Student Comments on Dead Birds

Fooling the Audience

The film Dead Birds focused on the Dani of West Irian.  It linked the life of the people to a story told by them in which people are like birds and die instead of being like snakes and shedding their skin.  The important things to the Dani are the presence of ghosts, which surround them in their daily lives and rule the thing that they do and the way they live.  The Dani are constantly at war with other people to pacify the ghosts.  When one person is killed his ghost will cause unrest and trouble among the people until he is revenged by the death of another.  The life revolves around the waiting and watching for the enemy and then the battles to pacify the dead ghosts.  The women do not participate in the battles but are at home taking care of the family and doing most of the farming.  The men do the hardest most labor-intensive jobs while the women do the longer more tedious jobs.  The main food staple is sweet potatoes.  Pigs are also important for eating at special occasions and trade.  Men go out everyday to watch for the enemy and protect the women who are working in the fields.  There are no battles at night since the ghosts are strongest then and even the bravest men do not go outside.  The movie followed the lives of two male members of the community.  One boy and one man who was a warrior.  By following their everyday lives the movie attempted to portray a larger picture of society and the people.

Even though the artistic style of the film might not have been anthropological I liked the style in which the film was made.  Through the focus on one boy the audience was able to feel close to the Dani as a people.  The focus on animals as well helped to create a better film.  It was mentioned in class that this is not anthropological and a waste of time but it adds to the information of the people’s living environment.  The sounds of the animals and the forest ushered in feelings of ghosts surrounding the characters, which helps the viewer to get a sense of what these people feel at night and how they identify with the spirits.

There were two main problems I found with the film after watching it.  These were not something I noticed while watching but were pointed out after.  First I think there is no reason that the sound track should be staged.  Learning that it is detracts from the authenticity of the film.  As well the battle scenes in the movie are portrayed to be each individual events.  There is nothing to give any hint that they might be composites from various battles.

The film could have been better done if it focused on the female and male relations since according to the reading this is one of the most interesting thing about that culture that was almost entirely left out.  If John Gardner wanted to include various points from different battles he should have in someway shown that they were different events instead of combining them together.  There were many points where Gardner could have shown a more “real” view of what was happening but he failed to do so and instead tried to fool the audience.

Natalie Eft

The Narrative Pushes the Film 

Film Summary

The film Dead Birds is described as an ethnographic film about the Dani Tribe who live in the Grand Valley of Indonesia New Guinea. The Dani are an egalitarian society within the larger community of New Guinea.  The film's producer Robert Gardner insists that it is ethnographical in nature, but he diligently works toward producing a film with a definite narrative line, much like a commercial fictional film.  Gardner made the film with the assistance of Karl Heider, a well known anthropologist.  The film captures reality in an unmediated manner, despite its deliberate interpretation as an ethnographical cinematic achievement.  The film attempts to document Dani society including its culture and ecology.  The film focuses on a few individual people.

Film Techniques

The type of film used to film Dead Birds is not often seen in ethnographic films in today's world.  The type of film used is one that suggests color, but when developed produces shades of sienna in everything.  Thus, I experienced a sense of color when watching the Dani and some of the birds.  However, I did not see the true colors of the forest, grasses, ducks, lizards, people or reality in the Danis’ world.  Gardner filmed the Dani over a period of five months, April through August in 1961.  He remained alone in the Grand Valley of New Guinea for an additional 21 months after the anthropologists, film crew and others had departed.  Gardner subsequently returned to New Guinea several other times to study the ethnography of the Dani.  Although he had no script in hand while filming the Dani, he apparently did have one in his mind.  The focus of the film centers primarily around two central characters.  One is Weyak, a man who helps to guard the frontier and the other is Pua, a young boy who herds pigs. Gardner is the author, cameraman and editor of the film.  This represents the acts of either a very confident, capable person, or those of an egomaniac!

Mise-en-Scene

The Mise-en-Scene relates to the aesthetics of a film, lighting, sets, props, figure behavior, costumes and cosmetic make-up of the actors. 

Lighting

Gardner clearly states in his writings that he did not want to illuminate the film with artificial lighting.  However, he has no compunction regarding the use of other artificial effects in his narrative.  For example, he uses the freeze frame for shock effect, flashback of a battle, and “interiority” to take us inside the minds of Weyak and Pua.  It is as though he knows what they are thinking.  The sun is the only illumination used during filming.  Therefore, the dark interior of the huts even during the day, proves to be dark and foreboding allowing us to see  little of consequence.  Gardner could be more informative by using artificial lighting for some scenes inside the huts, even if only the light of a torch.

