POSTMODERNIST CINEMA AND QUESTIONS OF ‘REALITY’ 1

Postmodernist Cinema and Questions of ‘Reality’

Robert Beshara

The University of West Georgia

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Abstract

This Paper will address the representation of various levels of ‘reality’, especially the

psychological, in postmodernist cinema, particularly in the work of Jean-Luc Godard.

Various theories of realism will be addressed. Reference will be made to dramatic

structure, acknowledging art cinema’s debt to theatre, particularly the theories of

Aristotle, Artaud, and Brecht. For instance, Godard clearly has been influenced

stylistically by some of the tenets of Brecht’s Epic Theatre, such as his emphasis on

presentation versus representation. The main argument of the paper is

that postmodernist cinema, marked by excessive stylisation in its presentation of various

levels of reality, in fact manages to capture the ‘real’ in a deeper way than

observational cinema and so-called ‘reality TV’. For instance, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s

Michel in the early French New Wave masterpiece À bout de souffle (Godard, 1960) is a

fine example of an anti-hero—a byproduct of the alienation effect—who makes us, as

viewers, feel less safe by breaking the cinematic fourth wall, hence, forcing us to think

that the film’s story is not just about Michel, the fugitive, but about us as well, that is,

what we are running from in our lives. 

Keywords: postmodernist cinema, Godard, Brecht, Aristotle, Artaud, structural

realism, representation, reality

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Postmodernist Cinema and Questions of ‘Reality’

In this paper, I aim to explore the representation of psychological reality in certain

film styles vis-à-vis structural realism (SR), a scientific realist position known as the best

of both worlds in philosophy of science. I am drawn to SR because it is not as idealistic

as the extreme form of scientific realism known as realism or as illogical as the other

extreme: antirealism. SR is a middle ground that looks at the mathematical structure of

reality, and in that sense it is formal. Also, it humbly tries to approximate reality as

opposed to suggesting that one can have direct access to or no access at all to objective

reality. In SR, two incompatible theories could imply the same structure regarding the

object of study (e.g., light as vibrations) and have predictive power, but still differ in

terms of representation; such was the case with the theory change from Fresnel’s

equations to Maxwell’s equations (Chalmers, 1999, p. 244-245). It seems impossible to

know the nature of the universe or its ontology independent of our minds; however, I am

not a hardcore idealist either, but perhaps I am sympathetic to this view known as, poly-

solipsism (Keiser, n.d.), that frames humans in my opinion as inter-idealists, who co-

construct a shared reality. It is hard to write about reality without thinking about truth.

Which theory of truth would contain SR? Perhaps a Neo-Kantian coherence theory of

truth, wherein there is a noumenal world (objective reality) or the thing-itself, and a

phenomenal world (subjective reality). How can we study the former objectively if we

are entirely embedded in it? The latter is our interpretation of the former based on our

limited senses as humans, but how reliable are we in terms of measuring reality, with or

without scientific instruments? SR, as a Middle Way, looks at the structure of reality

through the lenses of inter-subjectivity and inter-objectivity à la Werner Heisenberg’s

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Uncertainty Principle, wherein an observer affects observed reality blurring the line

between subject and object.

Psychological reality is somewhat different from physical reality though not less

bizarre; in the words of one of the torchbearers of Imaginal Psychology (IP):

“Psychological life as a reality of reflection is psychological life as metaphorical reality”

(Romanyshyn, 2001). Whereas with SR, we try to identify the mathematical structure of

physical reality, with IP we try to identify the metaphorical structure of psychological

reality. The key is that both structures reflect different realities, and to say reflect means

that each structure (reflection) is not exactly the same as what it is reflecting (reality). A

person in front of a mirror is not identical to her figure because the reflection is a two-

dimensional projection. However, the reflected image is to be taken as seriously as the

source of the image (i.e., the Subject) because it can be a glimpse into an aspect of the

metaphoric structure of that person’s psychological reality.

