Mass-Observation and ditl

About the Mass-Observation Project in the 1930s, Tom Harrison, Humphrey Jennings, and Charles Madge had the following to say: "It does not set out in quest of truth or facts for their own sake, or for the sake of an intellectual minority, but aims at exposing them in simple terms to all observers, so that their environment may be understood, and thus constantly transformed" (147). "Observation reports, we find that they tend to cover just those aspects of life which the others miss. Why is this? Because, we suggest, in these reports people are speaking in a language natural to them - their spelling, punctuation, etc., are their OWN - in spite of a uniform State education. [...] Mass Observation is among other things giving working-class and middle class people a chance to speak for themselves, about themselves" (148).

About the relatively recent day in the life trend, "babyslime" (Babs), the moderator for LiveJournal's ditl community, writes, "ditl wasn't created just for putting our lives on display for others, it was about making our lives more interesting to us, noticing the things about your life that interest you and looking at things differently. Stop and smell the roses! On a regular day you wouldn't notice how that little piece of trash catches the light, or the pattern the water makes on the tub when you get out of the shower. Let DITL open your eyes and look at things in new ways. [...] You don't have to have a fascinating life to look at things and present them in an interesting way."

There are some striking similarities between the Mass-Observation Project and ditl, as well as the many other forms of public, group journaling that worldwide communication networks made possible, with the Internet topping the list. Unlike the anthropological study of foreign cultures, both ventures involve the participants in a high-level of self-scrutiny, conflating the usually separate entities of the observer and the observed, in order for the participants to document their own lives in the ways that they wished. For the Mass-Observation Project, the submissions were text-based, while ditl is mainly a photography-based record, with some optional text. Regardless of the medium of communication, both sets of participants have a lot of leeway when it comes to the specific level of "language" they use to narrate their story.

For the Mass-Observation Project, the organizers did not provide any specific direction to their participants. Another way to look at this is that the organizers did not constrain the actions of their participants in any way. Highmore notes that much of what they received was "diaristic self-observation" (145), a far cry from the clinical analyses of anthropological study, though this should have been expected from participants who were largely unfamiliar with academia. However, even the diaristic self-observation varied widely, from highly narrativized stories that spanned a participant's lifetime to short, stilted documentations of a daily routine.

What lies behind such variation and what importance can we attribute to it?

It is only fair to expect and accept a multitude of voices, since providing the masses with an opportunity speak for themselves would only contradict with the expectation that a single, familiar voice would resound back. The variation of voices is representative of the diverse nature of the large participant group, and to my mind, the form of the observation reports can speak more loudly than their content to the nature of the writer and the way they must live.

For example, the writers of "From report on normal day" (150-1) and "From another report on a normal day (By a Housewife)" (151-2) are clearly different people on a superficial level. They are likely opposite sexes, both describe their day and its tasks, which are completely different, and seem to have a different understanding and experience of writing. The centre-lathe turner has obviously had time or made time to write out his narrative at the end of his day, developing the day's events into a cohesive and suspenseful story before committing it to paper. There is a sense of leisure associated with the reporting of his day. The lathe-turner's report is also concentrated on his own thoughts, actions, and feelings. The story is about him.

The housewife, on the other hand, jots short, abrupt sentences next to time markings. Her day is consumed by tasks and the needs of others. It is clearly regimented by time, but not so much by the clock--as I notice her day does not begin until noon--but by the flurry of people coming and leaving the home. I find the housewife's language especially interesting. The short sentences and choice of words give the whole report a sense of urgency--rush, give, give, give, hectic, scramble, no time, jabbering, shout. The report gives the reader the sense that she wrote the piece as the day progressed, in between activities. Like live reporting. But should she truly have been so busy, how in the world could she have written the piece as she worked? Considering the sections set off by time, it's possible that she wrote each time segment separately, but I can only guess that the times are estimations then.

Reading the housewife's report more closely, I see that her voice permeates the whole piece, though it may be an account of all the tasks she completes between 1.5 and 11.15. Between such reporting statements such as "He says 'O.K.'" and "Gives me his wages 10/-" she inserts "Good job he's good tempered" (151), expressing her own thoughts in the midst of the frenzy. There is some time for reflection after all, but the housewife's reflection seems more real, more from the gut than the thought-over, well-constructed reflection of the lathe-turner. So then, do I attribute authenticity to the housewife's harried report rather than the leisurely report of the lathe-turner? What then am I saying about narrativizing a life? If I consider the housewife's report more authentic, I still have to recognize that she has narrated her day. Normally she would not record the day, I suppose, at least not in such a personal way as she has done--she does remark on her own feelings from time to time and often comments on the situations occurring around her. There is some forms of narration, then, that seem more true to the patterns of everyday life. Is life one continuous story where the beginning has made sense of the end? No.

Can we read in ditl a resurgence of the same desires shared by Harrison, Jennings, and Madge? Or are the collective journaling efforts of people in the twentieth century beneath the aspirations of the creators of the Mass-Observation Project? Is this latter question even valid when considering the fact that Mass-Observation had no methodology? If the purpose of Mass-Observation was to take anthropological study out of the confines of academia and place the right to observe oneself into the hands of the masses, giving them the ability to amplify their voices and be heard, then has the Internet and other forms of mass communication not played the same role.

In ditl, do the masses not speak their voices, record their days, invite witnesses to their lives? There are some obvious limitations, but I would say Mass-Observation faced the same limitations. Only those who volunteer to participate do--which already limits the participant group to those who are already inclined to record their day.

