Cannibal Analysis

In the documentary Cannibal tours, we see the interaction between western tourists and local native tribes along the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea. We are able to see the ways that the western tourist romanticizes, simplify, and exploit the locals and their way of life. While Westerners consider the locals “primitive”, this is a false, elitist ideology. The local people grudgingly live in the unfortunate, inherently unequal and codependent state that has occurred due to western colonialism.
Westerners romanticize the locals and their “primitive, simple” way of life and believe that they passively exist “as one with nature.” However, the term ‘primitive’ is a western construct designed to be a comparative social marker. It holds little analysis about the culture of the locals themselves, but the Western bias that a less technological and capitalistic culture is regressive and indicative of underdevelopment. The reality of the locals’ life is complex and contain differences that should not be compared to Western society. Many of the tourists, when asked, …show more content…
The locals were upset at the lost of their culture and their holy places. To survive, the locals must barter their culturally significant goods and use their traditional garb to entertain the locals to gain Western power symbols. The interviewed local woman voices her claim that they, essentially, have the future of their tribe dependent on tourists and the money the tourists bring to spectate the locals. While the locals comprehend that they are in an unequal financial relationship with the tourists, they do not understand the tourists’ fascination with them. They do not view the tourists as “advanced”, because they themselves are not primitive, or have the comparative marker to do