Re-framing the Ethnographic Encounter: Les Maîtres fous

Abstract

The controversy provoked by Rouch’s Les Maitres fous resulted both from the ambiguity of the unfamiliar Hauka ritual at the center of the film, and from the complexity of Rouch’s verbal and visual framing of the event. The dialogic framing does not hedge interpretation, but rather multiplies the ritual’s potential meanings in Rouch’s contradictory views of both the ethnographer’s position and the object of observation in essays, in interviews, in his voice-over commentary, and in his editing of the footage.