Part Two / Chapter 7
A Voyage of Self-Exploration
To what extent is human behavior determined or influenced
by heredity, and how free are human beings in their actions and reactions?
Training our cameras on unsuspecting people from hidden vantage points,
we searched for something which lay beyond the scope of their "free will."
Studying the movements of Chinese, Europeans, American Indians, Hamites,
Negroes, Polynesians, Lapps, and others, we sought evidence of something
universal and powerful which influences human life counter to the will
of the individual. We checked to see if there are behavioral attributes
which – whether among black, yellow, or white, rich or poor, educated or
uneducated-influence individual actions and so help to determine the course
of life. Finally, we explored ourselves.
From the technical point of view, taking close-ups unobserved
was particularly difficult because of a human reaction which is probably
innate. Being a visual creature, man prefaces every hostile act with a
stare. This, presumably, is why the person staring becomes a key stimulus
which induces heightened alertness in the person stared at. The lens of
a camera bears a resemblance to the human eye, as we were forcibly reminded
by a five-year-old Pygmy boy. No sooner had he noticed that I was aiming
the camera at him than he instinctively ducked, much as animals do. A few
weeks later we recorded almost the same reflex movement in a jackal. With
people who are aware of the significance of the camera, psy-
(original book page 80)
chological factors play a part as well. Many primitive
tribesmen believe that someone who acquires part of their person-be it
only their likeness-gains a hold over them, but many civilized people show
equal annoyance when they notice that they are being photographed because
they regard it as an infringement of their privacy.
We solved this problem by equipping the camera with a
mirror which enabled me to take films at right angles to the direction
in which it was facing. We thus aimed the camera as required, often standing
for hours in front of trees, flowers, or houses and observing them with
unflagging interest until people gradually became accustomed to us. Life
resumed its normal course, and we were even able to film people in our
immediate vicinity without their knowledge.
Inquisitive children proved a universal hazard. Anxious
not to get in the way, they ranged themselves on either side of the camera
and thus obstructed the camera's true line. It also required a great deal
of practice to follow moving objects with the mirror tube. Thanks to the
reflex effect and transverse camera angle, each camera movement produced
a different displacement of the image. The most difficult subject in this
respect was the ritual hand movements performed by Hindus bathing in the
Ganges.
Ethnologists tend to make things much easier for themselves.
They ask a suitable person to perform the appropriate movements in front
of the camera, superimpose them on a fitting background, and then repeat
the scene as often as it suits them. For purposes of behavioral research,
however, such films are worthless. As soon as someone knows that he is
being filmed, he ceases to behave naturally. The difference between a genuine
and a contrived sequence of movements is far greater than one might suppose,
even in the case of dances, which are normally intended for an audience
in the first place. To test this, we have first filmed a sequence unobserved
and then asked the same person to perform it again in front of the camera.
It is astonishing how much fluency and grace a performance loses in the
process. Movements executed in an awareness of being filmed take on quite
another aspect. If cultural films on the subject of craftsmanship tend
to be extremely boring, this is
(original book page 81)
probably because they are contrived. There is almost always
something enthralling about the real thing.
Our films yielded many results which we failed to detect
until later. Spectators watching accelerated sequences often noticed phenomena
which had not occurred to us while shooting. In Venice, for example, I
stationed myself on the outer gallery of St. Mark's Cathedral and filmed
the patterns of movement made by pedestrians streaming across St. Mark's
Square. When the film was shown, one of the audience pointed out that many
people did not cross the square by the shortest route (i.e., diagonally)
but steered first for a lamppost which was somewhat out of the direct line
and then for another before making the complete crossing. This drew our
attention to an interesting phenomenon of orientation.
Film shot in a temple at Banaras also yielded unforeseen
results. The pilgrims, who entered in batches, touched the rear wall of
the temple with raised hands and forehead, and when one pilgrim turned
in the course of his obeisance, those following him turned likewise. If
a pilgrim then came who did not turn, those immediately following him likewise
failed to turn. This was a good illustration of how one human being can
influence others by example. We recorded similar occurrences elsewhere.
Only the sight of hundreds of people performing the same maneuver in quick
succession brings home the extent to which one man's behavior can influence
that of his fellows.
