Les Maitres Fous Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Les Maitres Fous - Essay Example They kill and eat a dog; in traditional Nigerian culture, it is forbidden to eat dogs, so this element is a transgressive ritual that demonstrates the forbidden power the men are channeling. They make noise with the clapping of wooden guns, representing both the formal (marches and parades) and informal (death and destruction) powers of the guns from the British colonial perspective. Only â€Å"pure ones† can participate in the ritual; whether this is because of a belief that the spirits can only fill the pure ones or because of a belief that only the pure should be trusted with the power is not clear, and the answer is probably some admixture of both. Finally, the possessed are tested by burning and boiling: Proving that they have become more than men. It is noteworthy that the vast majority of the film's subjects (or objects, as Rouch extorts and invites the audience to truly participate in the ritual and essentially become Hauka for some minutes) are men. Rouch doesn't note this extensively, but this further complicates an already complex ethnography. It is all well and good to talk about what African colonial memory might be, but this seems to be African male colonial memory and coping mechanisms. Women seem to be reacting differently.