The initiation ritual of tucandeira is typical of the Sateré-Mawé people stationed along the Amazon River on the border between the states of Amazonas and Pará of Brazil.
The ritual is named after a giant ant (the Paraponera clavata, also known as “bullet ant”) whose painful sting, 30 times more poisonous than that of a bee, causes swelling, redness, fever and violent chills.
This test of courage and endurance sanctions a tennager’s entry into adulthood: every young man who wants to become a true warrior must submit to it.
The tucandeira takes place during the Amazonian summer months (October to December).
First the ants must be captured and taken from their anthills, usually located at the base of hollow trees, and they are enclosed in an empty bamboo called tum-tum. A mixture of water and cajú leaves is then prepared, and the ants are immersed and left in this anesthetic “soup”.
Once they are asleep, the ants are inserted one by one within the knitting of a straw glove, their fearsome stingers stuck on the inside of the mitten. They are then left to awaken from their numbness: realizing that they are trapped, the ants begin to get more and more angry.
When the time for the actual ritual finally arrives, the whole village meets to observe and encourage the adolescents who undergo initiation. It is the much feared moment of the test. Will they resist pain?
He who leads the dance intones a song, adapting the words to the circumstance. The women sit in front of the group of men and accompany the melody. Some candidates paint their hands black with Genipa berries and then drink a very strong liquor called taruhà, based on fermented cassava, useful for reducing pain and giving the necessary strength to face the ritual. Those who undergo the tucandeira for the first five times must apply to certain diets. When the ants awaken, the actual ritual begins. The dance director slips the gloves on the candidates’ hands and blows tobacco smoke into the gloves to further irritate the ants. Then the musicians begin to play rudimentary wooden tubes while the boys dance.
The angry ants begin to prick the hands of the young, who are made to dance to distract themselves from the pain. In a short time their hands and arms get paralyzed; in order to pass the test, the candidate must wear the gloves for at least ten minutes.
After this time, the gloves are removed and the pain begins to manifest itself again. It will take twenty-four hours for the effect of inoculated neurotoxins to subside; the young man will be the victim of excruciating pain and sometimes prey to uncontrollable tremors even in the following days.
And this is just the beginning for him: to be fully completed, the ritual will have to be repeated 19 more times.
Through this ritual, a Sateré Mawé recognizes his origins, laws and customs; and from adolescence on, he will have to repeat it at least twenty times to be able to draw its beneficial effects. The whole population participates in the ritual and observes how the candidates face it. It is an important time to get to know each other, gather, and contract future marriages.
The tucandeira is also a propitiatory rite, through which a boy can become a good fisherman and hunter, have luck in life and work, turn into a strong and courageous man. People come together very willingly for this ritual, which in addition to its festive and playful aspect is also an opportunity to recall the cosmogonic myths of the origin of the stars, the sun, the moon, water, air and all living things.
(A. Moscè, Ibid.)
In this National Geographic video on tucandeira, the chief summarizes in an admirable way the ultimate meaning of these practices:
“If you live your life without suffering anything, or without any kind of effort, it won’t be worth anything to you.”
Suppose you’re making your way through a jungle, and in pulling aside a bush you find yourself before a huge snake, ready to attack you. All of a sudden adrenaline rushes through your body, your eyes open wide, and you instantly begin to sweat as your heartbeat skyrockets: in a word, you feel afraid.
But is your fear triggering all these physical reactions, or is it the other way around?
To make a less disquieting example, let’s say you fall in love at first sight with someone. Are the endorphines to be accounted for your excitation, or is your excitation causing their discharge through your body?
What comes first, physiological change or emotion? Which is the cause and which is the effect?
This dilemma was a main concern in the first studies on emotion (and it still is, in the field of affective neurosciences). Among the first and most influential hypothesis was the James-Lange theory, which maintained the primacy of physiological changes over feelings: the brain detects a modification in the stimuli coming from the nervous system, and it “interprets” them by giving birth to an emotion.
One of the problems with this theory was the impossibility of obtaining clear evidence. The skeptics argued that if every emotion arises mechanically within the body, then there should be a gland or an organ which, when conveniently stimulated, will invariably trigger the same emotion in every person. Today we know a little bit more of how emotions work, in regard to the amygdala and the different areas of cerebral cortex, but at the beginning of the Twentieth Century the objection against the James-Lange theory was basically this — “come on, find me the muscle of sadness!“
In 1924, Carney Landis, a Minnesota University graduate student, set out to understand experimentally whether these physiological changes are the same for everybody. He focused on those modifications that are the most evident and easy to study: the movement of facial muscles when emotion arises. His study was meant to find repetitive patterns in facial expressions.
