Reading time: 25 min
[Written on May 3rd, 2022]
(Archives of the Planet by Albert Kahn, Babel by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu)
Roland Robertson was a British sociologist and globalisation theorist. In his book Globalisation: Social Theory and Global Culture (1992), Robertson claims that there is a duality in the concept of globalisation. He writes that ‘globalisation as a concept refers both to the compression of the world and intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole’. This quote which starts off the first chapter of his book indicates that globalisation acts in two different ways simultaneously. In this article, I wish to explore and discuss this claim in relation to two projects which I argue have meditated but also produced insightful ideas, in each their own ways, on the grounds of Robertson’s concept of globalisation. I will look at The Archives of the Planet by Albert Kahn, a global recording and archiving project that took place at the beginning of the 20th century, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Babel (2006), a fiction feature film in which an extraordinary and horrific accident links different groups of people from around the world. From looking at the nature of the projects’ mediums and the specific technicalities that went into the making of the projects, to questioning ideas of visual representation and the role of technological advancement, I believe that both The Archives of the Planet and Babel reflect Robertson’s two-sided concept of globalisation on the grounds of their attempts at linking people, environments and cultures together. Both projects accept the ‘and’ in Robertson’s quote: the world must be a world that can be shrunk and compromised if it is also a world that can be seen as a totality, as ‘global’. In both The Archives of the Planet and Babel, globalisation becomes the very function that defines the relationship between two visions of the world.
The Archives of the Planet was a philanthropist filmo-photographical project that began in 1909 and ended in 1931. The project was created by Albert Kahn, a French businessman. Motivated by a vision to give humans the means to better learn about themselves, Khan sent photographers around the world to shoot still and moving images of people of all kinds. He wanted to ‘fix, once and for all, the aspects, practices and modes of human activity whose disappearance is but a question of time’ (Khan: 1912) Khan believed something needed to be done, and fast.
First and foremost, Khan’s project resonates with Robertson’s idea of globalisation on a conceptual and technical basis. The concern is with the nature of the photographic image itself. Or put more simply, the concept of ‘photographing’ or ‘recording’. There is a degree of compression in ‘photography as a practise’ because photography can only make images of the world. In a way, it is critical to understand that photography can only be the act of taking from the world. At the time, taking a picture was always a conscious act which, generally speaking, consisted in capturing a piece of reality, present an angle on the world and create an image of an experience. Therefore, the act of photographing is by definition an act of reduction because it aims to show the world through representation and ultimately by means of compressing its real subjects into images of themselves. Thus, for the photographer, compromises and choices must always be made. For example, the photographer needs to find a particular physical subject to point the camera at, then assume a particular creative direction, then particularly stage and organise a shot, frame it in a particular way and finally shoot the photograph. These different general steps already show how much the photographer must narrow down his view on the world in order to extract an image. The quality and the ability for this image to then ‘reflect the world’ might then be a testament to the photographer’s skill and talent. Another perspective could be that the human has, in the case of photography and recording, the power over its subjects. The photographers (who followed Kahn’s vision) can pick the contents of the images, the point of view that will be used, the way in which the contents are shown…etc. A photograph is therefore nothing but an impression of the world – perhaps even a personal one. A photograph is a highly focused artificially produced copy of a particular vision of the world. Thus, the role of the photographer is to hack at the world to create a photographical image which by definition is a compression of an experience and therefore a direct compression of the world.
