[lbo-talk] sick perversions

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Sep 27 16:08:39 PDT 2004


Michael Dawson MDawson at pdx.edu, Mon Sep 27 13:50:54 PDT 2004:
>Yes, but, Doug, he's right you know. It's all health and balance in the
>kinship societies:
>
>"The Yanomamo are historically a tribe of "endocannibals" (which
>means that they eat their own people). This rare form of cannibalism
>usually only occurs after death. The body of the deceased is set
>afire in a remote region away from the village (so as not to dirty
>the village or its food) and then the remaining bones and ash are
>pulverized into a fine powder which is mixed into a beverage (often
>juice from the plantain). The beverage is then consumed by the
>deceased person's relatives. This "drinking of the dead" is thought
>to be the way for the deceased's soul to enter the body of their
>living descendants, thus providing spiritual and physical strength
>to combat the evils of the jungle. The act of cannibalism may seem
>shocking to most Westerners, however a form of cannibalism called
>"theophagy" is practiced by many Catholics on a weekly or daily
>basis. The Communion (the symbolic eating of the body and blood of
>Christ) may seem like a natural ritual to us, but may make little
>sense to the Yanomamo. They prefer the real thing.
>
>"Although the Yanomamo are known as endocannibals (choosing to eat
>from their own tribe) they are an aggressive and violent clan who
>have very tumultuous relationships with anyone perceived as being
>"other than" their tribe, or towards out-and-out foreigners. Anyone
>discerned as being "other" than the tribe, is considered to be
>subhuman. The laws and ethics that may keep a village from
>succumbing to warfare within its own walls, thereby do not apply to
>anyone perceived as being subhuman. In other words, war is hell and
>the Yanomamo will do anything including kidnapping, raping, killing
>and abusing people from opposing tribes."

Curious about where the un-attributed quotations come from, I Googled the Net, and I found the source of the above quotations to be <http://www.cannibalholocaust.net/yamamomo.htm>, the official website of a horror film _Cannibal Holocaust_ <http://www.cannibalholocaust.net/exhibition.htm>. To present what's in _Cannibal Holocaust_ as facts about the Yanomano is like to present what's in _The Exorcist_ as facts about Iraq.

Speaking of _The Exorcist_, I've found the following stranger-than-fiction news items:

<blockquote>Variety January 12, 2004 - January 18, 2004 SECTION: INSIDE MOVES; Pg. 8 LENGTH: 274 words HEADLINE: THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS BYLINE: Gabriel Snyder HIGHLIGHT: Troops muster 'Exorcist' site

BODY: Mount Vernon has George Washington. Memphis has Elvis. And now Hastra, Iraq, has "The Exorcist."

As part of reconstruction efforts by the 101st Airborne Division, U.S. troops have been preparing the ancient architectural treasures in northern Iraq as a tourist attraction.

After a soldier watching "The Exorcist" on a portable DVD player realized the temples he was guarding are where William Friedkin filmed the opening to his 1973 classic, the troops have made a savvy marketing move to promote the site to the pics' many fans as "The Exorcist Experience."

Friedkin is thrilled with the idea. "I think it's American ingenuity at its finest."

When he heard of the plans, the helmer got in touch with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st, who filled him in on the effort.

Tour guides have already been hired, hotels are open and the Army and local residents held an event last month to celebrate the end of Ramadan and Christmas.

"It was quite an evening, with local leaders and sheiks," Petraeus emailed Friedkin.

Friedkin has not been able to return to Iraq since he spent three months there in 1972 working on "The Exorcist," but he very much wants to return now.

"I never felt closer to a people than I did to the Iraqis," he says. "I'm trying to go over there. I have no problem going, but they want to be sure it is secure."

Friedkin acknowledges Hastra isn't going to challenge Las Vegas or Disney World as a tourist destination for some time. (The 101st spokeswoman says, "Security there is not 100%.")

