A Documentary Fiction and Ethnographic Production: An Analysis of Sherman's March

Author(s): Sharon R. Roseman

Source: Cultural Anthropology , Nov., 1991, Vol. 6, No. 4 (Nov., 1991), pp. 505-524
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association

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A Documentary Fiction and Ethnographic
Production:
An Analysis of Sherman's March
Sharon R. Roseman
Department of Anthropology
McMaster University

If the relation between observer and observed (rapport) can be managed, the relati
between author and text (signature) will follow-it is thought-of itself.
-Clifford Geertz
Works and Lives

Recent theoretical discussions in anthropology explore the relationship be-

tween two central acts of the profession: fieldwork and the writing of ethnogra-
phies (see, among others, Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Cushman 1982;
Marcus and Fisher 1986; Tedlock 1983; Tyler 1987). The main themes in these
discussions coincide with theoretical commentary in other disciplines, such as lit-
erary criticism, film studies, women's studies, and historiography. There is a con-
cern with exposing the research and productive processes, and in so doing, schol-
ars and artists provide a reflexive examination of their authority and personal
biases and agendas. This concern brings a number of questions to mind. Should
ethnographers have complete control over the production of ethnographic texts?
What possibilities exist for "dialogical" rather than "analogical" ethnographies,
and for multiple authorship (Tedlock 1983, 1987)? What are the nature and lim-
itations of "representation" (Tyler 1987)? Is there such a thing as a postmodern
or "incomplete" authenticity (Handler and Saxton 1988)? And, finally, how can
we use reflexive and multivocal techniques to provide cultural critiques that in-
corporate colloquial as well as academic metaphors and interpretations (Fernan-
dez 1985; Marcus and Fischer 1986)?
I would like to discuss these issues in relation to a particular cultural con-
struction, a film by Ross McElwee entitled Sherman's March. My main goal is to
show how an analysis of films such as this one can help develop an understanding
of the possibilities and limitations of ethnographic production. I also explore the
idea that documentary film and ethnography necessarily involve the transforma-
tion of experience into "fictional" productions.'
There is a body of film and criticism that points to the broad parallels between
film and written ethnographic media (both of which are used by anthropologists)

505

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506 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

as well as to specific parallels between issues of concern to both filmmakers an

anthropologists. Anthropologists such as Jean Rouch and John Marshall have
made numerous ethnographic films. Currently, the subfield of "visual anthrop
ogy" is gaining a new prominence in Europe, North America, and Austra
(Chiozzi 1989). The theoretical interest among anthropologists in exposing th
relationships and processes of ethnographic production can be explored fruitfu
with the film medium. Film can provide an added visual and vocal account of t
research process. This trend toward reflexivity and a concern with process c
also be found in postmodern architecture, art, and literature (Hutcheon 1988).
There are more specific connections between filmmaking and ethnography
particularly in regard to the development of the various types of documentar
films. Documentary filmmaking and anthropology both expanded during the sa
period, the first half of the 20th century. Early filmmakers and ethnographe
shared a concern with "salvage" work (Chiozzi 1989). Documentary filmmak-
ers, one of the most famous being Robert Flaherty, created their works based
long periods of fieldwork. Flaherty spent ten years in northern Canada befo
making Nanook (Grierson 1966:141). Their work was to be distinguished from
that of reportage journalism and scientific documentaries because of the long p
riods of personalistic research and the small number of crew members. This co
trast is similar to that which is often made between the methods of anthropologis
versus those of other social scientists.
The Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov and the French anthropologist Jean
Rouch first labeled the genre of cinema verite. The feeling of Vertov was that film
should be used to provoke audiences' understanding of the world, and therefore
initiate social change (Ruby 1988:69-70). By "demystifying the creative pro-
cess" (Ruby 1988:70), a path was opened for the demystification of the world.
The explorations of institutions and social issues, such as the Vietnam war by
American filmmakers since the 1960s, share with more avant-garde and autobio-
graphical productions a concern with providing personal and cultural critiques of
the social world (Jacobs 1971; Rosenthal 1988a).2
Although film seems to capture moments more authentically and thoroughly
than any written description, it is as incomplete a representation as standard eth-
nographies. The postmodern questioning of "totalisation" arises in both film and
anthropological criticism: "One of the marks of postmodernism is an incredulity
toward metanarratives in which attempts at totalization are made. ... In this
sense, dialogue (as an ongoing process) is postmodernist" (Tedlock 1987:327;
see also Clifford 1986; Hutcheon 1988; Rosenthal 1988a). A new style of reflex-
ive ethnography has as a priority leaving "telltale marks of our own tools" (Ted-
lock 1983:331). In the direct cinema genre of American documentaries, "acci-
dents" such as poor focusing are often kept in the final edited versions as "signs
of direct-cinema style, an indication that the director did not control the event he
was recording" (Ruby 1988:73). As with the material collected during fieldwork
versus that actually used in ethnographies, the film footage that makes up the final
versions of documentaries is a tiny proportion of that which is shot. Anthropolo-
gists who include descriptions, dialogues, and interpretations that undermine their

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 507

authority as the sole "interpreter" are using these items very consciously, t
ate a new authority or persona (Clifford 1986; Marcus and Cushman 1982
lock 1983). In the past, although "realist" ethnographies tended to draw b
a third-person, authoritative account, they often began, like Firth's We the
pia, with a personalized anecdote demonstrating that he was "in that place"
"real people" (see comments by Geertz 1988 and Pratt 1986). Like direct c
filmmakers who are "allowing the circumstances of the shooting to dicta
form of the film, which consequently revealed the process and producer"
1988:73), interpretive ethnographers now have more license to exhibit a fre
terplay between the circumstances of fieldwork and the control of ethnog
production.
One way in which filmmakers successfully incorporate commentary on re-
flexivity is through the use of parody and irony. Jan Ruby defines "parody" as a
style that "mocks or ridicules communicative forms" (1988:68). Linda Hutcheon
defines parody more broadly, in the context of postmodern practice and theory,
as "repetition with critical distance, which marks difference rather than similar-
ity" (1985:6). Hutcheon points out that the meaning and use of parody have
changed through different periods and suggests that its current usage does not
necessarily have the negative connotation of "mocking": "Parody, therefore, is
a form of imitation, but imitation characterized by ironic inversion, not always at
the expense of the parodied text" (1985:6). These techniques, used in both fiction
and documentary films, are also used in various genres of writing (Ruby 1988:68).

