Design Ethnographies

1.1 A Moment that Matters

Documentary

This documentary is directed by Jenny Popplewell with a run time of 82 minutes released on September 30, 2020. This documentary is centered around a “normal” American family that turns into a nightmare when the husband, Chris Watts suddenly flips a switch on his wife Shanann Watts, and two daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste. The film is constructed to keep viewers engaged by starting the documentary at the end of the families’ case when Shanann is suddenly missing one morning. The story of the family then begins to unfold by showing very normal videos from Shanann’s social media posts which gave a bit of her background. Shanann was very loving, happy, and grateful for her family always taking videos of them both playing with the kids. It showed sentimental moments of her surprising Chris with a positive pregnancy test as well as family photos that all looked extremely normal from the outside. The movie progresses going back and forth between real footage from cop cameras involved in the case. Chris started to get into working out and getting into shape and met someone else. He was cheating on his wife and began to distance himself. Shanann noticed he wasn’t engaged with the family and realized. the possibility of him cheating. She went on a business trip and came back late one night. In the morning, Chris admitted to having an affair and they had a heated argument that turned to him choking her out. Shanann was also pregnant. The kids heard and questioned Chris. Chris put Shanann in a sheet in his truck and put the girls in the back seat and drove to work at an oil containment field. He then put a blanket over Cece’s head first while the other watched and put them in the oil tank. Then buried Shanann in the ground next to the tanks. The bigger idea of this story is the importance of recognizing when relationships can become abusive and the realization of mental disorders. So many families and individuals struggle with emotional damage from their partner that may be experiencing a change in their lives and instead of communicating it, they hide it. I believe that communication is one of the most important aspects of life because you can’t read other people’s minds as much as you think you can tell what people are thinking. Everyone has their issues and keeping some things inside can ultimately ruin relationships and lead to more mental issues. There should be a stronger awareness of mental disorders as well as the signs and actions of abusive relationships. No matter what relationship you are a part of whether it is friendship or romantic, communicating what is on your mind and what you are feeling to them will only make it stronger as well as allow somebody looking from the outside to make you aware that some things you are feeling may not be normal.

Microculture

My microculture is the Watt family, a disturbed family. The people I am addressing in my microculture are the husband, the pregnant wife, and the two daughters. They live in Colorado as a normal young family. The family was living as a normal American family working, expecting their next baby, taking care of their kids, and visiting their families. By definition, a family is a group of two or more persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption who live together. I find this group so compelling because the circumstances of their story and the end result was one of the most violent and inhumane cases that I’ve heard of about what seemed to be a normal loving family. The story was particularly so shocking because Chris Watts acted so happy and calm throughout the entirety of the documentary in Shanann’s videos from social media. The family feels familiar with the activities they did and how they acted toward each other. They looked as if they loved their young kids and wanted the best for them and that they all had a really great time together. Most families enjoy spending time together as they showed and enjoy taking care of each other. The strange aspect of their family was the fact that Shanann was very obsessed with posting videos and photos on social media of what they were doing at the moment or even random silly videos of Chris playing with the kids. I don’t find that many people are so open with their families, especially with young kids. Another strange thing about the family is when Chris really started to distance himself from Shanann, she didn’t really make a great effort to find out what was going on as far as I could tell. This is problematic. She held in her thoughts and accusations of Chris cheating on her until it got worse when she did try to confront him about it. Something weird about their story is why Chris started to get into working out heavily and if that was the reason why he wanted to branch out and talk to other women. Did he feel that he was too good for Shanann? Did he lose feelings? Did he even love her when he married her if he was so quick to cheat?

