ruminations

Upon first viewing "Reassemblage" I have to admit that I left List feeling very confused about what I had just watched. While trying to place the film in the ethnographic genre, in watching the film, I found myself slightly troubled by how I should interpret the multiple focuses on the Senegalese women (in particular their breasts) in the film. Should I interpret it as a male gaze in the spirit of Mulvey? But then again, the film is made by a woman manufacturing the film through a feminist film studio (Women Make Movies), so maybe it's more of an empowering statement. However, Minh-ha's point started to come across with her voice over stating, roughly, that a couple go to see an anthropological film and afterwards the husband shamefully turns to his wife and says that he is not sure if he witnessed an ethnography or a pornography. Here Minh-ha does a great critique of the traditional ethnographic images of naked tribal women, and brings into question what is "art" and what is "pornography." In fact, in that light, her whole film becomes a critique of how ethnography is presented and her film does a great job in highlighting stereotypes, discrepancies and generalizations that are present in many ethnographic films.