But the potential of such practise is what was briefly mentioned previously: the goal of an image of the world is to become an image for the world, an image of the truth in the world in the way that J.L Godard might claim that ‘Photography is truth. Cinema is truth twenty-four times a second’ in his film The Little Soldier (1963). Marcel Proust has a particularly interesting outlook to consider when put in relation to Kahn’s project: “A photograph acquires something of the dignity which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of reality and shows us things that no longer exist.” (Proust: 1923) The Archives of the Planet is an archiving project which, at its core, is in the necessity to relay a truth (about the people of the world) before it is supposedly lost forever. Therefore, the images needed to be quite telling of different lifestyles and culture. Thus, the photographer’s job was to figure out a way to stage and organize images, optimising their capacity to represent faithfully the people and their customs (perhaps also to some extent, a certain truth of experience on behalf of the photographer). In Khan’s work, the goal was to, as in a biologist, probe all kinds of environments and record it so that people would never forget they existed. The subjects were the people, their lifestyle, the living situations, their beliefs. And photographers, like scientists, needed to bring back ‘data’ about the environment. In The Ontology of the Photographic Image, Bazin talks about ‘the practice of embalming the dead’ (Bazin and Gray: 1960) which links to Proust’s idea too. This is significant as Khan’s goal was to capture as many different and diverse human practices from around the world with photography and film. Bazin’s idea of mummyfication is precisely what Khan aimed at doing with The Archives of the Planet. Khan’s use of photography essentially has to do with trying to protect and prolong human existence.
The Archives of the Planet is also a piece that tends outward, towards the world. It is expansive and uses the photographic image precisely as means to relay a certain global idea of reality. For example, Khan is able to show strikingly different images of people one next to the other. It is clear that there is a true motivation in Khan’s work to make the world more unified, more reachable for all. Robertson argues for an ‘intensification of the consciousness of the world’ and I believe that this notion of ‘reach’ grounds itself directly in the perception of the world as a diverse ‘whole’. In The Archives of the Planet, we are presented with both the potential for seeing the differences and the similarities between people. But fundamentally, Khan’s idea of archiving ‘the world’ might be more interesting to see as an attempt to represent the global at a time where globalisation is a world phenomenon, a product of fast-ramping modernity in the West. Thus, the regrouping of images provides a deeply humanist link between images, people and their environments. The images come together to form a unique constellation of human practise which will point the viewer in the direction of a world as a globality based on each culture’s unique customs and lifestyle. Of course, one must accept that this constellation can only be made up of a sample of the world’s ‘true’ globality. This said, the Archives of the Planet has the ability to reflect a globality. In addition to this, the viewer attains a God-like perspective on the world in which they are able to discover and get a grasp of it all as a whole. One might argue then that Kahn’s project is at once a humanist project and a project of modern times as it also aims to provide humans with the resources to learn about the past in order to prepare themselves for what is to come. The Archives of the Planet bear the weight of telling a particular story about humanity with as its main actor humanity itself. The project definitely possesses an anthropocentric view of the world. It wouldn’t be unimaginable to read Kahn saying something along the lines of: ‘It is only when people can learn about themselves and from others (same thing?) that the world becomes reachable.’ Robertson’s concept of globalisation is widely explored and clearly central in Kahn’s The Archives of the Planet.
In Babel, Robertson’s two-side concept of globalisation is also revealed in the nature of the filmic image (which is akin to the photographical image). But more importantly, it is present in the film’s multi-plot narrative and unique storylines. The story of Babel is one about a specific accident that happens under extraordinary circumstances. As Susan and Richard, an American couple, go touring Morocco, a bullet strikes Susan. The film is about this horrifying event from the perspective of four different groups of people from four different countries: USA, Morocco, Mexico and Japan. Although this event is central to Babel, the film’s focus drifts across storylines (and therefore continents) and the viewer will also spend some time in Mexico or in Japan, inside a high school for example. Not all storylines are exactly clear as to how they link to the accident at first, but Iñárritu reveals it all by the end of the film. Technically speaking, the use of montage is used to create a multi-narrative film that guides the viewer through a world of action and non-action, but also to compress events and experiences in order to present certain point of views.
Babel is a film in which, as Thompson and Bordwell note, ‘the characters might be strangers, slight acquaintances, friends, or kinfolk. The film aims to show a larger pattern underlying their individual trajectories.’ (Thompson, Bordwell: 2006) Through the linking of varied characters with one and another, multi-narrative films are able to project a unique portrait of the world as communicating and tending towards the ‘global’. This links also quite strongly with the phenomenon of globalisation which has seen people around the world connect more as technological progress has been made. In fact, Robertson’s concept for globalisation is very reminiscent of the effect that Babel’s multi-narrative structure has on the viewer.
