The Anthropology of Toxicity

In light of our discussions last week about the politics of ethnographically and analytically accounting for resonance and lineal association across various kinds of phenomena encountered in  “the field,” “the literature” and/or in “the archive,” I noticed several relevant threads that also animate the political stakes of audio-visual representation in film. Similar to how physically locating historical accounts of a different era next to contemporary ethnographic accounts within a journal article can, depending on the reader’s personal knowledge of the topic at hand, create conditions for simplification or even misleading distortion, the juxtaposition of sound and image, strategic attunement of audio and video recording devices, as well as the sequencing of particular images and sounds can have similar (sometimes harmful, sometimes useful) effects. Distortion in this context isn’t simply a matter of one presenting false or true information. Distortion happens in small ways when the ideological cuts one makes to foreground a certain set of phenomena at the expense of others are obscured from view at the same time that they claim to present an accurate account of something in the world. This effect is perhaps nowhere more insidious nor more difficult to deconstruct than in documentary film, where the “reality” of objects and bodies on screen, by virtue of their being captured on camera, is immanent, at the same time that their existence on camera is the product of calculated and contingent technical, as well as ideological, devices. To illustrate how this happens as well as the political stakes of this for film production and design (something all of us will be doing in our own ways in the coming weeks), I wanted to offer a close reading of a scene from a much-praised, much-criticized, and academy award-nominated film called Waste Land (2010). People should keep in mind that my reading of this scene is narrowly bound to what the scene alone offers me as a viewer. In this way, my reading is quite formal. This is intended to underscore the point that regardless of what one wishes to do with their film or believes they are doing with their film, films communicate information in their own terms—similar to how additional chances to clarify or provide context for aspects of a journal article are rarely afforded.

For this reason, if one wants, to the best of their ability, be in control of the politics of one’s creation, one must acknowledge and reflect upon how one’s political orientation to one’s subject, as well as the political orientation you will ultimately simulate for your viewers when they watch your film, is a matter of political, practical, aesthetic, and technical intent and/or negligence. As people who make movies about things, we owe it to ourselves, our subjects, and our viewers to be aware of our political orientations so that we can be accountable to them and better equipped to recognize when our orientation is at odds with our politics. This last point is especially important because, as we will all understand very well after our first rounds of filming, film production is messy and rarely goes the way you intended it to. Accidents and surprises are what makes filmmaking exciting and terrifying. To have accidents be exciting and not just terrifying it can be helpful to be able to think through what unexpected changes present to your project and your politics. Towards this end, I have detailed below and provided some helpful context for a close reading of a scene from a movie that has always rubbed me the wrong way for reasons that have been difficult to articulate. This is mostly an exercise for myself, but it may also be helpful for others interested in thinking through the politics of film and representation more broadly.

Waste Land (2010) is a documentary directed by Lucy Walker that follows the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, arguably Brazil’s most famous contemporary artist at the time of filming. As we learn early in the film, Vik grew up in poverty and hauled garbage for a living until, due to suddenly receiving a large sum of money as a result of being shot, managed to attend art school in the U.S. While in school and in his early career, Vik made a name for himself in the art world by using nontraditional materials, such as plastic army men, peanut butter, and sugar to create realistic portraits of people for whom these materials matter in complicated, often violent ways. The plot of the film centers on Vik’s desire to, at the peak of his career, “give back” to those less fortunate in his home country of Brazil and, ultimately, “change” their lives for the better through mutual collaboration in an art project of Vik’s design. The people he has identified as being in need of change are trash pickers in Rio’s largest landfill, Jardim Gramacho, and the change he aims to inspire in these people is broadly construed as a kind of newly-discovered sense of self-worth and passion for changing the immediate conditions of their current life and aspiring to new social heights. The mechanism of such change, understood by Vik, is both participation in the production of large mural portraits, made from trash collected by these people and bearing the image of the pickers themselves posed as iconic figures from art history, and, apparently, a kind of revelation of self-worth and beauty which these artworks inspire.