On the steps of a church in Rio we found a beggar. Since
Eibl took a special interest in begging movements, we set up the camera
some distance away, focused it on the man by mirror, and left the camera
to run. Instead of begging, however, our subject gradually succumbed to
sleep. When speeded up, the film showed how he wrestled with the urge to
doze. His head first sank, then jerked upright, in a very definite rhythmical
pattern. Within the context of our bodily functions, the urge to sleep
acts as a safety valve and prevents sensitive brain cells from being damaged
by excessive strain. This sequence made it possible to follow the gradual
self-assertion of the urge.
My first ethological discovery was attributable to a
film which we made in a remote village on Sawaii, one of the West Samoan
(original book page 82)
islands, where my wife and I were lodging in the headman's
house. Since the houses there-known as (ales-have no walls, only posts,
we could easily watch what was going on in the houses around us. Unobserved,
we filmed scenes from daily life, including the manner in which people
ate their meals. It struck me later that people look around repeatedly
while eating, especially if alone. Their eyes glance up abruptly and dart
from side to side. This procedure has long been known in animals, being
a hereditary coordination referred to as scenting. The risk of being surprised
by a predator is, after all, particularly great at feeding time. As our
subsequent visual and photographic observations in various parts of the
world showed, this hereditarily determined movement has survived in man
as well and may be observed in any restaurant. Although we have long ceased
to be in danger of attack by predators, we continue – quite unwittingly
– to perform these movements with our eyes.
We were able to identify the same procedure among African
elephants living in the wild. When the animals drink, they periodically
raise their heads and swivel them from side to side. In man, scenting is
normally too rapid to attract attention, whereas in elephants it is so
slow that it becomes apparent only when speeded up. Varying the speed of
a film makes it possible to observe animals, too, from a new and different
standpoint. This shows up particularly well in comparative films of animals
living in the wild and in captivity. The condition of animals kept in zoos,
however well run, becomes horrifyingly apparent in speeded-up films. In
elephants, the normal motor rhythm is completely disrupted and permeated
with stereotypes. One rhinoceros filmed by us returned again and again
to the same post and rubbed its horn in precisely the same manner. Pine
martens hopped repeatedly to the corner of their cages in an equally stereotyped
way. Bears shuttled back and forth between the same boundary lines with
machinelike regularity, hundreds and thousands of times.
We discovered an interesting parallel in man. From the
roof of the Vienna Opera I filmed a news vendor whose beat was in front
of a projecting section of wall on the other side of the street. At ten
times the actual speed, my film showed that the man shuttled to and fro
as if between two invisible boundary
(original book page 83)
lines. He faced the street, where his customers were streaming
past, but always kept to exactly the same boundaries. For experimental
purposes I filmed him again six months later, but the boundaries had not
changed. This, too, was an instance where stereotyping had developed into
a form of imprisonment.
We were particularly eager to compare the motor rhythms
of factory workers operating machines. The same task can often be performed
in a number of ways, and it is important, both to the firm and its employees,
to find out how a particular operation can be carried out most speedily
and with the least possible exertion. It is also instructive to compare
workers who are new to a machine with those who have been operating it
for years. Such comparisons show how the whole movement is integrated;
they also reveal points at which the flow of movement is interrupted. Just
as a rock obstructs the natural course of a stream, so factors obstructive
to the operation as a whole become visible in films which have been greatly
accelerated.
The documentation of human facial movements requires
considerable patience. Working among various races, we strove to make unobserved
recordings of all the moods and emotions which an actor deliberately conveys
to an audience-rage, alarm, expectancy, jealousy, amazement, suspicion,
disgust, arrogance, fear, derision, and so on. We crouched in the dirty
backyards of American Indian houses, posted ourselves near members of the
international set in French luxury hotels, stationed our camera in the
midst of hundreds of bawling, singing visitors to the beer tents of the
Munich Oktoberfest, captured the animated faces of traders and hagglers
in street markets. If we saw a quarrel, we tried to edge closer; if we
caught sight of people engaged in intimate conversation, we crept up on
them with a telephoto lens. Children's faces sometimes betrayed an alternation
of emotions quicker than the sequences in a newsreel, and the network of
lines in a leathery old face conveyed the distillation of a long span of
existence. Whatever the face, we waited patiently to see what would occur
in it and tried to gather, from the prevailing situation, what was going
on inside its owner.
Here again, chance came to our aid. In Samoa, a pretty
young girl watched me apparently filming the deserted sea and
(original book page 84)
became increasingly annoyed that I continued to scan the
distant horizon instead of looking at her. She compressed her lips, angrily
drove her clenched fist into her open palm, and grew more and more restive.
