This is calm, controlled, courteous, doubly devastating. O’Rourke likes some of these tourists, and many, even most of them deserve to be liked. And just because you’re a native doesn’t mean you can’t be self-serving or plain unpleasant. Having established this, what’s left is utter devastation, and an utter quandary. Cannibalism was obviously no good, but Contact, in its own way, was almost as much of a disaster. “That’s close enough,” says the one, suddenly squeamish white person. The “second price” sequence, especially with the way these scroungers talk so smugly over the top of the people their bilking, encapsulates the whole abomination with incredible, terrible efficiency.
Tweet Review:
Saw #CannibalTours. Perditional! Indigenous folk perform/enact defunct cultural emblems for the grasping horrible tourists …
… (who are probably/actually nice folks themselves; what happens when they know not what they do?) while caught/crushed between …
… the irretrievable, unacceptable past—you can’t just eat people, can you?—& the unattainable present & future. Talk about No Exit!