Documentaries: Film Essay: This is a 900-word essay, which will focus on one of the documentaries we’ve watched. (it’s ok to go over the maximum number of words), which will focus on two of the documentaries below. (The Split Horn, Witchcraft Among the Azande, The Many Faces of the Occult (on pagans), or We Are Not Alone (on the Unarius Academy of Science)). Compare two of the following. The goal in these essays is not to summarize, but to analyze. Pick a feature of the film, a question, a topic, etc. Analyze it, and to incorporate the following readings below. I’ve attached links and PDFs. Documentaries: Documentary: This week’s documentary is called The Split Horn. It’s an award winning anthropological film from 2001, which looks at Hmong shamanism. In case you don’t know, the Hmong are an ethnic group that resides in the mountains across East and Southeast Asia. But this film follows a Hmong family that was forced to leave Laos in the wake of the Vietnam war, and that settled into life in Wisconsin. It focuses on the father of the family, who is a shaman, and whose life as a shaman is transformed in the United States. (link: https://www.kanopy.com/product/split-horn) Documentary: In this week’s lecture, I mention E.E. Evans-Pritchard and his book Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, which was first published in 1937. The Azande (plural of “Zande”) are a large ethnic group of at least one million people living on the borders of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Azande have a complex religious tradition, a large portion of which involves the consultation of oracles (i.e., divination). In 1982, anthropologist John Ryle and film-maker André Singer teamed together to produce the film Witchcraft among the Azande for Granada Television’s “Disappearing World” series, as a way both to highlight Evans-Pritchard’s work, and to see what had changed in the decades following the book’s publication (53 minutes). (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmug_qvO15s ) Real pagans/witches; and you get to hear from them, rather than hear about them. This is another ten-minute movie, a short documentary called The Many Faces of the Occult. It’s shot beautifully, with dark contemplative scenes and arresting orchestration in the background. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWT-cNxuqNA ) Readings: The first reading is from Sapiens, an online Anthropology magazine. The article is by Manvir Singh, and it’s called “Why Shamans Stand Apart.” Singh’s work is based in Indonesia, but he’s most interested in the idea that shamanism is a concept seemingly present on all corners of the globe. He answers broad and pressing questions about how shamans help to remove uncertainty in a mysterious world. (link: https://www.sapiens.org/culture/shaman-uncertainty-specialists/ ) The second reading is a New York Times profile piece on Durek Verrett, a famous pop-shaman with an influential and powerful following. Written by Jessica Bennet, this great article–called “The Shaman of Instagram”–is a kind of anthropological biography, exploring the spiritual journey of this very unique person. If you have a NYT subscription, or haven’t read over your monthly quota (pdf: The Shaman of Instagram https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/style/self-care/durek-verrett-instagram-shaman.html ) Third reading is a excerpt from E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (1937). This is an excerpt dealing with the “poison oracle,” also called benge, which is administered to chickens for the purpose of answering questions about the present and future. It’s a fascinating read, and one which will help you better understand the documentary above (6 pages) (PDF: E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (1937)) Fourth reading is an article in the New Yorker, written by Christine Smallwood, and titled “Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty” (12 pages). It’s a great piece of ethnographic journalism, exploring the interesting resurgence of astrology among younger generations in the United States. It will probably seem closer to home for many of you–closer, at least, than the poison oracle–but think broadly about how divination offers an answer to something that people across the globe face: uncertainty. (link: PDF Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty)
