Part I- Autoethnography
‘A form of self-reflection and writing that explores the researcher’s personal experiences and connects this autobiographical story to a wider cultural-political-and social meanings and understandings’ (Collins Dictionary, 2013)
Autoethnography is a new and foreign concept to me, one that seems simple at first glance yet has hidden complexities and requires a greater deal of insight to result in purposeful authenticity.
This week’s reading Autoethnography: An Overview (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011) details that autoethnography is to analyse experience through methodological tools, literature research and use personal experience to illustrate facets of cultural experience. Therefore it is under this guise that I shall share my process of autoethnography regarding the 1954 Japanese film Godzilla/Gojira.
Observation and simply absorbing the text in all its glory, taking note of my observations were the only methodological tools used. A basic approach, but as this is my first attempt at autoethnographic research, basic is the best way to start.
Here are my observations, a summary of the running commentary of my thoughts during the entire film:
- Constant shadows make it hard to see the emotions displayed of the characters faces.
- I wonder what the subtitles meant by ‘firefighters’, I’m guessing firefighters given the context.
- There is a lot of jumping from one scene to the other.
- Little emotion is shown by the characters when announcing the deaths of the soldiers. They are stone cold statues.
- There is this annoying bell sound throughout many of the scenes and it is starting to annoy me.
- This storyline is getting hard to follow, there are many different characters being introduced and the scene jumping around.
- The constant jumping around between scenes is leading me to disconnect from the text, and a computer screen in front of me provides an abundance of distractions from writing emails to scrolling the Facebook newsfeed.
- It is so silent given the large amount of people in the scene, there is very little background noise. I am definitely not used to a movie score of this nature.
- Now I’m thinking about food while watching a man handle a dead fish. I don’t think I am really invested in the film.
- The scary noise they are running away from isn’t even that loud, their screams cover it.
- Finally Godzilla/Gojira makes an appearance.
- That appearance only lasted a second. That was hardly worth all the build up in that scene.
- There is no visable destination that they are running towards. Then they just stop before the scene changes.
- The picture of Godzilla/Gojira is on the screen longer then he actually was.
- They never actually seem that scared of it. Maybe thats just a cultural difference regarding the displaying of emotions.
- How did they get the sand from Godzilla/Gojira’s body?
- I got distracted again by emails. It’s not my fault they just pop up on my screen.
- Why is the guy in the eye patch so serious?
- I think that girl has the hots for the guy with the eye patch.
- I didn’t pay enough attention to know any of the characters names.
- New method found to slightly understand what’s going on. Watching the #DIGC330 twitter feed.
The literature research conducted on the topic of autoethnography. Autoethnography: An Overview (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011) did two things for my understanding of autoethnography. Firstly it enlightened me as to what the process of autoethnography entails and what it produces; ‘aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of personal and interpersonal experience’.
Secondly, what my first attempt at autoethnograhic research was not. Ellis et. el. (2011) stated that autoethnography was developed in ‘an attempt to concentrate on ways of producing meaningful, accessible and evocative research grounded in personal experience’. If I were to use this as a checklist, I could say that my work was very much grounded in personal experience as there was no other other facets to it and that by posting it in this digital format it is also accessible, but meaningful or evocative I am struggling to see that part coming to fruition.
My personal experience with this film is that I couldn’t get fully immersed in the storyline. What is evident from my notes is that as the film progressed I became less content with watching and making observations. I found myself looking for distractions and had difficulty remaining focused.
Though in all honesty I have never;
a. Been drawn to Asian cinema unless it was of a Bollywood persuasion
AND
b. Been able to become totally engrossed in a film in an educational context, it just seems unnatural.
For someone else, or if I had first encountered this film in a different context, the outcome might have been different, though this simply wasn’t the case and I am afraid that this will cloud my view of the film forever in my mind.
Reference List
Collinsdictionary.com. (2016). Definition of Autoethnography | New Word Suggestion | Collins Dictionary. [online] Available at: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/submission/10957/Autoethnography [Accessed 25 Aug. 2016].
Ellis, C., Adams, T. and Bochner, A. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, [online] 12(1). Available at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095 [Accessed 30 Jul. 2016].
IMDb. (2016). Godzilla (1954). [online] Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047034/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2016].
Digital Asia 