Reflections on Migration through Film: Screening of an Anthropological Documentary on Indian Youth in London

Abstract

Visual anthropologists have seldom discussed audience reactions, and those that have done so have tended to focus on the reactions of informants featured in their films. This article shows that collecting and examining responses from a wider range of audiences, and broadening the discussion on the subject of the audience, are useful in further exploring film as a tool in anthropological research. Research on responses elicited by the film Living like a Common Man [2011], which was screened to varied audiences across India and Europe, produced additional insights on the social position of the film characters and suggested new directions for further studies on ambivalent and contradictory aspects of migration.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was written as part of the research program, Provincial Globalisation: The Impact of Reverse Transnational Flows on India's Regional Towns, a collaboration between the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for valuable suggestions, and Anju Christine Lingham and the participants of the Moving Matters seminar of the AISSR, especially Vincent de Rooij and Willem van Schendel, for their comments and feedback on an earlier draft.

Notes

A classic example of this method is the film Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Seance Observed by Linda Connor, Patsy Asch and Timothy Asch [1980–81], in which the informant Jero Tapakan responds to the film A Balinese Trance Seance (on Jero's work as a spiritual medium). Other examples are the work of Dirk Nijland [1989] and De Maaker [2000].

For an overview of anthropological studies on audiences, cf. Crawford and Hafsteinsson [1996].

This is related to the notion of an anthropological film as being “… produced … by professional anthropologists, who use the medium to convey the results of their ethnographic studies and ethnological knowledge. [They are] not documentaries about “anthropological” subjects but films designed by anthropologists to communicate anthropological insights” [Ruby 2005: 167]. For a discussion on several approaches to visual anthropology, cf. Hockings [2003].

The filmmakers were present at the East End Film Festival (2011, London), Persistence Resistance Film Festival (2012, New Delhi), Beeld voor Beeld Festival (2011, Amsterdam), and the International Festival of Ethnological Film (2011, Belgrade). Due to lack of time and funds they were not present at festival screenings in Canada, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Ethiopia, Argentina, Poland, Nepal and Brazil. For an overview of the screenings, see https://sites.google.com/site/livinglikeacommonman/festivals-screenings.

During discussion sessions audiences could raise any questions or comments. If there was time, questions were asked of the audience, about observed audience responses, such as, “We observed that you laughed during this scene; why was that?”.

The questionnaire was given to Dutch and Gujarati students before the film screening, without explaining the content of the film, but with the clarification that the filmmakers were doing research on audience responses to the film. Questions tested expectations of migrant life in London: “What do you think Indian youngsters are doing in the UK, what is their life like?” “How do you think they feel about being abroad?” Directly after the screening and before the discussion additional questions were filled in, such as: “After seeing the film, how do you now think Indian youngsters live in the UK?” “What did you find most remarkable in the film?” For Dutch and Gujarati students the questions were formulated the same, although the word Indian was changed to Gujarati for students in Gujarat.

See Fernandes and Heller [2006] and Ganguli-Scrase and Scrase [2009] for an overview of discussions on the middle class in India. The film's characters fit Fernandes and Heller's description of the lower middle class: petit bourgeoisie, and the lower-ranking bureaucrats. For a brief description of Gujarati, see Shah [1992].

This Hindu association was mainly visited by immigrants from Suriname and their offspring, who are descendants of indentured laborers that migrated from British India to Suriname in the colonial period [Verstappen and Rutten 2007].

Two of these informal screenings were organized by Ellen Bal, Kate Kirk and Sarah Janssen as part of their research project Migration, Citizenship and Development: Notions of belonging and civic engagement among Indian (knowledge) migrants in the Netherlands and return migrants in India, at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

In the film one gets the impression that the new arrivals are exploited by their Indian employers and landlords rather than supported by them. Some Indian migrants commented on this, feeling that positive contributions of the settled Indian community in London did not come out well in the film.

These reactions might have been partly related to our position as non-Indians making a film about and screening it in a postcolonial society.

We thank the researcher Kate Kirk for discussing her views on these audience responses with us.

Fifty percent of the film's characters were from the Patel caste, the dominant caste in this region of central Gujarat. Patels and other high- and middle-caste families in central Gujarat rarely permit their children to do manual or service jobs in India; it would be below their dignity there but is accepted when living in London.

During later screenings in Europe two additional questions were posed to test emotions: “What did you find funny in the film, and why?” and “At what point did you feel sad during the film, and why?”

While Lakshmi Srinivas presents participatory viewing as Indian behavior, she also notes a contrast between different classes within Indian audiences, observing that an interactive style of viewing is gradually linked to class: middle-class audiences expect the working-class viewers sitting in the cheaper seats close to the screen “to be loud and boisterous and to adopt overly participatory viewing practices” [Srinivas 2002: 163; see too her forthcoming book on cinemas in Bangalore, from University of Chicago Press, 2016]. An interactive style of viewing may also be linked to the type of venue and the genre of film. Participatory viewing did not occur in screenings of Living like a Common Man during documentary film festivals and in small art-house or university theaters in Indian cities.

Teachers were roaming around the classroom while students filled in the form. The questionnaires were not anonymous, in order to get an indication of the social or caste background of the students on the basis of their surnames. This may have limited the number of oppositional responses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mario Rutten

MARIO RUTTEN is Professor of Comparative Anthropology and Sociology of Asia in the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. He conducted long-term research on rural capitalists and labor relations in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and on Indian migrants in Europe.

Sanderien Verstappen

SANDERIEN VERSTAPPEN is a lecturer and a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She has done research on audience responses to Indian cinema in the Netherlands, and on regional identity and mobility through a multi-sited community study in India and the UK.