CULTURAL STUDIES: Cannibal Holocaust by Gianfranco Clerici

Cultural studies is an academic field of critical theory and literary criticism initially introduced by British academics in 1964 and subsequently adopted by allied academics throughout the world. Characteristically interdisciplinary, cultural studies is an academic discipline aiding cultural researchers who theorize about the forces from which the whole of humankind construct their daily lives. Cultural Studies is not a unified theory, but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives. Distinct from the breadth, objective and methodology of cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, cultural studies is focussed upon the political dynamics of contemporary culture and its historical foundations, conflicts and defining traits. Researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates to ideology, social class,nationality, ethnicity, sexuality and/or gender, rather than providing an encyclopedic identification, categorization or definition of a particular culture or area of the world.

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies)


The Story:

The film opens with a television documentary about a missing film crew from the United States that disappeared on an expedition to the Amazon Basin to make a documentary about indigenous cannibal tribes. The team was Alan Yates, the director; Faye Daniels, his girlfriend, along with a script girl; and two cameramen, Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso. Harold Monroe, a New York Universityanthropologist, has agreed to lead a rescue team and flies to the Amazon to meet his guides, Chaco and his assistant, Miguel. The group has a hostage captured by the military from a local tribe called the Yacumo, and they use him to help negotiate with the natives. The team arranges his release in exchange for being taken to the Yacumo village. There, the team initially meets hostility and learns that the film group had caused great unrest among the people.

The next day, Monroe and his guides head deeper into the rainforest to locate two warring tribes, the Ya̧nomamö and the Shamatari. Following a group of Shamatari warriors to a riverbank, they intervene and save a smaller group of Ya̧nomamö from death in a conflict between the groups. The Ya̧nomamö invite Monroe and his team back to their village, where they are treated with suspicion. To gain the villagers' trust, Monroe bathes naked in a river. A group of Ya̧nomamö women emerge to take him to a shrine, which he learns holds the bones of the missing American filmmakers. Angry, Monroe confronts the Ya̧nomamö, during which time he plays a tape recorder for them. Intrigued, the natives agree to trade it for the first team's surviving reels of film during a cannibalistic ceremony, in which Monroe has to take part.

Back in New York, executives of the Pan American Broadcast Company invite Monroe to host a broadcast of a documentary to be made from the recovered film. Monroe wants to see the raw footage first. The executives introduce him to Yates's work by showing an excerpt from his previous documentary, The Last Road to Hell. One of the executives tells Monroe that Yates staged the scene to get more exciting footage. Monroe reviews the footage, which first follows the group's trek through the jungle. They promptly spot a large turtle, which they butcher and eat. Their guide, Felipe, is then bitten by a venomous snake. The group amputates Felipe's leg with a machete in an attempt to save his life, but he quickly dies and is left behind. The remaining four succeed in locating the Yacumo. Jack shoots one in the leg so they can easily follow him to the village. The second reel starts with the group's arrival at the Yacumo village. They force the entire tribe into a hut and burn it down in order to stage a scene for the film. Monroe expresses concerns over the staged scenes and poor treatment of the natives, but his worries are ignored.

Monroe expresses his disgust to station executives about their decision to air the documentary. To convince them of his view, he shows the remaining, unedited footage, which only he has seen. The final two reels begin with the team locating a young Ya̧nomamö girl, whom the men gang-rape as Faye tries to stop them. Later, the team films the girl impaled on a wooden pole, where they claim the natives killed her. After they move on, the Ya̧nomamö attack the team in revenge for the girl's rape and death. Jack is hit by a spear, and Alan shoots him so the team can film how the natives mutilate his corpse. As the three surviving team members try to escape the scene, Faye is captured. Alan insists they try to rescue her. Mark continues to film as she is raped and beheaded. The Ya̧nomamö immediately locate the last two team members as the footage ends with Alan's bloody face. Disturbed by what they have just seen, the executives order the footage destroyed, and Monroe leaves the station and declares: "I wonder who the real cannibals are?"

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibal_Holocaust)

The Criticism:

The story was based on the stories of the cannibals (people who eats the flesh of other human beings). The eating of human flesh is a culture of the Carib people.

In the story, the cannibals are ruthless killers that would not stop until they get a handful of human flesh to dine on. The movie never really tells why they eat flesh, the movie calls for close watching and a deep understanding of the movie.

As the movie flows, we would find that these flesh eating people do this because they are used in doing this because this is their culture. Modern people consider this as a taboo, but we must remember that it is their culture, a culture which is keeping them who they are.