Sherman's March

In the film Sherman's March (1986), Ross McElwee parodies several film
genres: "from cinema verite to travelogue to screwball comedy to historical do
umentary and even to film noir" (Reynaud 1986:21). McElwee studied film at
M.I.T. with Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus. In the late 1970s, he worked a
cameraman with John Marshall in Namibia, filming footage for what became
N!ai, Portrait of a !Kung Woman. His previous work includes Charleen (1978),
a lengthy interview of his former teacher, and Backyard (1982), a portrait of h
relationships with his father and brother and more generally of the culture of Sco
tish Presbyterianism in the southern United States (MacDonald 1988). McElwe
former teacher, his father, and his brother all appear in Sherman's March, whi
focuses on the culture of areas such as Charlotte, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
In a survey of non-mainstream film and video productions about the South
Linda Dubler (1986) demonstrates that McElwee is far from alone in making do
umentaries or cultural critiques of the South. Like ethnographers, some filmma
ers are able to capture and explore salient aspects of the culture of a region whe
they themselves stand outside, or on the border, of that culture. This distance c
be achieved not only by being from another culture but also by coming back t
one's own culture. This is what Ross McElwee did. After studying and workin
in the Northeast, he came back to his home region in the South. Among filmma

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508 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

ers who work in the southern United States, many have come from, or spent
in, other areas of the country. This approach, echoing Marcus and Fisch
(1986) call for a greater number of "cultural critiques" on anthropologists' ho
regions, is in contrast to the general trend in the field to go abroad, or to stu
"exotic" others.
Dubler (1986) mentions filmmakers Will Hindle (Pasteur, 1976), Lee Sokol
(Aqui se lo halla (Here You Will Find It, 1983) and video artist Stevenson Palfi
who, over their lifetimes, all came from the North to the South. Despite having
been brought up in Miami, Sokol is still considered a Yankee because she was
born in New York (Dubler 1986:40). McElwee came from the South to the North
and back to the South again in the context of the film Sherman's March. He him-
self notes that this quality is one that opposes him to his parodied historical
"other" in the film: General Tecumseh Sherman (MacDonald 1988:22). Within
the context of anthropology, McElwee is comparable to a "native" ethnographer
who has left home and returns to be

. . . thrice-born. The first birth is our natal origin in a particular culture. The sec-
ond is our move from this familiar to a far place to do fieldwork there .... The third
birth occurs when we have become comfortable within the other cultures-- . .. and
turn our gaze again toward our native land. We find that the familiar has become
exoticized; we see it with new eyes. The commonplace has become the marvelous.
[Turner 1978:xiii]

Dubler comments on this when she writes that Ross McElwee, who is "Southern
born-and-bred," "sharpens his vision of home by living in Boston" (1986:43).
McElwee himself states that Sherman's March is "a documentary, not a fic-
tion" (MacDonald 1988:23); it is "a personal essay form of nonfiction filmmak-
ing" (Insdorf 1986:26). The film is autobiographical, yet the persona of the film-
maker and his relationships are a metonym for a larger concern with portraying
the southern region, which General Tecumseh Sherman devastated at the closure
of the Civil War (MacDonald 1988:22).
McElwee's original intention was to make a film about people's impressions
of the Civil War, but he became side-tracked at the beginning of his project. His
girlfriend left him, and his sister Deedee suggested (on film) that he use his camera
to meet women (Insdorf 1986:26). In Sherman's March, McElwee has woven
several themes together in his editing of a series of seemingly randomly collected
and lengthy interviews with southern women. Some of these women are people
whom he has known for years-relatives, former girlfriends, or friends. Others,
he meets within the context of making the film. Two subtitles used in two separate
releases of the film are both related to his quest for a new girlfriend: (1) "A Med-
itation Upon the Possibilities of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of
Nuclear Weapons Proliferation" and (2) "An Improbable Quest for Love"
(Darnton 1986:C8). The first subtitle seems the most accurate pr6cis of the film,
since McElwee goes on to describe how his nightmares about nuclear war coin-
cide with his depressions about problems with his love affairs. As a child, on
holiday with his parents in Hawaii, McElwee saw the lights from a hydrogen
bomb testing explosion thousands of miles away. His personal preoccupation with

