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Keep the River on Your Right
directed by David and Laurie Shapiro
with Tobias Schneebaum
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Homosexuals get accused often of antisocial behaviors, but cannibalism isn't among them. Anthropologist, writer, raconteur, and homosexual, Tobias Schneebaum is one of the few New Yorkers to have confessed to engaging in the practice (well, just once). In his engaging 1969 memoir Keep the River on Your Right, Schneebaum described his journey to Peru on a Fulbright, his happy friendship with a tribe of Indians, and the day he joined them on a raid of a nearby village, afterwards partaking in a dinner of the losers. Since then, Schneebaum has become famous for his catholic palate. But really, in the broader view of his life, this is one of the least remarkable aspects of Tobias Schneebaum and his career.

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In 1973, Schneebaum went on another personal anthropological expedition, to live with the Asmat, a native people of New Guinea. He stayed among them for three years, was adopted into their tribe, and became lovers-- "exchange friends" is the Asmat term-- with Akatpitsjin, a handsome married man. In the documentary Keep the River on Your Right, film-makers David and Laurie Shapiro coax Schneebaum (who is now close to 80) back to Peru and New Guinea to revisit the native peoples he'd befriended.

Keep the River on Your Right, the film, is a marvelous, witty, and moving account of Schneebaum's life and his journey back to places and peoples that no longer exist quite as he once knew them. The film is also an anthropological document-- partly about the daily life of a band of Peruvian ex-cannibals and, shifting to New Guinea, about the Asmat, who are relatively unknown and unstudied by Westerners. But the film's center of gravity is Schneebaum's own life as a gay man who feels so distanced from his own world that he finds happiness, freedom, and emotional sustenance in a world as far removed as possible from civilization.

Homosexuals escaping the repression of Western civ is not new. From Sir Richard Burton's Asian junkets, Herman Melville's excursions to the South Seas, to T.E. Lawrence's thrusting himself into Arab culture (and vice versa), there's been a gay tradition of "going native."

Schneebaum's anthropological bent came about because he was, well, bent. This wasn't just about looking for sex-- Schneebaum was openly gay, living as a painter in Greenwich Village during an era of increasing sexual tolerance. Rather, Schneebaum was drawn to places and times in which the very structures that produced Western cultural intolerance were absent. When we see Schneebaum in New York chatting about his life, or on a cruise ship lecturing to tourists about the Asmat (as well as answering the eternal question about cannibalism) he seems competent, capable, and even happy. But later in the film, when he's back among the Asmat-- many of whom remember him and welcome him-- Schneebaum is radiant. Yet it's here when the film takes on an aura of melancholy. While Schneebaum's journey back feels redemptive to him-- he never expected it, and feared the return as it grew impending-- the specter of his death lies over the film. So does the inevitable march of "progress." The Asmat and the Peruvian Indians, though world's away, use eerily the same phrases to express that their histories are now dead and buried. Both groups have satellite dish television in their jungle outposts.

What's most revealing about the film is Schneebaum's capacity to be honest and open about his life. He's happy to answer the question, although he does seem a little tired of it, and is ingenuous about how he's lived his life. Schneebaum views his time with the Asmat as a gift. He doesn't carelessly idolize or sentimentalize them in the way so common among Westerners who reject their culture. Indeed, Schneebaum seems even to lack bitterness about the life in the US that he was so eager to leave. It's this degree of acceptance and wisdom that allowed him to live among the Asmat and be so welcomed. Unlike anthropologists who "simply" observe, or others who actively interfere, Schneebaum's genius as a participant in his adventures/studies is simply that he participates.

While the film avoids easy moralizing and the pitfall of talking heads (although Normal Mailer make a funny and apt appearance) it leaves us, in a good way, wanting more. As we see Schneebaum making his way through the jungle and over rough terrain, we realize that by temperament and nature, he's a man trapped between two worlds-- the paleolithic and modernity-- both of which are only partially available to him. Schneebaum himself is conscious of this, and his redemption and pain are conditional on being between these two places. This film is the perfect counterpart to Schneebaum's books as we see so vividly the writer's own ambivalence and confusion as he makes a life for himself always knowing what he is missing.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com