As I was surfing around the internet for information and/or inspiration for this blog entry I came across something that legitimately shocked me: human zoos. What, you may ask, is a human zoo exactly? Well, it is precisely what you would think it is. “Human zoos were 19th and 20th century public exhibits of people - mostly non-Europeans. Africans, Asians, Indigenous people and many others were often caged and displayed in a makeshift ‘natural habitat’” (Channel 4). They were used as “pseudo scientific demonstrations of ‘racial difference’” (Channel 4).
In my searches, one name kept coming up in relation to human zoos. This name belonged to a member of the Mbuti pygmies, an indigenous people in the Congo region of Africa. The name is Ota Benga. Benga’s basic story is that a white man, Samuel Philips Verner, bought him from a slave trader. Verner brought Benga and several other pygmies back to America for the St’ Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Verner eventually brought Benga to New York, where Benga ended up living in the Bronx zoo. Here are is a picture of him:
In this picture, Ota Benga is seen holding a monkey. He is wearing what one would stereotypically think of when thinking of an indigenous person from Africa. He is in nature. There are trees and shrubbery all around him. When Benga lived in the zoo, his hammock was put into an orangutan’s cage “where he was encouraged to play with the orang utan and weave caps out of straw and to shoot his bow and arrow” (Channel 4). He was encouraged to perform activities that fit the stereotypes that Americans held. He was placed in a cage with animals and was displayed and treated as one. Even though it claimed to be scientific, this was all really done just for entertainment.Now surely you would think: “These types of things can’t possibly still be going on. That was 1904… the world has come so far.” I hate to tell you this, but if you thought that you would be wrong. What shocked me more than finding out human zoos existed was finding out that human zoos recently existed.
In 2005 in Augsburgh, Germany an ‘African Village’ was put on display in the zoo. You can read more about it here, but I’ll give a brief rundown in case you don’t have time.
I really can’t understand the type of thinking that would go on to make someone think that this would be okay. I think a quote from the link sums it best: "There is an urge in Germany to see those who are not white as part of something exotic or romanticised." This urge, obviously, isn’t found just in Germany and it isn’t just directed towards non-white bodies. Most people, in general, love being able to look at different bodies in spaces where those bodies don’t have a chance to look or talk back. If this wasn’t true, human zoos and places like the Mutter Museum wouldn’t be as popular as they are.
(Image courtesy of wikipedia.com)
(Link courtesy of http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4070816.stm)
(Cited quotes courtesy of http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-human-zoo-sciences-dirty-secret/articles/human-zoo)
The human zoo you write about in this blog sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Oh wait! Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter House Five,” tells a tale about a human who is abducted by aliens and put on display in a zoo-like habitat for extra terrestrials to oogle at. Not only does this blog bring up the de-humanizing aspect a zoo-like habitat creates, but also a horrifying truth of spectatorship. In Vonnegut’s novel, the human (usually the privileged spectator) is put behind bars, while the “looker” takes upon a non-human superiority. However in the cases you bring up, those whom are looked at are again under-privileged, the other, etc. I’m completely troubled, not only by the realness of these seemingly fictional cases, but also the too-familiar narrative.
ReplyDeleteI also had no idea that things like this existed in modern-day. It's interesting to think that in the case of museums like the Mutter, the people being looked at are dead, and therefor unable to give permission to be viewed. For the humans in the zoos, they are still alive yet lack the agency to deny being viewed. The fact that they are the other or the underpriviledged makes them equivilant to a dead person in that neither has the rights of their own body.
ReplyDeleteah, yes, unfortunately too often reality surpasses fiction and this is certainly one of those cases. I really am shocked to learn that something like that is being done today in a place like..ehem..Germany. The quote you bring up just makes me think of why things like are still popular. A deep perverted need to deminsh others who are not like our cultures, and to put them in display like that really tells us that we know its wrong and that we know those others do not approve and would otherwise rebel...why else would we put them in cages if not for a sense of danger and shame all mixed together.
ReplyDeleteaaaand, this is why I don't go to animal zoos anymore.
It was really hard to fathom that human zoos could exist in modern times. What was even harder to fathom is how Germany could be guilty of housing such an atrocity. As a nation, Germany has apologized to the Jewish community for the Holocaust and has viewed the entire event as an extremely embarrassing and shameful point in it's history. While genocide is not to be conflated with human zoos, you would think that Germany would be especially careful and tactful when dealing with racial and ethnic difference.
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