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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pollitt Collection |
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| Pollitt Collection |
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| Pollitt Collection |
Let us study two different entities at the same time. Both coming
from very different cultures yet have a universal visual language of
pain. Francis Bacon's Portraits in connection with Mbangu Sickness Masks
from the Pende people from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their
skilled craftsmanship of twisted faces on wooden masks depict the mental
anguish felt by many of those oppressed and worn whilst jumping over an
open fire. The colours that make up the masks are mainly white with hints of red. The suffering
seen in the Congo for centuries is for many almost unbearable. It is no
wonder when wanting to dig into the soul of man one need look no
further than the Pende people of Central Africa.
The
loss of faith in humanity in the late 1940s was such that the human
image in art became increasingly difficult to portray. The existential
despair expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre in Nausea at the beginning of
WWII, 1938, found a visual counterpart in the early 1960's in the images
of despair and alienation of Francis Bacon.
In Edinburgh in 2005, John Berger described Bacon as the
'prophet of a pitiless world':
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| Francis Bacon | 'Self Portrait', 1971 |
"He repeatedly painted the human body, or parts of the body, in discomfort or agony or want. Sometimes the pain involved looks as if it has been inflicted; more often it seems to originate from within, from the guts of the body itself, from the misfortune of being physical."
Personally, I believe it comes from a sense of being regarded by the public as a homosexual pervert, a weirdo with mental-illness and sexual preferences different from the rest of the world. Growing up for Bacon must have been cripplingly difficult, feeling as I'm sure he did, such an outsider. The relevence of these works are vital as they were created after the Wolfenden Report of 1957 and at the time Britain decriminalised
homosexual acts in private in 1965.
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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pollitt Collection | | |
Since the 1970s, the consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and
the health and mental health professions globally is that homosexuality
is a normal variation of human sexual orientation, while there remain
those who maintain that it is a disorder. In 1973, the
American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The
American Psychological Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975. Thereafter other major mental health organizations followed and it was finally declassified by the
World Health Organization
in 1990. Consequently, while some still believe homosexuality is a
mental disorder, the current research and clinical literature
demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and
behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality,
reflecting the official positions of the American Psychiatric
Association and the American Psychological Association.
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| Francis Bacon | Study of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1966 |
Sigmund Freud's views on homosexuality
were complex. In his attempts to understand the causes and development
of homosexuality, he first explained bisexuality as a normal part of the
"original libido endowment,"
by which he meant that all humans are born bisexual. He believed that
the libido has a homosexual portion and a heterosexual portion, and
through the course of development one wins out over the other. He also
believed in a basic biological explanation for natural bisexuality in
which humans are all biologically capable of being aroused by either
sex. Because of this he described homosexuality as one of many sexual
options available to people. Freud proposed that humans' inherent
bisexuality leads individuals to eventually choose which expression of
sexuality is more gratifying, but because of cultural taboos
homosexuality is repressed in many people. According to Freud, if there
were no taboos people would choose whichever was more gratifying to
them- and this could remain fluid throughout life- sometimes a person
would be homosexual, sometimes heterosexual.
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| Francis Bacon | Portrait of Lucian Freud |
Some other causes of homosexuality for which he advocated included an inverted
Oedipus complex
where individuals begin to identify with their mother and take
themselves as a love object. This love of ones self is defined as
narcissism, and Freud thought that people who were high in the trait of
narcissism would be more likely to develop homosexuality because loving
the same sex is like an extension of loving oneself.
Freud believed treatment of homosexuality was not successful because
the individual does not want to give up their homosexual identity
because it brings them pleasure. He used
analysis and
hypnotic suggestion as treatments, but showed little success.
It was through this that Freud arrived at the conclusion that
homosexuality was "nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it
cannot be classified as an illness, but a variation of sexual
function." He further stated that
psychoanalysts "should not promise to abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place,"
as he had concluded in his own practice that attempts to change
homosexual orientations were likely to be unsuccessful. While Freud
himself may have come to a more accepting view of homosexuality, his
legacy in the field of
psychoanalysis,
especially in the United States viewed homosexuality as negative,
abnormal and caused by family and developmental issues. It was these
views that significantly impacted the rationale for putting
homosexuality in the first and second publications of the American
Psychiatric Association's DSM, conceptualizing it as a mental disorder
and further stigmatizing homosexuality in society.
*That
is Wikipedia's version but this next article creates a very different
perspective and a much kinder and more open outlook as seen by those in
West Africa, specifically in Burkina Faso.
Gays: Guardians of the Gates
An Interview with Malidoma Somé
Copyright © 1993 by Bert H. Hoff
This article appeared in the September, 1993 issue of M.E.N.
Magazine.