From Vik’s first interactions on camera with Rio trash pickers, Vik presents himself as someone who “made it” and managed to overcome poverty via hard work, talent, and, indeed, a bit of luck (i.e. getting shot). This way of framing his success sets the stage for the kind of change he hopes to inspire in his new friends as well as how he feels this change can be realized. Notably, the capacity to change one’s life according to Vik is primarily construed as a shift in individual perspective above all else. It is because of this shallow, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-boot-straps view of poverty (of both its causes as well the experience of living under its conditions) that Vik mobilizes that many have critiqued both Vik’s project at large as well the film’s portrayal of it. To look at how this shallow view of what poverty is and how it can be overcome makes its way into the film, I offer a close reading of one notable scene wherein we are introduced for the first time to the trash pickers Vik ultimately ends up working with. Before I get into this reading, an additional point must be made.

Its important to keep in mind that this is not Vik’s film. While he is a large part of it, he is not the director. Therefore, when one tries to think through what the film is trying to argue about Vik and his project, one must be attentive to how the film portrays Vik, Vik’s ideas about poverty, as well as the human subjects upon which these ideas come to bear. Indeed, part of the confusion in critiquing this film is that critiquing Vik himself and critiquing the portrayal of Vik are not one in the same, though the later greatly conditions your capacity to do the former. Of course, the film does not merely present an objective account of Vik’s project. Its sensibilities at times mirror and contradict what Vik appears to be saying on screen. For this reason, my analysis focuses on the film’s framing and introduction of the human subjects Vik works with. The extent to which Vik’s expressed political orientation to these subjects is similar to or different from that of the film’s matters little. This is because one’s ability to critique Vik can only emerge from the way in which the film frames the subjects he is working with. For this reason, the scene I’d like to analyze is one wherein the viewer is introduced to the people Vik ends up working with for the first time. I find this scene important because I noticed a lot of technical and aesthetic work being done in it to establish, from the onset, a particular understanding of human beings and their relationship to (or, in this case, isolation from) social and material worlds that ultimately, I argue, supports Vik’s shallow vision of poverty and the promise of his collaborative art project more broadly.

About 31 minutes into the film, after we have learned about Vik’s personal history and desire to embark upon this project, Vik travels to the Jardim Gramacho landfill to recruit trash collectors as models and possible collaborators in his art project. In an effort to find the right individuals for this project, he travels on foot throughout the land fill, with the guidance of a representative from the landfill, and, with a film crew documenting the experience, does a range of curious things. He begins by pulling individuals away from their work, work which they get compensated for by the amount of trash and the quality of trash they are able to gather, and interviews them about their working conditions as well as some aspects of their personal life. Once Vik identifies individuals whom he feels might be right for the job, he photographs them against a perfectly white backdrop, isolated and removed from their working conditions, though still bearing traces of its filth on their clothes and faces. This is the first moment where we are given a close-up glimpse of the faces of these individuals as well as any meaningful information about their lives. Prior to this scene we are given only a bird’s eye view of the massive landfill as well as wide views of the trash-filled landscape. Contrary to the faceless workers we see during these early establishing shots of Jardim Gramacho and the kinds of labor conditions there, the interviews and photoshoot scenes with individual trash pickers have the feel of offering a previously missing human element. It is the establishment and essentialized portrayal of this human element that appears to interest both Vik and the director of this film.

To clarify the rest of my reading of this scene, I’d like to note that it is the visual and sonic framing of a particular kind of human or humanity in this scene that I am interested in and which is essential for the director and Vik to clarify if their mutually-implicated moral projects are to be justified. More specifically, I’m interested in how humanity in this scene can only exist once it is sanitized from the surrounding noises, smells (which can be evoked visually and sonically), and material conditions of Jardim Gramacho. If humanity can be something that is not, by definition, inextricably bound to these things, then transcending the gravitational pull of these material realities becomes much easier to imagine—especially if the clarity of one’s own voice and an ability to articulate oneself uninterrupted is understood as a given within the context of the film. In other words, the capacity to “pull oneself up by one’s own boot straps” becomes much easier to imagine if we understand humans to, by definition, not exist in fundamental relation to smells, sounds, and material realities—let alone to exist under the conditions of psycho-social states such as depression or food insecurity. With this point in mind, let us return to the first scene where we meet one of Vik’s eventual collaborators, a woman whom we learn is named Isis thanks to floating text placed next to her head. In this scene, while Vik photographs her against a perfectly white backdrop, the following exchange unfolds between her a Vik:

 

Isis: “I feel disgusting. I can’t believe you want to show me all dirty.”