To add another layer to physical and psychological realities, there is indeed

spiritual or transpersonal reality. I do not necessarily see these layers in conflict; surely

there is tension or dissonance between these layers at certain nodes or even whole

sections, but often there is a lot of overlap and intersection. As a transdisciplinarian, I am

curious about the potential marriages between different disciplines such as Buddhism and

psychology especially to see what their shared perspective will say about reality, and of

course I am aware that there are irreconcilable differences; however, I choose to focus on

the co-constructive, for example: “A main concept in Mahāyāna-Buddhism and

postmodern psychoanalysis is intersubjectivity. In relational psychoanalysis the

individual is analysed within a matrix of relationships that turn out to be the central

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power in her/his psychological development. By realising why one has become the

present individual and how personal development is connected with relationships, the

freedom to choose and create a life that is independent from inner restrictions should be

strengthened. In Mahāyāna-Buddhism, intersubjectivity is the result of an understanding

of all phenomena as being in interdependent connection. Human beings are a collection

of different phenomena and in constant interchange with everything else” (Virtbauer,

2010). The notion of intersubjectivity spoken of here resonates with Edmund Husserl’s

phenomenological version of the same concept. Additionally, the two truths doctrine in

Buddhism of absolute and relative truths is echoed in the Kantian notions of the

noumenal and the phenomenal worlds, so clearly there are overlaps between these

different scientific, philosophical, psychological, and spiritual systems. I find a systemic

view useful and encouraging principally in the context of the current common traps of

discrimination worldwide, whether on a social level (e.g., racial, religious, or sexual) or

even on an international level (e.g., wars). This is an effort to build bridges that may lead

to a somewhat pragmatic ‘relational ontology’ (Caponigro, & Prakash, 2009). A

relational ontology is a flexible working model that is based on poly-solipsism, and so it

is not a firm or dogmatic metaphysical position.

I see art as a reflection of a reflection, and I use the word ‘art’ here loosely mainly

to denote fine art, specifically film. As is clear so far, we are dealing with a multi-layered

reality, whether physical, psychological, philosophical or spiritual, and film handles these

layers of reality in different ways. With film, we try to construct or identify the dramatic

structure of cinematic reality. Perhaps, it is useful to visualize this multi-layered view of

reality as an interlocking spiral. Aristotle laid down the early rules of dramatic structure

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in The Poetics more than two millennia ago, and many screenwriters as well as

screenwriting gurus today still follow them—knowingly or unknowingly—as exemplified

by the clear-cut three-act structure of beginning, middle, and end that we see in most

films. Even though cinema is a young art—only more than a century old—in comparison

to its ancestor, theatre, it has full-bloomed at an in impressively fast pace especially as it

has paralleled technological advancements over the years.

I will focus on film’s ancestor for a little bit because that is where dramatic

structure came from. Dramatic theorists did not necessarily see eye to eye when it came

to the purpose of drama. Aristotle thought that plays should move audiences on an

emotional level, Antonin Artaud—a surrealist and the founder of the Theatre of Cruelty

—, millennia later, was more for a visceral/gut-level experience, and Bertolt Brecht—a

Marxist and a proponent of the Epic Theatre—was far more interested in a dialectic

between plays and audience members on an intellectual level. In the world of theatre,

there are two broad categories for how reality can be handled on stage, through

representation or presentation. Put simply, representation means trying to replicate real

life on stage and presentation means having an artistic license with how real life is

stylistically and structurally presented on stage. In film, melodramas and documentaries

would belong to the first category, while more experimental and avant-garde films—esp.

surrealism with its historical affinity with psychodynamics—would belong to the second

category, but honestly there have been many films, too, that combine elements from both,

they can be labeled as trans-genre (Kaplan, 2005). All of these different styles differ on

the purpose of drama or its effects. For instance, to Aristotle the purpose of tragedy was

catharsis or the purging of emotions through pity and fear, which usually happens when

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we as audience members identify with the protagonist and her struggles empathically as

if they were our own. This sense of shared suffering can be healing or therapeutic but it

can also be numbing as a form of escapism from our own suffering as we project our

suffering onto film characters or repress altogether. Brecht saw it as the latter through the

lens of Marxism, to him the illusion of recreating reality on stage is a deceptive capitalist

mechanism that does not challenge us, so he wanted his theatre to have the opposite

effect. Put differently: “In representational theatre [or film] the artists strive to create a

visual and performance reality on stage [or on screen] that tricks the audience into

accepting the idea that what they are seeing is real. […] The artists in presentational

theatre [or film] try to challenge the natural passivity of the audience by creating a

moment to moment reality, forcing the viewers to actively participate in the creation of

the reality” ("Presentational Theater and Representational Theater", n.d.). Brecht did not

think highly of cinema because he saw it as a tool in the hands of a capitalist movie

industry (Hollywood), and in that sense he is right; in fact, movie producers got greedier

and more creative at marketing, and blockbuster films got more formulaic in terms of

their plots, often times relying on sentimental devices, such as tear-jerkers and jaw-

droppers. Not mentioning the fast-paced short-attention span inducing editing, our

desensitization through the glorification of sex and violence, and the computer-generated

imagery that are designed as eye candy to keep us entertained. Amidst this gloomy

picture, I argue that most moviegoers still long for transpersonal themes even from

mainstream movies, e.g., The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), Star Wars (Lucas, 1977),

