Images of Mursi-A Commentary on ‘Preserving’ Cultural Integrity
By Shauna LaTosky
for CAPITAL
On February 9th, The Perils of Face: Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, edited by Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, was launched at the Goethe Institute / Gebre Kristos Desta Center in Addis Ababa. Over a dozen senior and junior social anthropologists from Ethiopia and abroad contributed to the book exploring the dangers inherent in situations of cultural contact and examining how powerful notions of pride, honor, name, and ‘face’ come into play, as culturally different people meet face to face and struggle to gain and maintain their identity and self-esteem.
At the book launch Rita Pankhurst said that as a feminist she was particularly interested in the section on Women’s quest for self-esteem and added that she would like to read more about this topic in the near future.
I welcome this request and here offer her as well as other interested readers the following excursion into the predicaments of Mursi women in a changing world.
It is not uncommon for cultural anthropologists to be pegged as ‘preservationists,’ or people who wish to keep cultural change to a minimum. Since my graduate research began, I have had various encounters with government officials, NGOs, conservationists and tourists, many of whom are quick to remind me of the cliché image of the cultural anthropologist as someone ‘uninterested in helping to bring about change or development.’
When discussing, for example, the situation of the Mursi today, a common question asked is: “You don’t really believe that they can stay like this forever do you?” In other words, “The Mursi can’t keep wearing skins, piercing their lips and chasing their cattle forever can they?”
Any anthropologist will agree that no culture is static. Given this fact, to claim, then, that culture can somehow be ‘preserved’, as if it were to exist in a glass bubble, would obviously be impossible.
What is perhaps less obvious, however, is how and to what extent cultural integrity can be ‘preserved,’ especially since most people have very different ideas about its meaning. To be a proud Canadian or a proud Mursi might mean very different things, just as the meaning might be contested even within Canadian or Mursi culture.
In a contribution to The Perils of Face (2006) titled, “Reflections on Mursi Women’s Lip-plates as a Source of Stigma and Self-Esteem,” I look at such contested views by analysing discussions with Mursi women on whether or not it is good to continue wearing the lip-plate. Their different views provide evidence of how the lip-plate has become both a source of stigma and self-esteem within Mursi society. The different ways in which the Mursi have come to see themselves through the eyes of outsiders is also implicit in their discussion.
Since first reflecting on what self-esteem means to Mursi women, I have also began to reflect more on outsider perceptions of the Mursi. This was triggered by questions Mursi women would ask me, such as: “What do these tourists do with our photographs?” or “Why do they come here to ‘shoot’ us?” I began by not only taking my own photos back to them , but also those found on the internet, in coffee table books and in the popular press. During an exhibit at the Goethe Institute in Feb. 2006, I attempted to bring out some of the reactions of Mursi women to the ways in which they were being portrayed in and by the outside world.
Responding to a photo on the back cover of Vanishing Cultures (2004), one young married Mursi woman said:
“The photographs people take of us, like this one, do not show our true culture. Why does she have a lalang (bracelet) on her lip! A tourist gave her money to do this, but it is not our culture.” “Do you put your bracelet in your mouth?” “No,” I answered. “Then why would we?”
More recently, I passed around the cover of the German television guide Hör Zu (May 2006) to a group of married Mursi women and men. Neither group identified the photo as being that of a Mursi. “A Mursi woman would never wear a lip-plate with her hair like that. She’s like a baboon!” said one woman. Most thought that she was Surma (Chai), and some thought that she was from Baale (neighbours of the Surma). The men finally told me to put the photo away and one young man asked:
“What can we do to control such bad photos being shown outside? If there is a way, we should do something! This is very bad!”
In the meantime, anthropologist David Turton was already ‘doing something’ by speaking out against such degrading images. In Nov. 2006 he wrote to the editor of Hör Zu magazine:
“No doubt without realising it, your advertising agency has produced an image which strikingly illustrates the long tradition in European image-making about Africa which sees the bodies of the non-European 'Other' (especially the non-European female 'Other') as commodities. To recognise the way many people are likely to interpret the image, and yet to leave it on display until it has run its intended course, seems to me indefensible.”
When I returned from Mursi in December 2006, I was passing through the Hilton lobby in Addis and from the corner of my eye spotted the latest edition of the Ethiopia. Bradt Travel Guide (2006). I thumbed through the pages and was shocked to read the following passage contained within an insert on Mursi:
“Contrary to what the publicity shots might have you believe, Mursi women do not actually wear their lip plate all that much – it’s far too heavy and uncomfortable. Instead, the wretched ladies wander about in what appears to be a monumental sulk, with their distended lip hanging limply below the jaws. Call me a culture-bound git, but a Mursi woman sans lip plate is not, by any standards a pretty sight – one can’t help but feel for the teenage girls who will soon be mutilated in a similar fashion!” (p. 520)
Next to the travel guide was a coffee table book with a striking photo of a Mursi man wearing warthog tusks (fastened by a plaited leather cord) used to adorn his favourite ox. With the little information the travel writer or photographer obviously had to include such culturally insensitive images, I couldn’t help but wonder how the Mursi would write about us.
Given the equally sparse information the Mursi have about our culture, I laughed to myself as I began to imagine the photos they might consider for a coffee table book on Canadian culture. On the front cover I envisioned a ‘white’ (though the Mursi would say ‘red’) woman with long blonde hair and an exaggerated breast size - Pamela Anderson perhaps? This is one of many exotic features that Mursi women will often question me about. While looking at a fashion magazine that I was using for pressing plants, they asked: “Why in your culture do you want to lift your breasts rather than let them “sleep”. Are these ‘real’ women? When do you grow up into women’?” No doubt there would be an outcry if a Mursi woman were to write:
“Call me a culture-bound git, but a Canadian woman con push-up bra or breast implants is not, by any standards a pretty sight.”
