I have read... nothing ...
|
Vertical Divider
|
I have written... nothing ...
|
the return of the dead
One of the most famous post-modern cinematographic narrations about Papua New Guinea is Cannibal Tours, a sort of semi-documental film made in 1988 by Dennis O'Rourke, a dissident ethnographer (he abandoned the formal studies in the discipline precisely to go to Papua New Guinea, but as an artist rather than an explorer or a researcher, or whatever the current politically correct denomination might be). Consequently, the aim of Cannibal Tours was certainly not to provide another piece of typical ethnographical documentation about the tribal life. To the contrary, O'Rourke was among the first ones to see critically the encounter, and more than encounter, the friction, the tension between the tribal life and post-modern tourism, a form of white presence that followed the characteristically modern phenomena such as exploration, colonial exploitation... and ethnography.
The post-colonial time is shown here as a time in which a new travel is undertaken to revive the colonial past and memory. The well-known tourism of the macabre is underway. Just like those who travelled to see the concentration camps after the ww2, these people come to see the place where heads used to be cut. Yes, it was here, on that stone. A photo. Ja, ein Erinnerung. A new touristic shot is contrasted with an old, black-and-white photography. Those new Germans are the ones who return on the footsteps of the first explorers who navigated up the Sepik River, little more than a generation ago (this is why the natives say: The dead have returned, with a distinct sense of the metaphor; they are well beyond taking their own myths literally). Global news coming on the screeching radio provide the acoustic background for a slow-pace, counter-current paddling. As if it were an encounter of time and the timeless, or what once used to be seen as timeless.
There are the tourists and the natives asked to speak. The tourists say silly things. The natives give much deeper, much more thought-provoking insight in this particular intercultural situation, and the world in general. Incidentally, the futility of travel seems to be an important lesson; those tourists have been everywhere; but what kind of wisdom or knowledge or sensibility do they bring?
There is an absolute disproportion between the rich foreigners and the destitute natives, at the moment already out of their happy, self-sufficient world of healthy and natural nutrition (if it ever existed). Calories are discussed, since it is an encounter of the fat and the slim. An economy based on money is already well established. The natives, spoiled of all their sacred artefacts by the missionaries, produce tourist art, statuettes that may compose well on a European mantelpiece, and penis sheaths bought by dozens by those of the foreigners who do not even have a mantelpiece at home. And they only ask to be paid the small prices they demand without any more fuss. Just to feel a little bit less like idiots, facing those other idiots.
A carnival, well accompanied with Mozart's music, is the only conclusion. A macabre one, since the patterns painted on the faces of the tourists for this final masquerade are those traditionally used to paint the skulls of the dead.
Kraków, 7.08.2021.
The post-colonial time is shown here as a time in which a new travel is undertaken to revive the colonial past and memory. The well-known tourism of the macabre is underway. Just like those who travelled to see the concentration camps after the ww2, these people come to see the place where heads used to be cut. Yes, it was here, on that stone. A photo. Ja, ein Erinnerung. A new touristic shot is contrasted with an old, black-and-white photography. Those new Germans are the ones who return on the footsteps of the first explorers who navigated up the Sepik River, little more than a generation ago (this is why the natives say: The dead have returned, with a distinct sense of the metaphor; they are well beyond taking their own myths literally). Global news coming on the screeching radio provide the acoustic background for a slow-pace, counter-current paddling. As if it were an encounter of time and the timeless, or what once used to be seen as timeless.
There are the tourists and the natives asked to speak. The tourists say silly things. The natives give much deeper, much more thought-provoking insight in this particular intercultural situation, and the world in general. Incidentally, the futility of travel seems to be an important lesson; those tourists have been everywhere; but what kind of wisdom or knowledge or sensibility do they bring?
There is an absolute disproportion between the rich foreigners and the destitute natives, at the moment already out of their happy, self-sufficient world of healthy and natural nutrition (if it ever existed). Calories are discussed, since it is an encounter of the fat and the slim. An economy based on money is already well established. The natives, spoiled of all their sacred artefacts by the missionaries, produce tourist art, statuettes that may compose well on a European mantelpiece, and penis sheaths bought by dozens by those of the foreigners who do not even have a mantelpiece at home. And they only ask to be paid the small prices they demand without any more fuss. Just to feel a little bit less like idiots, facing those other idiots.
A carnival, well accompanied with Mozart's music, is the only conclusion. A macabre one, since the patterns painted on the faces of the tourists for this final masquerade are those traditionally used to paint the skulls of the dead.
Kraków, 7.08.2021.