The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont, 1994), Avatar (Cameron, 2009), and Cloud Atlas

(Tykwer, Wachowski, & Wachowski 2012). I also recognize the growing trend of

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independent or underground cinema—thanks to the affordability of digital video

technologies and the openness of the Internet as a democratic platform for freely sharing

creative projects—that runs parallel to mainstream cinema, and sometimes overlaps with

it. As a filmmaker and as a cinephile, I am aware of cinema’s potential to not just

entertain us, but to educate us and to heal us, too. I suppose money is not the issue, it is

what you do with it; this takes us back to the beginning: to the purpose of dramatic

structure vis-à-vis its effects. Here is what Brecht thought about cinema and in some way

it foreshadows a worryingly deterministic field such as neurocinema (Randall, 2011):

“What the film really demands is external action and not introspective psychology. […]

Great areas of ideology are destroyed when capitalism concentrates on external action,

dissolves everything into processes, abandons the hero as the vehicle for everything and

mankind as the measure, and thereby smashes the introspective psychology of the

bourgeois novel. […] [I]n the great American comedies the human being is presented as

an object, so that their audience could as well be entirely made up of Pavlovians.

Behaviourism is a school of psychology that is based on the industrial producer’s need to

acquire means of influencing the customer; an active psychology therefore, progressive

and revolutionary. Its limits are those proper to its function under capitalism (the reflexes

are biological; only in certain of Chaplin’s films are they social)” (Brecht, & Willett,

1964, p. 50). Even though Brecht had little respect for cinema, his influence on some

filmmakers (namely, Jean-Luc Godard) has resulted in impressive results. Brechtian

cinema follows some of the conventions of dialectic theatre, such as the alienation effect

(A-effect). In comparing the new technique of acting he had developed to science, Brecht

wrote: “Characters and incidents from ordinary life, from our immediate surrounding,

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being familiar, strike us as more or less natural. Alienating them helps to make them

seem remarkable to us. Science has carefully developed a technique of getting irritated

with the everyday, ‘self-evident’, universally accepted occurrence, and there is no reason

why this infinitely useful attitude should not be taken over by art” (Brecht, & Willet,

1964, p. 140). The A-effect distances us as film viewers from film characters, this

disidentification takes us on a metalevel where we are not just engaged emotionally with

the characters but dialectically with the actors, too. This is an added layer of complexity

that can make us realize the illusory nature of cinematic reality inspiring us to question

our multi-layered reality and perhaps to transform aspects of it, if need be. Jean-Paul

Belmondo’s Michel in the early French New Wave masterpiece À bout de souffle

(Godard, 1960) is a fine example of an A-effective cinematic character. Michel is not

very likeable as a character, he has his share of hubris, and in that sense as the film’s

protagonist he is like an anti-hero, but he has some redeeming qualities about him:

possibly, his Bogartian suave (i.e., chain smoking and quirky humor). Michel breaks the

fourth wall towards the beginning of the film by looking into the camera and addressing

us, film viewers, directly. This A-effect makes us feel less safe and it can force us to

think that this story is not just about Michel, the fugitive, but about us as well:

conceivably, what we are running from in our lives. Godard was a film critic before being

a filmmaker, and so he was theoretically mature but inexperienced practically as a

cineaste. Since the film was produced on a low budget, Godard asked the actors to do

extended improvisations during shots or scenes based on his directions. Out of necessity,

Godard used ‘jump cuts’ to omit the non-workable parts of these improvisations, and that

was the birth of the infamous jump cut! Then the jump cut became a stylistic device,

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which constituted part of the film’s syntax as a jarring device that effectively intensified

the A-effect. Today, many filmmakers use jump cuts superficially without giving much

reflection to that device’s relationship to form and content within the world of a given

film.