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 509

the advent of nuclear war is a counterpoint to his obsession with the activ
General Sherman during the Civil War and the anger of southerners, their
of being beseiged and marginalized by the centers of American industry a
ernment in the Northeast and on the West Coast. As McElwee notes in th
General Sherman knew southern women better than he knew southern me
during the campaign the men were away fighting. Similarly, we get the
sion that Ross McElwee has more knowledge of, and sympathy with, the
of the South. The film composes a general parodic comparison of Ross Mc
filmmaker, and General Tecumseh Sherman, warrior. The devastating ac
war, filmmaking, and love affairs are implicitly compared throughout th
(Draper 1987; Dubler 1986:44; Hoberman 1986).
McElwee sets out to record his encounters with various southern women. But
he continues to film places where General Sherman lived and fought. When he
includes segments during which he films himself alone, voicing his own thoughts
about his failures in love affairs, he includes asides about the life of General Sher-
man and his own fears of nuclear annihilation. Small sequences portraying the
filmmaker's trip through the South punctuate the larger commentaries by Mc-
Elwee and the women he interviews.
The women interviewed by this filmmaker talk about the Civil War, about
their careers and plans, about love, and about their relationship with the South.
The first woman to be portrayed at length is Pat, an actress, who, like McElwee,
grew up in the South but left her home to pursue her career. She is very comfort-
able with McElwee and his camera, and teasingly performs cellulite exercises for
him and tells him the plot of her fantasy movie script. He juxtaposes his and Gen-
eral Sherman's personas with that of Burt Reynolds, whom he calls his "neme-
sis" at one point in the film. Pat is trying to meet Mr. Reynolds, as he is filming
a new movie in the Atlanta area. McElwee develops the theme of Mr. Reynolds
as the perfect romantic hero in a film script (Draper 1987:42). This theme is pur-
sued later in the film when McElwee uses footage of a Burt Reynolds look-alike
he meets (who is also searching for Mr. Reynolds) and the set of the movie where
Mr. Reynolds is signing autographs.
The next woman McElwee meets is Claudia, a friend of his sister's and a
divorced mother and interior decorator. She takes him to meet a group of surviv-
alists in the mountains of North Carolina who agree to be interviewed on film if
McElwee does not reveal their names and location. This group of men say they
live in isolation to escape the constraints of government control, yet they support
the buildup of a nuclear arsenal by the American government to surpass the "com-
munists." They also want to be able to "shoot a gun off your porch" without
interference and to control anyone who enters their domain.
McElwee visits an island retreat off the coast of Georgia, which is inhabited
by only two people, Wini, a doctoral candidate in linguistics, and Michael, a ge-
ologist. Wini and McElwee become involved for some time. He films her per-
forming rural chores, such as milking a cow, and discussing her linguistics re-
search. When he returns to the island after being away for several months, he
records Wini's rejection of him (for Michael).

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510 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Next, McElwee spends time with an old girlfriend, art teacher an

clear activist, Jackie, who is on the verge of leaving her home in So
to escape to California, where people have "shallow roots" and "just
We see Jackie with her young students and as a leader of a peace ral
from her that South Carolina has the largest number of nuclear waste
and McElwee picnic at a recently erected monument, which explain
guages, for the survivors of a nuclear war, how to rebuild "civiliza
McElwee tries to discuss their relationship on camera, Jackie turns
goes to California leaving McElwee (and we sense herself as well) wi
solved feelings about their relationship to each other and to the Sout
We then meet McElwee's former teacher and good friend, Charlee
ject of another of his films mentioned above), who introduces him to
mon school administrator and folksinger. McElwee spends a lot of tim
of these women before finding out that Didi is a Mormon and finally
Charleen that Didi and he are not suited as prospective spouses. Did
mother show the camera (and McElwee) their supplies for the upco
lypse or nuclear war. McElwee tells Charleen that Didi's dowry "app
cludes a better than average chance of survival in case of a nuclear
leaves Charleston before Charleen has a chance to introduce him to her next
choice for his future wife. The next sequence involves McElwee meeting another
singer, Joyce, performing in the parking lot of a shopping center. At the end of
the subsequent interview with Joyce (which seems to take several days), this tal-
ented, jazzy nightclub singer leaves the South to search for fame in New York
City, a reversal of McElwee's trip to the South.
The last woman to be interviewed is another former girlfriend of McElwee's,
Karen, a lawyer and E.R.A. activist who also left the South and then came back.
McElwee is unable to convince Karen to fall in love with him (in lieu of her cur-
rent boyfriend, who spends his time moving giant plastic animals with his
friends). He parodies his attempts by filming a discussion he initiates during an
E.R.A. rally: "With consummate timing, I insist upon talking to Karen about our
relationship in the midst of 10,000 angry southern women."
Finally, Ross McElwee leaves the South because he has only one roll of film
left, and he is unsure how to film his life since he finds that "my real life has
fallen into the crack between myself and my film." He returns to Boston where
he closes the film with a new romantic interest, Pam, the instructor of a music
class he is auditing.

Sherman's March and Ethnography

Examples from Sherman's March can be used to examine how a recent focus
on the process of ethnographic construction intersects with other issues: multi-
vocality and authorship, representation and authenticity, and cultural critique and
colloquiality.

Vocality versus Authorship

As noted by James Clifford (among others), every presentation of an eth-
nography or a similar work is only an expression of "partial truth" (Clifford

