Turn the Damn Camera Off!

"Why don't you, for this first listening to DeeDee, forget the fucking film and listen to DeeDee.  This is your wife!  This is your betrothed!"  (1:38:34)

This quote, made by McElwee's friend/former teacher, Charlene, perfectly sums up my feelings towards our "lovesick" protagonist.  Every time he meets a new girl or pursues an old girlfriend, he has this camera on and asks them twenty questions.  And then he goes off and feels sorry for himself when they turn him down.  I don't know what everyone else thought, but I believed that all of these women were turning him down BECAUSE he had a camera constantly on them while they were together.

Perhaps these women felt, as they were talking to him, as if they were subjects in a creepy experiment as opposed to girls being flirted with by a generally nice guy.  If I were talking to a girl who had an interest in me, but would NOT STOP FILMING ME, I'd get out of there as quickly as I could.

It seems to me as if Ross McElwee, would have been luckier had he actually looked upon these women as actual women as opposed to possible objects to give his life meaning.  I just could not stop wondering why, when he felt connections with some of these women (no matter how oddball some of them may seem), he kept his camera on.  It was as if he was always looking at them through an audience's POV as opposed to his own, and that kept him emotionally separated from them.

I also want to know what the people who gave him the grant to make this film thought when they saw the finished product.  They gave McElwee a lot of money for the purpose of making a documentary on General Sherman's actual march.  Not a self-indulgent, metaphorical march through the South which supposedly parallels Sherman's.  Granted, it did go on to become acclaimed and win awards, but you have to wonder how they reacted.

Question: Do you believe that he would have had more luck with these women had he had his camera turned off?  Do you believe that he was generally in love with them, or that he looked upon them as objects in a search for the meaning of his life?