First, the viewer is immersed in the main event’s close unfolding: this is a result of specific narrative storytelling, ‘compressing the world’ of the film, as Iñárritu tries to prioritize this storyline over the others. But over time, one is meant to realize how all of the other storylines fit with one another and this produces the generally omniscient point of view of the story. The focus is set on the causality of actions in the world of the film. Indeed, although we are conscious that Susan was shot by accident, the viewer takes notice of the butterfly effect and quickly realizes that ‘everything’ in the film has a cause and an effect. Thus, the story has the potential for illustrating the interconnectedness of people in our day and age, the direct effects they can have on each other without sometimes even knowing. The viewer, often through the characters, experience a changing in their perception of the scale of the world: at once it is grand, daunting and unmanageable; Richard is desperately trying to communicate with locals to treat his wife’s gunshot wounds but no success. At once it is small, at arm’s reach; Richard finds a phone booth and calls the nanny who is back in the USA looking over the couple’s children.
In the first instance, Robertson’s concept of globalisation in Babel could be seen as overtly represented because it is fundamental to the structuring of the film. Without a globalised world, communications across continents wouldn’t be possible, let alone the understanding for the notion of globality and what this entails. Tierney argues that “In Babel, one of the effects of temporal disjunction is again to bring the focus onto causality – but it does this in a much more global and political sense.’ (Tierney: 2009)
Firstly, the film is shot over four different continents and linked in the film using montage. The storylines are juxtaposed and intertwined; the viewer is constantly propelled across time and space traveling seamlessly thousands of miles at the speed of a single cut. The different environments share the screen one after the other in a non-linear fashion and in no particular order (it seems). For example, in the beginning of the film, we witness a young Moroccan boy shooting a gun from the top of a mountain in the direction of a random bus driving down in the valley. The film holds back from giving any other perspective on the event. It is only much later that the viewer discovers that the fired bullet struck Susan in the arm. It is then even later that we discover that the gun used to fire at Susan was a gift from a Japanese man to the father of the Moroccan boy; up until then, the viewer follows the story of the Japanese man’s daughter without knowing the reason. The storylines are purposefully mixed up in order to hold back on giving the viewer resolutions. Iñárritu makes us understand that they always come in time.
Secondly, the characters speak different languages and cannot always communicate effectively between each other. This happens when Richard is desperately trying to get an ambulance to the village but none of the locals know how to respond to his demands. This said, later, when the bus full of tourists leaves without notice, the viewer is told that miscommunication is perhaps not simply a question of language. Tierney claims that Babel ‘recount[s] different stories of miscommunications or misconnect both across and within cultures.’ (Tierney: 2009). In Babel, there is both a feeling of unification made through montage, and also a feeling of separation, through the juxtaposing of people speaking different languages and misunderstanding each other when using the same language. Babel is not interested by the individual place, culture or environment, but rather by how people communicate with one another. Babel is a story concerned with what has enabled it to become in the first place: a global world connected through modern technology and globalisation.
Furthermore, as the film unfolds, all main characters become the representational figure, the face, for their country and culture. They are the archetypes (and some we realize might also be stereotypes such as the Mexican nanny). By establishing characters that are also archetypes, Babel enables the viewer to consider the storyline on the global scale. However, this can also definitely be seen as an extremely limiting factor. In talking about the multiplot film and the potential for showing a totality of the world, Tiago de Luca writes that ‘Totality is not a necessary and inherent outcome of the multiplot film, for the multiplicity of characters, stories and settings that constitute the genre can be exploited for the opposite effect: that is, a narrative based on fragmentation and division rather than unity.’ (De Luca: 2017). The multiplot has a significant effect on the way in which the viewer conceptualises of the global. Iñárritu presents the multi-plots as always communicating or touching (because they are inherently intertwined and juxtaposed) but not always telling each other something (they don’t always hold clear story links between each other). Tierney claims that ‘The disrupted chronology and swapping between different narratives makes the connection between them long before we learn that they are connected through the gun.’ (Tierney: 2009) This links to Robertson’s claim once more. This time globalisation can be seen as compressed on the basis that, as viewers, we do not have the capacity to see the links between characters, events and environments. We imagine the world as globalised but we do not always know what links environments together, what links people together. And they are those links which precisely make the world globalised in Babel. Furthermore, De Luca seems to say that one can even fracture the reality of the world when thinking of it globally. It forces generalities and falsehoods. Thus, although Babel tries to link continents, it is important to realize that no happening is a result of coincidence or ‘luck’, but it is provoked by mostly invisible and unique events that follow a logical cause-and-effect pattern. Babel treats globalisation in a very unique way: it tries to show the unshowable.