Let us focus on Godard for a little bit now, as an exemplar from Brechtian

cinema, because he knows how to successfully dissect inter-subjective reality as a film

auteur; this is an attempt to understand Godard’s treatment of reality in his films as

informed by dialectic theatre:

Godard counterbalances his reality effects with eccentric editing strategies (his

reality-based shooting style merges with storytelling tactics), does not claim to

possess answers for the vast set of questions he raises, and has little interest in a

declarative cinema obsessed with self-contained stories and simplistic

psychological models (representation of our physical world should not be

considered a goal of worthwhile cinema). Godard subjects real-world material to

formal procedures that abandon the familiar rules of linear narrative, and aims to

make films in which fictional elements are inseparably linked with the physical

realities that surround them, and to conjure up a world-before-names through a

cinema-without-language. Godard’s notion of cinema stresses the allusiveness of

image combinations and juxtapositions (the sights and sounds of cinema do not

present us with self-evident truths). […] ‘[…] Godard replaces the psychological

depth of character typically produced by narrative continuity with multiple

representations of character-types’. […] Godard considers cinema to be the

language of things, insists on blurring all distinctions between the realities of

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fiction and the fictions of reality (Godard likes to blur distinctions between word

and image), and shows growing interest in fragmentation of movies” (Şerban,

2011).

I find that postmodernist cinema ironically captures reality through the use of

artificial techniques—which it is at least aware of and does not try to completely hide—

more authentically than, let us say, observational cinema (e.g., direct cinema or cinema

vérité), wherein the documentary filmmaker is supposedly a fly on the wall. In other

words, observational cinema is not more objective than postmodernist cinema because

any film—observational or not—is made up of specific angles and is edited in a

particular way, so clearly the filmmakers’ intersubjectivity enters into the equation of the

filmmaking process, with or without our awareness of that fact. Postmodernist film

auteurs are guilty of the same intersubjectivity but they do not try to hide it necessarily;

in fact, there is often a sense of self-reflexivity at work, such as in David Lynch’s cryptic

critique of the Hollywood system using the surreal mise en abyme structure of a film-

within-a-film, e.g., Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001) and its sequel INLAND EMPIRE

(Lynch, 2006). Metafilms are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem A Dream Within A

Dream as well as Arthur Koestler’s notion of holons or “[t]he idea of hierarchy and of

their constituent part-wholes” (Edwards, n.d.), a concept popularized by integral theorist

Ken Wilber. Other examples of postmodernist cinema that are worth highlighting here

include the film essays, e.g., F for Fake (Welles, 1973) and Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983),

and confessional cinema, e.g., Tarnation (Caouette, 2003) and I Am a Sex Addict (Zahedi,

2005).

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Reality television is a very interesting recent phenomenon because as a television-

programming genre it can be seen as an oxymoron. A lot of reality shows, if not most of

them, are scripted, hence, are somewhat fake. As a filmmaker, I know that once you start

filmmaking people they become self-conscious and so they start sort of performing for

the camera. I am not suggesting however that there is an essence to people that could be

experienced off-camera, but that most people feel more ‘natural’ perhaps or less self-

conscious when they are not being filmed. Surely, filming people for a documentary can

seem contrived or even invasive, but often after some time the film subjects may forget

about the intruding presence of the camera. I am convinced that we all perform in real life

anyhow à la social constructionism, but the camera, as an artificial eye that captures

aspects of reality that later can be screened to a public audience, brings about a sense of

shared voyeurism, which adds a strange ‘observer effect.’ The film that perfectly explores

this idea of the influence of the camera on the filmed subject is Film (Schneider, 1965),

which is written by absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett and stars silent film legend

Buster Keaton. In Film, the protagonist is uncomfortable because he feels he is being

watched, but he is not sure by whom. Little does he know as a character that there is a

camera filming him as an actor. In 1988, Godard shared some of his thoughts on

television; he starts by reacting aggressively to the way he is being shot up-close by a

cameraman: “This is the enemy, not him as a man, but the culture, this is the enemy. […]

The way you have to shoot me is so disgusting, so disgusting, that it’s no wonder some

people after like Le Pen can say that the concentration camp is only a detail. It comes

from that way of seeing, of looking at things. With TV, you know you can’t even think of

something different. With movie [sic], you can. And that’s why there is this strange affair

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of love and hate between TV and movie” (Festival de Cannes, 1988). It seems like

Godard regards the random cameraman he is addressing in the beginning of that quote,

who is the foot soldier of the TV industry, as a peeping tom for perhaps a degenerate

culture? This distortion of reality being referred to here could be symbolic of some kind

of social perversion, wherein the subject being filmed becomes objectified in the eyes of

the consumer culture as captured through voyeuristic TV cameras. Again, this is

disingenuous in comparison to the artificial techniques employed in postmodernist

cinema that bend reality in such a way that perhaps the shadow of a culture gets exposed;

in this sense, cinema becomes an uncomfortable mirror to look at, a therapeutic one that

is forcing us to change as opposed to the screen acting as a portal transposing us to our

narcissistic fantasies.