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 511

1986). New ways of creating ethnography must deal with the limitatio
in this notion. Two intersecting themes are the changing authority of
who describes and interprets the "other" and the changing form of
work. One suggestion on how to change the nature of "ethnographic a
and the form of ethnographic accounts has been to use the voices of in
often providing verbatim accounts of particular dialogues between inv
and informants and their interpretations.3 In recent revisions of the cin6
genre of filmmaking, the filmmaker has begun to include him or her
logues and other sequences to demonstrate his or her role in the creati
Film theory and practice have recognized the constraints of earlier cin
observational, and interview documentaries whose creators attempted
film medium to illustrate, transparently, "reality" (Jacobs 1971:275;
1988:53). Those who are being filmed are now "voices" rather than sim
jects."
The notion of multiple "voices" brings several questions into play. Even if
there are multiple voices included in the text, does not the editing of the footage/
data provide a single, overriding voice? How does the intentionality of ethnog-
raphers and/or filmmakers in terms of their research approaches as well as their
mode of presenting ethnography (or similar cultural products) affect the process
at each stage? In other words, a concern with written form, strategies, and styles
necessitates an awareness that structure creates a message that is partly uninten-
tional and partly intentional. Grierson notes that films "all represent different
qualities of observation, different intentions in observation, and, of course, very
different powers and ambitions at the stage of organizing material" (1966:145).
This structure or form is developed throughout the practice of filmmaking or an-
thropology, because the way in which one questions and chooses to proceed are
all part of a series of varied and complex overt and covert messages (Tyler 1987).
Some of McElwee's co-participants in the filming of Sherman's March are
told that he is making a film about Sherman's march through the South, however,
they are also aware that he is filming his conversations with them, most of which
have nothing to do with the historical march. So we see individuals, such as Pat,
who are excited to be filmed. She responds to the camera and sets it in the context
of her quest for fame as an actress. In one scene, she tells McElwee and the film
audience of her idea for a film, describing in detail her proposed heroine's role.
A singer, Joyce, also seems relatively comfortable with the camera. Others are
visibly uncomfortable. In fact, their behavior helps convince me that McElwee's
film was not scripted. These individuals reach out to an unknown audience, past
McElwee and his camera, and at times they reproach McElwee's insistence on
filming. Jackie turns her back to him when they talk about their relationship;
Karen, the lawyer, tells him: "Stop filming, that's cruel"; and Charleen attacks
what she perceives as his need to film in her efforts to stop him: "Turn it off. This
is important. This is not art, this is life." It seems that he has left these sections
in the film intentionally; as many filmmakers do, he is using his own invention to
make the audience aware of the power of the medium.
In an introduction to a special volume on the issues of voice and place in
ethnography, Appadurai concludes that "although none of these essays says so

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512 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

explicitly, the problem of place and voice is ultimately a problem of power"

(1988:20). He goes on to analyze the inherent power in the relationship betwe
the places from which anthropologists come and those to which they go to d
research. It is easy to read McElwee's interest in past and present distinctions a
relations between southern and northern United States as an interest in power.
begins with his fascination with General Sherman's act of waging "total warfa
against a civilian population." Then, back in the 1980s, it shifts to the questi
of why there are so many nuclear waste sites in South Carolina.
In his discussion of "the author," Michel Foucault mentions that a revers
occurred in the characters of "scientific discourses" and "literary discourses"
(1984:109). In the Middle Ages, it was necessary to have the scientist's name o
writings for their "truth" to be accepted; whereas, today, scientific texts are ofte
authored by a team of multiple authors, and their truth value is thought to be co
tained in the work of scientific experimentation rather than in any one autho
imagination. The opposite has occurred for works of literature. In the past th
were many anonymous texts, whereas, over time, we have arrived at a situatio
in which, in Western cultures, "literary anonymity is not tolerable" (Foucau
1984:109).
McElwee alludes to several genres of filmmaking (in particular, documen
tary filmmaking and home movies) that are not only thought to be naturalistic bu
are also given a "truth" value that is not tied to the authority of a particular
thor. He interweaves these genres (or his parodies of them) with his filming o
interviews with particular people. The "documentary" film portions are those
which he travels to, and explains, Civil War sites. Near the beginning of the fil
McElwee's film professor and a veteran of American documentaries, Richard
Leacock, anonymously plays the narrator of a historical documentary. His deep
serious voice simultaneously introduces General Sherman's and, implicitly, Ros
McElwee's marches on the South (MacDonald 1988:19; Reynaud 1986).
On many occasions McElwee also plays with the home movie genre. One
example of this is the beginning sequence when he goes with his family to a com
munity picnic. On another occasion, McElwee films himself walking backwar
into a marsh as he speaks to the camera. He may have set up this scene intentio
ally, pretending to be unaware that he would drop off the bank. Or he may n
have known what would happen. Even so, in his editing of the final version, h
chose to leave it in. In the opinion of the film critic Bernice Reynaud, whether
not McElwee deliberately set up this sequence, he has used it to remind us of
"... the disappearance of the Subject tumbling within his own discourse, lost
the flow of history and, more specifically, in all the real and metaphorical kud
[a plant found in the southern U.S.A., which grows rapidly] that block our acce
to the past and ridicule our efforts to reconstruct it" (1986:21). It is not rea
possible for viewers to reconstruct the series of intentions and non-intention
there is only the final product, which in this case may be purposefully ambiguous
Those who experience various sorts of media, through reading, listening, viewi
and so on, experience them as both singular individuals and as collective audi
ences. McElwee's ambiguity exploits this variation here, playing with his aud
ences every step of the way.

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 513

McElwee never indicates that he is in control of the filmmaking process. O

of the most interesting aspects of Sherman's March is that McElwee demonstra
his struggles with his own project. It comes out most clearly in Charleen's cri
cism of his need to film, telling him that filmmakers need passion in both their
and their lives. But on his own, McElwee goes beyond this comparison,
speaks of how the act of filming is not a direct reflection of one's life, but on
refracted attempt to grasp at an image: "It seems I'm filming my life in order
have life to film . . . [the camera and the process become like a] primitive org
nism. ... It's a little like looking into a mirror and trying to see what you lo
like . .. [you] are not looking at your own reflection."' In this aspect, McElw
film reminds me of the recent discussion in anthropology on the need to be m
aware of how our "translations" of the "other" are really refractions-refrac
tions that are crafted through the use of particular terms and images, which som
times involve implicit comparisons between various cultures, including those o
the ethnographers (Dresch 1988; Strather 1988; Tedlock 1983).
In critical discussions of documentary filmmaking, the topic of ethics gen
erally includes a consideration of the process of filming as well as the selectio
made in editing final film versions. Although some filmmakers and ethnograph
do collaborate extensively with their co-participants, this partnership is usual
relegated to the process of filming (or recording/writing) rather than to the edit
process. This reluctance to carry multivocality into multiple authorship has n
been explored sufficiently:

Canadian critic Patrick Watson summed up the filmmaker's antipathy to collaborati

in editing: "Ceding authority over the edit is revolutionary; it requires a curious su
mission of the director's ego." Yet, established filmmakers like Colin Low and F
nand Dansereau do not feel threatened by the collaboration of their subjects in t
editing process. [Pryluck 1988:264]

Film critics have recently begun to discuss the economic and political exploitat
of those whose lives and thoughts are revealed in documentary films (Rosenth
1988c). As with a lot of anthropology, documentary filmmakers often exam
the lives of the poor, the disenfranchised, and the exploited rather than "study
up." One general explanation is that the rich and middle-class have the resourc
to deny access to filmmakers and anthropologists. Yet Frederick Wiseman w
given legal access to a hospital and a school (among other locations) to make w
became very critical documentaries of American society (Denby 1971).
Denby and others also recognize that the interactions between the directo
and his or her "subjects" are weighted from the beginning.