Sets and Props

Gardner uses no props and/or sets in the film, other than things that the Dani normally use in their everyday existence.   Gardner filmed the high towers along "no-man's land," one of which is where Weyak searches the frontier day after day for signs of attack by neighboring tribes.  Gardner also filmed the village compound and fields where the Dani grow their meager crops.  He filmed Weyak weaving a funeral band decorated with cowrie shells, Pua herding his pigs, and the funeral of a young boy who is killed by the neighboring tribe on the day of a pig feast. 

Figure Behavior

The figures and characters in the film all seem to move very naturally.  This natural movement may be because according to Gardner’s claim that the Dani have no idea that he is filming them.  They may have reacted to Gardner differently if they had known they were being filmed.  The scene in the film where the young boys of the village are having a mock battle, is very natural.  This game necessarily is not to determine who is strongest, but more likely to determine who is the weakest.  As Gardner notes, the mock battles can be dangerous. Some boys apparently have been blinded as the result of having been struck in the eye by long pointed sticks, shaped much like spears, and thrown by one of the other boys.  Other serious injuries reportedly have occurred as a result of boys throwing rocks at one another.  Obviously, the adults of the community do not look upon this rough play with any sort of disapproval. 

Gardner did not film the Dani women to any great extent.  He tells us that he did not feel that he could film the women ostensibly, as he felt that this would jeopardize his relationship with the men of the community.  The women are filmed going up the mountain to the brine pool to collect salt in the strips of banana fiber.  They also are filmed cultivating their crops.  The women are not filmed in their huts or weaving the stands of braided grasses for their skirts and nets which they wear to cover their backs, or cooking or caring for their babies.

Costumes and Make-up

The only attire worn by men is the penis gourd, worn by all males beginning at the age of five years.  The gourd reportedly is for modesty's sake rather than for any kind of decoration.  The men also wear bird feathers in their headdresses, especially when fighting with neighboring tribes.  These headdresses represent the "deadbirds," Dani warriors that have been killed by their enemies. 

The married women wear braided reed and string skirts which are wound tightly around their hips.  Prior to marriage, girls beginning at the age of about four or five, wear hanging skirts made of strings and reeds.  Women's breasts are always bare, but they are extremely modest about their backs.  They keep their backs covered with a net hung by a loop from their foreheads.  Often a woman will wear several nets.  These nets are used for carrying their babies and produce from the fields to the village compound.

Cinematography (Mise-en-Cadre)

Photography

Gardner uses a large amount of film for this production. As mentioned previously, he uses freeze frames for shock effect.  He uses flashbacks.  He uses wide-angle shots and telescopic shots.  Gardner uses many angles and perspectives to create the apparent effect that he is striving to attain.  Birds play a major role in the Dani's culture; thus, Gardner intersperses shots of birds throughout the film.  Gardner also uses composite film in what appears to be one battle.  Actually, it is a series of shots spliced together from four or five battles in an effort to make it appear as only one battle.  The editing of the entire film apparently is a composite of shots put together in an attempt to show us typical Dani life.  I question the splicing of film to create a narrative such as this one.  The narrative pushes the film instead of letting the film push the narrative as should be the case with an ethnographic film.  The film thus becomes more of a documentary than an ethnographic film!

Framing

The framing of the shots is actually quite good.  Gardner frames close-ups of faces in order to translate the symbolism of emotional events in the film.  The facial expressions of different individuals translate reams of information.   He films Pua with yellow clay around his eyes that the Dani often use to complete their perception as birds.  Gardner films a close-up of Weyak to translate the sorrow Weyak feels, shortly after discovering that the Dani's enemy had killed a young boy in the area where he normally patrolled and watched from his tower.  Gardner films much of the animal symbolism that makes up the Dani culture.  He films the ducks that warn the Dani of danger along the river, and that the Dani believe deplete the forces of life if killed.  The film shows banana trees along paths, which the Dani believe serve as houses for ghosts.  The film also shows the construction of a fence that encloses the ghosts, which keeps the ghosts penned up during the pig feast.  The frames for all of the aforementioned shots and others are well planned and executed.

Narrative

Gardner criticized Flaherty's film Nanook of the North[ii] as being contrived and staged, with too much narrative.  Gardner does the exact same thing that Flaherty did, although he denies doing so.  It is obvious that he intends to focus on only two people, Weyak and Pua.  The stories of both are told from an outsider's point of reference.  Gardner then begins to speak as though his thoughts and words are Pua's thoughts and words.  He does the same thing with Weyak, at the time of the funeral scene, when Weyak's pain registers clearly through his actions and expressions.  As a result, Gardner is successful in compiling a vast amount of film and editing it into a very decisive narrative of Dani life.