To understand if all subjects reacted in the same way to emotions, Landis recruited a good number of his fellow graduate students, and began by painting their faces with standard marks, in order to highlight their grimaces and the related movement of facial muscles.
The experiment consisted in subjecting them to different stimuli, while taking pictures of their faces.
At first volunteers were asked to complete some rather harmless tasks: they had to listen to jazz music, smell ammonia, read a passage from the Bible, tell a lie. But the results were quite discouraging, so Landis decided it was time to raise the stakes.
He began to show his subjects pornographic images. Then some medical photos of people with horrendous skin conditions. Then he tried firing a gunshot to capture on film the exact moment of their fright. Still, Landis was having a hard time getting the expressions he wanted, and in all probability he began to feel frustrated. And here his experiment took a dark turn.
He invited his subjects to stick their hand in a bucket, without looking. The bucket was full of live frogs. Click, went his camera.
Landis encouraged them to search around the bottom of the mysterious bucket. Overcoming their revulsion, the unfortunate volunteers had to rummage through the slimy frogs until they found the real surprise: electrical wires, ready to deliver a good shock. Click. Click.
But the worst was yet to come.
The experiment reached its climax when Landis put a live mouse in the subject’s left hand, and a knife in the other. He flatly ordered to decapitate the mouse.
Most of his incredulous and stunned subjects asked Landis if he was joking. He wasn’t, they actually had to cut off the little animal’s head, or he himself would do it in front of their eyes.
At this point, as Landis had hoped, the reactions really became obvious — but unfortunately they also turned out to be more complex than he expected. Confronted with this high-stress situation, some persons started crying, others hysterically laughed; some completely froze, others burst out into swearing.
Two thirds of the paricipants ended up complying with the researcher’s order, and carried out the macabre execution. In any case, the remaining third had to witness the beheading, performed by Landis himself.
As we said, the subjects were mainly other students, but one notable exception was a 13 years-old boy who happened to be at the department as a patient, on the account of psychological issues and high blood pressure. His reaction was documented by Landis’ ruthless snapshots.
Perhaps the most embarassing aspect of the whole story was that the final results for this cruel test — which no ethical board would today authorize — were not even particularly noteworthy.
Landis, in his Studies of Emotional Reactions, II., General Behavior and Facial Expression (published on the Journal of Comparative Psychology, 4 [5], 447-509) came to these conclusions:
1) there is no typical facial expression accompanying any emotion aroused in the experiment;
2) emotions are not characterized by a typical expression or recurring pattern of muscular behavior;
3) smiling was the most common reaction, even during unpleasant experiences;
4) asymmetrical bodily reactions almost never occurred;
5) men were more expressive than women.
Hardly anything that could justify a mouse massacre, and the trauma inflicted upon the paritcipants.
After obtaining his degree, Carney Landis devoted himself to sexual psychopatology. He went on to have a brillant carreer at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. And he never harmed a rodent again, despite the fact that he is now mostly remembered for this ill-considered juvenile experiment rather than for his subsequent fourty years of honorable research.
There is, however, one last detail worth mentioning.
Alex Boese in his Elephants On Acid, underlines how the most interesting figure of all this bizarre experiment went unnoticed: the fact that two thirds of the subjects, although protesting and suffering, obeyed the terrible order.
And this percentage is in fact similar to the one recorded during the infamous Milgram experiment, in which a scientist commanded the subjects to inflict an electric shock to a third individual (in reality, an actor who pretended to receive the painful discharge). In that case as well, despite the ethical conflict, the simple fact that the order came from an authority figure was enough to push the subjects into carrying out an action they perceived as aberrant.
The Milgram experiment took place in 1961, almost forty years after the Landis experiment. “It is often this way with experiments — says Boese — A scientis sets out to prove one thing, but stumbles upon something completely different, something far more intriguing. For this reason, good researchers know they should always pay close attention to strange events that occur during their experiments. A great discovery might be lurking right beneath their eyes – or beneath te blade of their knife.“
On facial expressions related to emotions, see also my former post on Guillaume Duchenne (sorry, Italian language only).
That’s how it turned out to be — your mother was bleeding.
The doctors opened the woman’s body, and saved her. You should know that, despite all their cruelty and barbarity, human beings do this as well: they keep each other alive.
Your mother was out of the woods but the doctors wanted to understand why there was so much blood (another human thing, to try and understand). The flesh became a casket and revealed the secret that had been hidden till then, a secret of which the woman herself was not aware: they saw you.
You had struggled to surface, and you had failed.
They called you extrauterine, but you are actually extraterrestrial. From the dark of your mother’s womb you moved to the shining transparency of the liquid that would prevent you from dissolving. Your floating feet have never touched this planet. You have not touched the ground, you have not landed. Our bitter dimension could not damage you.
