Cannibal Tours

“Cannibal Tours”

It is easy to sit here and judge. The comparison of the peoples of Papua New Guinea and the tourist who visit them. Going to a new place is exciting. To see a new culture and a new way of living. To experience voyeuristically and vicariously what it must be like to live in that place and to live like the people of that area. It is hard to imagine that the tourist in this movie knew very much about the people they were going to go visit or even much about the situation those people live under. When one goes on a tour it is assumed that the entity giving the tour has permission to go to the destination planned and that the peoples there will be OK with them being there. It is likely that the tourist were told things to make the trip to see these natives attractive.

Here are two peoples who live completely different lives and are being placed in a situation where they come together. I think the same things would happen if you brought two groups together from any part of the world, especially if one has a lot more advantages than the other.

It is interesting that the filmmaker Dennis O’Rourke thinks the film makes him, rather than the other way around. Perhaps his vision or idea of what he originally wanted or hoped for the film has changed by the footage he captures. He says that he spent time talking with the various villages before he actually went to any of the villages to shoot. He would have had to explain what his intentions were to get permission to film there. So he had to have had an idea about what he wanted the film to be like. So if it came out in a way he did not expect, then he either changed his mind or the footage he viewed after the fact changed his mind. There is also the fact that we are not seeing all the footage, so we don’t know as much about the subject as he does. As a filmmaker he gets to chose what scenes we see when and in what order. He also gets to choose what shots are juxtaposed with what shots. I think it is more likely that he starts with an idea, but lets the captured footage shape its own story. Not like how a Ouija board supposedly spells things out on its own, but that the story falls together from the footage captured.

It is amazing though, that he was able to put together what he did, how he did. He made something that seemed to be as if we were just watching it happen, almost as if we were right there. It was great to watch. We get to see the resentment the natives have for these people who come to see them as if they are on display. They do it, of course, to try to make some money to buy things they can use. There is a frustration though, the natives have been introduced to something they can’t easily have. They are a part of something they don’t fully understand. They know they are being taken advantage of, but what can they do about it?

We all see examples like this in our every day life. From the people standing on street corners to that man or woman in the expensive suit driving the Jaguar. People who live in the plaza area who can afford a 1500 sq. ft. apartment for $3000 a month, to people who live on the street. Everyone has a way to look at all of those fortunes whether good or bad, and we see them from where we are and where we have been. We compare them to what conditions we grew up in with the conditions we are in now.

Most of us as students either don’t have an income or have very little income. We are greatly dependent on the recourses available to us. It could be loans, scholarships, grants, jobs, or even family. Not that it is impossible, but I highly doubt that any student here drives a Jaguar. It would be easy for a student to see a person in that situation and compare it to the more probable life style of a student and have some sort of resentment. One might even think to themselves, “Why do they have so much money and I don’t ?”.

The New Guineans tell us about how they feel about the tourist. They have grown to need the tourist. We see this with the woman who complains that no one is buying her things. She doesn’t know what she will do if she can’t get money to send her kids to school. As much as they resent the tourist, they need them. The one villager states that they are living between two worlds. They way things were before the Europeans came and how things are now. It is more like they are part of a new world but would like to go back to one before. Perhaps they see it as a better time.

We don’t get to hear any interviews of the tourist about them being tourist, or why they came to see the native there. We do hear their opinions on what they think of the natives and their situation, but not on themselves or their situation. One man has gone to many places in the world. He is probably well off and this is just another notch under his belt. For the most part the tourist are older people and probably just trying to see the world. One woman talks about how she heard about the natives and she was going to be the first to go see them. Although this would have been much harder to do, It would have been nice to hear more about the backgrounds of the tourist like we got to hear some of the stories of the natives. We do get to hear a snip hear or there, but not like we hear of the village, or the spirit house, or even the woman who is unable to sell anything.

The movie shows the tourists as uncaring people who laugh at the villagers because they can get things so cheep. Then later shows them as if they were mocking them, dancing around in painted faces. I think these people meant nothing disrespectful, they were just having fun on their vacation. It is ignorance of the people they visited that these people are guilty of. If they could have heard all the interviews the audience has the privilege to hear before they go to see these native, I think their attitude and treatment of the natives would be quite different. It would have been interesting to see a second film in which the tourist see these interviews before their visit. It would be an interesting contrast.