Vik: “What’s it like working here?”

Isis: “Really bad. Awful…This isn’t a future.”

Vik: “But you make good money here?”

Isis: “Yes, I make $20/$25 per day.”

Vik: “Smile! Just think about how happy you’ll be when you’re rich and leave Gramacho.”

 

After she and Vik banter back and forth, somewhat playfully, she begins to open up a bit and, with the help of subtle edits in dialogue that allow their conversation to progress comfortably, Isis suddenly begins crying. With the camera tightly focused on her face and her tears sharply in focus, Isis proceeds to give an account of a recent breakup she had and how being asked questions about her personal life is making her miss her ex. After wiping away her tears, the scene abruptly cuts to her running back to work with her trash bag trailing behind her. The sound of dump trucks, which had previously been muted due to the location and use of directional mics that foregrounded Isis’s voice at the expense of loud dump truck engines and crashing dumping sounds, slowly fades in along with an ominous music score. As we watch Isis somewhat frantically collect trash, the ominous music score begins to drown out the sound of dump trucks and leaves us watching, sonically-detached from the scene, though affectively re-attuned via the music score, to footage of Isis collecting garbage. The stark contrast such framing presents makes the previous glimpse of humanity we see during her interview feel completely absent.

What are the conditions of possibility for offering an account of oneself in this place and within this film’s particular over-arching narrative and politics? For starters, the only reason we are able to hear her voice and not merely the constant, oppressive hum of dump trucks, crashing glass and crunching metal, or the disconcerting squishing sounds which make you realize the place is soaked—likely in shit—which also makes the stench of this place unavoidable as you watch it, is because of the directional mics, whose sensitivity is set explicitly to foreground Isis’s voice. To literally see and hear Isis and her humanity in this context, we must abandon certain material realities. While we are given sights and sounds later in the film of a variety of sensory details which allow one to imagine, with greater specificity, how difficult it must be to work in this place (no matter how mentally strong one is), these shots rarely, if ever, work to portray the humanity of the trash pickers Vic works with. While Vik earlier in the film goes out of his way to say how he was surprised to see very proud, even playful working people in this space, the audio-visual portrayal of this labor, in contrast to scenes focused exclusively on individual people, fails to accommodate such human dimensions into view. The ultimate irony here is that the pieces of art that Vik makes with these people seek to convey a sense of humanity explicitly with trash. But trash in this context is completely different from the trash that is encountered in these people’s everyday labor. It is sanitized, isolated into individual objects, and dried. Also, the way these individuals interact with these objects in Vik’s studio is entirely different than how they would interact with them in the landfill.

Despite their desire to use trash and the unseemly labor conditions these people inhabit to produce art that can celebrate the humanity of these individuals, they negate critical aspects of these people’s everyday reality when they try to portray such humanity, making personhood something very floaty and abstract, accountable only to language, and not weighted down by the gravity of stench, sound, and invisible forces like depression. Despite the filmmaker’s good intentions to give voice and a human face to labor practices often purposefully kept at a distance and obscured from view, the humanity they capture with their mics and cameras is aesthetically kept at a distance from the material and sensorial worlds these people inhabit day in and day out. By obscuring these realties from view it becomes easier to believe that anyone, if they care enough or try hard enough, can escape this complex, weighty, and lived thing we call poverty. If, for instance, we think poverty is something else and that individuals constantly engulfed by the incessant hum of dump truck engines, crashing glass, seeping shit, and who, throughout, are inhaling and exhaling this matter into their lungs, might find it more difficult to persevere than people living and working under different conditions, what might be some alternative ways to portray these people? Is it possible to foreground these material and sensorial dimensions at the expense of voice without denying these people a sense of human dignity? This, I think, would have been an interesting place to begin the filming of this project anew. Sometimes, I believe, the incessant interruption of airplanes flying overhead, for instance, during an interview can offer a more true and coherent account of someone’s everyday life than a crystal clear, well-lit interview. There isn’t a right or wrong approach. I think the challenge lies in taking the time to figure out what your own political commitments, as well as the political commitments of your subjects, are and how to honor these commitments most effectively at each stage of the production process.