Swollen-bellied children crying for food. Flies hovering over dead bodies. Revolting poverty. To this day, filmmakers in poor African countries use the same old images to portray life on the continent. Surprisingly, many parallels can be made between these African villages and rural Kentucky, and while the images taken in America may appear less horrid, the same principles hold true. The principles of the single story.
Generalization hurts both subjects and documentarians as it presents a one-sided depiction of reality, whether it’s devastation in Africa or poverty in Appalachia. The single story corrupts the subjects’ dignity while also causing tremendous harm to the people who do not fit into the generally accepted view. No one is safe from the dangers of generalization: as a result, many documentarians end up humiliating communities in the name of social change, while some even risk their lives as in the case of Hugh O’Connor and his film crew. This essay will focus on Elizabeth Barret’s 2000 film Stranger with a Camera[1] to explore the multiple versions of the truth behind the murder of filmmaker Hugh O’Connor and his documentary work in rural Kentucky. In doing so, I will also examine the circumstances that justify conducting documentary work in unfamiliar communities and outline the practices that can help documentarians raise awareness about social issues without hurting their subjects.
According to Barret, shortly after World War II, Kentucky was a place of dichotomies: while outsiders saw the state as a poverty-stricken hellhole, people living in the area took pride in their upbringing despite the challenges that life brought their way. Some people did not experience these challenges at all. “I wish that anybody who’d ever lived could live the life that I lived growing up,” a Kentucky local warmly recalls halfway through the film. While reflecting on her childhood, Barret, too, brings up the snapshots of her prom night and cheerleading practice to show that her life resembled that of every other middle-class teenager in America. Her upbringing certainly did not fit into the stereotype of a malnourished Kentucky child covered in coal ash, yet this was how the mainstream media portrayed every person living in the region. “I did not think much about these images,” she says. “After all, what did they have to do with me?” Barret’s childhood neither denies the instances of poverty in her community nor confirms it. Instead, her experience serves to illustrate that by focusing solely on the issues of poverty and devastation in rural Kentucky, thousands of reporters, journalists and documentarians failed to see the multitude of human lives and the wealth of the Appalachian culture, both impoverished and dignified.
This is precisely why it is so difficult to resolve the conflicting opinions surrounding the murder of Hugh O’Connor. While murder can never be justified, the question remains – what could bring such vicious rage on behalf of Hobart Ison and was he right in feeling so? Did Hobart Ison not understand that his pride was only hurt for the sake of his fellow people? Did the filmmakers not understand that their portrayal of Kentucky locals as poor and needy was hurting just as many people as it was helping? No and no. The laws of the single story dictate that we are not permitted to look beyond our prejudices while making assumptions about others,[2] and that is exactly what happened. Blinded by self-indignation and pride, Hobart Ison was unable to see past his bruised ego, while O’Connor’s crew believed that it was only “right” to document the worst of Appalachia’s suffering since their film could raise social activism and bring change. Many others believed so, too, justifying their primitive portrayal of the locals by the promise of the greater good. From the TV commentator’s snickering remark about the non-existent road to a group of children tragically singing a Christmas song, Barret keeps repeating the same question: “I wonder how they felt about having their pictures on television?” While these patronizing images did elicit a response from President Johnson – who proclaimed a “war on poverty” in the region – was it justified doing so at the expense of Appalachians’ sense of self-worth and identity? Bombarded by journalists and news reporters and looked down upon by the rest of the country, people were exposed to ridicule and humiliation as a result of the widespread media attention: apart from those who did want to bring change, many others were quick to blame Kentuckians for their own poverty and suffering. As of now, the ends still did not justify the means: Johnson’s war on poverty was largely unsuccessful, and many of the states that were among the poorest five decades ago remain so now.[3]
The tragedy of the single story makes Hobart Ison’s anger somehow easier to understand. “The president’s visit was the worst thing that ever happened to the family,” says Calvin Fletcher, the son of the unemployed sawmill operator who unwittingly became the face of President Johnson’s war on poverty. “Since then we’ve had nothing but people wanting to talk about that day and taking photos of this house.”[4] Fletcher’s experience demonstrates that a camera can be almost as powerful as a weapon, making people feel violated when one intrudes into their home. Hobart Ison was no different. He was an intelligent and relatively well-off man, respected in his community for his hard work – and his land. Painfully aware of the stereotype that surrounded his home region, Ison felt threatened when he saw a camera intruding on his property and diminishing his way of life. For O’Connor’s crew, Ison’s land was nothing but a blur among countless other images of devastation, but Hobart Ison felt as if his entire life was at stake – and being a man of his time and culture, he could not find a resolution other than using his own weapon. While there is nothing that can excuse Ison for O’Connor’s murder, it may have been prevented, had the documentarians been working with the people rather than framing their story for them. Barret echoes this thought when she discusses the aftermath of the killing in her community: most people never questioned Ison’s basis for murder assuming that the filmmaker must have done something wrong and deserved to get shot. “We didn’t give O’Connor any benefit of the doubt,” Barret says. In their book on the American countryside, Stock and Johnston similarly conclude that “the locals defended Ison not because they approved of murder and not because of an innate, clannish suspiciousness of outsiders, but because they perceived the prying eyes of reporters to be an assault on manners, common decency, and the integrity of their communities.”[5] As a result, the single story of Appalachia became a double-edged sword, with prejudice on one side and alienation on the other.
