Cowboys and Aliens: Body Techniques and Audience Reception in Malaita, Solomon Islands

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Lau of Malaita Province, Solomon Islands, this article revisits the “imperial cowboy problem” through an anthropology of technology approach. It examines audience preference for Westerns, or “cowboy movies,” and their rejection of science fiction, or “new technology movies.” Non-verbal, visual communication, material cultures and body techniques are shown to be particularly significant for how unintended audiences engage with foreign visual media, given their own sociocultural context.

Notes

1 The argument here is specifically in reference to the audience preferences of Gwou’ulu villagers. While previous work has found similar interests elsewhere in the Pacific, based on current resources it is impossible to generalize for the entire region.

2 Martial arts movies enjoy some popularity in Solomon Islands. I observed this particularly during fieldwork in urban areas [Jourdan 1997: 147 n. 14]. However, research in Gwou’ulu revealed only one martial arts movie in the collective digital data of the village, 3 Ninjas Kick Back [Kanganis 1994]. A detailed discussion of martial arts movies is therefore not included here. I also contend that the popularity of martial arts movies in Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific [Hahn 1994] does not challenge the argument presented here. The core action of a martial arts movie, martial arts, entails a series of technical gestures involving hand to hand, but also metal- and wood-based weapon combat. Furthermore Cantonese, Fukienese and Mandarin-speaking communities have a long history in urban and periurban locales across the Pacific, thus whatever “uniquely Asian” material cultures they bear are often well-known to Pacific Islanders.

3 I do not include here pornographic materials produced in Melanesia.

4 The first Pan-Indian Pow-wow was probably the one convened at the University of Chicago by Sol Tax in summer 1961 (at which the editor of Visual Anthropology assisted).

5 This antagonism is exemplified in Harold Ross’ description of Baegu-Lau relations which my own fieldwork confirms: “Accusations of land theft and title litigation are ubiquitous, because hill people claim land in which sea people have interests based on adverse possession or cognatic inheritance from Baegu ancestresses. Both accuse the other of practicing arua (sorcery) using contagious magic. Each has prejudicial stereotypes of itself and the other…As a result, hill and sea people distrust one another…, there is little casual mixing, and they do not trespass on each other’s property” [1978: 122–123].

6 Such was the case in the African Copperbelt [Ambler 2001: 104].

7 The popularity of Rambo [Stallone 2008] in Melanesia is well documented [Jourdan 1997; Kulick 1993; Kulick and Willson 1994; Maranda, in Woodhead 1987; White 1991]. Jourdan [1997: 143] suggests that its popularity among Malaitans can be traced to the homonymy between a local type of warrior, a ramo, and Rambo.