Out of time — at least out of the time of the human beings — you are floating motionless.
I found an ancient vase, hand-blown more than a century ago by an artisan who lived in a faraway continent, to honour your alien beauty. I gently immersed the minuscule, snow white limbs in the liquid, as if they were holy relics and I was their humble keeper.
Now you are watching from the shelf, suffused with gleam.
I talk to you as if I addressed my own wonder. Only a fool would expect answers from a mystery.
What do you know about the Universe?
Maybe life is precious and rare. Maybe it is more similar to a mould, a moss clinging to every minimal surface, to any rock it can find in the cold of the cosmos.
What dreams have you dreamed?
Maybe for a while you have felt the warmth, the ancient and familiar sensation, because we all know how to be born and how to die. But maybe your incomplete shape did not let you perceive the beginning nor the end.
What do you see when you look out at me from inside there?
Maybe my pain means something to you. Maybe it is only the consequence of my persevering in living.
You who are out of the game, out of the world. You who have known the basics — to take shape and vanish — without your perceptions being clouded by words, thoughts, emotions. You who, of the heart, only knew the ephemeral vertigo.
Tell me. How can we go on, blinded and wounded as we are, fallen into the morass, belonging to the race that burnt the wings in the attempt to reach the sun?
“Do not fight. Slow down the collapses. Relax the muscles. Let yourself be conquered.”
This is what the Moon Baby seems to whisper to me.
“You cannot fall. There is nothing you have to do.”
This article originally appeared on The Order of the Good Death. I have already written, here and here, about the death positive movement, to which this post is meant as a small contribution.
___________
“As soon as the grave is filled in, acorns should be planted over it, so that new trees will grow out of it later, and the wood will be as thick as it was before. All traces of my grave shall vanish from the face of the earth, as I flatter myself that my memory will vanish from the minds of men”.
This passage from the will of the Marquis de Sade has always struck a chord with me. Of course, he penned it as his last raging, disdainful grimace at mankind, but the very same thought can also be peaceful.
I have always been sensitive to the poetic, somewhat romantic fantasy of the taoist or buddhist monk retiring on his pretty little mountain, alone, to get ready for death. In my younger days, I thought dying meant leaving the world behind, and that it carried no responsibility. In fact, it was supposed to finally free me of all responsibility. My death belonged only to me.
An intimate, sacred, wondrous experience I would try my best to face with curiosity.
Impermanence? Vanishing “from the minds of men”? Who cares. If my ego is transient like everything else, that’s actually no big deal. Let me go, people, once and for all.
In my mind, the important thing was focusing on my own death. To train. To prepare.
“I want my death to be delicate, quiet, discreet”, I would write in my diary.
“I’d prefer to walk away tiptoe, as not to disturb anyone. Without leaving any trace of my passage”.
Unfortunately, I am now well aware it won’t happen this way, and I shall be denied the sweet comfort of being swiftly forgotten.
I have spent most of my time domesticating death – inviting it into my home, making friends with it, understanding it – and now I find the only thing I truly fear about my own demise is the heartbreak it will inevitably cause. It’s the other side of loving and being loved: death will hurt, it will come at the cost of wounding and scarring the people I cherish the most.
Dying is never just a private thing, it’s about others.
And you can feel comfortable, ready, at peace, but to look for a “good” death means to help your loved ones prepare too. If only there was a simple way.
The thing is, we all endure many little deaths.
Places can die: we come back to the playground we used to run around as kids, and now it’s gone, swallowed up by a hideous gas station.
The melancholy of not being allowed to kiss for the first time once again.
We’ve ached for the death of our dreams, of our relationships, of our own youth, of the exciting time when every evening out with our best friends felt like a new adventure. All these things are gone forever.
And we have experienced even smaller deaths, like our favorite mug tumbling to the floor one day, and breaking into pieces.
It’s the same feeling every time, as if something was irremediably lost. We look at the fragments of the broken mug, and we know that even if we tried to glue them together, it wouldn’t be the same cup anymore. We can still see its image in our mind, remember what it was like, but know it will never be whole again.
I have sometimes come across the idea that when you lose someone, the pain can never go away; but if you learn to accept it you can still go on living. That’s not enough, though.
I think we need to embrace grief, rather than just accepting it, we need to make it valuable. It sounds weird, because pain is a new taboo, and we live in a world that keeps on telling us that suffering has no value. We’re always devising painkillers for any kind of aching. But sorrow is the other side of love, and it shapes us, defines us and makes us unique.
For centuries in Japan potters have been taking broken bowls and cups, just like our fallen mug, and mending them with lacquer and powdered gold, a technique called kintsugi. When the object is reassembled, the golden cracks – forming such a singular decoration, impossible to duplicate – become its real quality. Scars transform a common bowl into a treasure.