The ethical problem raised by such approaches is that they give the potential subje
no real choice: the initiative and momentum of the situation favor the filmmaker. The
presence of the film crew with official sanction is subtly coercive. So is the form
the question, "Do you have any objections?" [Pryluck 1988:256]

In an interview, Ross McElwee explains how easily he obtained the consent o

his friend Karen.

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514 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

I said, "Can I come and spend some time with you? I have my camera and I'll pro
ably do some shooting. I'm making this film about women in the South and about m
journey along Sherman's route." And she said, "Sure, come." In one sense sh
startled when I walk in the door shooting; she hadn't quite expected that, but in gener
she's prepared. [MacDonald 1988:20]

Jan Ruby states that "documentary filmmakers have a social obligation to not
objective" (1988:75). Part of his plan for working toward an engaged and poli
ical style of filmmaking is to use reflexivity to assert that films "are created, stru
tured articulations of the filmmaker and not authentic, truthful, objective record
(1988:74-75). Ross McElwee uses awkward moments he has captured on film t
do just that. The interviews he conducts are not completed encounters. Unlik
historical and scientific documentaries, he does not provide summaries, only
openings.

Representation and Authenticity

Questioning the authority of scholars and creative artists becomes a chal-

lenge to their ability and right to "represent" others. In postmoder practice and
theory, the work of women, "ethnic" and "minority" writers and artists, and
inhabitants of Third World communities has been developed in response to the
representational authority of those with political and economic power (Fischer
1986; Hutcheon 1988). Anthropologists have similarly begun not only to incor-
porate "native" voices but also to question their primary assumptions about rep-
resentation. One aspect that has been considered is the notion of "authenticity,"
which was at the core of "realist" or "classic" ethnography (Geertz 1988; Han-
dler and Saxton 1988; Marcus and Cushman 1982; Tedlock 1987).
"Realist" ethnographers tended to establish their first-person authority of "I
was there and lived among the natives" early in their texts and then disappear into
the third-person authority of a scholarly-objective-observer (Geertz 1988; Marcus
and Cushman 1982). Third-person accounts were used to describe the behaviors,
values, and beliefs of "others" in a decontextualized, general fashion: "The
women here prepare the evening meal in groups." Descriptions were presented
as noninterpretive and factual; thus an assumption of there being an "authentic"
version of "reality" was reinforced in ethnography as well as in early documen-
tary films (Jacobs 1971). These conceptions of "authenticity" and "representa-
tion" have been reexamined recently in a number of fields, including both an-
thropology and filmmaking.
The use of the film medium, and especially the presumption of documentary
("real" footage), makes Sherman's March a good example of Baudrillard's
"Precession of Simulacra." In Baudrillard's terms, the film no longer "repre-
sents" the "real," because there is no longer any "representational imagery"
(Baudrillard 1984:253). Simulation destroys the ideal of making maps that fit ter-
ritories; it even goes further and becomes a process by which "it is the map that
engenders the territory" (1984:253). Baudrillard states that our postmodern fate
is to be unable to observe and analyze the difference between the real and its rep-
resentation.

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 515

According to this line of thinking, McElwee's work is not divisible into

real and the representational. It, too, is a process of simulation, in which we
no control except to capture and impose "order"-that familiar signal o
once-real (Baudrillard 1984). Bill Nichols notes that "the film is thus a sim
crum or external trace of the production of meaning we undertake ourselves e
day, every moment" (1988:59). However, in a postmodern context, simula
have become forms that refer not to a "reality" but to other examples of t
selves. While watching Sherman's March, we are aware of the decentering
McElwee's production process. He is in and out of the film, in front of and
the camera, a voice in dialogue and monologue, but never an artist in a prod
room, splicing the many feet of film that we suspect he has. Are the few
when he announces that the sound recorder was turned off-he himself supp
a verbal summary of the images and words-intended erasures or accidental
Without Baudrillard's specter of the "hyperreal," we might ask these que
with little or no sense of parody: "It is rather a question of substituting si
the real for the real itself" (Baudrillard 1984:254). This process is partly c
dental with the system of capitalist production, which "inherently possess
power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and institutions to such a d
that the so-called realistic representation can no longer evoke reality exc
nostalgia or mockery . . ." (Lyotard 1984:74). According to thinkers such as
Baudrillard and Lyotard, a modernist insistence on the possibility of realistic and
authentic representation is a denial of the ideological nature of all representation.
It seems, then, that McElwee is playing a nonrepresentational joke on his viewers.
He is leading them to ask what cannot be answered, even by himself, even if we
did have evidence about the amount of film taken, of the way in which he edited
and produced the film.
Another statement of the futility of notions of representation is found in Han-
dler and Saxton's discussion of the dyssimulation involved in the experience of
enacting living history (1988). They examine the emphasis of those practicing
"living history"-historical reenactments of particular periods and events such
as the American War of Independence-on the ideal of "authenticity." Living
history practitioners' definition of authenticity, as summarized by Handler and
Saxton, is similar to Baudrillard's account of former notions of cartography: "as
isomorphism between a living-history activity or event, and that piece of the past
it is meant to re-create" (Handler and Saxton 1988:242). They still hope for the
possibility of being able to "replicate" and not "interpret the past" (1988:243).
It seems that in Sherman's March, McElwee is also aware of this hope on the part
of documentary filmmakers, and expresses it through an internal commentary.
Interestingly, there are some references to living history in the film: McElwee
visits Civil War forts and films historical interpreters dressed in 19th-century cos-
tumes.
As Handler and Saxton show, the possibility of accurately replicating the
past is impossible on various philosophical levels. Their main assertion is that the
living history practitioners' reflexivity, the very outlook which stirs their interest
in the subjective experience of those who lived in the past, does not allow them
to experience or reexperience without interpretation. As with McElwee's inter-