This said, Iñárritu also allows his particular narrative to represent the links made between people who use technology to connect and communicate with each other. Indeed, globalisation can be taken very literally in Babel, and this has the latter effect of Robertson’s quote: thanks to technology the world can be seen as a global entity. Indeed, because communications have become fast and efficient, it is now the case that everyone has a foot in someone else’s culture and way of life. Therefore, although not all people are able to utilize this technology, most characters in Babel are conscious, in result of technology, of the world as a totality. When Richard tries to get a helicopter, he first thinks local because Suzan needs assistance immediately. When no help is found, the next thing he does is to ask for a phone to call someone. The fact that two out the four groups of characters in the film (Richard and Suzan, the nanny and the children) are outside of the United States is in itself a testament to their global consciousness. They are not bound to where they come from because technology allows them to always be in touch with home. On the contrary, the Moroccan family do not have the same means of connecting with the world for many social, economic and political reasons. It might therefore be assumed that these characters cannot have the same degree of global awareness, although we don’t know for sure. Tierney claims that “[Babel] emphasises the result of neo-liberalist policies: extreme wealth of the few versus the extreme poverty and lack of social mobility of others, rigid social stratification and disenfranchisement of the poor’ (Tierney: 2009) and De Luca argues that “the film betrays a sense of national superiority through the centrality of the American narrative” (De Luca: 2017). The notion that globalisation does not affect, nor equally concern, everybody in the world, might be one of the major limits of Babel when applying Robertson’s conceptualization of globalisation.
The way in which Khan conceptualized and organized of the shooting for The Archives of the Planet can be seen as a second source of reflection on Robertson’s concept of globalisation. First, there is an example of globalisation as a ‘compression of the world’ in the logistical and strategical process that went into the making of the project. Although we accept that The Archives of the World are archives of the ‘world’, it’s critical to be reminded (although it isn’t exactly surprising) that Khan only sent a limited number of photographers around the world. Khan could only enable certain travels and not others. He sent photographers to approximately 50 countries (which remains an impressive amount): many European countries, in North and South America, Asia and Africa. For example, Benin, in Africa, was the only sub-saharian destination that Khan sent photographers to because it was a French colony at the time. Other countries like Russia weren’t travelled to.
In a report text in French called Atelier “Archives de la planète – Observatoire de la dynamique des localisations”, Bigoteau, Cicchini and Bonhomme quote a passage from their textbook Manuel de la creation de l’information to reveal the intentions behind Khan’s choice to shoot in specific geographical locations: “…to bring together, in a coherent and homogenous way, maximum information on everything that moves in the cities and regions of France and the World, and which can have a certain effect in structuring and revealing significant dynamics […] It is really a question of appreciating the unequal dynamics of places, to identify developing “promising spaces” and those which stagnate…’ (Bigoteau, Cicchini, Bonhomme: 1987) This idea refutes the simplistic idea that Khan sent out photographers randomly and ‘where he could’. In fact, it demonstrates that specific places were picked according to specific criteria which would showcase detailed (and quite geographical) recordings. The archives, beyond being a collection of revealing images, were destined to indicate the status of the world on a global scale. The choice of location was particularly important because, if well determined, they would most likely reveal something new, perhaps something that would help see the world more clearly. With this project, it seems that Khan aimed to visually represent these ‘unequal dynamics’ and therefore it is undeniable that Robertson’s idea of globalisation as the intensification of consciousness is a fundamental and major prospect of the project.
