I've been watching Going Tribal, a Discovery Channel reality show about this British marine who goes to live with various tribes for a month. I find it to be quite interesting, though on the Discovery Channel forum a bunch of anthropologists are stirring up a ruckus.
I concur that the advertising is retarded. "Oohhh, watch the white man try to survive a month with the CANNIBALS!!!" Plus, the generic "tribal" drumbeat, the cliche spiral pattern and leet flame motifs get a thumbs down. You know if they did a show called "Going Oriental" and had a bunch of geishas, dragons and Jackie Chan in the trailer, (with ying yangs and that "chop suey" font), I'd be pretty pissed off too. It'd be almost as bad as the description* university dining services wrote of our Chinese takeout. Anyway, the show itself is actually pretty good, though I think that the hour-long episodes are too short to give us anywhere near a comprehensive understanding of various cultures. True to its reality show nature, you get all the crazy @#%$, ("I'm Bruce Parry, watch me drink cow blood!") but not so much normal things.
Of course, all the anthropologists are screaming, "Cultural Imperialism!" I think the anthropologists should pull their heads out of their butts and be glad a show like this was even made, and is widely watched. One of the criticisms I saw was, "OMG how dare the Discovery Channel send a normal joe, and not a trained anthropologist!" I find that to be a paternalistic and imperialistic statement in itself. So the only people who can "study" foreign peoples are "trained scientists"? So the only contact indigenous people should have with the outside world should be people sent there to study them? God. The Suri and the Kombai, among others, are living and breathing people, not Jane Goodall and the monkeys. They should have the final say over who to invite into their homes to live with and befriend, not scientists who want to "protect the natives from cultural contamination." Explorer Bruce Parry never claims to be an objective scientist doing a scholarly documentary. His show is merely the memoir of his personal experience and how it changed him. It's not the be-all-end-all authority about a people, and nothing ever will be. If someone produces a reality show about living in Japan or England or Sweden, will the anthropologists jump on him too?
Anthropologists are also annoyed that Bruce Parry spins his experience as being exciting and dangerous. This annoyance is understandable, since for ages anyone who wasn't white has been labeled an exotic, wild savage. To which I respond... exotic, wild, or no, living miles away from the nearest modern medical facility is dangerous. Having bows drawn on you by a dozen Amazon tribesmen is dangerous. Living in Sudan on the border between two warring ethnic groups, in the middle of a civil war, is dangerous. Parry made it quite clear that his hosts were hospitable and kind, but be that as it may, anyone in his situation is in great danger, regardless of the disposition of his companions. It's a hard life, and it does a great disservice to the people involved to pretend that, "Ladeedadeeda, there's no war or disease here! We live in Rousseau's paradise!"
Bruce Parry has balls. Give him credit for that.
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