Yeelen La Lisse Analysis
3. CULTURE AND RITUAL AS A COMMUNICATIVE MATRIX
Culture, could be defined as all that characterizes a people from their nomenclature, thought patterns, belief systems and ritual life (see Maliknowski 1957). Culture is a concept and a reality that is complex to describe, quantify and account for especially in its day to day communicative valence. One does better to live it than to define and describe it.
Very significant elements of a people’s culture are ritualized and not thematised in clear-cut philosophical reasoning. Through ritual, thought patterns are codified, cosmogonies are encrypted and history is written. It is important to note that these ritual practices, especially in West Africa, which mean everything to the people concerned, …show more content…
It is a story that is reminiscent of an Oedipus complex for which the only solution sought by the warring parties was the death of the other. The story is cast in the philosophy and cosmogony of the Komo and the vital forces of light amidst the dark and occult forces of malefic and transmogrifying powers that rule and define men’s destinies. Yeelen is a film heavily characterized by rituals that are part of the belief systems of the Bambara world of men who stake their claims to defend their pride and uphold the dignity of their clan and background. The film is equally the story of an odyssey of age-old unsettled feuds of the Diarra Family that have dire consequences on the Komo and the Bambara people as a whole. The predictions are sinister in nature: the present reality is destined for destruction before a new generation is born from the turbulence that was to overtake them …show more content…
He therefore makes a formal complaint to the confraternity of the Komo to justify his decision to kill his son, Nianankoron: “The descendants of the sacred crocodile have not inherited his qualities. They are just simple worms or serpents. My ancestors died for the Komo and I myself will die or the Komo. But to me is born a son who has betrayed the Komo. I am looking for him to kill him” (231 – 257). Soma’s son, Nianankoron, on the other hand, spurred by his mother, flees from the wrath of his father to prepare himself ritually for the final showdown: the climax of the entire film.
Souleymane Cissé’s film is didactic in intent. It aims at communicating the elements of the Komo secret society, its philosophy and world view etc. How much he really succeeds in this task when a large part of his audience are non-initiates of the Komo is open to debate. The sort of lesson and graphical explanations that the film gives at the start about the vital forces that govern the universe and give orientation to the world, is reminiscent of the teething attempts at philosophizing in Western thought in the Ionian
Culture, could be defined as all that characterizes a people from their nomenclature, thought patterns, belief systems and ritual life (see Maliknowski 1957). Culture is a concept and a reality that is complex to describe, quantify and account for especially in its day to day communicative valence. One does better to live it than to define and describe it.
Very significant elements of a people’s culture are ritualized and not thematised in clear-cut philosophical reasoning. Through ritual, thought patterns are codified, cosmogonies are encrypted and history is written. It is important to note that these ritual practices, especially in West Africa, which mean everything to the people concerned, …show more content…
It is a story that is reminiscent of an Oedipus complex for which the only solution sought by the warring parties was the death of the other. The story is cast in the philosophy and cosmogony of the Komo and the vital forces of light amidst the dark and occult forces of malefic and transmogrifying powers that rule and define men’s destinies. Yeelen is a film heavily characterized by rituals that are part of the belief systems of the Bambara world of men who stake their claims to defend their pride and uphold the dignity of their clan and background. The film is equally the story of an odyssey of age-old unsettled feuds of the Diarra Family that have dire consequences on the Komo and the Bambara people as a whole. The predictions are sinister in nature: the present reality is destined for destruction before a new generation is born from the turbulence that was to overtake them …show more content…
He therefore makes a formal complaint to the confraternity of the Komo to justify his decision to kill his son, Nianankoron: “The descendants of the sacred crocodile have not inherited his qualities. They are just simple worms or serpents. My ancestors died for the Komo and I myself will die or the Komo. But to me is born a son who has betrayed the Komo. I am looking for him to kill him” (231 – 257). Soma’s son, Nianankoron, on the other hand, spurred by his mother, flees from the wrath of his father to prepare himself ritually for the final showdown: the climax of the entire film.
Souleymane Cissé’s film is didactic in intent. It aims at communicating the elements of the Komo secret society, its philosophy and world view etc. How much he really succeeds in this task when a large part of his audience are non-initiates of the Komo is open to debate. The sort of lesson and graphical explanations that the film gives at the start about the vital forces that govern the universe and give orientation to the world, is reminiscent of the teething attempts at philosophizing in Western thought in the Ionian