The Couple in the Cage
The pair in the cage is a sequence of concerts done by Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco. The two adorned themselves out in nascent gears and locked themselves in a golden cage. In it they appeared before the public as “undiscovered Amerlndians” which was an exercise based on racist images of natives in the faux anthropology. This performance has been done in four different countries for eight times where it evoked various responses (R.R. Bowker Company. 2000). Among the responses was one which was most startling where a big number of people did not find the inkling “natives” tamper-proofed in a cage obnoxious. The confrontational video advocates that the “primitive” is nothing more than a profitable of the west and makes use of amusing fiction to report ancient truths and calamities.
They voyaged through numerous western cities where they presented this calling themselves and their homeland Guatinauis. The couple performed their traditional responsibilities from watching television to the lady darning voodoo dolls while displayed in the cage. The couple even placed a box for donation outside the cage where they were to present some of their performances for a fee hence making a show out of it. This entailed of a traditional dance from the lady while the man would narrate outmoded stories all in a made-up semantic (R.R. Bowker Company. 2000). They had also security guards who stood around the cage with the task of answering any arising questions, feeding the Guatinauis and on leashes take them to the bathroom. All the couple did in the cage was found to be profoundly melodramatic, where their skulls were measured, feed on bananas and were estimated samples. This all are characters of monkeys at the zoo.
All this now a documentary served to dissect the audience’s responses to the peculiar display. Most surprisingly a good percentage of the audience believed in the authenticity of the Guatinauis. However, the intension of the documentary or rather the displays was to exaggerate the western discernments of a primeval and primal ‘other’ for an ironic and comedic verge. Other than the anticipated it led to the recognition of just how protuberant chauvinistic dogmas were in their postcolonial humanity (Slaughter, Moreno, & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009). Therefore from then the documentary served as an indirect proof that colonial thoughts which concession the concept of non-western people being original and lesser in all facets to western people, still pervade our domain today. In fact the ideas ties back those of N’gugi of how orature is dependably minimized today because its origin and progress happened in the occupied or more aboriginal lands.
One of the articles about the performance is an argument that the spectators’ instant response discloses their essential beliefs. The incorporation of a discussion of morality where human being were quite simply handling other human being as unusual curiosities. There was a complete disregard of the notion that they too were human being with brains, species and body as they themselves (Slaughter, Moreno, & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009). Further, the documentary served to question the accustomed notions of concert rotating around line memorization, a stage in the amphitheater and prepared body engagements. The sort of performance in the in the documentary was all the more powerful for the audience being in a certain position, performing behaviors that had not been rehearsed and propelling viewers into a field or a theater. Moreover, what makes this performance more intriguing is the fact that unlike in the theater where the audience has no clue of what they watch. In this there is room for the viewer to watch his or her responses as the third party in the documentary.
Reference
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Slaughter, S., Moreno, H., & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. (2009). Representación y fronteras: El performance en los límites del género. México, D.F: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Programa Universitario de Estudios de Género.
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R.R. Bowker Company. (2000). Bowker's complete video directory 2000. New Providence, N.J: R.R. Bowker.
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