"On Being": Tom Davenport's North
Carolina Films
by Keith Cunningham
North Carolina Folklore Journal (Vol. 35, No. 2, Summer-Fall
1988),103-108
Over the past two decades Tom Davenport has established himself
as one of the two or three most important and successful folklore
filmmakers active in America. In the same period of time many folklore
filmmakers have burst into view and then disappeared out of sight
(and frame) real quick. Davenport, however, has endured. More than
endured, he has prevailed and established his own style, for Davenport
films have a style. Davenport has finely honed his ability to shoot
a mass of footage and from that mass sculpt a masterpiece showing
us something of what it means to somebody to be. His finest films
are all essentially autobiographies of people and cultures whose
stories they tell. This uniquely autobiographical approach is particularly
apparent in his North Carolina films, which have been enriched by
his association with students and faculty of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Curriculum in Folklore. The influence of
folklorists Dan Patterson and Allan Tullos has been especially productive
in these three Tar Heel films.
Davenport's first North Carolina film, Born for Hard Luck: Peg Leg
Sam Jackson, as the subtitle suggests, tells the life story of "Peg
Leg Sam" Jackson and allows a traditional performer to perform
in a traditional manner, thus describing both the performance and
its context. The art of Davenport is that he gives the appearance
of having allowed "Peg Leg Sam" to capture the film and
use it as another of his lifelong performances. The grief and pain
"Peg Leg Sam" has known are clearly reflected in his disfiguring
scars and injuries, but his determination to respond positively
to life and to manipulate past, present, and future by performances
shines forth even more clearly. "Peg Leg Sam's" traditional
philosophy of life, collected much earlier from Southern Blacks
in exactly the same words by John Lomax and reported in his autobiography
Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, is "funny things happen in this
world." "Peg Leg Sam" says and believes that funny
things happen in this world, and his considerable traditional musical,
dance, and narrative skills have evolved and are invoked to affirm
this proposition -- and we see it all as audience to his performance.
At one point in the film, for example, "Peg Leg Sam" takes
a big swig out of a styrofoam thermal jug, twists his already twisted
face further, bugs his eyes, and tells the camera, and thus the
audience, "Know what I got here? Corn liquor! I fools people
by telling them it's water." Actually, however, he has water
in the jug, so when he tells us he fools people by telling them
he has water in the jug when actually he has corn liquor in the
jug, he is fooling us by telling us that he has corn liquor in the
jug when he has water in the jug, actually.
Davenport's next North Carolina film, On [stet] Being A Joines,
is subtitled A Life in the Brushy Mountains. The crawl titles introduce
the film, the central character, and the Davenport style:
John Joines, a gifted tale teller, grew up in the Brushy Mountains
of western North Carolina. Here the early American backwoods life
lingered until nearly the Second World War. "Frail"
Joines's experience and stories give a glimpse of the traditional
Appalachian community and of the changes that in a single generation
have swept it away.
The film does what the crawl titles say it is going to do and more.
Again we see life from the point of view of the person living it.
The action begins with a telling of some thoroughly traditional
"scar stories" and continues with autobiographical musing
by "Frail" Joines, the central character, brought to life
by skillful use of historic photographs. One particularly vivid
"scar story" describes a wound with the words, "And
it stunk like a dead horse."
The next major sequence of the film concentrates upon the performance,
in reasonably realistic contexts, of "lies" and "true
tales." The film moves gradually from these stories into the
telling of "war stories," comic and tragic.
After the presentation of more autobiographical information, Joines
(joined by his wife) begins recounting a series of religious narratives
including stories of out-of-body experiences and divine healing.
One particularly vivid healing story involves the vomiting up of
noxious matter which is characterized again by the phrase, "And
it stunk like a dead horse."
The film closes with a series of personal narratives about the Joines's
courtship and marriage. When Mrs. Joines denies that one story happened,
"Frail" responds, "Well, I didn't say you did. I
said I told it on you." The closing episode, and the "scar
story" and healing narrative which use the exact same phrase,
"And it stunk like a dead horse," show that "Frail's"
narratives are one art regardless of their subject or genre and
that, while he, perhaps, is not as continually "on stage"
as "Peg Leg Sam," folklore in the sense of traditional
performance is as important a part of his life as it is a part of
"Peg Leg Sam's" life.
Davenport's third North Carolina film, A Singing Stream, is subtitled
A Black Family's Chronicle, and again the subtitle is extremely
significant. The film is a family's autobiography and, like the
other Davenport films, is structured so that they tell (and sing)
their lives. It is, in effect, a multiple life history.
The multiple life history is successful because life is like that:
history is multiple. Each member of the group has memories of what
really happened based upon what he needs to remember and what he
needs to forget; and his memories, plus the memories of another
member based on what she needs to remember and what she needs to
forget; and their memories, plus the memories of all other members
of the group based on what they need to remember, equal A Singing
Stream. A Singing Stream is a Black family's chronicle; the matricentric
foci of the film look to a past including parents as well as grandparents
and to the future including great-grandchildren as well as grandchildren.
In A Singing Stream a mother and her children report incidents and
periods in interactional, overlapping narration with one person
frequently gently disagreeing with another as to the events reported.
The result of this interactional narration is that A Singing Stream
reveals a family, their lives, and their life through time and space
and reveals that traditional performances, although very different
from those of "Frail" Joines of "Peg Leg Sam,"
are an essential part of their being.
Ruth Bunzel once wrote that the purpose of her long involved research
at Zuni was to learn what it meant to be Zuni. Tom Davenport's North
Carolina films could all three be titled "On Being," for
they help the viewer to learn what it means to be. All use a basically
autobiographical point of view and structure to reveal individuals,
culture, and the complex relationships between them.
All three center in traditional cosmologies and eschatologies. "Peg
Leg Sam" eloquently explains his humanistic theology, most
closely akin to Unitarian Universalism; the Joines's extensive religious
experiences clearly occur within the framework of a tradition; and
the Landis family are so thoroughly entrenched in the middle of
the sect-church continuum that they appear visibly uncomfortable
when a member of their audience enters the trance state Peter Cartwright
observed and described in his autobiography -- "the jerks."
The family is obviously very happy, but they are not ecstatic.
Against the backdrop of three religious traditions, all three follow
a similar narrative progression and begin with "scar stories"
detailing obstacles, difficulties, and prejudices the individuals
have overcome. The sense of accomplishment in each is heightened
by the telling of obstacles so that, for example, a man's full closet
and articulated philosophy of clothing as costume find their full
meaning in the telling of stories of lacking adequate clothing as
children. All three show narrative used to create and control what
was, is, and shall be. All three show the power of man and the power
of tradition.
At a paradigmatic structural level, all three move from telling
of difficulties encountered to a Henley-like assertion of selfhood
and ego. From "Peg Leg Sam's" boundless and unending joy
in performing, to "Frail's" conviction that God has spoken
through him and has miraculously healed his wife, to the Landis's
feeling that God led them from slavery to a life of promise, all
three films demonstrate that man shall not only endure but shall
prevail through and by the use of tradition. And so shall, I hope
and trust, the filmmaker prevail who allows people to tell themselves
to us so that we learn of being.
Used by permission of the author and the North Carolina Folklore
Journal
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