New Exhibition Details The Exploitation of Human Zoos

The Quai Branly Museum in Paris, France, a museum opened by Jacques Chirac dedicated to once-colonized cultures, has now come full-circle. Last week, a brand new gallery entitled Human Zoos: The Invention of the Savage opened, detailing the degrading practice of exploitation of colonial cultures for entertainment. The gallery traces the lives of 35,000 individuals that were displayed as freaks, novelties and savages in various sideshows, museums, and zoos around the world. Illustrating the divide between science and voyeurism, the museum highlights a phenomenon in our society that has perpetuated as long as there has been a society.

In 1906 a Mbuti pygmy (pictured above) from the Congo was put on display in the New York Bronx Zoo. The pygmy, Ota Benga, was a petite man with a kind face and, a particular trademark of his “character”, a mouth full of sharpened teeth. Ota Benga had been promised repatriation to his native country but, having proven such a popular attraction, was denied. As a result he committed suicide. Ota Benga is just one example of the people behind the stories that these museums created around their displays.

Former French football start Lilian Thurman is the curator of this new gallery, using the stories of these people to campaign against racism and intolerance. Furthermore, Thurman has his own connection to this type of human degradation. His World Cup team-mate Christian Karembeu’s great grand-parents were brought to Paris from New Caledonia as ambassadors. However, upon arriving they were placed in a cage and displayed in Paris and in Germany as “cannibals”.

These kinds of displays, human zoos, “living” museums, circuses and mock villages were highly popular in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The novelty appealed to people’s innate tendency toward voyeurism, while curators often used them for highly politicized purposes. Some justified imperial colonialism by displaying the very “savages” that the nations were attempting to civilize. Others, toward the end of the 19^th century, used these kinds of displays to promote a kind of racial hierarchy, branding the “specimens” as lower on the path of human evolution and justifying a host of discriminatory practices, from Christian missions to eugenics.

Although the practice waned in the latter half of the 20^th century, the last known showing of a “human spectacle” was of Congolese tribesmen in Belgium in 1958. With the advent of cinema and television, and a change in social attitude, society’s need for voyeuristic entertainment seems to be largely satisfied by actual performers. However, reality television has given rise to an entirely new form of human spectacle: people willing to place themselves on a viewing stage (in this case, on camera) in exchange for a degree of fame and popularity. The question remains, with shows like Real Housewives and Celebrity Rehab, we somehow have turned the tables on human exploitation. The “freaks” are now the rich and famous, while colonial cultures in some parts of the world pick up Toddlers and Tiaras on satellite TV.