Malidoma Somé recognizes that he learned more through his initiation as a Dagara tribesman
than from his PhDs from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. His name means "be friendly to
strangers," and he is charged by his elders of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso (east of Nigeria and
north of Ghana) with bringing the wisdom of his tribe to the West. His book Ritual: Power, Healing
and Community
(reviewed in this issue) is highly praised by Michael Meade, Robert Bly and Robert
Moore. If you were not fortunate enough to catch his reading at the Elliott Bay Bookstore last August,
you can find out more about him through the book and tape reviews in this issue.
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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pollitt Collection |
During one of the Conflict Hours at the Mendocino Men’s Conference Malidoma spoke
eloquently on indigenous people’s views of gay men. He kindly agreed to elaborate on his views as he sat
with me among the redwoods of Mendocino.
Bert: At Conflict Hour you told us that your culture honors gays as having a higher vibrational
level that enabled them to be guardians of the gateways to the spirit world. You suggested that our
Western view limits itself by focusing only on their sexual role. Can you elaborate for our readers?
Malidoma: I don’t know how to put it in terms that are clear enough for an audience that, I think
needs as much understanding of this gender issue as people in this country do. But at least among the
Dagara people, gender has very little to do with anatomy. It is purely energetic. In that context, a male
who is physically male can vibrate female energy, and vice versa. That is where the real gender is.
Anatomic differences are simply there to determine who contributes what for the continuity of the tribe.
It does not mean, necessarily, that there is a kind of line that divides people on that basis. And this is
something that also touches on what has become known here as the "gay" or "homosexual" issue. Again,
in the culture that I come from, this is not the issue. These people are looked on, essentially, as people.
The whole notion of "gay" does not exist in the indigenous world. That does not mean that there are not
people there who feel the way that certain people feel in this culture, that has led to them being referred
to as "gay."
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| Francis Bacon 'Self-Portrait' 1969 |
The reason why I’m saying there are no such people is because the gay person is very well integrated
into the community, with the functions that delete this whole sexual differentiation of him or her. The
gay person is looked at primarily as a "gatekeeper." The Earth is looked at, from my tribal perspective, as
a very, very delicate machine or consciousness, with high vibrational points, which certain people must
be guardians of in order for the tribe to keep its continuity with the gods and with the spirits that dwell
there. Spirits of this world and spirits of the other worlds. Any person who is at this link between this
world and the other world experiences a state of vibrational consciousness which is far higher, and far
different, from the one that a normal person would experience. This is what makes a gay person gay.
This kind of function is not one that society votes for certain people to fulfill. It is one that people are
said to decide on prior to being born. You decide that you will be a gatekeeper before you are born. And
it is that decision that provides you with the equipment (Malidoma gestures by circling waist area with
hands) that you bring into this world. So when you arrive here you begin to vibrate in a way that Elders
can detect as meaning that you are connected with a gateway somewhere. Then they watch you grow, and
they watch you act and react, and sooner or later they will follow you to the gateway that you are
connected with.
Now, gay people have children. Because they’re fertile, just like normal people. How I got to know
that they were gay was because on arriving in this country and seeing the serious issues surrounding gay
people, I began to wonder it does not exist in my own country. When I asked one of them, who tad taken
me to the threshold of the Otherworld, whether he feels sexual attraction towards another man, he jumped
back and said, "How do you know that?!" He said, "This is
our business as gatekeepers." And,
yet he had a wife and children -- no problem, you see.
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| Francis Bacon | 'Self Portrait' |
So to then limit gay people to simple sexual orientation is really the worst harm that can be done to a
person. That all he or she is is a sexual person. And, personally, because of the fact that my knowledge of
indigenous medicine, ritual, comes from gatekeepers, it’s hard for me to take this position that gay people
are the negative breed of a society. No! In a society that is profoundly dysfunctional, what happens is that
peoples’ life purposes are taken away, and what is left is this kind of sexual orientation which, in turn, is
disturbing to the very society that created it.
I think this is again victimization by a Christian establishment that is looking at a gay person as a
disempowered person, a person who has lost his job from birth onward, and now society just wants to fire
him out of life. This is not justice. It’s not justice. It is a terrible harm done to an energy that could save
the world, that could save us. If, today, we are suffering from a gradual ecological waste, this is simply
because the gatekeepers have been fired from their job. They have been fired! They have nothing to do!
And because they have been fired, we accuse them for not doing anything. This is not fair!
Let us look at the earth differently, and we will find out gradually that these people that are bothering
us today are going to start taking their posts. They know what their job is. You just have to get near them,
to feel that they don’t vibrate the same way. They are not of this world. They come from the Otherworld,
and they were sent here to keep the gates open to the Otherworld, because if the gates are shut, this is
when the earth, Mother Earth, will shake -- because it has no more reason to be alive, it will shake itself,
and we will be in deep trouble.
