Thought I'd show my face again. The last time I posted on here was for the ethnography project. I thought I would post a few thoughts on that.
I mentioned this in class (but didn't include it in my presentation because it didn't fit), but I found it very interesting that the fact that my friend (a nobody) suddenly became somebody important just because we had a camera and a boom mic on him. I have some conflicted feelings about this. On one hand, I felt that it was great to get some of the reactions of people to what they thought was a movie star. That's what Sundance is to a lot of people... going somewhere cool and seeing movie stars. They were looking for cameras, microphones, and big groups. Those are the signs of a movie star.
On the other hand, I felt like it kind of made my impression of Sundance less accurate. Had I just gone to silently observe, I would have noticed many different things, and may not have even realized that people gravitate towards cameras and groups. It's almost as if I went into this place and made it what I wanted it to be. Of course, that wasn't my intention, but I can see how this could present the problem of a lack of authenticity. My report on "what Sundance is like" was more like a report on "what I made Sundance to be like..." You know what I'm saying here?
So in the end, I just kind of felt weird that I was trying to discover what made Sundance a "place", but in the process was altering it to become something that it may not exactly be.
good point about the silent observation, Branden. i imagine it wouldn't have had to be "silent," though. i am thinking that if the one focus had been to just go, be there, and not work with the other agenda, great! HOWEVER, what you were able to produce was pretty impressive. AND, most Writing Studies scholars i know are adept at hypertaskolating!
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