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Cannibal Tours 1988 Essay

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Cannibal Tours 1988 is an ethnographic film which comedically and disturbingly documents a group of european and american tourists during their exploration of “primitive culture” in Papua New Guinea. The film opens with shots of the primitive people, and the sepik river, then soon transitions into footage of a tourist walking with one of the primitive peoples. During their walk, they come across a stone which is the site of many killings which took place in the cannibalistic killings of the both primitive peoples and german conquistadors. Rather than showing interest in researching and understanding the tradition, the tourist seems to recoil in shock, focused only on the idea that the primitive people are killers, lacking the capacity to call …show more content…

During the documentary, one of the first representations of this interaction which stood out to me was a scene beginning at 8:06 which shows one of the first discussions between the tourists regarding the lifestyle of the primitive peoples. In this scene, the tourists agree in the expression that the primitive people are “truly living with nature”. On the surface, this seems to be a positive observation of the primitive people, however as the scene goes on, we learn that this comment is more of a false observation of the primitive people, in which the tourists seem to believe that the people are not truly living, but vegetating in their environment. Truly living with nature, and vegetating in their environment, are two completely different claims, showing that the westernized idea of living has blurred the understanding that other cultures do not need all that the typical western society requires for living. Though the western society may live well with the technological advancements of today, and even the advancements that the tourists had in the 80’s, the single lens view that we display towards other cultures who live without such advancements can be seen here as the tourists look at the people of the primitive culture as underdeveloped and under civilized creatures, rather than human beings who simply live differently from

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