Essay 3

Thesis - In Coco Fusco and Fuillermo Gomez-Pena’s The Couple in the Cage, they tried to show the impacts of mass culture on the lives of everyday ctitizens by putting on such a provocative and outrageous show that many believed to be authentic despite obvious fabrication.

Paragraph 1 - By pretending to be native people, Fusco and Gomez exploited people’s gullibility by convincing them that they were unfamiliar with modern society because of complete isolation.

Paragraph 2 - People watching the exhibits seemed to be more fascinated with their culture rather than the inhumane treatment of taking people from their original homes and putting them in cages while traveling across the world.

Paragraph 3 - The root meaning of the project can link back to modern civilization taking over indigenous people which has happened many times throughout history.

Conclusion - Fusco and Gomez’s The Couple in the Cage was successful at conveying their message that the general public is blind to inhumane treatment.

quotes - Rather than offering a critique of contemporary (or even modern) ethnographic theory and practice, The Couple in the Cage uses the ethnographic burlesque in the service of a shameful ethnology, practices associated with the early history of ethnographic writing and display and with popular entertainment,(1) Before the advent of public museums, such displays were largely in the hands of commercial showmen, who combined edification and amusement in various ratios (Altick 1978).


the function of the ethnographic displays as popular entertainment was largely superseded by industrialized mass culture. Not unsurprisingly [sic], the popularity of these human exhibitions began to decline with the emergence of another commercialized form of voyeurism--the cinema--and the assumption by ethnographic film of their didactic role.... The representation of the "reality" of the Other's life, on which ethnographic documentary was based and still is grounded, is this fictional narrative of Western culture "discovering" the negation of itself in something authentically and radically distinct. (1995a, 49, Fusco's italics)(FN4)