Mass-Observation and other public journaling/reporting efforts in their multitudes work together to challenge the dominant narrative that may be produced by the government, media, and popular literature. It gives power to the people's voices in the manner of number. Perhaps Mass-O and ditl have no real effect now, but hopefully, for those looking back on a time, the first-hand accounts work against dominant narratives--as a caution.

When creating my first ditl, I am struck by the amount of editing that I did to my day. Clearly, some things are not appropriate to display on the Internet or to your professor--though our class has crossed several boundaries of discussions, which is great. However, what I wonder about is the tendency to edit away the parts of our days which are boring. Did the housewife only start her report at 1.5 because the time before that was leisure time? Or perhaps it was consumed by tasks that had no interaction with others? We won't know because she didn't consider it important enough to record.

I found myself making the same decisions as I recorded my day. Originally, even, I had also recorded the day's sounds--but decided only to submit the recording I did in conjunction with Mon Oncle because of the sheer boredom that ensued when I listened to it. There is a lot of silence in my day, it seems.

Day in the Life of Anny
1. The picture is pretty good representation of the cozy and dark cocoon that is sleep to me, with the sunlight on the edges that threatens to wake me. What the picture doesn't tell you, though it may be obvious, that this picture is staged. I don't have someone else to take pictures of me sleeping. So I took a picture of myself pretending to be asleep. In addition, I also made sure to cover myself with the blanket, so the picture is inauthentic in smaller ways than the grand made-up sleep. Also, while the picture intimates the comfort of sleep, it does not really report how I was sleeping the moment I woke up, as I remember being woken up by the brightness of the room--which I obviously can't see in that turned over position.

2. The pictures are meant to relate my bad vision. I look at the window and see the fuzzy aura that is sunlight coming in. I reach my for glasses--which are in focus?--and put them on. The whole scene is fabricated. I had already put on my glasses before realizing I should record this meaningful part of my day. I then took them off again to do so.

3. The sentiment expressed in this one is true. When the room is focused, everything is in focus and everything becomes just a little less magical.

4. Finally, an unstaged picture! The picture of my feet beneath the keyboard and the two screenshots are recorded as they occur. My thumbs up smiling face? Clearly done only for the camera. Maybe I would have smiled at the news, though...

5. The shower routine is clearly highly censored, though other than the initial towel-getting picture, are pretty much recorded as the day goes. However, I am not left-handed, as the pictures suggest. Simply, I am right-handed and need to shoot pictures that way and so forced myself to do everything with my left hand. The pictures in this sequence that seem truest to what I see my life as is the image of me washing my hair and the shot from above on the plugged tub. This is life.

6. Picture 3 in this sequence made me cringe when included it, but it is so real that I did anyway. That's my one concession on this day's editing, and I even desaturated the photo to make it appear to be appropriate, a la black and white nude shots. The entire sequence, though recorded pretty much as those activities occurred, is arranged out of order. My memory was not working when I put this scene together. It should actually run 2, 3, 4, 1, 5.

7. I grabbed the underwear, put it back, took a picture, and the grabbed it again. Enough said?

8. Now, this scene is very authentic. However, I took it today rather than yesterday and stuck it in because, well, I forgot to take a picture of myself on the toilet yesterday. Not only that, I'm not really using the toilet in the picture. But I do stare out the window whenever I do use the toilet.

9. Not surprisingly, as I found with the housewife's report, once there are more activities done in the presence of others, the recording of the day became easier. Breakfast-making happened just about the way it was recorded.

10. Ditto.

11. For this scene, I had a moment that "babyslime" said ditl was meant to produce. I had never really noticed before that I wavered between chopsticks and forks. While I can wield both equally well, I choose a fork in this case...simply because pasta seems to call for a fork.

12. The picture records the product of my actions, not the actions themselves. I see lots of ditl that do something similar. What does this do to the representation of a person's life? The subject becomes the objects being handled, rather than the handler.

13. I realized with regret after the printing had stopped that it would have been interesting to capture the papers shooting out of the printer as they printed. It would have made the scene seem more real. This was one scene I did not care to reproduce simply for the shot.

14. While the picture of me descending the stairs is inserted, the rest is true. i did have breakfast after lunch because my brother came home with milk. What sequence suggests but does not say is that food is an excuse to watch television.

15. All true. Guitar playing often does inspire me to cut my nails. However, the situation itself was spurred by the thought of ditl. Normally I rarely pick up my guitar.

16. Homework does happen once in a while.

17. Yes, it is the afternoon and I am only getting dressed in presentable clothing now.

18. The picture for Winnipeg warm-up occurs after the fact as the frigid cold prevents my brain from considering ditl when running out to warm up the car.

19. We jump from going to the restaurant to coming back because the actual life that takes place--all the action--during work makes me forget entirely about recording it. Is the recording of life a leisurely activity?

20. It would have been more interesting to take a picture of the partygoers rather than the food, but then arises many issues of posting pictures online, my unfamiliarity with them, and the fact that I would have to ask and then explain. It's easier to record inanimate objects.

21. The phone shot is recreated. It's hard to think about recording life as you do it.

22. The last sequence is actually out of order, though it made the most sense as a story when I put it in this order. The scene is recreated and what the story implies never happened. I didn't fall asleep on the phone, but soon after putting it down.

* The recording of one's life is difficult to do while life is occurring. It must take place in moments between work. Do they have to be moments of leisure?

* While recording life and during the editing process, I constantly thought of the final narrative I wanted to present and the audience that would read it. Does this not clearly erase the authenticity of the project? Did the Mass-O organizers consider the possibility of fake reports being submitted? After all, "babyslime" even compiled a list of suggestions for ditlers: How to make a winning entry