#advancedcapitalism

[eric-sadahire]

The US isn't even a country...

it's just five corporations in a trench coat.

[danthropologist-blog]

Examining Essentialism and Advanced Capitalism within “Cannibal Tours”

The film “Cannibal Tours” by Dean MacCannell and Dennis O’Rourke interrogates the ideas of colonialism, othering processes, and how these ideas interplay in a milieu of advancing capitalism. The film begins with faraway shots of an island which depict distancing tropes, a formalistic technique to symbolically convey the distance between observer and observed. This is further developed with the shot of an individual, taken to be the subject, whose gaze directly confronts the viewer and stirs uncomfortability within them. MacCannell then complicates the simple dichotomy of observed and observer in his method for depicting both tourists and the subjects of the tours. While the viewer would initially assume that the ‘cannibals’ are the individuals made vulnerable by the camera, MacCannell’s rendering also subsumes the white, European travelers.

MacCannell and O’Rourke’s lens offers the viewer an essentialized depiction of tourists and tourist culture, casting them in an ignorant light. In many ways this fits the films commentary on the repercussions of a colonialist heritage, and in many ways the actions and ignorance of the tourists turns the viewer’s stomach. But a more productive way of discussing this intentional representation exists beyond a simple claim-making exercise. While the othering and demeaning actions of these individuals is hard to witness, even if it is unintentional, the camera nonetheless renders them as a subject to be exploited. Thus, the cameraperson is complicit in this manipulation, and consequently feeds the narratives surrounding both of these cultural caricatures. The impact of MacCannell’s choice here isn’t good or bad per se, but being aware of its presence within an ethnographic film is imperative nonetheless and important to be mindful of during our own shooting processes.

In the film, many of the tourists develop and express problematic notions of cultural evolution, and position the peoples of the Sepik as ‘primitive’ ancestors within this lineage. These individuals, through the capitalistic and touristic enterprise are forced to sell goods and carvings for low prices in order to survive. In this way, their economy has become linked to tourism, even though this tourism simultaneously cheapens their labor and necessitates individuals to perform personas and roles which fit the fantastical expectation of the tourists. Even if such performances are provoked by this dynamic, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are less valid, or less representative of the cultural attributes of these peoples. They are a coping mechanism and survival strategy within a larger framework of capital flow and are rooted in traditional cultural expressions.

The ‘ex-primitives’ or community members which have been forced to adapt to the external pressures that these systems demanded, express confusion and anger at the inequality which the tourists embody and flaunt. Individuals’ poverty is violently commodified and repackaged to an audience which feels compelled to view due to the “disillusionment and alienation” provoked within them by the processes of advanced capitalism (Robb-Larkin). The film thus offers a critique of capitalism, tourism, and the productive relationship that these elements have in encouraging different forms of violence, which remains salient within our current moment. As touristic processes of spectacle have become heightened overtime, one might ponder whether violence, and hyperviolence, are intrinsically tied to our conceptions of modernity as it stands.

#cannibaltours #maccannell #advancedcapitalism #violence #hashtag