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516 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

views on film, Handler and Saxton (1988:253) note that "living historia
plicitly understand the authenticity of reenactment in terms of lived empl
of life as storied yet unself-consciously composed-and only marginally i
of fidelity of reference, or token isomorphism." In the case of McElw
that the inner commentary he provides throughout the film is the very sa
of reflexivity, but he seems to have a more heightened awareness of t
straints of the production process than the living history practitioners d
by Handler and Saxton. McElwee knows that he cannot replicate exactly
Sherman's march through the South or his own trip through the Sout
1980s. Or does he?
When McElwee's old teacher and friend, Charleen, accuses him of not hav-
ing enough passion to be a filmmaker or an artist, he records his reaction. In doing
so he seems to be offering a simultaneously embarrassed and somewhat patron-
izing recognition of Charleen's need to have such outbursts of opinion. He ends
his visit on the pretext of escaping her matchmaking attempts, but leaves room
for viewers to wonder whether or not he is avoiding her criticism of his filmmak-
ing activities, or, more specifically, her linkage of his art and his life. Some of
Charleen's comments include the following:
* "Ross, are you using this camera because you don't want to be with us?"
* "How can you be a filmmaker if you never have any passion?"
* "Hell, it's [life's] all a tragedy. It's just a matter of how you get through
it."

A few of their conversations are such a perfect containment of ideas on the rela-
tionship between art and life that I was drawn to question whether or not they were
scripted (although we know that they were not because of interviews with Mc-
Elwee; see, among others, Darton 1986; Insdorf 1986; MacDonald 1988). As
some of the most explosive portions of the film, they lead the viewer to want more
of this commentary.
Handler and Saxton's use of dyssimulation is somewhat different than Baud-
rillard's, partly because they are using different substantive examples, and partly
because they seem to hold out more hope of achieving a creation that is neither
pre-reflexive nor a subverted attempt to routinize cultural invention. They note
that living history experiments are not authentic in a modem way but are rather a
"symptomatically postmodern authenticity-an authenticity that makes living
history a genuine article of postmodern culture . . ." (Handler and Saxton
1988:258). A postmodern authenticity incorporates the capitalist tendency to
"systematize the manufacturing, marketing, appropriation, and accommodation
of novelty and difference ranging from . .. commemorative ritual to didactic ped-
agogy" (1988:258). Their emphasis on the postmodern trend toward new defi-
nitions or understandings of authenticity accords well with McElwee's own at-
tempt to create a postmoder film, one which not only seems to comment on the
routinized lives of those presented but also questions the possibility of represent-
ing them.

Cultural Critique and Colloquiality

McElwee's film is an investigation of the lives of American southerners in
the late 20th century. He has provided us with a document consisting of images

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 517

and interviews with, for the most part, different women of various ages, a
varying interests and occupations. However, particular themes soon becom
alent. McElwee develops an ongoing interpretation of events through h
tions in conversations (or interviews?) and his own commentaries on ev
seems to be working in the direction of a "cultural critique" (Marcus and
1986) of the American South.
Marcus and Fischer's call for anthropologists to bring their critical s
projects at "home" applies to Sherman's March. The viewers cannot be c
as to whether McElwee intended to create such a film or not (for impre
the extent and direction of McElwee's intentionality, see material from in
by Darton 1986; Insdorf 1986; MacDonald 1988). In any case, the predom
"colloquial metaphors" (Fernandez 1985), which provide the main theme
film, seem to develop out of the concerns of those interviewed and film
discuss in the first section of this article, the main preoccupations of tho
viewed are romantic love and war (the Civil War of the past and the im
nuclear war of the future). These worries coincide with McElwee's own
cupations, and his editing of footage of himself and others provides over
tural commentary.
McElwee, as author, seems to be comparing both past and present co
of American southerners, and the effects of the past on the present. Th
sponds to Marcus and Fischer's concern that anthropologists compare the
lives of the "other" with those of their native communities. The "other" is of
another historical period here. It is also the northerners of the past and of the pres-
ent. And McElwee himself shares many of the concerns of those with whom he
speaks. He seems to be comparing his own past life in the South with his present-
day attachment to northern spots such as Boston and New York, and even perhaps
to northern women. At the beginning of the film he sets out his concerns as an
oscillating pair: he tells the film audience one night that, when his love life is not
going well, he looks out at the stars and becomes afraid of nuclear war. He dreams
about nuclear war, and he is fascinated by the Civil War. His fascination with the
Civil War is an ongoing cultural analysis of its implications for the individuals
involved, especially General Sherman. Like McElwee, General Sherman feels
like an outsider in the South, but he likes the South and the people of the South.
McElwee makes the implicit parallel between himself and General Sherman more
explicit when he tells his friend Charleen that General Sherman liked the South
and that he painted pictures of southern people he liked. Is McElwee intentionally
drawing a parallel between Sherman's pictures and his own film? And if he is
doing so, how far can we take this comparison, especially in the context of Char-
leen's incredulous response that General Sherman destroyed the South. Is Mc-
Elwee's trip through the South not only parallel to Sherman's peaceful portraits
but also to his warring campaign that brought the southerners "to their knees"?
(See comments by McElwee and MacDonald on the relationship between the met-
aphors of filming and war in Sherman's March in MacDonald 1988:23.)
If Sherman's March is to be viewed as a valuable cultural critique, it must
be shown to illustrate more than cultural themes alone. It must also make some
comment on their function and their form-the way in which they are presented
in a particular idiom. Fernandez suggests that ethnographers should use more

