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‪Dead Birds‪‪ (1964), a film directed by Robert Gardner during the Peabody Museum expedition to New Guinea, was recently critically reviewed by the film ‪ ‪Expedition Content ‪‪(2020), produced by the Sensory Ethnographic Lab (SEL) at Harvard University. Redeeming the reality of filming conditions by using the expedition’s sound archives, researchers Veronika Kusumaryati and Ernst Karel claim to express the relations of domination in a colonial context. At the same time, the researchers reestablish the role of the sound archives as salvage ethnography, allowing them to be reappropriated by the Hubula (wrongly called Dani). The immersive approach used in ‪ ‪Expedition Content‪‪ is similar to that for which Gardner advocated in his initial writings. It raises the question of why ‪ ‪Dead Birds‪‪ itself does not similarly make use of an immersive approach. This article argues that, ultimately, ‪ ‪Dead Birds‪‪ became an attempt at ethnographic popularization for mass mediainstead.‪