"The site is beautiful," Friedkin says. "I'm flattered they're relating it to 'The Exorcist.' "</blockquote>

<blockquote>American troops launch 'Exorcist' tour at ancient temple By Colin Freeman in Hatra (Filed: 04/01/2004) <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/04/wirq104.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/04/ixnewstop.html>

For a country recently purged of its chief tormentor, it is perhaps a grimly appropriate theme for its first new tourist attraction. Need to get away

American troops in Iraq have launched what has been dubbed "The Exorcist Experience", after discovering that the ancient ruins they were guarding provided the location for the 1973 horror classic's opening sequence.

They now plan to help locals put the 2,000-year-old city of Hatra back on the international tourist map by marketing it as a future holiday destination to fans of the cult film.

Using a modest $5,000 (£2,800) grant, the soldiers have recruited local guides and guards to the city and built a car park and police station nearby. They have also revamped the nearby Saddam-built Hatra Hotel, which they hope to privatise.

"Once it's up and running again as a visitors' spot, this place will be a real moneypot," said Capt Nik Guran of the 2-320 Field Artillery Regiment, attached to the 101st Airborne Division. "The film will just add to the numbers of people coming here. You should see it all at night - we've put in floodlights and it looks really beautiful."

The regiment hatched the plan to revamp the Assyrian site's derelict visitors' facilities after spending the summer living in Hatra's 200ft-high sun temples to protect them from looters. An oasis of pre-Christian civilisation in the middle of the desert south-west of Mosul, Hatra's finely preserved columns and statues make it one of the most impressive of Iraq's archaeological sites.

After spending several months looking after the site and researching its history, most of the soldiers can now discourse knowledgeably on the various Assyrian, Sumerian and Parthian influences on its butterscotch-coloured stonework.

Pointing with a hand that guided 105mm howitzer shells during the war in Iraq, Capt Guran slips fluently into tour-guide mode as he strides towards the 100ft iwans - huge, open-fronted vaulted halls that resemble Arab guest-tents. Initially, the troops thought the main interest would come from archaeology enthusiasts who flocked there decades ago, before Saddam virtually closed the site to the outside world.

They only realised its marketing potential to millions of fans of the world's most famous horror film when, completely by chance, Capt Guran watched The Exorcist on a portable DVD player one night.

To his astonishment, he spotted Hatra's distinctive skyline in the director William Friedkin's opening sequence, in which a priest at an archaeology dig unearths the ancient Mesopotamian demon that goes on to possess a young American girl. "It was filmed a bit before Saddam really came to power, and the opening scene was made at an actual excavation that was taking place here at the time," said Capt Guran, 30.

"I thought, 'Wow - that's the place we've been guarding'. We've spent so much time down here, you recognise it straightaway."

Saddam would no doubt have admired Hatra's defensive record against invading superpowers, which involved using early forms of chemical and biological weapons. Naptha bombs and jars of desert scorpions were poured over the outer wall to successfully repel Roman invaders , according to the classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor.

More recently, the temple has been associated with the so-called Exorcist's Curse, said to have plagued all those involved in the film with bad luck.

"We had an incident a while back where one soldier shot another, and there were mutterings about it being the curse of Hatra," said Capt Guran. "We had to stop that right away."

The city was left in ruins after it was sacked and burnt by Sapor, the Sassanian Persian king, in AD 241. The impressive temple complex dedicated to several Hatrene gods, the chief of which was the sun god Shamash, lies in the very centre of its limestone and gypsum walls.

Mohammad Sulaiman, 35, a former US army translator who has been trained to manage the hotel, hopes it will revive the economic fortunes of the poverty-stricken local town. "This is our heritage and we want to show it to all the world," he said. "Hopefully, now that Saddam has been captured, peace will come and the tourists will return."

Lt Col Kevin Felix, who had the original idea of revamping the site, said: "I would love to come back in a few years' time and stay as a tourist at the hotel, if things work out in this country. I guess it will either be doing brilliantly, or it will have burned to the ground."</blockquote> -- Yoshie

* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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