Eminent film critic André Bazin asks us to distinguish between two broad and

opposing trends: “‘those directors who put their faith in the image and those who put

their faith in reality’” (quoted in Galenson, & Kotin, 2007). Several film theorists have

explored the notions of reality and representation; this is a view I sympathize with since it

delineates between illusion and reality in cinema vis-à-vis hallucination and hypnosis:

The fine distinction between illusionary perception and hallucination consists in

the fact that only illusion includes an aisthetic [sensory] dimension in which

perception and projection inseparably interact, while the aspect of perception can

be completely absent in hallucination. […] [T]he concept of illusion refers at least

implicitly to the concept of reality. […] According to Musil, whenever aesthetic

representation is successful, it is able to narrow down the observer's

consciousness […] as in a state of light hypnosis. […] Relating this thought back

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to the special case of the cinema, the situation can be described as follows:

because of the darkened room and the relatively limited mobility allowed by the

movie seat, the vital valence [lebendige Wertigkeit] of the film spectator's

immediate surroundings is reduced for his or her consciousness. Thus, attention

can be absorbed by sound and image sequences, so that in their visible and

audible movement these become overvalued by the consciousness of the

spectator. The difference between the mode of presence of the events on-screen

and that of (empirical) reality may remain latently perceptible, but it is forced

from the spectator's consciousness to the benefit of a perception of the events on-

screen that includes projective additions” (Voss, Pollmann, & Hediger, 2011).

On the subject of movie magic, it is fair to realize that there are different forms of

illusions; two broad ones, include: projective illusion or “a loss of awareness of the

photographic image as an image in favor of the experience of a fully realized, though

fictional, world”, and reproductive illusion, which “usually occurs in the context of

nonfiction film that employs actuality footage as evidence of its subject matter” (Allen,

1993). Again, to go back to the early themes of this paper and sum them up, projective

illusion resonates with presentational theatre, postmodernist cinema, the phenomenal

world, relative truth, or subjective reality, while reproductive illusion resonates more with

representational theatre, observational cinema, the noumenal world, absolute truth, or

objective reality. However, to transcend this false dilemma, I shall allude to more hybrid

films that successfully capture inter-subjectivity or inter-objectivity. An excellent

example of a film that seems to blur fact and fiction stylistically is the docudrama The

Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988), which depicts the story of Randall Dale Adams who was

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convicted in the murder of a Dallas police office. The film was controversially seen as

less factual at first because it was made up of dramatized reenactments that were

juxtaposed to talking heads. However, thanks to this film, which was used as evidence to

prove Adam’s innocence, Randall was released from prison in 1989 after having spent 12

years in confinement for a crime he did not commit. Another highly influential

documentary that captures some truths in an unconventional way is the experimental

documentary film Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982), which is a Hopi word that means life

out of balance. I see Koyaanisqatsi, which has been described as a tone poem, as

translinguistic because it contains no dialogue relying instead on Philip Glass’s

entrancing minimalist soundtrack and Ron Fricke’s mind-altering cinematography to tell

a unique story through rhythmic juxtapositions of Earth before the existence of humans,

the effects of industrialization on the environment, and the effects of urbanization on

humans. Even though the film is extremely stylized, being shot on 70mm and employing

techniques such as slow motion and time-lapse cinematography, it offers us a

macroscopic view of our relationship with the Earth and technology through an audio-

visual rollercoaster ride, capturing some kind of inter-objective reality in the process.

Koyaanisqatsi is an excellent example of the potential of film as a universal language.