I would like my death to be delicate, quiet, discreet.
I would prefer to walk away tiptoe, as not to disturb anyone, and tell my dear ones: don’t be afraid.
You think the cup is broken, but sorrow is the other side of love, it proves that you have loved. And it is a golden lacquer which can be used to put the pieces together.
Here, look at this splinter: this is that winter night we spent playing the blues before the fireplace, snow outside the window and mulled wine in our glasses.
Take this other one: this is when I told you I’d decided to quit my job, and you said go ahead, I’m on your side.
This piece is when you were depressed, and I dragged you out and took you down to the beach to see the eclipse.
This piece is when I told you I was in love with you.
We all have a kintsugi heart.
Grief is affection, we can use it to keep the splinters together, and turn them into a jewel. Even more beautiful than before.
As Tom Waits put it, “all that you’ve loved, is all you own“.
Some of you probably know about sati (or suttee), the hindu self-immolation ritual according to which a widow was expected to climb on her husband’s funeral pire to be burned alive, along his body. Officially forbidden by the English in 1829, the practice declined over time – not without some opposition on behalf of traditionalists – until it almost entirely disappeared: if in the XIX Century around 600 sati took place every year, from 1943 to 1987 the registered cases were around 30, and only 4 in the new millennium.
The sacrifice of widows was not limited to India, in fact it appeared in several cultures. In his Histories, Herodotus wrote about a people living “above the Krestons”, in Thracia: within this community, the favorite among the widows of a great man was killed over his grave and buried with him, while the other wives considered it a disgrace to keep on living.
Among the Heruli in III Century a.D., it was common for widows to hang themselves over their husband’s burial ground; in the XVIII Century, on the other side of the ocean, when a Natchez chief died his wives (often accompanied by other volunteers) followed him by committing ritual suicide. At times, some mothers from the tribe would even sacrify their own newborn children, in an act of love so strong that women who performed it were treated with great honor and entered a higher social level. Similar funeral practices existed in other native peoples along the southern part of Mississippi River.
Also in the Pacific area, for instance in Fiji, there were traditions involving the strangling of the village chief’s widows. Usually the suffocation was carried out or supervised by the widow’s brother (see Fison’s Notes on Fijian Burial Customs, 1881).
The idea underlying these practices was that it was deemed unconcievable (or improper) for a woman to remain alive after her husband’s death. In more general terms, a leader’s death opened an unbridgeable void, so much so that the survivors’ social existence was erased.
If female self-immolation (and, less commonly, male self-immolation) can be found in various time periods and latitudes, the Dani tribe developed a one-of-a-kind funeral sacrifice.
The Dani people live mainly in Baliem Valley, the indonesian side of New Guinea‘s central highlands. They are now a well-known tribe, on the account of increased tourism in the area; the warriors dress with symbolic accessories – a feather headgear, fur bands, a sort of tie made of seashells specifying the rank of the man wearing it, a pig’s fangs fixed to the nostrils and the koteka, a penis sheath made from a dried-out gourd.
The women’s clothing is simpler, consisting in a skirt made from bark and grass, and a headgear made from multicolored bird feathers.
Among this people, according to tradition when a man died the women who were close or related to him (wife, mother, sister, etc.) used to amputate one or more parts of their fingers. Today this custom no longer exists, but the elder women in the tribe still carry the marks of the ritual.
Allow me now a brief digression.
In Dino Buzzati‘s wonderful tale The Humps in the Garden (published in 1968 in La boutique del mistero), the protagonist loves to take long, late-night walks in the park surrounding his home. One evening, while he’s promenading, he stumbles on a sort of hump in the ground, and the following day he asks his gardener about it:
«What did you do in the garden, on the lawn there is some kind of hump, yesterday evening I stumbled on it and this morning as soon as the sun came up I saw it. It is a narrow and oblong hump, it looks like a burial mound. Will you tell me what’s happening?». «It doesn’t look like it, sir» said Giacomo the gardener «it really is a burial mound. Because yesterday, sir, a friend of yours has died». It was true. My dearest friend Sandro Bartoli, who was twenty-one-years-old, had died in the mountains with his skull smashed. «Are you trying to tell me» I said to Giacomo «that my friend was buried here?» «No» he replied «your friend, Mr. Bartoli […] was buried at the foot of that mountain, as you know. But here in the garden the lawn bulged all by itself, because this is your garden, sir, and everything that happens in your life, sir, will have its consequences right here.»
Years go by, and the narrator’s park slowly fills with new humps, as his loved ones die one by one. Some bulges are small, other enormous; the garden, once flat and regular, at this point is completely packed with mounds appearing with every new loss.