My A-Ha moment was when Chris started to distance himself from Shanann. It was quite obvious to me that he didn’t seem happy when he was with her and when she was constantly taking photos and videos of him. She also noticed he was distant because text messages between her and her friend read that she wanted to cry because he hasn’t shown her any affection in weeks. He would rather work out than spend time with her. He also didn’t take the time to text her or call her when he was on a trip. It was clear that he either lost feelings for her or was having an affair. This is when I felt that something was wrong in this household. Shannon wanted to confront Chris about how she had been feeling but instead choose to bottle her emotions up and tell her best friend how she really felt. I feel that this is the reason Chris felt that he needed to kill her to live the life he wanted. I feel that Chris was trying to escape his marriage with Shanann in a peaceful way and thought that while he was planning his escape Shanann was clueless. But Shanann, however, was not clueless and the stress and pressure was building up inside her. Once Chris had eventually admitted to having an affair Shanan finally let out all her emotions and snapped at him and told Chris that he would never see the kids again. Even though Shanann is upset and had every right to be, I think that this choice of words sent Chris into a psychotic panic. I assume he felt that in order to be with the girl he wanted and escape everything that he had now done to his family he would have to kill Shanann and his little girls in order to protect himself from the pressure of people finding out about the affair and his girls not loving him anymore.

A Moment that Matters

The kids had visible love for their Dad writing songs for him about him being their hero. The problem with the family was between the husband and wife. They had poor communication and a lot of built-up frustration and tension that led to the burst of outrage from Chris which ended in him killing his pregnant wife. He had guilt from cheating on his wife and couldn’t admit to being wrong and just wanted to continue with his secret life. Shanann told him he would never see the kids again after he admitted that he was having an affair and that angered him. In his mind, the only way he could keep his life was to kill Shanann since she was in the way. By bringing the kids with him to the site where he would bury the wife it is assumed he couldn’t care to explain to his kids what happened to their beloved mom so he killed them as well. The choice of words triggered abusive and violent actions which resulted from the built-up anger and tension toward one because of the lacking communication.

1.2 Microcultures

Enacting Rights in Public Space

Starting with the first right of public space from Carr’s ‘Rights in Public Space’, access relates to my microculture of disturbed families in the way that there may be different access ranging from children to adults. Some public spaces are not meant for children such as ones that are located in dangerous areas or dark and unsecured areas. The access also ranges between men and women because women may not feel comfortable going in unlit public spaces as well. As for freedom of action, children are discouraged from playing and rough housing in a majority of public spaces that are not visibly meant for such actions. Disturbed families may also not feel comfortable in openly shared spaces or highly secured spaces. Shared spaces discourage any arguments or toxic fighting that may occur within the family as well as secured areas as this will cause unwanted attention. Claim of a space would also potentially discourage a disturbed family from publicly exploring this area because of the lack of privacy and territoriality. Disturbed families obviously act as though everything is normal on the outside, but with the underlining mental illnesses that are mostly present in these families, it may cause these individuals to feel uncomfortable where they cannot hide or do what they want without being watched. As for ownership and disposition, families may engage in controlling a site if they find it comforting to them where they can do as they please. Children in the family may also have an influence on the families’ ownership of a space for such activities involving school and or sports where they practice and participate in events regularly. It could also involve the desire to keep a park clean and safe for their children if they enjoy using a particular space in their free time to play with their children or walk their pets to get them outside.

Relationship Matrices

	Disturbed Families	Men	Women	Children	Mentally-ill
Disturbed Families		Relationship: Relationship with significant other, the husband and father in the family   Events: Can turn to mental or physical abuse in the family, Chris Watt was the killer in the family	Relationship: Relationship with significant other, the mother and wife in the family   Events: Shanann was the victim in the family and was verbally and physically abused and murdered	Relationship: Offspring or adoption of a family, children in the family   Events: Celeste and and Bella are victims, did not receive verbal abuse from their father but were brutally murdered	Relationship: Can take over a family and turn it toxic if not taken care of   Events: Family was destroyed in result of not confronting the present tension and issues of the family
Men			Relationship: Relationship with significant other, husband and wife   Events: Chris and Shanann had a toxic relationship that disrupted their life. Chris was actively cheating on Shanann	Relationship: Offspring from a man   Events: Chris was the father to his daughters, he seemed to treat them very well and showed them love.	Relationship: Can effect any subculture   Events: Chris Watts had a mental illness that turned him to strike against his own family by taking their lives when he was told he would never see his children again.
Women				Relationship: Takes care of children   Events: Shanann loved her children very much and was very involved with posting family videos of the kids playing with their dad or in general.	Relationship: Can effect any subculture   Events: Shanann was directly affected by the mental illness that Chris had as she went through great abuse and was killed.
Children					Relationship: Can effect any subculture   Events: The children were directly affected as they were killed by their father.
Mentally-ill

