Serpent and Rainbow

8/4/2019 Serpent and Rainbow

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astersubtitlestyle

TheSerpentandthe

Rainbow

Anoutsiderloo

kinginattheworldofv

oodoo


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Presentations

Wade Davis

Tetradotoxin

Ton Ton Macoute


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Wade Davis

Wade Davis has been described as "arare combination of scientist, scholar,poet, and passionate defender of all oflife's diversity."

Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent morethan three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer,living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin Americannations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His worklater took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicatedin the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing

Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow(1986)


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PASSAGE OF DARKNESS:THE ETHNOBIOLOGY OFTHE HAITIAN ZOMBIE

A more scholarly, less sensationalistic

version of The Serpent and the Rainbow


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According to Davis, what makes zombies is the interplay between certainfeatures of the culture of Haiti and the use of drugs.

"Evidence suggests that zombification is a form of social sanction imposed byrecognized corporate bodies--the poorly known and clandestine secret Bizangosocieties--as one means of maintaining order and control in localcommunities."

The essence of Davis' claim is this:there are zombieshowever, there are actually very very few of themthey are created in part by a poisoned powderhowever, they are created in part by the effects of the culturezombies are created when a person first falls into a death-like trance whichis both drug and culturally inducedthen is revived and kept under the control of the houngan by the use ofother drugszombies are created by Voodoo priests who are members of the Bizangosecret societiesBizango societies constitute a totally secret and hidden other governmentbeneath the surface of Haitian societyzombification is not random nor for profit or personal vendettazombification is the ultimate punishment to someone who has seriouslyviolated the law of the Bizango society


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Davis claims there is a poisoned powder which causes the targetperson to fall into a death-like trance. It was to seek this drug thatoriginally got Davis the assignment to track down the zombie poison.

His sponsors reasoned that such a drug must exist, and if they couldfind it might have valuable pharmacological possibilities as analternative to currently popular but unsafe anesthetics.

The great controversy which Davis' book has caused is mainlyconnected to his claim that the chemical tetrodotoxin, gotten from

the puffer fish, is the primary active ingredient in this "zombiepowder."

The powder alone cannot adequately account for nor make a zombie.Davis describes the "set and setting" which is required for the powder towork. "...set, in these terms, is the individual's expectation of what the

drug will do to him or her; setting is the environment--both physical and,in this case, social--in which the drug is taken.

Thus the poison in the powder, which is a psycho-active drug (onewhose effect is related to specific personal psychological factors), willhave different effects depending on who one is, what one'ssocialization and expectations are.


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Escaped slaves, the maroons, living deep in the mountains,created an alternative society, more African than Western.

These societies brought with them the remembered lore ofAfrica, including knowledge of the use of local poisons. Thepoisons were used as tools of social control within the marooncommunities. After independence and the radical split betweenthe life in the rural areas and the cities, these maroon socialorganizations became the secret Bizango societies, andzombification is, effectively, their death sentence for seriousviolations of the code of conduct required in Bizango.

Critics argue that Davis grossly

exaggerated what he had found in thepowder and that he had exaggerated,if not lied, about the chemically activeproperties of the powders he broughtback.


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3Mhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3M


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http://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/fr/hti/fr_hti_penal.html

Haitian Penal Code, Article 246 [year?]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3Mhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cyGqzgJd3Mhttp://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/fr/hti/fr_hti_penal.htmlhttp://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/fr/hti/fr_hti_penal.htmlhttp://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/fr/hti/fr_hti_penal.htmlhttp://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/fr/hti/fr_hti_penal.html


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Zombis and pop culture

Summariesof the 2readings

Zombi movies andfiction [and???]


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What to watch for/thinkabout

This film was made by WesCraven:

What adaptations,distortions, oversights and

exaggerations might youexpect?

How are Haiti and Haitianspresented in this film, asopposed to last weeks?

GoofsJust before the spider starts crawling on Dr. DennisAlan's face, you can see the crew member in the leftbackground who placed it there.Errors in geography: At Captain Peytraud's firstmeeting with Dr. Alan, Peytraud wears his fullHaitan Tonton Macoute uniform including a row ofseveral award ribbons. All of these ribbons are infact United States armed forces decorations - clearly

visible are the Vietnam Service Medal, KoreanService Medal, Air Force Overseas Ribbon, and theArm Good Conduct Medal.


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Discussion

How would friends and

family not aware of whatvoodoo really is react tothis movie?

What reactions mightHaitians have? Harvard

anthropologists?

In scholastic terms, whatare the high and lowpoints of the film? Interms of entertainment

value?

Cmo reaccionaran a esta pelculasus amigos y parientes que nosaben nada del vud?

Cmo sera la reaccin de loshaitianos? los antroplogos de

Harvard?

En trminos escolticos, culeseran los aspectos positivos ynegativos de est pelcula? entrminos de entretenimiento?


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For the next class:

readings + 5 linesummaries:

3 readings inhandout; p. 326

in Afro Latin@reader

written:

2 200 word reviews fora general audience. 1RAVE review [Loved it!]

1 scathingly negativereview.

Have some fun withyour critique, but keepit clean, por favor.

presentations:

1. Henry Louis Gates Jr.2. Rafael Trujillo3. Toussaint LOuverture4. Jean-Jacques

Dessalines5. Henri Christophe

**beware of Wikipedia!

Documents

Serpent and Rainbow