Because this problem of humps in the garden happens to everybody, and every one of us […] owns a garden where these painful phenomenons take place. It is an ancient story repeating itself since the beginning of centuries, it will repeat for you too. And this isn’t a literary joke, this is how things really are.
In the tale’s final part, we discover that the protagonist is not a fictional character at all, and that the sorrowful metaphore refers to the author himself:
Naturally I also wonder if in someone else’s garden will one day appear a hump that has to do with me, maybe a second or third-rate little hump, just a slight pleating in the lawn, not even noticeable in broad daylight, when the sun shines from up high. However, one person in the world, at least one, will stumble on it. Perhaps, on the account of my bad temper, I will die alone like a dog at the end of an old and deserted hallway. And yet one person that evening will stub his toe on the little hump in the garden, and will stumble on it the following night too, and each time that person will think with a shred of regret, forgive my hopefulness, of a certain fellow whose name was Dino Buzzati.
Now, if I may risk the analogy, the humps in Buzzati’s garden seem to be poetically akin to the Dani women’s missing fingers. The latter represent a touching and powerful image: each time a loved one leaves us, “we lose a bit of ourselves”, as is often said – but here the loss is not just emotional, the absence becomes concrete. On the account of this physical expression of grief, fingerless women undoubtedly have a hard time carrying out daily tasks; and further bereavements lead to the impossibility of using their hands. The oldest women, who have seen many loved ones die, need help and assistance from the community. Death becomes a wound which makes them disabled for life.
Of course, at least from a contemporary perspective, there is still a huge stumbling block: the metaphore would be perfect if such a tradition concerned also men, who instead were never expected to carry out such extreme sacrifices. It’s the female body which, more or less voluntarily, bears this visible evidence of pain.
But from a more universal perspective, it seems to me that these symbols hold the certainty that we all will leave a mark, a hump in someone else’s garden. The pride with which Dani women show their mutilated hands suggests that one person’s passage inevitably changes the reality around him, conditioning the community, even “sculpting” the flesh of his kindreds. The creation of meaning in displays of grief also lies in reciprocity – the very tradition that makes me weep for the dead today, will ensure that tomorrow others will lament my own departure.
Regardless of the historical variety of ways in which this concept was put forth, in this awareness of reciprocity human beings seem to have always found some comfort, because it eventually means that we can never be alone.
Dove ci sono uomini troverai mosche e Buddha
(Kobayashi Issa)
Chiunque percorra un autentico cammino spirituale dovrà confrontarsi con il lato oscuro, osceno, terribile della vita. Questo è il sottinteso della parabola agiografica che vede il Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, uscire di nascosto dal suo idilliaco palazzo reale e scoprire con meraviglia e angoscia l’esistenza del dolore (dukkha), che accomuna tutti gli esseri viventi.
Il fotografo giapponese Yamanaka Manabu da 25 anni esplora territori liminali o ritenuti tabù, alla ricerca della scintilla divina. Il suo intento, nonostante la crudezza degli scatti, non è certo quello di provocare un facile shock: piuttosto, lo sforzo che si può leggere nelle sue opere è tutto incentrato sulla scoperta della trascendenza anche in ciò che normalmente, e superficialmente, potrebbe provocare ripugnanza.
Gyahtei: Yamanaka Manabu Photographs è la collezione dei suoi lavori, organizzati in sei serie di fotografie. I sei capitoli si concentrano su altrettanti soggetti “non allineati”, rimossi, reietti, ignorati: sono dedicati rispettivamente a bambini di strada, senzatetto, persone affette da malattie che provocano deformità, anziani, feti abortiti, e carcasse di animali.
L’approccio di Manabu è ammirevolmente rigoroso e rispettoso. Le sue non sono foto sensazionalistiche, né ambigue, e ambiscono invece a catturare degli attimi in cui il Buddha risplende attraverso questi corpi sbagliati, emarginati, rifiutati. Con la tipica essenzialità della declinazione giapponese del buddhismo (zen), i soggetti sono perlopiù ritratti su sfondo bianco – e il bianco è il colore del lutto, in Giappone, e sottile riferimento all’impermanenza. Sono foto rarefatte ed essenziali, che lasciano al nostro sguardo il compito di cercare un significato, se mai riusciremo a trovarlo.
