Jean Rouch, Tumblr and the miscommunication of life.

 I've recently acquired a new lease for watching Jean Rouch's ethnographic films and free from my previous travails of taking screenshots and putting them on Tumblr, I begin to enjoy them without thinking of contexts and getting myself lost in the moment again. The ritualistic nature of these films always make me feel that I'm watching something at its most primal and, in some ways, intimate. The fact that Rouch did so much to help Black Africans make films themselves is something of a joy in itself but it's seeing his films that really take it up a notch.

I'm sorry for making tiresome connections between the films and my life but I remember I stopped watching Rouch after a nasty altercation on Tumblr. It was primarily a film blog and I would take screenshots of films and put them up and see how many notes it got. I was never sure how they would go but by the end I kind of knew that while I wanted to promote films I had watched, there would inevitably be those who'd steal your screenshots and use it as their own (to make them look more sophisticated than they really were) and more importantly the films you watched weren't just films anymore - the more notes you got, you would see people saying "Mood," "Aesthetic" and other terms which you saw bandied about demeaning the course of language and becoming a sort of empty mantra for hormonally challenged people. Anyone can take your screenshots and plaster them on Instagram and feeding into their idea of aesthetic. It's only when people ask what films did these come from that they don't respond and if you're following them, you'll respond to the other person with the films.

One such girl in particular thought that when she was talking of her skin blemishes (of which she posted a photo of herself naked), I had rather naively thought that she was talking of some condition and that I could discuss ailments which was a big mistake. Because I liked the photo and all that, she thought I was coming on to her which immediately rang alarm bells in me. There was a feeling that this was going on for a while, especially since she was reblogging stuff that was of a romantic/sexual nature from the films that I was watching at the time. It's one of the things I noticed frequently with Tumblr is that if you want more notes, post stills from films that have a moment of sexual intimacy or something that preys on their feelings. When I mentioned I had another blog which I originally used for stuff that got flagged for their grotesque nature - the impacts of nuclear war and all that - that most of the stuff was now sexual-ish. When she saw the other stuff her tone changed completely. Gone is the flirtatious nature and she gets increasingly hostile with me. I had been honest with her the whole time that I had someone and was perfectly happy but given that I was diagnosed by the hospital and I was openly talking of my condition, this could and was used against me. The tipping point for her where she went berserk was a screenshot of Jean Rouch's Mad Masters where in the heat of the ritual, one man skins a dog and holds it aloft. I did not know that an ex of hers had threatened to do the same thing and for watching these films, I am deemed a "sick fuck" and that "fucking do something with your life there's nothing fucking wrong with you."

She promptly banned me from her list so that I could not communicate and because she wanted to see me beforehand in a photo, from Instagram as well. The whole altercation drained what little energy I had for going there which at this rate was becoming an automatic response. After a guy deleted his film blog on Tumblr, I felt I would go too. All the blogs bar a couple were gone and it made me feel happy. A sense of relief where I could get away from a site that fed on toxicity and I couldn't and didn't want to live in a perpetual situation like that. I had dealt with enough and for a while, even though I would regularly watch films, it was hard to get that enjoyment back because you're sitting or lying in bed and you watch the mechanics of film take place and emotion is very hard to manipulate when you feel so dead inside. 

You might feel that this has little or nothing to do with Rouch's films and you'd be absolutely right, exploring them right now and watching his rapture at being in Africa - at being among these people who cherish life at its most purest or at least to our unsophisticated palette - and then you contrast that with the films he made in France with people full of hang-ups and a sense of existential entrapment as shown in The Fifteen Year Old Widows. Unfortunately, I have no deeper analysis I can give you of his films - this was more a diary entry of certain events that involved Rouch on a superficial level. Perhaps as I watch more and read more into his work (I have my eye on two CinémAction books dedicated to him), I could give a more considered look. For now, please accept my apologies, and allow me to watch films again that allow me to feel good about the art of cinema.