'Contested Images of the Other: An Assessment of the Ethnographic Reality Series Toast Kannibaal’.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of images of the Other in popular television following the emergence of hybrid ethnographic documentary series, including, for instance, BBCs Tribal Wives and Last Man Standing or National Geographics Worlds Apart. This paper discusses a case study of an ethnographic reality series, Ticket to the Tribes (Eyeworks), which is based on the premise of sending ordinary families to live among primitive tribes in order to portray the conflicts and negotiations that ensue when modern, Western and pre-modern cultures meet. The series ran on the main commercial channel in Flanders for three seasons, reached an average market share of about 30%, was nominated for the prestigious Golden Rose entertainment television awards and spurred Dutch, German and French versions of the format. Despite, or because, its popular appeal and its recognition within the television industry, the series stirred the public debate in ways unprecedented since Big Brother. The present study looks into the critical and defensive discourses surrounding this television show, based on a contextual analysis of media coverage and in-depth interviews with a senior production member and participants of the show, and conducts a formal and thematic textual analysis. In doing so, the ethnographic reality series as a popular and hybrid incarnation of ethnographic documentary is being assessed by exploring and elaborating the underlying tensions of knowledge/information vs. pleasure/entertainment, expert vs. non-expert discourses, documenting vs. dramatizing as well as the issues of (the politics of) representation, (image) ethics and documentary (reality and social) value(s) that ensue.