“He was there for the underdog,” O’Connor’s daughter says as she recalls her father telling her a story about a little African girl who had never seen a camera before. “He had a real sensitivity to the people he was filming.” The man’s colleague seconds her sentiment as he says, “I can’t imagine [O’Connor] being insensitive enough to generate that kind of hostility.” Stranger with a Camera portrays O’Connor as an honest and sensible man who had pure intentions and wanted to reveal the contrast between the exploitation of the miners and the American dream. It is difficult to imagine why such a responsible filmmaker could “deserve” to get shot, so Barret offers a staggering insight into the issue. “While some filmmakers wanted to show the contrast [between the rich and the poor] to help bring about social change, others mined the images the way the companies had mined the coal,” she explains. Eventually, the line between the two became blurred, and no amount of good intentions could save the filmmaker from being perceived as a threat to the community’s dignity. Just like the African continent, rural Kentucky fell prey to the white savior complex, with outsiders coming in and trying to help people as they saw fit, by exaggerating their misery and ignoring their successes. Despite his well-intentioned nature, O’Connor, too, became a victim of this curse, losing his life as a result.
What motivated O’Connor to film the miners in rural Kentucky? Most importantly, is it “right” for filmmakers to conduct work in unfamiliar communities? The answer to this question comes down to how the documentarians choose to use their power and frame the story they are showcasing. Underrepresented and marginalized communities often do not have the means to share their story: some lack the equipment and the platform to raise awareness about their issues, while others do not have the time or money for this kind of activism. (It is rather difficult to be an empathetic filmmaker when you are struggling to put the food on the table.) This is why some communities need storytellers who have the power to communicate their agenda to larger audiences and bring about change. However, these storytellers have to possess a great sensibility to work with the marginalized communities in a bottom-up fashion, becoming a blank canvas and giving the people a chance to tell their story truthfully and in full. Look no further than the work of the American photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, the author of the famous photograph Tomoko in Her Bath. Determined to alert the world to the issue of environmental injustice and the Minamata disease in Japan, Smith worked in collaboration with the mother of a girl who suffered from the incurable illness. The powerful image became a symbiosis of both the mother’s initiative and Smith’s talent, while the careful power balance between the photographer and his subject ensured that the Kamimura family did not feel humiliated despite having their daughter’s deformed naked body depicted on a photograph. As a result of Smith’s work, the Minamata community was able to increase the global awareness of the disease and promote the victims’ struggle for recognition and compensation from both the polluting corporation and the government.[6] Unfortunately, people in Kentucky did not have the same privilege of sharing their story – instead, they heard strange rumors about themselves from alien filmmakers and photographers who took advantage of the community’s lack of agency and representation. As Stranger with a Camera points out, “the others” represented the Appalachian people much differently than they saw themselves and therefore failed their responsibilities as storytellers.
This leads us to the most important question Barret asks in her film: “Who gets to tell the community’s story and what are their responsibilities?”. In an ideal world, it is the people who are intimately connected to the issue that get to share the complexities of their shared experiences. In her documentary film, Barret illustrates one way in which this can be done as she works within her own community to tell their story. Stranger with a Camera carefully weaves together the photographs and clips from Barret’s childhood, conversations with locals, archival footage of the news reports depicting the poverty of the Appalachians, as well as interviews with the people who knew both Hobart Ison and Hugh O’Connor. Unlike many other documentarians before, Barret does not present just one side of the story. In her film, Ison is not a righteous landowner, whereas O’Connor does not appear as a corrupt filmmaker who wanted to take advantage of her people’s struggles. Both men are portrayed as complex characters through the conversations with their relatives, friends and coworkers – often biased or overly emotional, yet absolutely earnest and real. Neither does Barret sugarcoat the stories of her community: she is not afraid to juxtapose her fancy childhood home with the dilapidated shacks of the miners or attempt to explain why locals were supportive of the murderer. The film leaves the audience with more questions than answers, as we are left to our own devices to decide whom (and what) to believe. In a way, Stranger with a Camera portrays Kentucky more truthfully and accurately than an entire generation of filmmakers who only sought after the region’s poverty, ignorance and pain.