If there is one thing that the Mursi women have taught me, it is about our own fanciful forms of aesthetic expression (high-heeled shoes, breast implants, tattoos, padded push-up bras, piercings, dental braces, make-up etc.). Even in America today, young people are now experimenting with a new kind of piercing — lip-plugs! Within North America or Europe, however, such practices are regarded as expressions of individuality. In East Africa (or southern Ethiopia, in this case), on the other hand, they would be considered (also by many Westerners) as ‘traditionally harmful” or downright “backwards.” If anything, comments such as “…a [Mursi] woman can ideally pull her distended lip over her head” (Briggs, p. 520) are what one might consider, “traditionally harmful”, if not, downright ignorant!
In Mursi tradition, a girl does not stretch her lip so that she can “ideally” stretch it over her head. For what purpose?
To impress a potential suitor? This sort of thing, as the Mursi women would explain to anyone interested enough to find out, “only started because tourists began to demand it.” Such degrading images of Mursi can only be critically viewed once we have begin to turn the lens on our own culture.
I leave you with an image of a Mursi woman— hardly a‘wretched’ sight—which not only contrasts the pathetic ‘primitive’ images of Mursi that have come to dominate the internet and bookshelves today, but which gives a glimpse of the true beauty and diversity of Mursi people.
The Perils of Face, edited by Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, will be available in bookstores throughout Addis Ababa early next week. I hope that we can look forward to more works like this from the South Omo Research Center, which help to correct many of the distorted “faces” we have come to associate with people from South Omo, especially the Mursi.
Greeting cards with lip-plates will also be available at several Bookworld locations throughout Addis Ababa. All proceeds go to Mursi women.
Oscars ready for a
night of glamour
Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson ready for new honours
Hollywood is ready to unveil the winners of its most prestigious awards – The Oscars – as some of its greatest actors, directors, and other technicians get ready to grace the red carpet.
With the Oscars to be screened on Monday Morning February 26, only a select few of Hollywood’s elite are invited to have the evening of their lives. But DStv is offering you the next best thing – the live screening of the event on DStv.
If you tune in to DStv for the 79th Academy Awards, you will find out who wins the Oscars or who misses out. DStv has live coverage of the screenings, but for those who miss it, M-Net will have another screening later on Monday evening.
This year’s Oscars will be held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and will be hosted by US comedy star and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. She becomes only the second woman, after Whoopi Goldberg, to present the Oscars.
Forest Whitaker, who portrayed former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the movie ‘The Last King of Scotland’, is the front runner for the Best Actor category. Whitaker won the Golden Globes for the same movie and is also expected to sweep the Oscars, though he faces stiff competition.
Whitaker is up against Troy co-star Peter O’Toole, who picks up his eighth acting nomination for the movie ‘Venus’. Leonardo DiCaprio, who was expected to be nominated for an Oscar for playing an undercover cop in ‘The Departed’, was however nominated for playing a Zimbabwean treasure hunter in ‘Blood Diamond’. DiCaprio, who missed out on the award for his role in ‘The Aviator’ is the dark horse of the race and can’t be ruled out to make a sweep at the Oscars.
Another competition in the category is Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happpyness and Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson. Will Smith gets his third nomination after previously being nominated for ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ and ‘Ali’. Smith and Whitaker are expected to go head to head for the award. Smith plays a struggling father (with son Jayden Smith) who decides to become a stockbroker to make it in life.
In the Best Actress nominations, Helen Mirren, who has never been a serious contender in the Oscar world is the front runner for the award after winning the Golden Globes for playing Queen Elizabeth II in ‘The Queen’. Judi Dench, who won the Oscars for ‘Elizabeth’ is also nominated for her performance in ‘Notes on a Scandal’, while Kate Winslet picks up her fifth career nomination for playing an adulteress mother in ‘Little Children’. Winslet is the only actress under the age of 25 to be nominated for the the Oscars.
Meryl Streep is nominated for a record 14th time for playing an evil magazine editor in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, while Penelope Cruz is nominated for the first time for her part in ‘Volver’.
In the Best Film category, Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’ and Golden Globe winner Babel are the front runners. ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, the story of a family who drives across town so their little daughter could take part in a pageant, the Clint Eastwood directed ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ and The Queen are the contestants.
In the Best Director category, Clint Eastwood is nominated for ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ while Paul Greengrass for United 93. Martin Scorsese who directed classics such as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas is tipped as a favourite to win his first Best Director Oscar for the movie ‘The Departed’.
This year’s Best Actor in a Supporting Role has a surprise nominee in Eddie Murphy, for playing a failing musician in the musical ‘Dreamgirls’. Murphy, who made a name for himself by playing comedy roles for 25 years, took on a rather serious role to land him the nomination that has eluded him in his career so far. Djimon Honsou is nominated for playing a Siera Leon native as he finds the biggest diamond he has ever seen in ‘Blood Diamonds’. Mark Whalberg, who is usually known for his tough guy roles is for a change nominated for playing a wise cracking cop in ‘The Departed’.
In the Best Actress in a Supporting Role there is a surprise nomination in Jennifer Hudson. Jennifer, last year’s American Idol runner up plays Effy White in Dreamgirls. Cate Blanchet was also nominated for playing a student in ‘Notes on a Scandal’.
DStv will not only cover the pre-show and awards ceremony, E! Entertainment (channel 41) on DStv will be bringing viewers a countdown to the red carpet, The 2007 Academy Award as well as Live from the Red Carpet.
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