It is crucial to remember that Kahn’s photographers had a mission to complete. Here, the notion of ‘compression of the world’ is present in the act of working with a prompt, a mission to undertake, an archiving mission. These images were commissioned. There was a strong sense of urgency, technically and logistically speaking, present in the production of these images. None of the images in The Archives of the Planet were the result of an organic experience, produced on the fly, like one might go and photograph ‘the world’ today. For Khan, these pictures needed to be. Essentially, this mission is a reductive idea of what the world actually is and looks like. However, it is a necessary way to limit and create boundaries for the project and without these, Kahn would have probably never been able to achieve anything.
For Kahn, globalisation was a real threat. His conceptual treatment of The Archives of the Planet was therefore based off the strong convictions he had about the world. He saw that cultures were disappearing. He believed that modernity was going to keep swallowing up those who did not have the means to keep up and therefore he believed he needed to act to preserve it however he could. Naturally, he needed to find a specific focus point in order to create images that could become resources for people around the world. For Khan, the idea of globalisation as intensification of consciousness of the world is only achievable if we understand the value of human difference. Thus, the accumulation of unique stories, through photography and film, all compose a greater and global story about the world. Although centred on human beings, the archiving and categorization allows also to step away from purely anthropocentric thought. Here, the world as a globality becomes the focus and one of the goals of the project is to make people become more aware of its diverse composition. The Archives of the Planet relay images of unique people with particular living situations in order to develop a universal idea of the world. In a way, the Archives of the Planet should probably be seen as the Archives of Khan’s world, a world that made sense to him and which he tried to make sense of for all.
In Babel, another way in which Iñárritu engages with globalisation as both compression and intensification of consciousness of the world is through the film’s ability to show the speed at which events affect one another, the rate and debit that information and disinformation collide into each other in the film. This engagement has two main consequences regarding Robertson’s theorization: first, a reflection on the physical scale of the world, and second, a reflection on what Todd McGowan’s would call the ‘politicisation’ in Babel.
Speed is present in the form of one of globalisation’s most successful products: communication. It is fast communication that shapes time in Babel. Not the speed of the narration, nor the speed at which scenes communicate with one another, but the speed of communication in the film. On the grounds of the presence/absence of technological devices, the speed of communication single-handedly advances the story. Whether one might want to consider communication literally, and we might think of the use of phones and televisions in the film as symbol of propagation of information, or more figuratively, also the ways in which an event that takes place in Morocco can all of a sudden affect an event that is taking place in Mexico by sole virtue of communicating using technology, Babel’s world is made to feel small when communications are successful. In a way, Iñárritu is letting us know that the world has the potential to be small. At least it should be the way in which humans conceptualize of the world because technology links people from across the globe. In this light, globalisation is a compression of the world in the way that a piece of equipment, a phone for example, comprises in of itself the possibility for communication. Thus, the potentiality for faster communications in Babel is what makes the characters more connected and therefore the world might feel small. It isn’t always the case.
Secondly, McGowan notes a level of politicization in Babel. This idea is also one that is based on communication too, but here one might wish to call it contingency of connection. In this case, this contingency of connection refers to the inability for humans to rival with the foreign and the ever-changing dynamics of communication between parties (person and person, person and environment, person and culture). McGowan notes that when Susan tells Richard to take out the ice cubes of his glass because the water is not drinkable in Morocco, she makes a ‘retreat from contingency’ (McGowan: 2008). In other words, she tries to break away from the world in an attempt ‘of sustaining a complete world, even in the midst of a world that constantly challenges her sense of completion’ (McGowan: 2008). In this scene, the American woman desperately holds on to what she knows, what she believes to be right and essentially what she knows from her world. But McGowan seems to argue that contingency will always come back to bite in the end: Susan being shot in such extraordinary circumstances could be seen as a testament to this theory. It seems as though the links between environments, the connections made from communicating, whether they take place inside the fiction, or ‘outside’, through film editing for example, are simply inevitable and will always take place because they are essentially the product of contingency. Thus, McGowan argues that the ‘refusal of suspicion in response to the experience of contingency is the form of politicization that Babel offers.’ (McGowan: 2008). The communication is of the order of connection, the possibility of a ‘bond’. Therefore, the speed, which refers to the speed at which hidden bonds will automatically form based on circumstances and whether characters have prepared for them or not, is a critical focal point in Babel. Iñárritu questions the potential threats of globalisation: can there be communication? Yes. Is there a risk of not connecting? Also, yes. Thus lies another way in which we can picture the duality of globalisation for Robertson: by communicating more do we connect better? The answer in Babel is probably also a question: who truly knows?