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518 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

"colloquial metaphors" in lieu of those developed out of academic concer

(1985). These southern people are interested in protecting the South, its inhab
ants, its way of life, and its morals. Independence, survival, local identity, Chr
tianity, gender differences, and romantic love are stressed by many of those
whom McElwee speaks. The women and men McElwee speaks with are co
cerned with maintaining their way of life and their way of looking at the past an
the future.
When he speaks of the Civil War to them, they assert, often implicitly, that
the South will win next time. These southerners are haunted by images of the
South in flames. They feel betrayed and beseiged by the North, yet patriotic to-
ward the United States. This seeming contradiction is turned into a coherent me-
tonym by the survivalists McElwee meets when he is with Claudia. These men
are isolationists at various levels: they both seek asylum from the interference of
their own government and support the expense of that government on nuclear ar-
maments. They tell McElwee that it is necessary to build up a defensive arsenal
against the "commies."
McElwee offers us other examples of the "defensive" South. In implicitly
asserting that the Civil War was won with unfair practices, one woman tells
McElwee that North Vietnam won the Vietnam war because they had under-
ground cities that the Americans could not infiltrate. She is very intense as she
explains this. Her friend Claudia (the voice in one of McElwee's extended por-
traits) nods in the background. The legacy of the Civil War to those portrayed is
that they must leave home to "make it" in the nation. Pat's friend Lee, also an
actress, tells of how the agent told her that her southern accent "wasn't bad, not
like Mississippi." On a more personal level, they are interested in protecting
themselves from the effects of nuclear war. Hence the Mormons' stores of water
and food and underground bunkers. Other dangers are hinted at with the dogs that
many of these southerners own; in one violent excerpt a dog is being trained to
attack in preparation for a trip North to New York with the singer Joyce and her
friend.

The survivalists are interested primarily in maintaining their independence

from the influence of neighbors and officials. To them, this is part of an old Amer-
ican way of life. McElwee's former girlfriend Jackie also expresses a dual concern
with the peace movement at local and international levels. She and her coworkers
are fighting the environmental and mortal dangers created by the number of nu-
clear waste deposits in South Carolina. This localized concern is interwoven with
a global one: nuclear war. She takes McElwee to a monument that was built anon-
ymously and that contains instructions in 12 languages on how to rebuild civili-
zation after a nuclear war. Her explanation for going to California: in her home-
town she is motivated to care about nuclear waste in a way she might not be else-
where: "my town, my state, my responsibility."
Other women in the film are concerned with romantic love, religious values,
and family life. McElwee is attracted to these women, as well as to others, who
have become concerned with their own work and with political issues such as
feminism and peace. One example is an old girlfriend Karen, who is a lawyer.
Her own confusion about her recent breakup with another man is similar to
McElwee's confusion about her. His interviews with her are very painful for the

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 519

viewer. At times she cries. In several instances, his camera abruptly cuts off the
scenes with Karen. Both of them are presented as standing between the past gen-
der roles and values of the South and their present lives. This is also shown when
McElwee gets involved with Wini. He is hurt upon his return to the island when
he finds out that she is involved with Michael. In fact, as he films Michael mas-
saging Wini, McElwee's extreme discomfort becomes perceptible without a di-
rect visual image of himself. He draws this event out with a long chain of illus-
trations that demonstrate his inability to find a woman whom he can love and be
committed to-this dilemma is developed clearly at the end of the film when he
states that he has given up the ideal of falling truly in love with a "perfect"
woman. Yet, true to the irony that is part of this film's structure, he presents him-
self as getting involved with a new woman in Boston soon after returning north.
Clearly, this aspect of the cultural critique involves both northerners and south-
erners.

Yet this aspect of the cultural critique is also more of a personal critique
McElwee uses his alter ego, General Sherman, to tie together his discourageme
with romance. The comparison is developed explicitly. McElwee asks Wini if sh
sees a resemblance between him and General Sherman: he mentions Sherman's
red beard-McElwee is bearded-and the general's troubles with business ven-
tures as a parallel to McElwee's disastrous love affairs. He tells us that both he
and Sherman were insomniacs. But he leaves us to our impressions to decide
whether or not McElwee, as well as Sherman, is "ruthless, cruel, totally unkind"
and "suicidal. " Near the end of the film, McElwee's continuous comment on the
marriage of Death and Love is brought together with the information that General
Sherman died of pneumonia on Valentine's Day.
Other women are presented by McElwee's family, and implicitly by himself,
as examples that reflect a stereotype of southern womanhood. There is a distinct
message that these women are different than those he meets in the North. For
instance, his stepmother introduces him to Pat, the woman who forms the first
long portrait of the film, as a good choice for a girlfriend because she was brought
up in the South (Pat also lives up North now) and because she is beautiful. Un-
certainly, she also adds that Pat is clever. The members of the audience might
wonder if she thinks that this is what McElwee looks for in women. He further
defines this notion of "southern women" by focusing on a private girls' school
where Didi works. He states that he has walked into "the very cradle of southern
womanhood," and records the conversation of a few young teenagers who are
looking at photos of themselves and discussing the possibility of air-brushing
away their blemishes. In another section of the film, he allows his sister to talk at
length of her plans for plastic surgery. He also films Pat's cellulite exercises when
she requests it upon first knowing him. McElwee seems to be exploitative in film-
ing these women's real yet frivolous concerns. But he does not think that southern
women are solely frivolous and he films them holistically, in all their dimensions.
They also have their dreams, ambitions, and personal values. Charleen's portrait
is a good example. Charleen is not religious but she seems to ascribe to many
"traditional" values. She believes that McElwee should settle down with a loving
wife and have children. To her, family life is not related to old-fashioned values

