Shots out at Slavery (Part 2)
The image at right is one of the most powerful representations of an African-descended woman I have ever seen on film. However, this representation is in the rasx() context of slavery screenshots because of the details I gather from the representation. This shot is from the surrealistic film The Holy Mountain (a.k.a. The Sacred Mountain and La Montaña sagrada), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. This film was so effective that I had to shut it off. I stopped watching this film after two psychological blows to the testicles. I don’t care how “unenlightened” Jodorowsky fans and supporters would regard me. When the main character, who I believe is called “The Thief” in the script, defecates into a big-ass glass jar—that was my cue to shut this motherfucker off.
And excuse my French but ‘this motherfucker’ refers indirectly to “The Alchmist,” Mr. Jodorowsky himself, a Chilean descendant of Ashkenazi Jews. You see, kind friends, before the take-a-dump-in-the-jar scene, our African-descended woman, who I assume is called “The Written Woman” in the script (assuming there is a script for this film), was involved in the wash-the-white-guy’s ass scene. The Written Woman ran a sponge between the buttocks of The Thief. This shot lasted for a few seconds—and it was quite a blow—and I tried to hang in there until the Christmas pooh.
I was trying to hang in there because Jodorowsky created what we, looking back from our post-hippie cultural context, might call an ‘acid-trip’ maintaining for at least ten minutes a sustained attack on Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. But it was a case of trading one slave master for another—and I am curious to know what was going through the mind of this actress as Master Jodorowsky directed her through the ass-washing scene.
Ancestral information, what Rasta people would call True Guidance, informs me that so-called “artistic works,” sculptures, photography, painting, etc. are forms of communication. Regardless of what the “artist” says to me about how they have no message, I will always make a message out of their work. The “artist” has no control over what my mind does in response to their efforts—unless, of course, their art form is mind control—and even then, they better have great Jedi mind tricks to get over on me.
The details that my mind gathers about The Written Woman is that she is a servant to The Alchemist. She wears a metal skullcap of an alloy and color that is foreign African metallurgic traditions known to me. In fact, the skullcap appears to me as steel—a European type recast from the swords of conquistadores. These bands hold her head, neck, her left arm, her right thigh—and there is a bolt of steel covering her clitoris. All of these symbols are strong enough to drive away any African away from her. Moreover, there are steel bands over her ears. They are shaped in what appears to be symbols from people of wisdom but again they appear as modern forgeries in the rasx() context.
She is called The Written Woman evidently because of the Hebraic inscriptions and other symbols—some of which look like Akan forgeries—tattooed on her body. The mind here details that this is the second layer of her captivity—after the patriarchal steel. When the raw material cannot hold her, then the foreign words will keep her in her place. The ancientness of the Hebraic forms is no match for the ancientness of her skin. In the rasx() context, she is a ‘modern’ woman in the guise of something ancient and esoteric. She is bound by the steel of the conqueror to wash much ass at his bidding.
The unverified argument here is that even when confined to ancient African cultures, we may find—somehow—that writing directly on the skin is relatively late development. Traditional Africans, what many of our scholars might call “basic” Africans, decorated their skin with scarification and/or coloring to create more symbols than words or inscriptions—and we can at least postulate that Master Jodorowsky was unable to convince this exquisite woman to allow herself to be permanently scarred for the sake of art and film.