The problem with traditional ethnography is that "as long as ethnographers assume the authority to represent other people, they control how others will appear in their texts." Basically, the filter (ethnographer) between culture and audience adds a degree of separation that has the potential to be damaging. Titon begins with a discussion about how traditional documentaries, despite their claims of showing what is "really there," employ conventional methods that make them just as dangerous as traditional written ethnography. Because the director edits and puts the video together, and because time and experience are so compressed, representation in film becomes very difficult.
Titon offers a way to diffuse the authority problems that arise from making a film. He offers moving away from the narrator-as-God method to making it from the point of view of the person doing the research or allowing the observed to participate in the making of the final project. I think that this is a good solution--though it might feel strange to let people edit themselves. I wonder what other collaborative tools will be open to us in the future, especially with the internet.
Titon ends by saying that problems of representation and authority are even more intense in film and video because documentaries have a much wider audience than journal articles. I just finished responding to a question about representation and wonder if researchers would feel more pressure making a film, since the obligation to be accurate is stronger because there is a larger audience (including the people the films are about).
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