The Couple in the Cage, “a satirical commentary on Western concepts of the exotic, primitive Other” (2) performed by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gbmez-Pefia, is intriguing and discomforting for two main reasons. First, the fact that so many people were unable to identify the exhibit as fake is alarming and suggests that we haven’t moved too far past the days of Barnum’s Circus or the Hottentot Venus. Secondly, the fact that so few people found it disconcerting to see a culture or a people on display because of the context presented it as a form of scientific exploration.
I think the first point reveals a great deal about how Western culture believes they are more developed or civilized than the ‘primitive’ East, primarily because of our ideological views that tell us to believe consumption and development are better. The binary opposition of the West and the East is explained in Edward Said’s Orientalism. This work explains the contrived identity of the Orient created by the West and the white’s “long tradition of executive responsibility towards the colored races”.
The one moment of the film that really stood out to me was when a man in the crowd commented on how interested the male ‘native’ was with the television set. He said that it was interesting that the male was so fascinated even though he didn’t actually know what it was. This can be considered to be what Said refers to as “high cultural humanism”. It demonstrates how, in Western culture, white people are thought to have greater wisdom and are more developed intellectually, solely because they are more developed in terms of practices like capitalism or institutional progress. This intellectual superiority is explained in Said’s Orientalism, where he states that the native races in the world are left with “centuries of experience and no wisdom”. I think that this statement resonated throughout The Couple in a Cage because none of the observers (of the exhibit) seemed to consider the history of the ‘natives’, when they actually believed that they were ‘natives’. Those who fell for the stunt seemed to be more interested in the couple’s interaction with Western products than they were in learning more about the history of this newly discovered native tribe. Even when the male would perform his speech about the tribe in their ‘native tongue’, only one person seemed to care that he couldn’t actually understand what the man was saying. Everyone else was fascinated with the exoticism of this foreign language and didn’t feel compelled to learn anything deeper than what was presented at surface level. The gimmick of these foreign creatures, interacting with the magic of Western technology, was the primary attraction for the West, which makes it way too easy to link this example to the human exhibits of our past. Fusco provides a good summary of the human exhibition that has occurred in the past:
Since the early days of the Conquest, "aboriginal samples" of people fiom Ahca, Asia, and the Americas were brought to Europe for aesthetic contemplation, scientific analysis, and entertainment. Those people from other parts of the world were forced first to take the place that Europeans had already created for the savages of their own Medieval mythology; later with the emergence of scientific rationalism, the "aborigines" on display served as proof of the natural superiority of European civilization, of its ability to exert control over and extract knowledge from the "primitive" world, and ultimately of the genetic inferiority of non-European races. (5)
The second point is more disturbing in the way that it exposes the flaws of Western ideologies. The concept of observing a different culture so closely has been deeply rooted through Western history as normal practice. It’s not only natural for the West to explore the rest of the world and its cultures, but it is also expected and even respected with a “sense of intellectual dedication” (Said) to helping these lesser cultures. This builds on Said’s concept of high cultural humanism and the power structure it creates. There is an assumption that it is natural for the West to explore other parts of the world, as Said describes “the tradition of experience, learning, and education that kept the Oriental-colored to his position of object being studied by the Occidental-white, instead of vice versa”. It is ingrained into our ideological beings that the West is superior due to its development and its civilized nature, and therefore it’s assumed that we have the right and the responsibility to explore and help other inferior cultures.
Fusco explains this sort of white imperialism as it dates back to Columbus. She states: “Finding historical justification for Columbus's "discovery" became just another way of affirming Europeans' and Euro-Americans' "natural right" to be global cultural consumers” (3-4). She actually describes the true intention of cultural exploration, which is to expand consumer bases and to support globalization. This issue obviously has many levels and deeper facets to it, but The Couple in the Cage reveals one form of cultural exploitation that produces profits for the West. The exhibition of humans, as Fusco summarizes, has been an ongoing practice and, as we discussed in lecture, has occurred up to present time (in 2005, Germany constructed a native African ‘village’ for exhibition). The film displays the Western reaction to the display of other cultures and other human beings. Although there are many people opposed to this concept in the film, there are also many people who support it or assume it to be natural, which reveals a lot about the Western ethnocentric way of life.