In efforts to find the people better suited to tell the story of rural Kentucky as opposed to outsiders, Barret explores the story of Harry M. Caudill – a Kentucky lawyer, professor and author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1963), “whose eloquent description of life in poverty-ridden Appalachia” attracted $15 billion in federal aid to the impoverished area.[7] Having spent his entire life living in a small Kentucky county, Caudill was able to tell the compelling story of what was happening in the region and put it in a historical perspective, which resonated with both the people living in his community and the outside world. The author of a public radio series Neighborhood Stories Katie Davis is another documentarian whose work explores the issues that affect the community in which she lives. After covering the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Davis realized that she knew nothing about the neighborhood where she’d grown up, so as a documentarian, she decided to switch her focus to the problems closer to home. As a white middle-class woman, Davis holds a disproportionate amount of power over disadvantaged Latino and African American youths who appear in her stories, yet they do not emerge as either humiliated or embarrassed. On the contrary, the neighborhood kids now call her Katie Divas and frequent her youth group Urban Rangers.[8] By living alongside these kids and becoming their guardian, Davis has been able to become a traditional storyteller, someone who captures the stories and keeps them in trust for her community rather than being a biased outsider with their own agenda in mind.[9] The goal of her work is to attract attention to the problems that America’s underrepresented neighborhoods face, such as addiction, gun violence and joblessness, but nevertheless, Davis manages to avoid portraying her subjects in a negative light. Instead of dehumanizing and patronizing people as in the case of the Appalachian poor, Davis gives the neighborhood kids the ability to exercise agency and take the reins of their narrative so they can tell their story as accurately as possible. Davis’ approach mirrors the perspective of Corey Pilson, a photographer whose documentary work revolves around his community.[10] Pilson uses photography as a means to uplift the narratives of his people, and in addition to documenting their lives and experiences, Pilson makes sure to spend at least an hour taking personal photos of his subjects – whether it is for a headshot or their social media profile – as a way to empower his community further.
The examples of Corey Pilson, Katie Davis and W. Eugene Smith illustrate that documentary work can empower the subjects instead of ridiculing them; that it can be done in collaboration with the people rather than against their will, making both the documentarians and their subjects rightful owners of the resulting work. Portraying people is an intimate process that may expose them to a vast sea of damaging influences, so it must be practiced responsibly, collaboratively and objectively in order to minimize the risks and bring change without harm. When these rules are absent, humiliation becomes alienation, which in turn transforms into fear. Communities lose their sense of identity and self-worth, whereas documentarians may even lose their lives – both falling victims to the dangers of a single story.
Bibliography
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” Video. TED Talks, 2009. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story
Contributors to Wikimedia projects. “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath.” Wikipedia, June 7, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoko_and_Mother_in_the_Bath.
Coomarasamy, By James. “Hard Times for Area Where Johnson’s War on Poverty Was Launched.” BBC News, November 2, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29853472.
Davis, Katie. “Covering Home.” In Reality Radio, Second Edition. University of North Carolina Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469633138.003.0010.
Fowler, Glenn. “Harry M. Caudill, 68, Who Told of Appalachian Poverty.” The New York Times, December 1, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/01/obituaries/harry-m-caudill-68-who-told-of-appalachian-poverty.html.
Grovum, Jake. “Uneven Gains for States After 50 Years of the War on Poverty.” The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2014. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2014/01/30/uneven-gains-for-states-after-50-years-of-the-war-on-poverty.
Hearing Voices. “Neighborhood Stories.” Accessed July 19, 2022. https://hearingvoices.com/webwork/hoodstories/.
Pilson, Corey. “Guest Lecture.” Presented at Documentary Studies 101, Duke University, 2022.
Stock, Catherine McNicol, and Robert D. Johnston. The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State: Political Histories of Rural America. Cornell University Press, 2018.
Stranger with a Camera. Ky: Appalshop Films, 2000.
Reference List
[1] Stranger with a Camera, directed by Elizabeth Barret(Ky: Appalshop Films, 2000).
[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Video, TED Talks, October 7, 2009.
[3] Jake Grovum, “Uneven Gains for States After 50 Years of the War on Poverty,” The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2014.
[4] James Coomarasamy, “Hard Times for Area Where Johnson’s War on Poverty Was Launched,” BBC News, 2014.
[5] Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston, The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State (Cornell University Press, 2018), 270.
[6] Contributors to Wikimedia projects, “Tomoko and Mother in the Bath,” Wikipedia, June 7, 2022.
[7] Glenn Fowler, “Harry M. Caudill, 68, Who Told of Appalachian Poverty,” The New York Times, 1990.
[8] Hearing Voices, “Neighborhood Stories,” accessed July 19, 2022.
[9] Katie Davis, “Covering Home,” in Reality Radio, Second Edition (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 75.
[10] Corey Pilson, “Guest Lecture,” in Documentary Studies 101 (Duke University, 2022).