According to John Worrall (1899), a champion of SR, the key to understanding

the structure of the universe is quantum mechanics. Again, modern physics is showing us

the structure of the universe using mathematical models, but it will still be hard to

represent reality accurately because we are using a purely formal system whose

abstractions could be seen as symbolic or metaphorical of reality (i.e., as reflections but

not the thing-itself); however, we can try an approximation. We can think about the

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marriage between science, spirituality, and art; perhaps, through physics, Buddhism, and

cinema. Here are two strong clues as to the overlap between physics and Buddhism,

which are: a) the impermanence of reality, “The concept of reality of Nāgārjuna’s

philosophy and the concepts of complementarity and interactions of quantum physics

teach us something quite different that one could express metaphorically: everything is

built on sand, and not even the grains of sand have a solid core or nucleus. Their stability

is based on the unstable interactions of their component parts” (Kohl, 2007); and b) the

illusory nature of reality, “if the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and

what is ‘there’ is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is also a

hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically

transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes of objective reality? Put quite

simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material

world is Maya, an illusion, and although we may think we are physical beings moving

through a physical world, this too is an illusion” (Talbot, 2006). It seems to me

compelling that some of the ancient sages were on to something, particularly when some

of their philosophies are not considered outdated by today’s standards, but rather are

confirmed by the latest findings in modern science. I am strongly drawn to this notion of

quantum consciousness; perhaps because I was a math major growing up and so I happen

to have a bias towards physics. I am, however, skeptical of quantum mysticism, or the

forced marriage between quantum mechanics and consciousness studies, a position that is

widespread in the New Age subculture and is summed up in the following statement:

quantum mechanics is mysterious and consciousness is also mysterious, therefore, they

must be related.

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To conclude, I would like to reflect on how all of these layers of reality can

inform cinema structurally, and how filmmakers can approximate reality on the big

screen as informed by SR. Possibly, we could contemplate something like quantum

cinema. This may seem like a completely foreign concept and it is, but it is based on a

literary genre that has become recently popular called quantum fiction, which is defined

as: “Any tale in which synchronistic adventures (entanglement theory), multi-

dimensional reality, interactive metaverses, nonlinear time, or consciousness as a

participant in the creation of physical reality are central to the story” ("Quantum Fiction

Literature & Books", n.d.). Based on this definition, one can imagine all sorts of surreal

science fiction films that are based on the findings of quantum mechanics; a recent one

that comes to mind is the non-linear almost three-hour long film Cloud Atlas (Tykwer,

Wachowski, & Wachowski 2012), which features multiple plotlines set across six

different eras with reincarnation acting as the over-arching thread that units the whole

film.

In addition to quantum cinema, two other film styles come to mind that also deal

with inter-subjectivity and/or inter-objectivity: expanded cinema (EC) and ethnofiction.

The former looks at video, as a syncretic art form that combines all sorts of new

technologies, and the latter is an ethnographic film methodology invented by French

anthropologist Jean Rouch. Valie Export, a luminary of EC, comments on her work with

Peter Weibel, another EC artist and theoretician: “My/our works were/are always

intended to be seen within the context of a social struggle, as an attack on state reality so

as to destroy the limits of state reality and the traditional concept of art, for expanded

cinema also means expanded reality. Transformed media produce a transformed world,

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and a world pressing toward transformation presses toward transformed media. Expanded

cinema was not only an expansion of the scale of the optic phenomenon, but also was

intended, in this phase, to do away with reality and with the language that construes it”

(Export, 2003). I am drawn to Export’s attitude regarding how EC’s goal is ultimately to

expand our sense of reality. Again, this supports the view that cinema is not just about

entertainment, but perhaps that it should also be enlightening.

Jean Rouch did something similar with a more rigorous practice-based qualitative

research (QR) methodology that—like SR—combines the best of both worlds—film and

anthropology; fact and fiction; etc.— in order to capture an approximation of inter-

subjective reality that is more genuine than in observational cinema or in a more

traditional QR methodology. Rouch resisted “making distinctions between fact and

fiction in his ethnographic films […]. For Rouch, practice was as much of a fun game as

it was surrealist art or ethnography. Fun and adventure seem to have been the

predominant motivations for him and the other participants of the ethnofictions, and

Rouch regarded their shared pleasure to be crucial for the ethnographic film production.

[…] As a fourteen-year-old Parisian boy Rouch had been inspired by jazz and surrealist

art […] and similar to previous French anthropologists, he would infuse ethnographic

research and representation with elements of surrealism and poetry” (Sjöberg, 2008). As

a lover of the surreal and the poetic, as a transdisciplinary artist, and as an

academic/researcher, I see ethnofiction as the ideal methodology of choice that will allow

me to perhaps see through the multi-layered structure of psychological reality. In

ethnofiction, research participants do not just talk about their experiences; they re-live the

memories they re-collect and, in the process, re-interpret them through improvised re-

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enactments. The transdisciplinary structure of ethnofiction can invite the researcher(s)

into the participants’ inter-subjective realities in ways not encapsulated by standard

interviews.

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