An Ethnographic Masterpiece or just another Orientalist view of the East?

The documentary opens with the line “The way of the world is the west.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) serves as a preparation for a heavily Orientalist approach in both filming and analyzing the Bakhtiari tribes’ 48-day migration as well as footage of how people in Anatolia live, eat, and hunt. The makers of this documentary introduces themselves as “two men and a woman who sought and found the Forgotten People” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) and the men only appear 2 times. First, in the beginning where they plan their way with no trace of interaction with the tribe and second, at the end of the movie. Even though they are the ones who are following the locals, this image demonstrates that they are in charge of everything, acting as though they are the shepherd and the locals are the herd. Throughout the documentary we also hear a melodramatic Oriental music which comes with the package of Oriental representation of the East.

The film starts in Angora (Today’s Ankara, Turkey) where they say “The caravan route of Ankara, worn by the passing feet of centuries, leads us on to mystery.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) Thus, the “mysterious” and “unchanging” way of describing the East comes out in the package of Oriental representation once again. Later on after describing the Anatolia’s conditions, they refuge inside a Kervansaray and listen to the stories of “Forgotten People” whom they’ve never seen which is the Bakhtiari people. There is again a feeling of showing the tribe as “mysterious” and “other” as it could be. After arriving in the Taurus Mountains, they film a local man’s hunting skill and refer to him as a “wild hunter” while also implying that “matches are undreamed luxury” because men light fires with flint and steel to cook the goat he has just shot. This once again shows the colonizer’s perceptions of the “primitive” East. After passing the policemen, there is once again a very orientalist sentence coming up on the screen “But going ahead, we were turning pages backwards — — on and on further back into centuries. We know them by the ancient life of tent and tribe and herb, the life of three thousand years ago.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) And right after this sentence, the filming of the Bakhtiari tribes’ migration begins.

In my opinion, Orientalism is at the forefront of the concepts that stand out in almost every minute of this documentary. The concept of Orientalism which was introduced by Edward Said, comes from the power relationships, dominations between the East (Orient) and the West (Occident). (Said, 1994) It is basically representing the cultures, lifestyles, traditions and ethnic groups of the East with a Western perspective. This generally brings the stereotypes, assumptions and generalizations of the East with adjectives like “primitive”, “lazy”, “savage”, “mysterious”, “unchanging”.

The second concept is Aryanism, which was again portrayed at one of the first scenes of the documentary. This theory comes from the Aryan race which was associated with Indo-Iranian people which was considered as the ancestors of the Europeans. After these racial theories started to gain popularity, the fact that Iran is a part of the Middle East was started to be seen as a “accident of geography” since according to Aryanism, Iran should be among the European nations. (Zia Ebrahimi, 2016) Many Iranian intellectuals, including Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade, has been affected by Aryanism and the desire to Westernize Iran that comes within Aryanism. (Kia, 1995)

The final idea is Westernization, which also exhibits “modernization” internally. Westernization can be described as the assimilation of non-Western societies with Western ideologies, beliefs, traditions which generally occurs as a result of colonization and globalisation. Iranian intellectual Al-e Ahma, in his Gharbzadegi, also analyzes the cultural and historical process of the Westoxication of Iran. (Hanson, 1983) I think it’s also an important detail that he mentions in Gharbzadegi how mechanization, one of the West’s technological advancements, is also a part of this Westoxification because the documentary frequently features scenes that highlight how “primitive,” “undeveloped,” and “technologically illiterate” the Eastern people are.

In the first scenes of the movie, we see “Long the sages have told us how our forefathers, the Aryans of old, rose remote in Asia and began conquest of Earth, moving ever in the path of sun.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) and “Back in the East behind us are the secrets of our own past, and a tradition of our brothers still living in the cradle of the race — — a long since Forgotten people.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) which reminds us the concept of Aryanism with the implications of “our forefathers”, “our brothers”, “secrets of our own past”. Another problematic scene in the movie related to Aryanism is the part where “Some of their children are white and fair before they are tanned by the sun of Arabistan.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) The way that whiteness of the children is discussed in the documentary reminds the Westernized way of Aryanism and the fact that Iranians are fundamentally “white” and “European”.

Like I’ve described in the second paragraph the whole movie consists a very obvious Oriental rhetoric. The “mysterious” way of this journey is one of the first sparks of Orientalism, following with the implications about how even a match is a “luxury”, how the locals still hunt like “wild animals” and how the more they see the more they feel like going backwards. Later introducing the Bakhtiari tribes and start the migration, they come across a river where the Americans are “impressed” by how the tribe cross the river with their animals, homes and families with them. When men of the tribe started to use goat skin to create floating boats to cross the river, they film this scene as if they are both impressed by their technique and also portraying them as “unchanging” creatures which know their ways of living. We can see the lack of mechanization in a way of Westernization here since it’s portrayed as they are helpless creatures who lack West’s advenced technology.

The section where the policemen’s daily lives were filmed was another area where signs of Westernization could be seen. The policemen’s daily activities were being filmed, and they remarked, “Off duty, like every police station in the world.” Like something ought to be different and some indication of “otherness” ought to be present. Even observing something that was typical for them was unusual because the Eastern should always be relegated to the background and Westernized whenever possible. Also the fact that the documentary starts with “The way of the world is the west.” (Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life, 1925) can be another example how the whole documentary is aimed at a outcome that implies “Westernization of East is a resolution, is a way to help them”. When we look back to the world history almost every colonization started with this sentence and ended with assimilations, westoxications and nothing but lost identities all over the world.

In conclusion, the fact that this is one of the first ethnographic documentary is remarkable but the representation and the statements make it a great work of Orientalism. In my opinion, the pervasive presence of adjectives and depictions that align with Orientalist tendencies makes the viewing experience of this film rather unpleasant than informing.

Bibliography:

Hanson (1983), The “Westoxication” of Iran: Depictions and Reactions of Behrangi, al-e Ahmad, and Shariati.

Merian (1925), Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life

Said (1994), Orientalism

Kia (1995), Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade and the Call for Modernization of the Islamic World

Zia-Ebrahimi (2016), The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism

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