Concerning Depictions of Westerners as a Tribe.

Concerning Depictions of Westerners as a Tribe.

My research into portrayals of tribal life the unknown and otherness would not be complete without a look at Western experiences of Tribal life in fiction which is a source of fascination for many.

In the Beach we find disillussioned westeners escaping the daily grind and forming their own hidden tribe. We see the utopia Richard finds gradually desend into dystopian mess, as his concepts of paradise are lost. The film mixes action existential resignation and paradise lost syndrome, and eventually a yearning for familiarity and his old safe wetsren ways. Though the Beach is clearly filmed for a blockbuster audience its retains the five points that Bruce Makes and is interesting to see a perception of another Western Tribe that my film is too be on. I found an extremly interesting review on the IMDB

"Ever since (at least) the eighteenth century, with its cult of the "noble savage", tropical islands have frequently been seen in Western culture as the nearest that it is possible to come to Paradise on earth. This view is often reflected in the cinema, in films such as "The Blue Lagoon" or the various versions of "Mutiny on the Bounty", in which the idyll of Tahiti is contrasted with the rigours of life on board a British warship. The two versions of "Lord of the Flies", like the William Golding novel on which they are based, offer an ironic twist on this theme; a tropical island is used as the setting for an anti-Utopian story in which an attempt to found a new society ends in a relapse into barbarism.

"The Beach" has certain similarities to "Lord of the Flies". The main character is Richard, an American backpacker travelling round Thailand, who has heard tales of a co-operative multi-national community of idealistic young people living on a beach on an island off the coast. Richard has dismissed these tales as mere urban legends, but changes his mind when another backpacker, Daffy, gives him a map showing where the mysterious beach can be found. Undeterred by the fact that Daffy commits suicide shortly afterwards, Richard sets out to go there accompanied by Etienne and Francoise, a young French couple whom he has befriended.

After a number of adventures, the three succeed in reaching the island and discover that the fabled community is no urban myth but a reality. At first they are welcomed into the group and spend their days leading a seemingly idyllic lifestyle, consisting of a small amount of time spent in fishing and large amounts of time spent in playing volleyball or beach cricket, lazing about smoking pot, or (for some obscure reason) translating various English phrases into Serbo-Croat. As with all films of this type, however, we quickly realise that this life is less perfect than it seems. Sexual tensions arise when Richard finds himself increasingly attracted to Francoise and she deserts her boyfriend Etienne for him. More seriously, there are flaws in the basic concept of the community.

The main flaw is that travel narrows the mind wonderfully. The community, mostly Westerners, have dropped out of their own societies and travelled halfway around the world to Thailand, but find Thai society no more congenial than those they have left behind. Their solution is to drop out of that too and to set up a "beach resort for people who don't like beach resorts" where they can live their own hedonistic idea of the hippie life. The community is not, however self-sufficient; they produce little for themselves, apart from fish, and have to import many of their supplies from the mainland, which they pay for by growing and selling cannabis. The island, in fact, is owned by a group of Thai farmers, themselves involved in a much larger cannabis-producing operation, who are happy to tolerate the newcomers provided they keep their community a secret and do not try to attract new recruits.

As in many anti-Utopian parables, the community is dominated by a sinister dictator-figure. "Lord of the Flies" had the choirboy Jack, "Animal Farm" had Napoleon and "The Beach" has Sal, an upper-class Englishwoman who is accepted as the leader of the community (although it is never clear how she attained this position). Sal is obsessed with protecting the community's privacy and secrecy, and in order to achieve this end she is prepared to resort to violence, even murderous violence. (She is deeply suspicious of Richard, who she suspects may have distributed further copies of Daffy's map). One of the film's most chilling incidents comes after Christo, one of the group, is seriously injured after being attack by a shark. He can only be saved if he is taken back to the mainland for immediate medical treatment, but because this might result in the community's existence being revealed to outsiders, Sal refuses to permit this and Christo is left to die.

Notes on The Beach

I hate cut out the less relevant parts on how good the acting is etc.

Noble Savage=otherness and unknown

Idyliic Sums up what many people feel tribal life may be like.

The idea that tribal life is hedonictic is very appealing to the west and in my opinion undelrying desire to be part of a utopian tribe like society.

Lord of The Flies

Adapted into film numerous times in which we find a group of westerners liviing as a tribe not by choice, unlike anything else they are forced too live in a tribal existance. The Novel is largely allegorical towards the worst in human nature, written in a time when the cold war was in full swing (1954) and shows the tribe of western children being disfunctional from the start. The book displays alot of immorality of the biys. This is stark cintrast to the hard but fairly ideallic life of many tribes. The dystopian look on this way of life had a strong influence on me and truely absorbed me as i did GCSE english many years ago.