Ogni serie di fotografie ha necessitato di 4 o 5 anni di lavoro per vedere la luce. Quella intitolata “Arakan” è emblematica: “Una mattina, incontrai una persona vestita di stracci che camminando lentamente emetteva un odore pungente. Aveva lo sguardo fisso verso un posto lontano, occhi raminghi e fuori fuoco. Cominciai di mattino presto, in bicicletta, cercandoli fra strade affollate e parchi pubblici. Appena li trovavo, chiedevo loro “Per favore, lasciatemi scattare una foto”. Ma non acconsentivano a farsi ritrarre così facilmente. L’idea li disgustava, e io li inseguivo e continuavo a chiedere il permesso ancora e ancora. Ho continuato a seguirli senza curarmi dei loro sputi e dei loro pugni, finché la pazienza veniva meno. Allora finalmente mi concedevano di fotografarli“.
Dopo 4 anni di ricerche, e centinaia di foto, Manabu ha selezionato 16 scatti che a suo parere mostrano degli esseri al confine fra l’umano e la condizione di Risveglio. “Sono sicuro che queste persone meritano di essere chiamate Arakan, titolo riservato a colui il quale recide i legami della carne ed è assiduo nel praticare l’austerità“.
Nella sua sincera indagine sul significato dell’esistenza non poteva mancare la contemplazione della morte. Il suo racconto della ricognizione su una carcassa di cane illustra perfettamente il processo che sottende il suo lavoro.
Nel mio tentativo di comprendere la “morte”, ho deciso di guardare il corpo morto di un cane regolarmente, sulla costa.
Giorno 1 – L’ho accarezzato sulla testa, domandandomi se la sua vita fosse stata felice.
Giorno 2 – La sua faccia sembrava triste. Ho sentito l’odore diventare più forte.
Giorno 5 – Molti corvi si sono assiepati sul posto, a beccare i suoi occhi e il suo ano.
Giorno 7
– Il suo corpo era gonfio, e sangue e pus ne uscivano. Nuvole di mosche su di lui, e l’odore divenne terribile.
Giorno 10 – La bocca era infestata di larve, e il corpo si era gonfiato del doppio. Quando ho toccato il corpo, era caldo. Pensando che il corpo avesse in qualche modo ripreso vita, mi sentii ispirato e giunsi le mani verso di esso.
Giorno 12 – La pelle dell’addome si era lacerata, e molte larve erano visibili all’interno. Mi sentii deluso quando scoprii che il calore era causato dallo sfregamento degli insetti. Pensai che la “morte” è brutta e dolorosa.
Giorno 15 – Si poteva vedere l’osso da una parte della pelle strappata della faccia. Il corpo divenne sottile come quello di una mummia. L’odore divenne meno penetrante. Il corpo morto sembrava bello come un’immagine di creta, e scattai alcune fotografie.
Giorno 24 – Le larve erano scomparse, e la testa, gli arti e il corpo erano completamente smembrati. Sembrava che nessuna creatura avrebbe potuto mangiarne ancora. In effetti di fronte a questa scena sentii che il cane era veramente morto.
Giorno 32 – Soltanto piccoli pezzi di osso bianco sono rimasti, e sembrano sprofondare nella terra.
Giorno 49 – L’erba nuova è cresciuta sul posto, e l’esistenza del cane è scomparsa.
Ma forse la sua serie più toccante è quella intitolata “Jyoudo” (la casa del Bodhisattva).
Qui siamo confrontati con il volto più crudele della malattia – sindromi genetiche o rare, alle quali alcuni esseri umani sono destinati fin dalla nascita. Senza mai cedere alla tentazione del dettaglio fastidioso, Manabu colleziona degli scatti al contrario pietosi e commoventi, volutamente asciutti. Qui la condizione umana e la sua insensatezza trovano un perfetto compimento: uomini e donne segnati dalla disgrazia, “forse per via di cattive azioni nelle vite passate, o soltanto perché sono pateticamente sfortunati“.
Il confronto con queste estreme situazioni di malattia è, come sempre in Manabu, molto umano. “In una casa di riposo ho incontrato una giovane ragazza. Non era altro che pelle e ossa, a stento capace di respirare mentre stava distesa. Perché è nata così, e che insegnamento dovremmo trarre da un simile fatto? Per capire il significato della sua esistenza, non potevo fare altro che fotografarla. Persone che gradualmente diventano più piccole mentre il loro corpo esaurisce tutta l’acqua, persone i cui corpi si putrefanno mentre la loro pelle si stacca e le loro fattezze diventano rosse e gonfie, persone le cui teste pian piano si espandono a causa dell’acqua che si raccoglie all’interno, persone con piedi e mani assurdamente grandi, e via dicendo. Ho incontrato e fotografato molti individui simili, che vivono con malattie inspiegabili, senza speranza di cura. Eppure, perfino in questo stato, quando li guardavo senza farmi vincere dalla paura, vedevo quanto le loro vite fossero veramente naturali. Cominciai a sentire la presenza di Bodhisattva all’interno dei loro corpi. Queste persone erano l’ “Incarnazione del Bodhisattva”, i figli di Dio.“
Quando un artista, un fotografo in questo caso, decide di esplorare programmaticamente tutto ciò che in questo mondo è terribile e ancora in attesa di significato, il confronto con la vecchiaia è inevitabile. D’altronde i quattro dolori riconosciuti dal Buddha, in quella famosa e improvvisata uscita da palazzo, sono proprio la nascita, la vecchiaia, la malattia e la morte. Quindi i corpi nudi di persone anziane, in attesa del sacrificio ultimo, rappresentano la naturale prosecuzione della ricerca di Manabu. Pelle avvizzita e segnata dal tempo, anime splendenti anche se piegate dal peso degli anni.
