The semiotics of anthropological authenticity: The film apparatus and cultural accommodation

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between media constructions of First and indigenous peoples, and the “performative primitives” who are employed in “cultural” villages in the South African province of KwaZulu‐Natal (KZN), with specific reference to Shakaland where the TV series, Shaka Zulu, was filmed in the late 1970s. A Perceian‐derived semiotic method is applied in analysis of the nature of tourist encounters with performers, the relationship between the Western Same and the African Other, and anthropologists’ /observers’ studies as a kind of cultural tourist. Through a discussion of the relationship between science and priestcraft I offer a theory which accounts for new ways of thinking about relations between emotional and active rhetorical discourses. This new form of “scientific discourse” is argued so as to be couched within related discourses of “development”, “conservation”, and “eco‐tourism”.