The Couple in the Cage

Dugan McShain

Anthropological Film Comments on La Pareja Enjaulada (The Couple in the Cage)

A century ago people were more interesting exhibits than animals. If you had a native from some far off land, you could make a fortune peddling their freakishness around rural America and Europe; stopping in bars and taverns or at fairgrounds, just so that people could ogle your strange savage.

The organizers of the worlds Colombian Exposition in Chicago set up one of these 'exotic creatures' exhibits. 100 years later and the practice can still draw a crowd. Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena locked themselves in a ten foot by ten foot gilded cage, and present themselves as a recently discovered tribe off the coast of Mexico. They were the inhabitants of a small Caribbean island, a "lost" isle.

The anthropology documentary that they made raises interesting questions and important issues about race and culture. It includes interviews with audience members from throughout the world who got a chance to see the strange creatures cavort for the low price of entry into their local museum. The couple had agreed to display themselves as people had been in the 19th and 20th centuries. Intercut with archival footage of humans displayed in cages and on leashes, perceived as freaks and curiosities.

The couple's discoveries of people's perceptions concern racial, ethnic, and Hispanic/Latino, identity in particular. "In this project the Coco Fusco and I did a parody of the great traveling "multicultural" exhibitions of principles of the 1900, revealing their inherent political contradictions, by means of the violent juxtaposition, although comedian, of true pre-Columbian and colonial art, with examples of tourist art and contemporary conceptual work."-(Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Text/Archive, Hemispheric Institute)

While the artists' intent was to create a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery, and colonization, they soon realized that many of their viewers actually believed the ruse. These 'modern' people all believed that the two were real and were actually long lost savages. "One is to articulate, to visualize and to anthropomorphism to the monsters that the same public projects when trying to include/understand or simply to enjoy another culture, in our case, the Mexican and the baffle plate."-(Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Text/Archive, Hemispheric Institute)

The record in the film about their interactions with audiences in four different countries exemplifies the fact that there is a long history of cross-cultural misunderstanding that still permeates our society today. Archival footage of the past ethnographic displays gives a historical dimension of truth to the otherwise almost laughable display. The couple in the cage is a powerful blend of comic fiction and a reflection on the morality of treating humans as exotic animals.

Americans have in the past couple of hundred years come to think of themselves as white; a category that they use to distinguish themselves apart from their own ethnic backgrounds and against racial 'others'. This significant other is used as a measuring stick on which we would like to measure ourselves.

The other is needed to proclaim us better, stronger, smarter and more importantly more cultured. And since the other is usually from a society that has little to do with our customs and practices it has typically been easy to judge ourselves as better than these people. Using morals, ethics and an inflated sense of importance that we have given to ourselves. In the film, the tourists are directed to take pictures, and to donate money to the savages in return for cultural dances, and other telltale 'odd' activities.

Some of the viewers were extremely confused, others; privy to the satire thought it an excellent way for people to realize what hundreds of years of colonization and cultural imperialism has done to societies the world over.

Surprisingly, more Europeans were fooled than any other nation. This may be because of a greater distance between Mexico and Europe, creating a larger gap of knowledge. Or possibly because the issue of multi-race varied background relations is more prevalent in Northern America. One girl interviewed wept openly in a display of sadness over the injustices visited on the peoples of the world in the name of entertainment and progress on the various people that the couple represented.

"It is in field work that the Anthropologist is perhaps like the playwrights he observes human behavior and looks for that which is significant either in itself or by comparison with other forms of behavior." -(pg.258 Picturing Culture Turnbull 1979:2 Ruby) It is satirical plays that hold a larger thrall over our life. We are not sure how to interpret a performance, so we prescribe certain traits to it to make it more homogeneous and help ourselves swallow it.

Satire like so many forms of comedy expresses freely the feelings which are too harsh or dangerous to acknowledge if the two stood there and ranted on about the injustices of the world they would never have had such a lasting impression on the audiences that observed them. Their performances therefore were designed to be subtler and seat themselves in institutes of higher learning.

There's was a message designed for "Everyman", it was designed for a crowd of people whom the actors knew could appreciate and dissect the message that they saw in an environment fit for proper discussion of a difference in cultures. Emphatically, the "Couple in the Cage" triumphs because of subtlety... not simply because they went after the brain's of their audience instead of their ears. But because the message they portray is one of hope.

First of all, this is not an anthropology documentary but the documentary record of the 1991-92 year-long performance art production, "The Year of the White Bear" staged by cultural critic Coco Fusco and performance artist, Guillermo Gomez- Pena. The couple installed themselves in a gilt cage throughout art centers around the world including Madrid, Spain; Orange County, California; Walker Art Center; Whitney Biennial, NYC; and the grand rotunda of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.

Fusco, an enormously talented author and artist produced the documentary from performance footage as the couple, dressed in outlandish pastiche costumes with "ethnic" overtones represented themselves as two "undiscoverd aborigines" from the make-believe Gulf of Mexico island of Guatinaui. Within the cage, the couple posed for photographs with museum visitors, were taken for walks on a leash lead by "handlers," and performed "authentic" native dances and rituals for a nominal fee. The public and museum audiences were stunned, entertained, shocked, and outraged. The reactions are priceless as some individuals believed museums continue to exhibit humans in cages at the end of the 20th century. The repercussions to this mindset was both an eye opener for the artists and the art institutions, however, with the political mindset of the new millennium, this notion is no longer shocking.

Within the discussion, Fusco inserted background research for the performance that included historical photographs and data which pointed out the practice of displaying humans in freak shows, carnivals, and museums, a practice that provides criticism of the ongoing debate surrounding the authority of museums to exhibit and interpret the art and cultures of non-western societies. An alternative voice during the Quincentennial celebration which was ongoing at the time, The Couple in the Cage is both criticism, satire, and celebration of museums, curators, and artists who actively engage audiences to think on the issues of cultural representation, difference, and race with the kind of satirical punch that Fusco and GG-P are noted for producing.

This is an excellent film for cultural studies, museum studies, art history, and ethnic studies courses as well as a rare background look at the trials and tribulations of live performance art in the arena of culture making. One of the more humorous moments is the tape of an actual phone call by a concerned Smithsonian visitor to the DCASPCA reporting the museum had displayed live humans in a cage -- "yeah, Lady...are you sure it's not two large orangutans?"