A Couple in a Cage: Feeling the Power of Money

Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s performance Couple in a Cage provides a very interesting vehicle for exploring the reactions within certain contexts. The performers provide a way for the audience to interact with them in a “safe” manner, in the form of paying a small amount of money in order to take a photo with the couple in the cage (for 1$), or have the male tell a story in their “native language” or the woman do a traditional dance (for 50cents). This type of interaction allowed the audience to influence the performance from the safety of being outside the cage, the section of the performing space that most people would relate to being the “stage,” or the place where the audience’s focus should be placed. However, the focus of the performance was more on the audience reacting to themselves, as Fusco said “We intended to create a surprise or “uncanny” encounter, one in which audiences had to undergo their own process of reflection.” While the audience’s encounter with the “couple in the cage” was responsible for producing part of this effect, the way the audience interacts with the performance by asking for something of the performers through money also shocked the audience.

The performance manages to put the members of the audience paying money for something by asking them to not only step to the front in order to give the money, but also by asking them to enunciate what they want loud and clear, making it possible for other members of the audience to easily know when somebody was asking for something. When the transaction occurs, the audience member will be perceived as the person in power in that situation. It is them that decide what the couple in the cage will do. This further reinforces the idea that these “Guatinauis” are not free, because not only are they in a cage, but they are also forced to do our bidding. This removal of freedom causes the occidental audience for which the performance was intended to feel uncomfortable, as it is generally against their values (in the time of the performance) to see human beings that aren’t free. An aspect that further dehumanizes the couple in the cage is the fact that the members of the audience are asked to enunciate what they want “slowly.” While this may be because the Guatinauis do not speak English, people commonly perceive poor language ability as a lack in education, this applies even to normal foreigners who come to live in a place where their language is not spoken. The initial, instinctive response is to categorize them as uneducated, and it takes practice to undo that perception.

The audience is also given power in a more indirect manner, through the capability of interpreting the “traditions” of the Guatinauis (the story and the dance) without any fear of being judged or even being wrong. A woman in the audience mentions in the film that “[The male] began his story with a private moment that was perhaps a type of prayer.” While she admits to having no knowledge of her certainty, she will never know for sure due to the nature of the performance, which means that she does not have to worry about the consequences of her thoughts. This reveals an interesting aspect of the colonialist mindset, which is that the colonialists are not held accountable for their thoughts on the culture of the colonized society. The Guatinauis may not even have a concept of prayer, but nothing can stop that woman from imposing her own views on the performance. A different woman reacted to the dance performed by the female by saying it “does not give me the effect of, say, something that I’d see on public TV from someone who has gone into some country and has lived in a culture with people unlike my own.” This brings up the issue of the context in which the performance is being received. In a sense, this woman’s comment on the dance is undermining the value of the dance itself, that is if we assume that this “effect” she speaks of to be defining of the response a “good” performance should achieve from its audience. This may, however, also reveal the woman’s frustration at the fact that these Guatinauis seemed very similar to them, and yet were so different. As she said, the dance sounded “like something from 50-cent,” which one would normally associate with American culture, and at the same time the mannerisms of the Guatinauis are very similar to occidental ones: they shake hands, the female takes a bow after her dance, and they watch TV. However, they are equally very different: their language sounds foreign and as the woman remarks, “they never talk to each other,” which strikes her as odd. All of these questions and fascinations that the audience has as a response of the production reveal an aspect of colonialism, which is that it is through performances that showcase these cultures, in a space where the audience feels (and is) safe can help maintain the view that these cultures are foreign, exotic, and maybe even inferior or underdeveloped.

It is important to remark the surprising effectiveness that this performance has in making the audience reflect upon themselves. A woman was moved to tears when expressing her views on the audience’s reaction to the performance.  She says that “to watch people get their pictures taken like they were animals” and the fact that that is happening in the USA, which she clearly perceives as being much more developed in the moral sense, “made [her] feel real upset.” While this may be dismissed as a sort of naïve overreaction to something that was meant to be solely for entertainment purposes, thus justifying the audience’s behavior, she does mention that her first impression was that it was all fake. This reaction is a clear example of the performance achieving its goal, “in which audiences had to undergo their own process of reflection.” It causes the audience members to reflect and discover some of the still underlying colonialist values that they have, which would otherwise remain invisible to their conscious mind.