We never succeeded in recording a dearer manifestation of resentment and
impatience. In the market at Pisac in the Peruvian highlands, Eibl noticed
an Indian woman who had lost her child in the crowd. With the greatest
difficulty, I managed to focus my mirror on her face through a sea of bobbing
heads and so obtained a unique record of profound consternation and anxiety.
A girl whom I filmed on the promenade at Nice was conversing with an elderly
man who was evidently paying court to her. She listened to him with a smile,
then abruptly drew a veil over her features. She inclined her pretty head,
narrowed her eyes, slowly opened her mouth-and gave a hearty yawn. We recorded
something similar while filming chimpanzees living in the wild at Jane
Goodall's installation at Lake Tanganyika. I had just focused the camera
on a placidly seated chimpanzee matron and started filming when she, too,
opened her mouth –
considerably wider than my first subject – and gave an
equally hearty yawn.
We were able in many cases to provoke facial expressions
artificially. For instance, Eibl was extremely anxious to record a human
being baring his canines in anger. An opportunity presented itself in a
lonely district in Kenya, where we came across two Karamojo warriors who
badgered us for money. As soon as I had hastily set up the camera and trained
the mirror correctly, Eibl gave one of them the smallest coin we possessed.
The man interpreted this as an insult and flew into a rage. He expressed
his opinion of us forcibly in unintelligible dialect, clearly revealing
his canines in the process. Eibl put the coin back in his pocket while
I rewound the camera. Then he fished out the same coin and proffered it
a second time. It should be remembered that both men had spears in their
hands and that there was nobody else for miles around. I managed to save
the situation by producing a ten-shilling note from my pocket and handing
it over. We had achieved our object. The two men departed in high dudgeon,
but their canines were preserved for posterity.
Eibl was also interested in obtaining as many pictures
as
(original book page 85)
possible of the human "eye greeting"-a slight widening
of the eyes coupled with a raising of the brows, principally employed in
flirtation. This signal – very probably another hereditary coordination
– proved to be a more entertaining subject. We trained the mirror on various
specimens of femininity, and while one of us did the filming, the other
eyed them as seductively as he could – though without using the signal
in question. Many of the ladies simply stared at us in surprise, but many
others reacted as required.
We also had good results in Japan with a box containing
a toy snake which sprang out when the lid was unscrewed. This time Eibl
did the filming while I joined strangers on park benches. I smiled amiably
at my victim, held out the box, unscrewed it, and the snake popped out.
We obtained some striking records of the transition from polite inquiry
to shock and bewilderment. At Luxor, in the Valley of the Kings, street
vendors swarm over arriving tourists like locusts and try to sell them
chains, scarabs, and other souvenirs. Here again we used artificial means
to get what we wanted in the way of a performance. I set up the camera
on one of the bare hills overlooking the road and, using a telephoto lens,
filmed my wife as she drove up in the car and climbed out. Two souvenir
sellers instantly hurled themselves at her, and all she had to do was stand
there with an air of indecision. The result was a filmed record of all
the gestures that both men had at their command.
We conducted one particular experiment in the solution
of conflict situations in various towns, mostly from hotel windows. We
set up the camera so that it could not be seen from below, trained it on
a footpath or pavement, and started shooting. Meanwhile, one of us had
unobtrusively visited the spot, drawn a circle on the ground with chalk,
placed a large bank note in the center, weighed it down with a stone, and
left.
It was astonishing how many people passed such a bait
without noticing it. Those that did so exhibited a variety of reactions.
In Nairobi we filmed a man who stood rooted to the spot (it was a pound
note), then swiftly picked up his find and walked on, then halted, hurried
back, and replaced the money in the circle. Another man performed a 90-degree
turn and vanished across some fields. On a busy pavement, countless
(original book page 86)
pedestrians streamed past the spot without pausing, though
most of them avoided the circle. Finally, one man paused and stared at
the bank note. Another followed suit, and within minutes a circle had formed.
Our accelerated film showed how the throng became denser and more animated
until one particular individual came to the fore. He talked vehemently-the
circle thinned-then suddenly he picked up the note. The crowd clustered
around him, and the whole gaggle of humanity, with the courageous individual
in its midst, surged off.
Back home we sat in front of the viewer, splicing various
sequences together and comparing them for points of difference and correspondence.
Once flesh-and-blood, the people we had filmed were transformed into marionettes,
and we asked ourselves who or what manipulated the strings which controlled
their individual movements. Was it their "free will"? Was it upbringing
and education? Or was it cerebral mechanisms which are common to people
the world over?