Reading Response for “Why A Fish Pond?”
The question about the staged interviews first struck me most. This was the roughly the fifth question in the article and Trinh explains her usage of “staged’ and “real” interviews through her film. Ethics is a huge part in documentary film making and some of the viewers of Trinh’s film did not understand this concept of respect. Trinh explains how the woman, despite their class, would dress up in beautiful clothing due to the amount of people that were going to be seeing them (this being the film crew, and later the audiences that will see the film) and wanted to look respectful. Even though Trinh would have rather had them not be dressed up, it was an ethical choice as a film maker to make her subjects comfortable with the film she was making about them. Another ethical choice Trinh had to encounter with the interviews was location of the interviews and how the women wanted to represented. One woman, Trinh explains, wanted to only be filmed next to a fish pond, which there were none near by. Trinh respected the woman’s wishes and found a pond to film by, but later found out that a fishpond is a place of meditation, a place of rest and wanted to be represented in this manor. Trinh stood by their wishes because that is how they wanted to be presented. If only all doc directors could be this way, in some cases it is hard to let your subjects have all the choice, in some cases, a director has to tell their subject no, and that they have to do it their way but that leads to problems on an ethical level. Once a filmmakers subject is uncomfortable, it is very hard to get an accurate representation of what the filmmaker is trying to get on film. Trinh knew that if she told the women no, and that they had to do it her way the woman would most likely not have participated so openly. It is about making even ground, where everyone respects the other to get a great end product and a message conveyed on film.
-John
ljhopes said,
October 29, 2008 at 3:41 am
I like the way you are framing this as an ethical choice, because representation ultimately involves ethical choices. Let’s talk more about ethical choices that we have made in representation. Has anyone had questions or issues like the ones brought up here (via Minh-Ha)?