SENSA Lab, and Department of Film and Screen Media

Dr Rupert Stasch (University of Cambridge)

Monday 27 March 2023, 5.00–7.00 p.m.

Film & Screen Media Auditorium, Kane Building B10B, UCC Campus

https://www.ucc.ie/en/fmt/film/research/sensa/

This talk examines the appeal to viewers of television documentaries about “tribal” societies, through the example of the BBC 2 series My Year with the Tribe. Although the show followed primitivist conventions of this genre, it also engaged in a meta-televisual exposé of the inaccuracy of tourists’ and media workers’ fantasies about who Korowai are. This talk touches on editors’ struggle with tensions between these two concepts of the show, and more generally examines through fieldwork the aesthetic, communicative ideas guiding their production and post-production work. Partly in the tradition of Goffman’s essay on “Footing,” I focus on the diversity of voicing configurations involved in the show’s depiction of speech, and diversity of its configurations of visual perspective and address, as these relate to engaging and pleasing viewers.