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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pollitt Collection |
Bert: Christianity has separated spirit from body and spirit from Earth. And earlier you talked to us
about Christianity suppressing your culture. So there’s a suggestion here that suppression of
homosexuality would be the way for the Christians to shut down the gateways, shut down the spirit, and
shut down our connection with the Earth.
Malidoma: Yes! That’s right! Christianity stresses postponing living on earth, as of we are only here
to pack up our baggage and prepare for a life somewhere else "out there." Jesus Christ is right here,
man! And of course anyone else who knows more, who knows better, will be suppressed.
And you start with the gatekeepers. You take the gatekeeper and you confuse his mind. You threaten
him and you throw him in the middle of nowhere. Then nobody knows where the gate is. As soon as you
lose the whereabouts of the gate, then you have a culture going downhill. What keeps a village together is
a handful of "gays and lesbians," as they call them in the modern world. In my village, lesbians are called
witches, and gay men are known as the gatekeepers. These are the two only known secret societies.
These are the only groups that will get together as a separate group and go out into the woods secretly to
do whatever they do. And if they find you during their yearly symposium, they have the right to kill
you.
Unless they go out on their yearly symposium, the village cannot be granted another year of life.
They have to go out to do what they do, in order for the village to feel safe enough to live the way it has
lived before. This is why, to me, we’re playing with our lives.
Bert: So our culture may not be granted another year of life.
Malidoma: That’s right! Every year it feels like the number of years that this culture is entitled to
live is getting smaller. So God only knows how close to the chasm this culture is. This constantly-
reiterated discomfort and hatred for the gay person is again another indication that every year we might
as well be prepared for the apocalyptic moment when the stars start to fall to the earth.
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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pende, Congo |
You see, unless there is somebody who constantly monitors the mechanism that opens the door from
this world to the Otherworld, what happens is that something can happen to one of the doors and it closes
up. When all the doors are closed, this earth runs out of its own orbit and the solar system collapses into
itself. And because this system is linked to other systems, they too start to fall into a whirlpool. And the
cataclysm would be amazing!
Ask the Dogon, they will tell you that. The Dogon. They’re a tribe that understands this so well, it’s
amazing, mind-boggling. And it is a tribe that knows astrology like no other tribe that I have
encountered. And the great astrologers of the Dogon are gay. They are gay. There is a dull planet that, in
its orbit, is directly above the Dogon village every 58 years. Who knows that, but the gay people.
I mean, I’m not just trying to make gay people look fine. This is the truth, man! I’m trying to save
my ass!
Why is it that, everywhere else in the world, gay people are a blessing, and in the modern world they
are a curse? It is self-evident. The modern world was built by Christianity. They have taken the gods out
of the earth sent them to heaven, wherever that is. And everyone who aspires to the gods must then
negotiate with Christianity, so that the real priests and priestesses are out of a job. This is the worst thing
that can happen to a culture that calls itself modern.
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| Francis Bacon | 'Self-Portrait' |
Bert: That theme came up earlier with you and Martín, the Mayan shaman here, that if a modern
society wants to shut down another culture they will go out and kill the keepers of the ritual.
Malidoma: Oh, yes! Because they know that this is where the life-pulse of the culture is. This is
where the engine room of the tribe is. So if you go and bomb that place, then the whole mechanism shuts
down. That’s pretty much what’s at work in the third world, and what has happened here with the Native
American culture. And the thing about it is that humans are going to be begetting gatekeepers, no matter
what. This is the chance that we’ve got. So maybe that means that sooner or later we’re going to wake up
to the horror of our own errors, and we’re going to reconsecrate our chosen people so that they can do
their priestly work as they should. Otherwise, I just don’t understand. I just don’t understand. My
position about it is not so much that gays be just forgiven. That’s just tokenism. But that they serve as an
example of the wrong, or the illness, that modernity has brought to us, and that we use that to begin working at healing ourselves and our society from the bottom up. That way, by the time we reach a certain level, all the gatekeepers are going to find their positions again. We cannot tell them where the gates are. They know. If we start to heal ourselves, they will remember. It will kick in. But as long as we continue in arrogance, in egotism, in God-knows-what form of violence on ourselves, no, there’s that veil of confusion that’s going to continue to prevail, and as a result it’s going to prevent great things from happening. That’s all I can say about that.
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| Francis Bacon | 'Self Portrait' |
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| Mbangu Sickness Masks | Pende, Congo |
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Conclusion
When reading these two opposing arguments on homosexuality we see how the cultures run in parallel rather than collide. One takes a clinic, sterile look at an issue and the other a far more spiritual approach coupled with a sense of inclusion rather than exclusion. This article is not wanting to bark on about sexual orientation but more about the way in which we approach our day to day.
