Cannibal Tours 1988 Film Analysis

Cannibal Tours 1988
The quote by Albert Camus says it all at the opening of the film: “There is nothing so strange in a strange land, as the stranger who comes to visit it.” The film suggests that the natives of New Guinea are not the ones we should be concerned with, but rather the Europeans who come to take pictures of them as though they were collecting snapshots of curiosities and eccentricities that will make their collection of oddities at home even more special. The reality is that the Europeans are far more intriguing because there is some disconnect between themselves and their sense of self. It is almost as if they are unaware of themselves in their hyper-awareness of the natives. The natives on the other hand simply accept the Europeans as weird but harmless, and so the natives act friendly to them.
In the one exchange, the Europeans are posing with the native children, and one climbs onto the log where the young woman is sitting. She poses like she is posing with an exotic wild animal. Would she pose this way for children at home? Why is she so happy and desirous of having this moment captured on film? This scene cuts to another European woman motioning to her subjects about how she wants them to pose for the camera. Then we see a native looking slightly humored by the whole thing looking right into the camera at the viewer, and the subtitles give us what he is saying: “When the tourists come to our village, we are friendly towards them. They like to see all the things in the village.” There is the sense that the natives are just humoring the tourists and that the tourists are entitled to take their pictures and have a look around. But both view the other as oddities, ironically.
So the natives pose, and the Europeans give them some money and the native says that he buys things that he likes when he is asked what he does with the money. It is an easy way for them to earn a living and the Europeans are grateful for just a few still shots of the exotic people.
The natives dance for them and perform and the Europeans capture the images for memory’s sake, as the one European later says to the camera to explain why he wants to take a picture of himself on a stone with a native. But what is he preserving for memory? What is he experiencing? What the two are experiencing and saying in their interviews reveals very little depth of real human interaction. Why must the Europeans travel thousands of miles across the world to a remote place to feel happy and alive and feel glad to take pictures of human beings? Can’t they do it at home? Surely there are people in Europe too!
The reality is as Camus suggests, we are strangers to ourselves and do not know who we are. At home we are stuck with ourselves and our lack of knowledge of ourselves is stifling and frustrating, so it takes an exotic expedition to wake us up and get the blood flowing. Do the natives understand this about the tourists? I think that they implicitly do, because they play the part that is expected of them and are rewarded in the process. Theirs is a simple part. They are not as encumbered by the malaise of the modern world as the Europeans, who have a whole history of the existential crisis of life death, salvation, redemption, damnation, and rejection to deal with that they would rather not take the time to actually deal with. It is easier to ignore all that and focus on the novel, the eccentric, the exciting, and the bizarre. I suppose that it makes them feel better about themselves. The natives do not seem to mind. They accept the Europeans, which shows that they are probably more mature and understanding.