KRIPPENDORF’S TRIBE

US, 1998, 94 minutes, Colour.
Richard Dreyfuss, Jenna Elfman, Natasha Lyonne, Gregory Smith, Carl Michael Lindner, Lily Tomlin, Stephen Root, Siobhan Fallon, Susan Ruttan, Barbara Williams, Elaine Stritch, Tom Poston, Zakes Mokae, David Ogden Stiers.
Directed by Todd Holland.

Krippendorf’s Tribe is a Disney-financed production of the late 1990s. It was not so successful at the box office. The comedy is rather farfetched, a professor grieving over the death of his wife is too inert to go back to Papua New Guinea where he had investigated a hidden tribe and photographed it. He accepts a grant, urged by an enthusiastic young anthropologist (Jenna Elfman) and he accepts the money – deciding to use his children and dress them up as the members of the tribe and perform various rituals, with his voice-over, which are then to be used on a television network for anthropological film. The older daughter, Natasha Lyonne, objects. The older brother, Gregory Smith, is part of the brains behind the venture.

A surprisingly large number of character actors also appear, Lily Tomlin as a rather randy anthropologist who goes to New Guinea, Stephen Root as a television producer, David Ogden Stiers as the manager of the television station, Zakes Mokae as a would-be New Guinean. Elaine Stritch and Tom Poston appear as the professor’s in-laws. The professor is played with his usual style and comedy by Richard Dreyfuss.

The film is farcical in its presentation of the anthropology, of the screenings on television, of the reputation of the professor and his assistant. However, the assistant becomes involved with the professor and appears in one of the films, about mating rituals. The authorities at the university discover the truth, want to back out of the grant, are involved in farcical dealings where alternately the professor and his assistant dress up as a New Guinean chief visiting the United States.

While a lot of the comedy is ham-fisted and obvious, the main aspect of the film is its colonialising attitude towards the New Guineans. The screenplay has a lot of racist language, considering the New Guineans as primitive, mocking their rituals, asserting the superiority of the American point of view – with Lily Tomlin making remarks about the villages in New Guinea, the stench, while ogling one of the New Guineans.

Anybody involved in serious work with emerging countries and the issues of inculturation will not find the film very amusing at all. The superior attitudes and the taken-for-granted superiority of the Americans is not surprising – yet very surprising.

The screenplay is by Charlie Peters, a writer with a mixed group of credits including Three Men and a Little Lady, My Father the Hero, and better films, Music From Another Room and My One and Only.

Direction is by Todd Holland, mainly a director of television series and the feature film for families, Fire House Dog.