1.3 Ecologies of Place

Tip of the Iceberg

My chosen ‘tip of the iceberg’ from my documentary that my microculture interacts with would be the oil tanks from the site where Chris Watts started working six months prior to the murder. Chris Watts worked as an oil field operator at Andarko Petroleum in Frederick, Colorado. In general, field workers start and stop the machinery, measure pressure and flow, compute and record data, adjust valves and pressures, and inspect and fix equipment. They could also look after oil batteries. Chris was actively working with the tanks recording data. Chris is obviously familiar with the site as he worked with it every day. Working as an oil field operator isn’t necessarily a hard job as it doesn’t require a college degree. The job is important and can be dangerous and I do think it requires effort because it is physical labor. I think the job both positively and negatively impacted Chris. Positive impacts include bringing him closer to his coworkers when he started to slowly become unhappy with his home life as well as meeting his mistress at work. This job also negatively impacted him in the same ways that he found someone at work that separated him from his family and caused tension and anger. An interview with a co-worker after the murders stated that he watched Chris gradually get more unhappy with his life. “He went from being a friendly guy to being withdrawn and angry,” says co-worker Brian Spence. He easily lost his temper and became irritable with the contractors. As for why Chris started to feel like this, I don’t have an answer. I assume that when he started this new job and found this mistress, he started to fall out of love with Shanann. I believe that when she told him she was pregnant, it angered him because he knew it would be harder for him to cheat on her with a baby. Soon after the pregnancy reveal, I think he started to plan to kill Shanann so that he could be with the other woman. He seemed to have a love for his daughters, so I assume he didn’t intend to kill them. His plan didn’t go as expected when Shanann told him that if he were to end the marriage that he would never see the kids again. This angered him and caused him to strangle and kill Shanann. Soon after that, he panicked and didn’t know what to do with her body and the kids. He took them somewhere he thought no one would suspect to look, the oil tanks. He buried Shanann away from the kids because he had such a hatred for her at the time. He smothered the children and put them in the oil tanks assuming it would accelerate chemical decomposition. Chris worked with these oil tanks every day and knew of their data so it was an easy decision for him to take the kids’ bodies to the tanks in the hope they would disintegrate quickly. After returning from the job, he attempted to return to his life normally until a caring friend of Shanann’s was worried, she didn’t hear from her and called the police. Thus, beginning the investigation of the missing Watt family.

1.4 Informing Design Through Ethnography

A Design Proposal

I decided to design a therapeutic garden for my microculture of disturbed families because I believe that nature has healing powers to soothe and calm the mind and body. Having a site like this in close proximity to where you live will benefit families struggling in their relationship to have somewhere to go and talk things out and settle down. This space will obviously not solve all issues that disturbed families face, however I find that the components within therapeutic gardens may bring peace to those struggling to find it. This design consists of vibrant flowers that catch the eye and a variety of aromas from those plants. The raised planting beds allow for visitors to see the flowers closer and smell the fragrance. The central fountain provides the site with a faint soothing sound of water that relaxes the mind and body. There are seating areas throughout the site that accommodate for particular needs such as a more intimate location under a shaded tree or a bench out in the middle where the sun will shine on your back. There are several spots of grass for those that would rather sit or lay on the floor and tan or soak up the sun. Most importantly, the ramps and material used in the site is ADA accessible to include all. The garden also has a well-defined perimeter to redirect visitors’ attention to details within the garden.