Sound Editing

Originally, no sound track accompanied the film.  One was added later.  Gardner mentions nothing about contemporaneously recording the Dani's voices and the sounds of the community-at-large.  The sound track reportedly was added in a film laboratory at Harvard University.  Heider and Michael Rockefeller, the sound editor, created the sound.  The sounds of the Dani singing and dancing during their victory celebration after winning a battle against their enemy are very reminiscent of the Indians in the Western United States dancing around their campfire celebrations.  The sounds are not very authentic sounding.  They indeed sound contrived!  

Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the strengths of the film is that it pictorially conveys a feeling of authenticity.  The Dani are portrayed as one of the last truly primitive tribes known to man.  Advancement of the Western culture obviously had not influenced the culture of the Dani at the time of filming.  The film is intended to be a record of what primitive tribes and cultures are, and how they take care of their own.  A film of this nature invariably teaches us about other cultures and societies.  It teaches us about how far the human race has progressed.  The film records a culture that has undoubtedly changed over the intervening years, and hopefully could be used as a measuring stick for progress.  In the Dani culture, no individuals own land or houses; they only have control and use of their land and houses.  They do however, own things such as spears, adzes, pigs and the like.  Neighbors can borrow any of these material things at will, except the pigs.  They cannot eat, steal, or transfer another man's pig to anyone.  Their rules are simple.  Their beliefs are based on their spiritual mythology, and the rites and celebrations around which they base their existence.  Much of these cultural mores are portrayed in the film.

The film also contains a number of inherent weaknesses.  The film raises more questions about the Dani than it answers.  For instance, what do Dani houses look like inside?  Do Dani children have close bonds with their parents?  Do Dani women believe that having their fingers amputated after funerals give them special status?  Do the Dani men ever hunt?  Is the only function of Dani men to fight battles, cultivate new garden plots, and weave funeral bands?  Do Dani children often cook for themselves as Pua does in the film?  Gardner could relate much more about the Dani than he does.  Why does he feel that it is subsequently necessary to add sound effects in a studio rather than record the Dani themselves?  Why does he feel compelled to "stage" his narrative so completely around only two characters?  Why does he not focus more on the "Big Man" or "Important Man" of the community?  In this regard, Gardner leaves many questions unanswered.

Concluding Comments and Recommendations

for Further Research

Dead Birds

The film Dead Birds focused on the Dani of West Irian.  It linked the life of the people to a story told by them in which people are like birds and die instead of being like snakes and shedding their skin.  The important things to the Dani are the presence of ghosts, which surround them in their daily lives and rule the thing that they do and the way they live.  The Dani are constantly at war with other people to pacify the ghosts.  When one person is killed his ghost will cause unrest and trouble among the people until he is revenged by the death of another.  The life revolves around the waiting and watching for the enemy and then the battles to pacify the dead ghosts.  The women do not participate in the battles but are at home taking care of the family and doing most of the farming.  The men do the hardest most labor-intensive jobs while the women do the longer more tedious jobs.  The main food staple is sweet potatoes.  Pigs are also important for eating at special occasions and trade.  Men go out everyday to watch for the enemy and protect the women who are working in the fields.  There are no battles at night since the ghosts are strongest then and even the bravest men do not go outside.  The movie followed the lives of two male members of the community.  One boy and one man who was a warrior.  By following their everyday lives the movie attempted to portray a larger picture of society and the people.

            Even though the artistic style of the film might not have been anthropological I liked the style in which the film was made.  Through the focus on one boy the audience was able to feel close to the Dani as a people.  The focus on animals as well helped to create a better film.  It was mentioned in class that this is not anthropological and a waste of time but it adds to the information of the people’s living environment.  The sounds of the animals and the forest ushered in feelings of ghosts surrounding the characters, which helps the viewer to get a sense of what these people feel at night and how they identify with the spirits.

            There were two main problems I found with the film after watching it.  These were not something I noticed while watching but were pointed out after.  First I think there is no reason that the sound track should be staged.  Learning that it is detracts from the authenticity of the film.  As well the battle scenes in the movie are portrayed to be each individual events.  There is nothing to give any hint that they might be composites from various battles.

            The film could have been better done if it focused on the female and male relations since according to the reading this is one of the most interesting thing about that culture that was almost entirely left out.  If John Gardner wanted to include various points from different battles he should have in someway shown that they were different events instead of combining them together.  There were many points where Gardner could have shown a more “real” view of what was happening but he failed to do so and instead tried to fool the audience.

Natalie Eft