E infine ecco la serie dedicata ai feti abortiti o nati morti. “Per una ragione imperscrutabile, non ogni vita è benvenuta in questo mondo. Eppure per uno sfuggente attimo questo piccolo embrione, a cui è stata negata l’ammissione prima ancora che lanciasse il suo primo grido, ha sollecitato in me un’immagine eterna della sua perfetta bellezza.”
Quelle di Yamanaka Manabu sono visioni difficili, dure, sconcertanti; forse non siamo più abituati a un’arte che non si fermi alla superficie, che non si nasconda dietro il manierismo o lo sfoggio del “bello”. E qui, invece, siamo di fronte a una vera e propria meditazione sul non-bello (ovvero asubha, ne avevamo parlato in questo articolo).
Nell’apparente semplicità della composizione queste opere ci parlano di una ricerca di verità, di senso, che è senza tempo e senza confini. Fotografie che si interrogano sull’esistenza del dolore. E che cercano di catturare quell’attimo in cui, attraverso e oltre il velo della sofferenza, si può intravvedere l’infinito.
Considerations about death in the age of social media
Take a look at the above Top Chart. Blackbird is a Beatles song originally published in the 1968 White Album.
Although Paul McCartney wrote it 46 years ago, last week the song topped the iTunes charts in the Rock genre. Why?
The answer is below:
Italian articles about “daddy Blackbird”.
Chris Picco lives in California: he lost his wife Ashley, who died prematurely giving birth to litle Lennon. On November 12 a video appeared on YouTube showing Chris singing Blackbird before the incubator where his son was struggling for life; the child died just four days after birth.
The video went immediately viral, soon reaching 15 million views, bouncing from social neworks to newspapers and viceversa, with great pariticipation and a flood of sad emoticons and moving comments. This is just the last episode in a new, yet already well-established tendency of public exhibitions of suffering and mourning.
Brittany Maynard (1984-2014), terminally ill, activist for assisted suicide rights.
A recent article by Kelly Conaboy, adressing the phenomenon of tragic videos and stories going viral, uses the expression grief porn: these videos may well be a heart-felt, sincere display to begin with, but they soon become pure entertainment, giving the spectator an immediate and quick adrenaline rush; once the “emotional masturbation” is over, once our little tear has been shed, once we’ve commented and shared, we feel better. We close the browser, and go on with our lives.
If the tabloid genre of grief porn, Conaboy stresses out, is as old as sexual scandals, until now it was only limited to particularly tragic, violent, extraordinary death accounts; the internet, on the other hand, makes it possible to expose common people’s private lives. These videos could be part of a widespread exhibitionism/vouyeurism dynamics, in which the will to show off one’s pain is matched by the users’ desire to watch it — and to press the “Like” button in order to prove their sensitivity.
During the Twentieth Century we witnessed a collective removal of death. So much has been written about this removal process, there is no need to dwell on it. The real question is: is something changing? What do these new phenomenons tell us about our own relationship with death? How is it evolving?
If death as a real, first-hand experience still remains a sorrowful mystery, a forbidden territory encompassing both the reality of the dead body (the true “scandal”) and the elaboration of grief (not so strictly coded as it once was), on the other hand we are witnessing an unprecedented pervasiveness of the representation of death.
Beyond the issues of commercialization and banalization, we have to face an ever more unhibited presence of death images in today’s society: from skulls decorating bags, pins, Tshirts as well as showing up in modern art Museums, to death becoming a communication/marketing/propaganda tool (terrorist beheadings, drug cartels execution videos, immense websites archiving raw footage of accidents, homicides and suicides). All of this is not death, it must be stressed, it’s just its image, its simulacrum — which doesn’t even require a narrative.
Referring to it as “death pornography” does make sense, given that these representations rely on what is in fact the most exciting element of classic pornography: it is what Baudrillard called hyper-reality, an image so realistic that it surpasses, or takes over, reality. (In porn videos, think of viewpoints which would be “impossibile” during the actual intercourse, think of HD resolution bringing out every detail of the actors’ skin, of 3D porn, etc. — this is also what happens with death in simulacrum.)
