu, maintaining authenticity meant understanding that authentic representation was impossible and thus abandoning the attempt at doing so entirely. 

This matter makes me reflect on how Michael Beckman and Terence Turner attempt to portray the Kayapo tribe authentically in the documentary, as well as how the Kayapo tribes attempt to portray themselves authentically in their own created media. On the level of the documentary, authentic representation necessitated that the videographers follow alongside the Kapot and the Gorotire as they live their daily lives. This included filmic representation of Kayapo rituals and practices, which were either narrated over or explained through a casual interview format with various Kayapo tribe members. As such, it appears that authentic representation was conceived of and achieved by the ethnographer and videographers maintaining a close intimacy with the Kayapo in order to learn about and represent their culture. There are also many moments in which the documenters follow individuals and learn about their stories. On the level of the Kayapo’s self-produced video content, I was most interested by the fact that the camera often remained in the center of depictions of the Kayapo rituals. The Kayapo cameraperson maintains no distance as he is also a part of the tribe and community that he is trying to authentically represent (and arguably the most authentic representations of a community are only made possible by the members of that community, although this view is complicated, as previously seen in the Media Worlds chapter “Culture in the Ad World: The Latin Look”). Unlike the Western documenters who also try to pick out individual narratives and stories to act as representative instances that make up a single culture, the Kayapo filmmakers also seem to just try to capture the lives and activities of the community as a whole, reemphasizing the importance of their social-centered values through the filmic depiction.