Cannibal Tours (1988) Director: Dennis O’Rourke

At the beginning of this film, a sentence appears on the screen that best describes the content, “there is nothing so strange in a strange land as the stranger who comes to visit it”. In Cannibal Tours the natives live on the land with their friends and family and everything is normal accept for the foreign people who come to watch and photograph them. It is apparent that the people of Papua New Guinea do not appreciate the arrogant tourists who come to observe their culture and bargain for their creations. As I watched this film, a strong feeling of invasion and lack of privacy consumed me. Dennis O’Rourke thoroughly depicts how ignorant tourists can be throughout this documentary.

People should treat people the way they wish to be treated, which should be told to the bourgeois tourists who visit New Guinea. Through translations in subtitled form, I was able to see from the perspective of the natives how badly they feel about the interactions they have with the tourists. It is interesting how O’Rourke would go from interviewing a native about the hard work that goes into their carvings and then how he would switch to a scene where a tourist is trying to bargain with them for lower prices. Selling their carvings and charging for photographs of “The Spirit House” are how these people earn their money and it is devastating when the tourists try to get them to reduce to “2^nd or 3^rd prices”. Although O’Rourke does not say any of his opinions, he shows through editing how he negatively feels about these tourists and their choices.

During the course of this film it is interesting to see how O’Rourke makes his editing choices to contrast the two very different ways of life.  At one part during the film, the tourists are shown on the boat discussing the amount of calories in their eggs. The camera then cuts to the natives and how they barely have any money for food because the tourists are not even willing to pay the asking price for their carvings. It is interesting to see the difference between the two groups of people through which scenes O’Rourke strategically chooses to place side by side.

When one native woman is being interviewed she explains how the tourists don’t help them, “they don’t buy our things, they just come to stare and take pictures”. It is as if they are being watched like caged animals at a zoo. It is great how O’Rourke captures material that expresses the native’s emotions so people can hopefully stop this kind of horrible tourist behavior. There are so many public service announcements on television that show people in third world countries filming the natives and we never get to hear their side of the story. The only people we ever hear from are the tourists or the people claiming that they are trying to help. It is intriguing to hear from the people who live in these places and what they think of these people invading their territory.

In the end there is a weird combination of the tourists being jealous of the simple ways in which these people live and the natives being jealous of the tourist’s money; I guess the grass really is greener on the other side. 

Titicut Follies (1967) Director: Frederick Wiseman

Throughout the course of this film I not only felt uncomfortable and disturbed, but also empathetic for the subjects. At the beginning of the film it was difficult to comprehend what was being said and for what purpose the men were being interviewed. I believe that Wiseman created this lack of clarity on purpose so that the viewers could observe the surroundings instead of the dialogue in order to understand where the footage was documented. Wiseman definitely introduced the content in an interesting way that allowed the viewer to learn what was going on through actions instead of words. 

The way this documentary was filmed with close ups, slow pans, and holding shots made me feel violated and frustrated for the subjects. I had a particularly difficult time watching the part that featured Jim. It was as if the doctors were trying to make him go crazy by treating him poorly, watching him, and repeatedly asking him questions. When the person who is shaving his face repeatedly asks “why isn’t your room clean Jim?” I felt like I was going crazy too. I believe that Wiseman strategically placed repetition into the documentary to portray how annoyed the patients must feel. When the camera stares at Jim stomping around his room I felt as if I should turn away. I think that Wiseman was trying to portray the violation of privacy that the patients experience in the part where the camera zooms into Jim’s face and Jim stares back for about 15 seconds. During this part of the documentary I felt like I was producing an unwanted gaze; Wiseman is successful at portraying feeling in the viewer when watching this documentary.

The lack of confidence and strength that the patients possess is also shown by the fact that they are always naked. It is obvious that the doctors and guards have power and control over the patients because of the way they treat them and because they are clothed and the patients are not. The fact that the men are denied the right to even wear clothes is disrespectful and rude. 

Overall, this documentary evokes a lot of sympathy in the viewers. When I was watching I could sympathize with how badly the patients were feeling. One part of the film that I found extremely interesting was at the beginning when one of the patients yelled out “I want all those men arrested” when referring to the doctors. Although this man was clearly mentally unwell and seemed to be talking nonsense I thought he had a good point. 

The way that Wiseman edited this documentary together made it seem as though the doctors were the ones tricking the patients into being mentally unwell. By asking questions unrelated to medicine, heavily medicating the patients, and telling them that they were crazy it was clear that the doctors were a big part of the problem. When seeing this mental hospital from Wiseman’s point of view it is clear that the patients are literally stripped of their rights and freedoms. 

Clip of the film that portrays how badly the patients are treated: 

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e5e_1233082303