The Film Of The Cage Directed By Coco Fusco And Paula Heredia

The documentary The Couple in the Cage directed by Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia consists of a video record about performance art in 1990s and a 1930s Hollywood film. In the video record, two performance artists dress up as indigenous from Gulf of Mexico and are declared by the guide that they cannot speak English (CIC). They come to some cities such as Chicago, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, New York City in U.S., Madrid in Sydney and Sydney in Australia (CIC), and they are put themselves in a big cage for visitors to watch and interact with. All their clothes and make-up makes them look like real natives: The male wear masks and clothes with pattern of tiger skin; the woman’s face is shaded by colorful painting and wear grass skirt exposing most of her body. In the cage, the woman dance with pop music, wear glasses and they curiously fiddle with TV sets, keyboards and cassette recorder which are all innovations from 20th century. At the same time, the visitors are charged to t ake photos with the couple and are interviewed to talk about their opinions. Some criticize that it is inhumane to confine the couple for displaying while some have no opinion about it. What is surprising is that the natives are actors who study the audiences more than the audiences study them. The alternating Hollywood black-white-silent depicts the scene that Indians constrained in the cage are exhibited to whites. The spectators look the Indians up and down, which is very similar to the scene in the