Nanook of the North: Visual Anthropology's Beginnings

Not long ago, film and photography were not commonly used in research. Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson were among the first to include photos in their research of the cultures and societies in Bali in the Netherlands East Indies, which today is known as Indonesia. Their research was primarily focused on "parent-child interactions, ritual performances and ceremonies, and artists at work. In addition to other objects, they collected Balinese art from adults and children and acquired over 1200 pieces of artwork." Their research was the first significant form of visual anthropology and this is what lead to the film genre, documentary, as we know it today (Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture)

Documentaire was what early filmmakers, primarily french filmmakers, gave to movies of day-to-day life, unseen places, and news. The word suggests observational neutrality, documentation, an unretouched record of what’s real. This name implies that the genre must be objective, honest, and provide a full report of all aspects being studied or documented.

Before 1926, the genre of the documentary was often referred to under the name of “Actuality films.” The first one of this kind was released by Auguste and Louis Lumiere in 1895. These films were single-shot moments (one or less than a minute) capturing scenes of reality for example a train entering a station, a tree moving in the wind, or a wild horse running. Actuality films remodeled our perception of reality and showed people instances that they may never encounter in their daily lives.

Flaherty was often referred to as the father of documentaries. Originally a prospector, Flaherty was hired as an explorer along the Hudson Bay for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Having no experience as a filmmaker, he began filming "Inuit women, igloo building, conjuring dances, sledding, and seal hunting" as a hobby in 1914 (Essner).

During his journeys between 1910-1916, he traveled with a movie camera and recorded the people and the wildlife that he came across while voyaging Hudson Bay.

In 1920 Flaherty met Captain Thierry Mallet, of the French fur and luxury goods company "Revillon Frères", who agreed to pay for Flaherty to film around one of the company's sub-arctic fur trading posts on Cape Dufferin. Leaving in August of 1920, he traveled up the Innusuk River with a group of Inuits who had agreed to participate in the film. Flaherty and the tribe worked under some of the "harshest of circumstances for man, camera, and film, journeying as far as 960 km to shoot a bear-hunting scene." Returning home in August 1921 (Auyash).

Flaherty's film, Nanook of the North (1920-1921), focuses on the daily lives of an Innuit man named Allakariallak, renamed by Flaherty as Nanook, and his family tribe in the Belcher Islands in arctic Canada.

Nanook of the North is seen as a point-of-origin film, commonly credited as the first documentary film, the first ethnographic film, and the first art film. After the film was released to theatres worldwide in 1922, we saw what filmmaker and anthropologist Asen Balikci coined as Nanookmania The craze over Nanook has been speculated to be caused by plenty of factors but it is primarily believed that it was the cross-genre nature of the film that sparked so much interest. At an intersection between ethnography and documentary, Nanook provided audiences with dialogue and a story that paralleled scientific research. Another reason that was speculated to contribute to Nanook Mania was that the film opened a conversation around the imponderabilia of everyday life (Rony). Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski coined this term to describe "a series of phenomena of great importance which cannot possibly be recorded by questioning or computing documents but have to be observed in their full actuality” (Malinowski)

The early 20th century was a time of Colonialism and British control, with one-third of the world's land being controlled by the British at the time. In addition to that, the United States and Canada were primarily internally colonized peoples. Being an ethnographic and anthropological film, it is necessary to examine the context of the film in relation to current events and cultural dynamics. With this in mind, we must view the film in relation to this colonial world and view the filmmaker and camera in relation to colonial ideals, visions, and perspective. Nanook in its prime was seen as a look into social evolution, the distance between the primitive and the civilized, and the romanticization of the primeval. Audiences had a fascination around what they weren't able to see: the micro-cultures around the world still living in a pre-industrial fashion.

The film focuses on familial intimacy, covering both the intimacy within the Inuit tribe but also the intimacy between Flaherty and his dependency on the Inuit during his time filming.

The main points of the film are centered around the details of everyday life for the Inuit. Flaherty's vision was to show the world what it was like to be an Inuit, not what it was like to film the Inuit. Like Malinowskiki discussed before, Flaherty was attempting to provide a more authentic view of humanity, looking at new perspectives, especially those that were denied what society saw as traditional humanity by European and Western discourse.

Anthropologist Alice Grimshaw in her essay "The Innocent Eye: Flaherty, Malinowski and the Romantic Quest,” states that making the Inuit his main focus for the film shows that "Flaherty sought to understand the world of his subjects through his own direct experiences" and further sought to humanize it, making "the lens and extension of eye and arm; when he moved the camera it followed precisely his own vision" (Grimshaw 48-49).

This artistic ingenuity of Nanook of the North can be accredited to the creation of documentary as a genre. Flaherty was the first to attempt to create an actuality film into a feature film. This set the standard for documentaries as we know them today. Roger Ebert, the American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author wrote that while the film is "not technically sophisticated... it has an authenticity that prevails over any complaints that some of the sequences were staged."

Fatimah Tobing Rony, professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on Nanook and it's significance in her essay "The Third Eye." Rony highlights the way in which Nanook showed family models performing traditional activities and further how "Nanook's family adopts a variety of poses for the camera." Here, Rony is discussing how each scene is representative of a certain virtue of traditional family or community values, for example, the paternal responsibilities as a hunter and the maternal responsibilities as a nurturer.

Professor Rony, in her essay, further relates Nanookmania to the rise of western thought writing "Nanook is shown to be ignorant of Western technology... This conceit of the indigenous person who does not understand Western technology allows for voyeuristic pleasure and reassures the viewer of the contrast between the Primitive and the Modern."

This unique look into the precolonial world was a huge factor in the success of Nanook in America and Western Europe. Westerners flocked to see the way Nanook and his tribe lived and how it differed from their lives. Nanook of the North not only presented a new look on the world that westerners valued for its originality, but further exploited western people's interest in social evolution, technology, and family values.

While Nanook is regarded as an actuality film, an ethnography, and a documentary there are many critiques on these labels. The primary critique centers on the fact that Nanook and his tribe are not actually related but rather are "non-actors." "Non Actors" refers to people playing a fictional character that is representative of themselves in a familiar setting. Allakariallak, better known as the star of the film Nanook, was cast by Flaherty, as well as the rest of the family. In addition to this the settings and scenes were set up and loosely scripted but, once more, were true to life as the Inuit built the setting and naturally played a major role in the production of the film.

An example of a scene that was staged is the walrus hunting scene (shown left.) Walrus hunting was no longer a primary choice for Inuit, however, Flaherty saw it was necessary to show, as walrus hunting was widely associated with Eskimos in western cultures. The scene shows Nanook and his tribe pulling a walrus to shore, while in reality the line is not connected to the walrus but rather a group of men behind the camera creating the illusion of a taut rope and the imagery of a fierce struggle for food (Rony).

This is just one major example of the falsities of reality in Nanook of the North and allows critiques to question the placement of Nanook within the genre of actuality or documentary film. The film however is showing as close to the reality of these Inuit as it could for its time. It is my belief that Flaherty had no intention of misconstruing the reality of the Inuit lifestyle, but rather hoped to provide a fully comprehensive look at their day-to-day routines.

Nanook of the North is one of the, if not the most, significant works of visual anthropology in the 20th century. Creating what we know of today as documentary Nanook of the North provided the world with a unique new genre that opens the mind to new cultures, ideologies, and lifestyles. Flaherty creates a narrative structure in his film, as Nanook explores the "imponderabilia of everyday life" for westerners to gain new insights into the Inuit community.