I think this film and its implications about Western life can be greatly explained through a statement made by Nietzche. “Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are” (Said). The ideological belief that Western culture is dominant, that the East is inferior, and that the West may explore, exhibit, and exploit the East, either as a form of ‘aid’ or for their own intellectual growth, is a truth created in the past, dating back to the days of exploration and Columbus. This is a constructed truth that we have forgotten was in fact constructed, making it very difficult to alter in order to eliminate the human exhibition completely.
I think the first point reveals a great deal about how Western culture believes they are more developed or civilized than the ‘primitive’ East, primarily because of our ideological views that tell us to believe consumption and development are better. The binary opposition of the West and the East is explained in Edward Said’s Orientalism. This work explains the contrived identity of the Orient created by the West and the white’s “long tradition of executive responsibility towards the colored races”.
The one moment of the film that really stood out to me was when a man in the crowd commented on how interested the male ‘native’ was with the television set. He said that it was interesting that the male was so fascinated even though he didn’t actually know what it was. This can be considered to be what Said refers to as “high cultural humanism”. It demonstrates how, in Western culture, white people are thought to have greater wisdom and are more developed intellectually, solely because they are more developed in terms of practices like capitalism or institutional progress. This intellectual superiority is explained in Said’s Orientalism, where he states that the native races in the world are left with “centuries of experience and no wisdom”. I think that this statement resonated throughout The Couple in a Cage because none of the observers (of the exhibit) seemed to consider the history of the ‘natives’, when they actually believed that they were ‘natives’. Those who fell for the stunt seemed to be more interested in the couple’s interaction with Western products than they were in learning more about the history of this newly discovered native tribe. Even when the male would perform his speech about the tribe in their ‘native tongue’, only one person seemed to care that he couldn’t actually understand what the man was saying. Everyone else was fascinated with the exoticism of this foreign language and didn’t feel compelled to learn anything deeper than what was presented at surface level. The gimmick of these foreign creatures, interacting with the magic of Western technology, was the primary attraction for the West, which makes it way too easy to link this example to the human exhibits of our past. Fusco provides a good summary of the human exhibition that has occurred in the past:
Since the early days of the Conquest, "aboriginal samples" of people fiom Ahca, Asia, and the Americas were brought to Europe for aesthetic contemplation, scientific analysis, and entertainment. Those people from other parts of the world were forced first to take the place that Europeans had already created for the savages of their own Medieval mythology; later with the emergence of scientific rationalism, the "aborigines" on display served as proof of the natural superiority of European civilization, of its ability to exert control over and extract knowledge from the "primitive" world, and ultimately of the genetic inferiority of non-European races. (5)
The second point is more disturbing in the way that it exposes the flaws of Western ideologies. The concept of observing a different culture so closely has been deeply rooted through Western history as normal practice. It’s not only natural for the West to explore the rest of the world and its cultures, but it is also expected and even respected with a “sense of intellectual dedication” (Said) to helping these lesser cultures. This builds on Said’s concept of high cultural humanism and the power structure it creates. There is an assumption that it is natural for the West to explore other parts of the world, as Said describes “the tradition of experience, learning, and education that kept the Oriental-colored to his position of object being studied by the Occidental-white, instead of vice versa”. It is ingrained into our ideological beings that the West is superior due to its development and its civilized nature, and therefore it’s assumed that we have the right and the responsibility to explore and help other inferior cultures.
Fusco explains this sort of white imperialism as it dates back to Columbus. She states: “Finding historical justification for Columbus's "discovery" became just another way of affirming Europeans' and Euro-Americans' "natural right" to be global cultural consumers” (3-4). She actually describes the true intention of cultural exploration, which is to expand consumer bases and to support globalization. This issue obviously has many levels and deeper facets to it, but The Couple in the Cage reveals one form of cultural exploitation that produces profits for the West. The exhibition of humans, as Fusco summarizes, has been an ongoing practice and, as we discussed in lecture, has occurred up to present time (in 2005, Germany constructed a native African ‘village’ for exhibition). The film displays the Western reaction to the display of other cultures and other human beings. Although there are many people opposed to this concept in the film, there are also many people who support it or assume it to be natural, which reveals a lot about the Western ethnocentric way of life.
I think this film and its implications about Western life can be greatly explained through a statement made by Nietzche. “Truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are” (Said). The ideological belief that Western culture is dominant, that the East is inferior, and that the West may explore, exhibit, and exploit the East, either as a form of ‘aid’ or for their own intellectual growth, is a truth created in the past, dating back to the days of exploration and Columbus. This is a constructed truth that we have forgotten was in fact constructed, making it very difficult to alter in order to eliminate the human exhibition completely.
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