Research Seminar in Cultural Anthropology with Claudia Merli

Abstract

This paper analyses the portrayal of gender and ethnic relations in a popular Italian television series of the 1970s, an adaptation of the famous novels by Emilio Salgari (1862-1911), based on the story of Sandokan, the Tiger of Malaysia, a dethroned local prince who fights for the independence and survival of his small kingdom in colonial British Malaya. Italian children eagerly awaited the weekly episodes, following the romantic and heroic exploits of the Malay pirate as he won the love of Marianna, a British-Italian woman whose legendary beauty was known in the region by her sobriquet, the Pearl of Labuan. The inter-ethnic tragic love story unfolds between the British colonial mansions of Sarawak and the pirate island kingdom of Mompracem. The film not only depicts the Bornean people and their exotic traditions through acting, but also provides voiceover descriptions to introduce the viewer to the local ways of life, blending drama with pseudo-ethnographic documentary elements. This fusion of genres made the film popular with European audiences and offered a critique of both colonial occupation and Western perspectives on gender relations. Life on Mompracem Island, married to one of the 'tiger cubs' (as the pirates were called), seemed to offer a sense of freedom in the tropical heat that was impossible to experience in the stiff drawing rooms and large hoopskirt dresses of British society. The paper contextualises the film within the reception of Salgari's novels and anthropological research on Borneo, exploring the ethnographic notes and perspectives that shaped the visual representation of this imagined island in the 1970s. It also considers the intriguing question: what is it like to waltz with tigers?