Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Pacific

I had no idea what I was watching when AMONG THE CANNIBAL ISLES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC started, but after a while it becomes apparent that this is a documentary short from 1918, charting the encounters of a couple of explorers (a married couple) with some native inhabitants of the South Seas islands.

The print quality available on Harpodeon is very poor quality but that's as you'd expect for something so considerably rare. The viewer is afforded the chance to see a long-forgotten way of life in a society which progress has skipped. It says something that the husband and wife filming the natives feel very modern by comparison. There's an undercurrent of racism in the way the natives are paraded around in front of the camera, but the viewer must remember that this is from an era where freak shows and sideshow carnivals were still commonplace.

Osa and Martin Johnson were a married pair of adventurers with a claim to being anthropologists who popularized the subject. On one of their expeditions, they were not permitted to leave by some natives on Vanatu until a British gunboat showed up.

After escaping, the Johnsons apparently decided to get their vengeance by returning and making a movie in which the natives were shown to be idiots. I would guess they showed up with a lot of guns, because this movie shows the Johnsons had no compunctions about making them eat cigarettes, grabbing them and making them stand in front to show how scrawny they were, and engage in other humiliating activities.

Given the poor condition of the print on the harpodeon.com site, there's little in this of much interest to either serious students of anthropologists or film. As a study of how people abuse other people, given the chance, it may be of some use, but surely there is plenty of evidence without this.