It isn’t surprising that Iñárritu called his film Babel. It is obviously a reference to the Biblical event of the Tower of Babel, which, according to Genesis, saw God confuse the world’s languages so that people wouldn’t reach the heavens with a tower, or in other words, they wouldn’t be able to achieve the ‘impossible’: “That is why it was called Babel – because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.’ (Genesis 11: 1-9) This idea is telling from the perspective of Robertson’s idea of intensification of consciousness of the world. Indeed, the title of Iñárritu’s film, in relation to the Bible, echoes the idea that there once was a time where all humans spoke the same language. This therefore also reveals the world in which the characters of Babel live in: a world that is now fractured and lacks the ability to communicate. The effect, in the context of Iñárritu’s film, is two-sided. One could either argue for a vision of globalisation as compressed because the film is clearly aware of the world as a globality but simply fails to show successful connection between parties. Or, one could also argue for the inverse effect. If we wish to follow the myth of Babel more straightforwardly, we might understand Babel, the film, as a film that aims to engage in a return to the universal. Iñárritu’s Babel is quite self-reflexive and one might wish to see it as the second attempt at doing the ‘impossible’. This time however, there needs to be new processes because, contrary to the Genesis story, there are already inherent barriers between people. This vision of globalization disregards the technological advancements. Instead, it is based on the fact that differences, at first, weren’t there. Here, there is a humanistic stance to see. Babel goes past the contextual differences between humans, and prefers to focus on what truly brings people together. One should believe that one of Iñárritu’s discourse is that ‘we are all human and live in a same world’ and that the unity of humans precedes all the differences and separations that exist today. Thus, Babel can also symbolically reflect the world as a globality. Perhaps, as an image, it can also assume the role of McGowan’s politicized subject in a world where contingency is a sort of limitation which humans will never stop fighting to cross: “Rather than reducing contingency to a deeper necessity in the way of the believer (in God, in the War on Terror, in progress, in Nature), we might avow the contingent, believe in it as our unsurpassable limit, and place it at the centre of our conceptual universe. The politicised subject exists in a universe structured around contingency.” (McGowan: 2008)
The Archives of the Planet and Babel are two projects which embrace unique and diverse formulations and applications of Robertson’s conceptualization of globalisation. Through the notions of ‘compression of the world’ and ‘intensification of consciousness of the world’, both projects show how globalisation is fundamental to all aspects of their creation from their structure and form to the story they present. By means of the photographical image, visual representation and the process of archiving and categorization, The Archives of the Planet showcases its author as a true visionary who sought to project the effects of modernity before they had even begun to unravel. Iñárritu is born at a time where one might argue that Kahn’s fears are the world’s realities. And at its core, his film Babel tests and exposes the limits of a globalised and connected world in order to see whether or not people can actually communicate better. Although both projects reflect unique visions of the world, both have Robertson’s concept of globalisation as a backbone. In The Archives of the World and Babel, it is crucial for both Kahn and Iñárritu to remind us that humans should always lie at the core of any conceptualization of the world.
THE ARCHIVES OF THE PLANET:
https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/
THE ARCHIVES OF THE PLANET:
https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/
Bibliography and webography:
Babel. 2006. [film] Directed by A. Iñárritu. Summit Entertainment.
The Archives of the Planet, 1909-1931. Kahn. A
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Bazin. A., 1960. The Ontology of the Photographic Image. [Translated by Hugh Gray] Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4, University of California Press, p. 4
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Tierney, D. 2009. Alejandro Gonzlez Iñárritu: director without borders in New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film. pp.109, 110, 111
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Theodore Gimeno 