Les Maitres Fous

Catherine Russell frequently describes possession ritual films as a mise en abyme of representation, or “placing into the abyss”. When discussing film, it refers to a scene dealing with unconsciousness or surrealism, like a dream within a dream. This is an excellent way to describe something that is captured on film, but not really seen. When a person goes into trance we can see everything that physically happens to them, but we can’t see what they’re seeing. Even if a revived individual has picture perfect memory of what was happening while he or she was in trance, which most do not, the description would not suffice. I believe Jean Rouch, above any other ethnographic filmmaker, has not just an overt fascination with such phenomena but also most vigorously attempted to (re)present it on film. In fact, I think he would argue film to be the only appropriate medium to express possession rituals, as the mediation of a camera from life to film embodies the essence of possession. In fact, it was Rouch who appropriated the term cine-trance.

Ethnographic film is a form of cultural communication, to document the extent and variation of human behavior and cultural imagination. When encountering a behavior that is contrary to the normative, such as possession rituals, anthropologists find the need to rigorously analyze them in order to contextualize the spectacular behavior as an expression of some universal trait. This, of course, has not always been the case. Anthropology has its dark past, including ties with colonialism and imperialistic behavior. At that time the possession ritual was observed as a spectacle, highly romanticized to feed a fantasy of the “other”, or used to justify exploitation. With regards to subjectivity, Russell says it best as, “If the possession ritual represents the most “savage” and “crazed” figure of the Other, it also represents a subjectivity that remains uncolonized. The ritual in Les Matres Fous is transcendental and sublime. The truth-value is the subjectivity of decolonizationary thought, and it infects the “real” of ethnographic film.

Jean Rouch’s Les Maitres Fous is a very powerful, provocative ethnographic film. The approach Rouch took on the structure of the film made it, for me, the most memorable ethnographic film I’ve ever seen. In fact, I have had to be reflexive about this film in order to “lay my feelings aside” and think critically about its content. Once I was able to except my own consternation and revulsion to the graphic-ness of the film (I have a problem watching animal sacrifices), I was able to move on and deconstruct it for the brilliance that this film is. Contextualizing a possession ritual with in a modern ordinary existence was as effectively stimulating as the organization of the film. The primary role of the film “demands a decolonization of thought” (Russell, 221). The Dogon enact this ritual as a way of sticking it to the man, reappropriating historical atrocities to strengthen their cultural convictions. It is paradoxically an escapism and confrontation, ironically, spirit possession is a way of dealing with the "reality" of their past.

Rouch’s concept of cine-trance can be expanded over to those who are watching the film. When I saw Les Maitres Fous, I sat with my mouth open, dazed, and physically ill, and I remember thinking it was at least an hour-long film. In reality, it’s only twenty minutes of footage. My sense of time and space was altered, how better to describe that state then an extension of cine-trance?

cheers

Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography. Duke University Press.

Les Matres Fous (Jean Rouch, 1955)