Of Mimicry and the Camera People

My first viewing of this movie was very difficult to sit through because as Claude Chabrol, a french filmmaker -mentioned in Of Mimicry and White Man by Kien Ket Lim -puts "it was too fantastic to watch" (Kien Ket Lim, 2002). During the course of the movie, I constantly found myself figuring out whether they were being actors for the camera and the spectators gathered around or they were actually possessed with the 'white man spirits.' I can understand how challenging that distinction would be to make, especially for anthropologists, when the Haukas, during the time of possession, are "so clearly and are not Europeans" (Lim, 40).  On one hand, they seem to mimicking the very events and characters of the white authorities in Ghana at the time. However, at some points in the film, they seemed to have added their [Haukas priests] own interpretations and perceptions of the authorities into their chants.

Another poignant point that was noted in Lim's article was the idea that the camera used by ethnographists in their studies are sometimes objects that cause havoc themselves. In the case of the lion hunt study, the hunter [Gow] almost lost his life because it presence was enough distraction for the hunter and a taboo against the laws that govern these rituals (Lim, 58). In other cases, the camera's presence goes beyond a taboo and "brings inevitable power to be substituted for all the existing rules of games, taboos included" (Lim, 58). For the Hauka possession, Lim explains that the presence of the camera became another Hauka spirit, whose ferocity can be conjured and "unleashed in full force" by breaking all taboos including "literally eating a dog" (Lim, 58). I cannot fully understand if Lim, by saying that, wanted to conclude that were the camera and the camera people not there, the chant would not have gone as ferocious as it did in the film. If so, I would like to know why the camera was given such power by the Haukas.

Lastly, Lim's article and Jean Rouch work pieces exemplify the difficulty in studying ethnography in its purest form without a resulting right and wrong interpretation and the subsequent effect of whichever interpretation is popular.