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520 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

but to a human need for companionship and love. She is very sincere on th
and in her way illustrates a concern with broader issues. Yet she is very aw
how her matchmaking attempts appear to McElwee; as they both admir
McElwee films) a woman walking up from a beach, Charleen comments,
so strong and beautiful." And then she tells McElwee that if he likes her,
er'll buy her for you"!
The most serious aspect of this cultural critique is an examination of the
that are deeply embedded in those living in the late 20th century-the fea
nuclear holocaust. The audience learns near the end of the film that Gener
man told a friend near the end of his life that he could "feel death reaching
me." McElwee narrates the beginning of his own preoccupation with dea
differs from Sherman's because war is no longer the horrific "total war"
late 19th-century American Civil War, but something that will implicate
citizens of the earth. When McElwee and his family stood on a beach in
and saw the results of a hydrogen bomb testing 800 miles away, there was
flash, a "lingering lime green" and a "deep dark red." It seems that his r
to the South brings back fears that not only coincide with a terrible love
he confides semi-jokingly at the beginning, but also with the general con
the South. At the end of the film, he says that he is not happy to be up Nor
he was not happy in the South, either, because "everything there seemed s
crazed and out of kilter, and the world as a whole seemed a much more da
place than it had even a year ago" when he began his film. McElwee has
quently shown that Sherman's march through the South is remembered
southerners, but even more salient is the sense of imminent danger and t
tempts to prepare for yet another destruction.
McElwee conveys a strong sense of nostalgia for his youth as a southe
for past love affairs and friendships, and for his innocence before watch
lights from the hydrogen bomb explosion. Renato Rosaldo explains what h
"Imperialist Nostalgia" (1989:68-87). The traditions of both ethnography
documentary filmmaking are built upon a nostalgia-a "people's longing f
what they themselves have destroyed" (1989:87).4 On the broadest level, a
pology and documentary films indirectly develop out of particular histori
social-structural conditions: "Processes of drastic change often are the ena
condition of ethnographic field research, and herein resides the complicity o
sionary, constabulary officer, and ethnographer" (1989:87). On a more im
diate level, McElwee shares with some ethnographers (see examples in Ro
1989) the reflexive awareness of the process of encoding cultural life, of at
ing to develop an "authentic" narrative, of dual activities of destruction an
ation. Although he usually films openly, McElwee alludes to his subterfug
illicitly filming at a Civil War fort site in the midst of a force of southe
Scouts. Like General Sherman's paintings of southern friends, done just
before he led the campaign that "destroyed" the South, McElwee's film im
and their link to a potentially undesirable future are not in his individual c
This nostalgia and ambivalence about both the South and filmmaking are th
ing forces behind his rendering of an incomplete, contestable, hence very
cultural and personal critique of the American South.

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 ANALYSIS OF SHERMAN'S MARCH 521

Conclusion

How are vocality, editorship, and authorship the same and different? In this
example, we see that it is possible for one individual to do all three things
McElwee is both an editor and an author, adding his voice to that of others, and
providing a commentary on the process. Yet that commentary does not really tak
the audience for a journey through the process by which the film was produced
an essentially impossible task.
The various creative projects of filmmaking, living history, and ethnography
are neither re-creations nor simple translations of other moments. New concep-
tions of representation and authenticity have been outlined here to illustrate way
in which films such as Sherman's March are relevant examples of the challenges
open to those creating and evaluating ethnographic works. McElwee's work is
also a good example of ways in which cultural critiques of contemporary North
American society can be developed through colloquial metaphors. And, finally
there are important continuities between the fieldwork process and the shape o
ethnographies. The film examined here can be seen as an example of McElwee's
exploration of a creative process, which, like anthropology, involves multiple hu
man ties and reflexive interpretations. It remains somewhat different from in-
terpretive ethnography because of the extent of the ambiguity he allows; ethnogra-
phies generally provide much more explicit and extended interpretations.
The example of Sherman's March illustrates that structure creates a content
and a message, sometimes very intentionally. It is not just the content per se th
communicates. There is a striking interplay in this film, and in some ethnography,
between the structure of presentation and the political messages or research agen
das of the ethnographers and their co-participants. It is important to acknowledg
this interplay. A particular mode of presentation does not guarantee particular re
sults, nor is it an exact reflection of specific agendas. We must remember that
multivocal text is edited; it is not normally the joint and equal creation of variou
authors. We always have to ask the question: which power struggles are left in
and which have been removed?

Notes

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank William Rodman whose guidance and enthusiasm
inspired me to write a preliminary analysis of Sherman's March in 1987. I am also grateful
to Ellen Badone, David Counts, Wayne Fife, William Rodman, and an anonymous re-
viewer for insightful comments on drafts of this article. I am, of course, solely responsible
for all interpretations. I would also like to extend my appreciation to McMaster University
and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support
while writing this article.

'I am using the word "fiction" in the same sense as Clifford Geertz (1973:15) and James
Clifford, who speak of ethnographies as "something made or fashioned" (Clifford
1986:6).

2Examples include Hospital by Frederick Wiseman and Inside North Vietnam by Felix
Greene (Denby 1971; Jacobs 1971).

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522 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

3See critical works such as Tedlock (1983, 1987) and Tyler (1987).

4I would like to thank Ellen Badone for suggesting the relevance of Rosaldo's notio
"Imperialist Nostalgia" to an analysis of Sherman's March.

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