The Couple in the Cage

I saw this segment a while ago and have talked about these two artists in a couple of other classes, including a lit class. We dealt very heavily into the post-modern in it and so this piece worked into the curriculum well. It's really strong in its ability to act as a great lens with which to view our culture. The viewers are so obsessed with the idea of the 'other' and it's almost uncomfortable to watch them watching the couple, the "primitives". It's disturbing that no one is flatly outraged by the fact that a couple of human beings are being stuck in a cage and paraded around the world, or at least the Western world, for entertainment and loosely "educational" purposes. A good picture is painted of how ridiculous humans really are, and what's most ironic is that the viewer is the one that looks most ridiculous even though the people in the cage are dressed so insanely.

I guess the novelty of the curio cabinet hasn't been outgrown, we've just had to fill it with newly outrageous things.