3. Grand Pretensions Of Importance
With its question at the end - "I wonder who the real cannibals are?" - Deodato posits Western values against the Third World with lofty pretensions of having asked a serious question. Of course, everyone who hears that line sniggers at the off the chart cheese factor. They don't actually ponder the question. But it is endemic to the Mondo genre that these films think that they are of great import and take themselves dead seriously. Africa Addio had pretensions of being an unbiased account of the end of colonial power in Africa. Instead it uses the film as a vehicle to disgust (all the animal snuff), as a vehicle to titillate (the White South African girls jumping in slow motion on the trampoline) and as a vehicle to spread the film makers' racist pronouncements about Africa and its peoples. Directors Jacopetti and Prosperi were stung by the racist allegations and strenuously denied them. They tried to redress the balance with Addio Zio Tom - an historical 'recreation' of what African Americans suffered during the dark days of slavery. They only succeeded in creating more jaw dropping racism. Even Faces of Death has pretensions of being a serious investigation into the mysteries of death. Cannibal Holocaust has many pretensions - most obviously to make us look at the nature of Mondo movie making - the dishonesty, the staged material, the brutality, Western imperialism. This raises it a notch above standard Italian cannibal fare (which isn't interested in anything beyond cutting off Giovanni Lombardo Radice's wang) and makes it a scathing indictment of Mondo movie making.