Miles Horner
Joseph Russo
Film and Anthropology
2/15/2024
In Dennis O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours, the title is a misnomer. This film is not about cannibalism in the typical sense, of one human eating another, but of cultural cannibalism. The tourists who come to Paupa New Guinea mercilessly devour every aspect of their culture - taking idols, watching dances, and photographing them at every opportunity. Through these tourists’ stupidity and inability to recognize the absurd nature of what they’re doing, O’Rourke is able to deconstruct binary between modernity and culture.
O’Rourke’s choice to film the tourists more than the native people who those tourists are there to see is intentional, and it engages in a history of ethnographic filmmaking, subverting it. Typically, ethnographic films, including earlier works like Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, Mead’s Trance and Dance in Bali or even later films like Herzog’s Woodabe: Herdsmen of the Sun focus entirely on the native population. This comes from a tradition of written anthropology, where authors, who sometimes didn’t even go to their locations, wouldn’t ever talk about their positionality and would only conduct analysis. This is mirrored by the form of ethnographic film – in the 1920s, the camera and the filmmaker are invisibilized, and the only thing the audience is meant to focus on is the native people and their rituals. By excluding themselves from the equation, ethnographic filmmakers are able to present a unified, objective narrative about these people, defining them under their terms. This type of definition is very effective; many stereotypes surrounding inuit people, even the popularlized use of the word ‘eskimo’ were entered into American culture because of how those people were displayed and talked about in Nanook of the North. While traditional ethnography influences the cultural constructions of the academy, which then seeps into the rest of society, ethnographic films are able to directly communicate with the public due to their visual accessibility. Therefore, paying attention to representation in ethnographic film is essential, because those representations are so effective at communicating information.
Here is where it’s important to return to positionality. If these representations are so important, what perspective is the filmmaker trying to adopt? Typically, ethnographic film, as discussed, relies on creating an ‘objective’ representation of the native culture that they’re studying, invisibilizing the filmmaker. Look at the structure of Margaret Mead’s Trance and Dance in Bali: in that movie, a detached narrator (Mead) tells us everything we need to know about the ritual they’re recording. While Margaret Mead's Trance and Dance in Bali presents itself as a documentary offering insight into Balinese ceremonial rituals, Fatimah Tobing Rony in her essay "The Photogenic Cannot Be Tamed" reveals critical omissions. The ritual depicted, rather than being an authentic ceremony, was actually performed by a commissioned troupe solely for the benefit of tourists. Mead's portrayal thus excludes crucial details, casting doubt on the film's depiction of genuine Balinese practices. It’s important to note that this inaccuracy comes from the attempt at objectivity; by failing to include either the perspective of those recorded or the context surrounding them, Mead is only able to display one perspective: hers. It’s ironic; through the desire for objectivity and “truth,” Mead ends up creating a narrative that is deeply subjective, largely false, and importantly, very self-serving. Mead went to Bali with the hypothesis that their culture was “schizophrenic,” and all her actions while there were aiming to prove that point. By presenting their culture as schizophrenic, she justifies her journey, the money she received to fund this project, and also reinforces her own cultural beliefs about white superiority.
By analyzing early ethnographic films like Trance and Dance as representations of the filmmakers’ mind, and not as representations of the native culture portrayed, we can unlock their true value as analytical tools. O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours does exactly that, taking a step back and interrogating the tourists themselves, asking both them and the people they’re visiting how they see themselves. A lot of this is due to the shots used in the movie - instead of invisiblizing the tourists and the filmmakers, they’re present in nearly every shot. By acknowledging the existence of the tourists, O’Rourke is able to deepen his analysis of what’s happening in Paupa New Guinea. The film incorporates interviews with both tourists and indigenous people. Tourists share their reasons for visiting, their perceptions of the local population, and their understanding of the culture. Indigenous voices are equally present, offering their perspectives on the influx of tourists. The film's setting, often a marketplace where tourists purchase "traditional" artifacts, highlights the economic exchange inherent in this interaction. For many indigenous people, these sales represent a crucial source of income. By including this array of perspectives, and not trying to present one unified narrative, O’Rourke is able to more effectively portray the region and the social and cultural dynamics present. It’s only through these interviews with Paupans that we understand that they make these “artifacts” so that they can be sold – much like the preformance in Trance and Dance. It’s an intentionally constructed representation of their culture, one that can be sold to visiting westerners to facilitate their survival. In Trance and Dance, that reality is entirely ignored, whereas in Cannibal Tours, by including this multiplicity of perspectives, a more accurate representation of both Paupan culture and Western culture is depicted.
One truth of western culture that is revealed through this more expansive analysis afforded by O’Rourke’s is the true nature of their desire for “modernity.” Throughout the movie, the tourists discuss how important it is that this Paupan culture be preserved, and that they don’t get caught up in modernity. “They’re happy because they’re primitive;” says one of the tourists, looking at the Paupans from their riverboat, “i’m unhappy because i’m not.” However, because of O’Rourke’s expansive methodolgy, we know that the culture they’re being shown, the culture they desire, is one constructed entirely for them. This is demonstrated well when the Paupans preform a ritual for the tourists. The Paupans, who have told the filmmakers that this is just a preformance to make money, enact the ritual with a presumed apathy, while the tourists gleefully capture every moment they can with their cameras. O’Rourke intentionally includes both parties in the shot, showing how they are both parts of this ritual – the Paupans preform, the tourists consume. In this, we see what ‘modernity’ truly means in opposition to culture – it’s not as though these tourists don’t have culture, it’s that their culture is to consume and extract other cultures. The tourists are the cannibals, going on river tours, consuming and acquiring as much ‘culture’ as they can, because they don’t have their own. Through a more expansive filmic method, O’Rourke is able to demonstrate the something much deeper than Mead – that modernity is another form of culture, not an antithesis to it.