The Horror of Anthropology + Cannibal Holocaust

Anthropologists have appeared as protagonists and key characters in many horror movies. Films like Horror Express (1973), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Candyman (1992) and The Relic (1997) have pitted the anthropologist against powerful spirits and demons, mutant beasts, malevolent sorcerers and ferocious cannibals.

While paying attention to the rich popular mythology that has grown up around the anthropologist and her/his work, Akintola Hubbard will use these films to closely examine the major disciplinary problems, anxieties and even phobias arising out of anthropology’s troubled place in the history of the West. Akintola Hubbard will look at the complimentary roles played by anthropological science and the horror genre in constructing, popularizing and sometimes challenging Western notions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship.

In this lecture, Edward Akintola Hubbard will engage in a gothic re-reading of anthropology as the ‘science of the Other’; consider the anthropologist as a liminal figure in popular culture – a hapless intermediary between science and superstition, between modernity and arcane tradition – who grapples methodologically with both rationalist and non-rationalist epistemes; examine cinematic representations of fieldwork as a terrifying, ill-advised crossing of social, cultural, geographic, and temporal boundaries; connect the themes of the course with current debates on imperialism, racism, classism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, racialized policing, immigration, and terrorism.

Cannibal Holocaust

After a break, Eye will screen Akin Hubbards film of choice for this evening: Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980). This film is a landmark in Italian exploitation cinema and remains one of the most controversial films ever made. A pioneer of the found footage cinematic technique, the film concerns an anthropologist who leads a rescue team into the Brazilian Amazon to find a crew of missing documentary filmmakers.

To achieve a heightened sense of gory realism, Deodato employed deeply problematic methods which predictably led to outrage upon the release of the film. While not for the faint-hearted, Cannibal Holocaust is a cautionary tale about race, power and ethics in the representation of non-Western cultures.

The film contains graphic depiction of sexual assault and actual animal cruelty. Part of the proceeds will go towards De Dierenbescherming.

About Edward Akintola Hubbard

Experimental ethnographer Edward Akintola Hubbard is the artistic director of the DARKMATTER Collective. He has taught the practice at New York University (New York and Shanghai campuses) and later at Utrecht University.