Tribe - BBC2 last night
Discussion
Thought I'd take a look at this and ended up watching the whole thing. Often I am yelling at the TV about how boring these sort of programmes but this was a gem.
Presenter seems a top bloke, hardly moved when they stuck a spike through his nose but think I would have turned down the penis inversion a bit earlier than he did...
:
Presenter seems a top bloke, hardly moved when they stuck a spike through his nose but think I would have turned down the penis inversion a bit earlier than he did...
:cracking programme - last weeks was good too with him in africa with the stick fighting lunatics!
Amusing to see that no matter how far removed a group of human beings is from what we regard as normal - we all find the same stuff funny - they seemed to spend the whole time laughing!!!
Amusing to see that no matter how far removed a group of human beings is from what we regard as normal - we all find the same stuff funny - they seemed to spend the whole time laughing!!!
carsarecool said:
Bugger! Missed it!
Was this the one with the cannibals? Or is that next week?
It was the one with the cannibals, sorry. Damn good it was too.
Perhaps it's my laitent hippy tendances comming out here but it also appeared to me to be a masterclass in we can all 'get along'. This guy comes out of nowhere and after a few packets of 'baccy they are all happy to accept him as their guest. No shared language, just a desire to see how the other peoples of the world live.
Thought I'd add my 2p worth as I used to live in Papua New Guinea and spent some time working in the rainforests (although not as far from the beaten track as the Kombai).
This is the 2nd programme of his I've seen & I was really pleased to see that the presenter genuinely seems to try to fit in with the tribe he attaches to - TBH before I saw the first prog I fully expected that it would be a load of insulting codswallop exploiting the tribes, having a laugh at their expense etc. - this is clearly not the case.
Having said that, a few insights into this programme...
The Kombai are a relatively well known tribe - this is the 3rd prog I have seen about them, so any presentations to never having seen a white man before go out the window.
The bow/arrows meeting was, in my opinion, set up (the presenter alluded to this as well). I have had several 'interesting' first meetings with people who are at first very concerned, but I have never been met with that level of open aggression waving bow & arrows (home made shot-guns yes, but that's another story!).
The people out there are genuinely very nice & friendly (once you get out of the cities) - it came as no surprise that he was 'accepted' into the tribe. Once their initial fear subsides (normally quite quickly) & you're not seen to be creating problems for them they do open up tremendously.
We can go round & round in circles about cannibalism - in my experience I never met anybody who admitted to actually having eaten another person. The best I always got was that people from the next village etc. - they always seemed rather embarrassed by the whole thing. The impression I came away with was that cannibalism no longer existed in PNG & hadn't done so since, probably, around WW2. The points they made about it being ritual are correct - in PNG it was generally used to prove you were a man by killing & eating a member of another tribe (note that it didn't necessarily have to be another man, or even adult, just another human - maybe some of the stuff Chav's get up to proving their manhod isn't too bad aferall...). I just wondered if the whole story was being made up for the cameras...(could go for the revenge killing just not the cannibalism)
And no I never went anywhere near a penis inversion, nor for that matter having a stick shoved through my nose; Sago is utterly utterly disgusting; Pig slow roasted like that is amazingly mouth watering.
Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the programme & it brought back some fantastic memories - all credit to the presenter. I am just trying to give you my personal experience/views on a few of the points.
This is the 2nd programme of his I've seen & I was really pleased to see that the presenter genuinely seems to try to fit in with the tribe he attaches to - TBH before I saw the first prog I fully expected that it would be a load of insulting codswallop exploiting the tribes, having a laugh at their expense etc. - this is clearly not the case.
Having said that, a few insights into this programme...
The Kombai are a relatively well known tribe - this is the 3rd prog I have seen about them, so any presentations to never having seen a white man before go out the window.
The bow/arrows meeting was, in my opinion, set up (the presenter alluded to this as well). I have had several 'interesting' first meetings with people who are at first very concerned, but I have never been met with that level of open aggression waving bow & arrows (home made shot-guns yes, but that's another story!).
The people out there are genuinely very nice & friendly (once you get out of the cities) - it came as no surprise that he was 'accepted' into the tribe. Once their initial fear subsides (normally quite quickly) & you're not seen to be creating problems for them they do open up tremendously.
We can go round & round in circles about cannibalism - in my experience I never met anybody who admitted to actually having eaten another person. The best I always got was that people from the next village etc. - they always seemed rather embarrassed by the whole thing. The impression I came away with was that cannibalism no longer existed in PNG & hadn't done so since, probably, around WW2. The points they made about it being ritual are correct - in PNG it was generally used to prove you were a man by killing & eating a member of another tribe (note that it didn't necessarily have to be another man, or even adult, just another human - maybe some of the stuff Chav's get up to proving their manhod isn't too bad aferall...). I just wondered if the whole story was being made up for the cameras...(could go for the revenge killing just not the cannibalism)
And no I never went anywhere near a penis inversion, nor for that matter having a stick shoved through my nose; Sago is utterly utterly disgusting; Pig slow roasted like that is amazingly mouth watering.
Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the programme & it brought back some fantastic memories - all credit to the presenter. I am just trying to give you my personal experience/views on a few of the points.
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