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A Look at "Divine Carcasse"

This film was shared with Future PCVs in Benin. It is called Divine Carcasse (1998). 

Click here to view the film on Youtube.

      The film, as a whole, is framed by two scenes of vessels.  These scenes are not simply motion of ships, but a bearing of a sacred cargo. With the knowledge of the objects upon these ships,  these ships are transformed into arks. Though, the divinities that these arks carry are of a different kind.

      The first in its opening shot, is of an ominous freighter approaching the camera. To an eye unfamiliar with this technology, it does not even appear to move, but simply lurk upon the horizon with dreadful authority .  We come to see in the following scene that this ship bears precious cargo, a 1950's Peugeot. 

      The second scene, a quiet, crawling ride down a river, reveals a punt bearing the same Peugeot. But the Peugeot, over the course of the film, has undergone a metamorphosis. After passing through many hands, the Peugeot has been left as junk. A metal-worker has been called to construct a fetish of the spirit Agbo. The punt  has become a vessel of divinity.

      The film allows the viewer to compare two kinds of mythology. The mythology of the France, held by the expatriate philosophy teacher, in which the Peugeot lives as a symbol of nostalgia and youth. This is an disenchanted nostalgia though, because the Peugeot survives simply as a commodity. Compare this with the mythology of the Benin, in which the Peugeot is quite literally, re-enchanted with the spirit of Agbo. 

This comparison is made most evident in a scene at 17.25:

Joseph: Do you know what they call a car like this in France?
Joseph: An ancestor. 
Villager: An ancestor?
Villager: Can you call a car an ancestor?
Joseph: That's what the French call it.
Villager: We can't call it that. Here we have our own ancestors, who protect and guide us. It can't be our protection god. It's nothing but an old car.
Joseph: Yes. Still, it's in good shape. See how it bore me from afar.
Villager: You can't call a living object an ancestor.
Villager: Still, it is nice.

     In an disenchanted France, the Peugeot is given a ironic pejorative with the phrase ancestor. The objects of antiquity to the western world are junk. The village's rejection of the name "ancestor" is two-fold: an "ancestor" is far more powerful than a mere machine, and an ancestor, by necessity, must not be alive. The village attributes the Peugeot spirit, but denies it the status of ancestor. (I am unfamiliar with what language is being used in this scene, but the corresponding words appears to be "tabo" or "tapo". I will do some investigating later to find out what that word means.)

     These are simply cursory sketches of the relations of mythological modes of the west and Benin. This film serves as equal parts documentary-ethnography and a fictionalized metamorphosis myth. I see an fascinating intersection of Western Capitalism, Beninese Vodun, language, and man's relationship with objects in this film. I look forward to exploring more of this in my service in Benin.

      I can not help but be reminded of Baudelaire's own divine carcass in "Une Charogne", another divine metamorphosis, or re-enchantment. Read it here: http://fleursdumal.org/poem/126

Benin Bound

Hello friends, family, future/current/past PCVs, the curious,

      Next Monday, June 23rd,  I fly from JFK airport to Cotonou, Benin, to begin an adventure of service and education. I have been invited by the Peace Corps to serve as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Teacher in the Education Sector. 

      This departure becomes more real in writing. The past few months have been full of anticipation, emails, packing lists, blogs, anxiety, doctors' visits, excitement, french, goodbyes, all in attempt to ground this future in reality. Within the necessary preparations of moving to a new hemisphere, there is a presence of the enchanted in this new work. 

      But this opportunity comes with serious responsibilities. This blog will serve as one those responsibilities.  I intend for this space to serve a two-fold purpose: 1) I want to tell you, my reader, about a people you may be unfamiliar with, and 2) I want this to be a place where we can meet.

      This may be your first encounter with Benin. Perhaps the first time you had ever heard of Benin was through me. When John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps in 1961, the institution was founded upon promoting world peace and friendship to all people. To achieve this end, three goals were established:

• To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
• To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served
• To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans

For my American readers, this blog will serve as an attempt to provide that understanding of the Beninese people. For my future Beninese reader, I hope this can provide an understanding of the American people as well.

     If all goes well, I will be in Benin for 27 months, until September 2016. I want to thank my mother, father, brother, cousins, grandfather, grandmother, grams, uncles, aunts, teachers, my friends in Baltimore, Annapolis, Ocean Pines, and those scattered on the earth. You, my reader, you hold a high place in my heart. I could not have made it here without you!

      I am still young and for me, 2 years is a long time (I have been told it is not). In my absence, imagine this blog as a front porch on a summer evening. Let us speak long and leisurely.