We can now die a million times, on the tip of a cursor, with every click starting a video or loading a picture. This omnipresence of representations of death, on the other hand, might not be a sign of an obscenity-bound, degenerated society, but rather a natural reaction and metabolization of last century’s removal. The mystery of death still untouched, its obscenity is coming apart (the obscene being brought back “on scene”) until it becomes an everyday image. To continue the parallelism with pornography, director Davide Ferrario (in his investigative book Guardami. Storie dal porno) wrote that witnessing a sexual intercourse, as a guest on an adult movie set, was not in the least exciting for him; but as soon as he looked into the camera viewfinder, everything changed and the scene became more real. Even some war photographers report that explosions do not seem real until they observe them through the camera lens. It is the dominion of the image taking over concrete objects, and if in Baudrillard’s writings this historic shift was described in somewhat apocalyptic colors, today we understand that this state of things — the imaginary overcoming reality — might not be the end of our society, but rather a new beginning.
Little by little our society is heading towards a global and globalized mythology. Intelligence — at least the classic idea of a “genius”, an individual achieving extraordinary deeds on his own — is becoming an outdated myth, giving way to the super-conscience of the web-organism, able to work more and more effectively than the single individual. There will be less and less monuments to epic characters, if this tendency proves durable, less and less heroes. More and more innovations and discoveries will be ascribable to virtual communities (but is there a virtuality opposing reality any more?), and the merit of great achievements will be distributed among a net of individuals.
In much the same way, death is changing in weight and significance.
Preservation and devotion to human remains, although both well-established traditions, are already being challenged by a new and widespread recycling sensitivity, and the idea of ecological reuse basically means taking back decomposition — abhorred for centuries by Western societies, and denied through the use of caskets preventing the body from touching the dirt. The Resurrection of the flesh, the main theological motivation behind an “intact” burial, is giving way to the idea of composting, which is a noble concept in its own right. Within this new perspective, respect for the bodies is not exclusively expressed through devotion, fear towards the bones or the inviolability of the corpse; it gives importance to the body’s usefulness, whether through organ transplant, donation to science, or reduction of its pollution impact. Destroying the body is no longer considered a taboo, but rather an act of generosity towards the environment.
At the same time, this new approach to death is slowly getting rid of the old mysterious, serious and dark overtones. Macabre fashion, black tourism or the many death-related entertainment and cultural events, trying to raise awareness about these topics (for example the London Month of the Dead, or the seminal Death Salon), are ways of dealing once and for all with the removal. Even humor and kitsch, as offensive as they might seem, are necessary steps in this transformation.
Human ashes pressed into a vinyl.
Human ashes turned into a diamond.
And so the internet is daily suggesting a kind of death which is no longer censored or denied, but openly faced, up to the point of turning it into a show.
In respect to the dizzying success of images of suffering and death, the word voyeurism is often used. But can we call it voyeurism when the stranger’s gaze is desired and requested by the “victims” themselves, for instance by terminally ill people trying to raise awareness about their condition, to leave a testimony or simply to give a voice to their pain?
Jennifer Johnson, mother of two children, in her last video before she died (2012).
The exhibition of difficult personal experiences is a part of our society’s new expedient to deal with death and suffering: these are no longer taboos to be hidden and elaborated in the private sphere, but feelings worth sharing with the entire world. If at the time of big extended families, in the first decades of ‘900, grief was “spread” over the whole community, and in the second half of the century it fell back on the individual, who was lacking the instruments to elaborate it, now online community is offering a new way of allocation of suffering. Condoleances and affectionate messages can be received by perfect strangers, in a new paradigm of “superficial” but industrious solidarity.
Chris Picco, “daddy Blackbird”, certainly does not complain about the attention the video brought to him, because the users generosity made it possible for him to raise the $ 200.000 needed to cover medical expenses.
I could never articulate how much your support and your strength and your prayers and your emails and your Facebook messages and your text messages—I don’t know how any of you got my number, but there’s been a lot of me just, ‘Uh, okay, thank you, um.’ I didn’t bother going into the whole, ‘I don’t know who you are, but thank you.’ I just—it has meant so much to me, and so when I say ‘thank you’ I know exactly what you mean.
On the other end of the PC screen is the secret curiosity of those who watch images of death. Those who share these videos, more or less openly enjoying them. Is it really just “emotional masturbation”? Is this some obscene and morbid curiosity?
I personally don’t think there is such a thing as a morbid — that is, pathological — curiosity. Curiosity is an evolutionary tool which enables us to elaborate strategies for the future, and therefore it is always sane and healthy. If we examine voyeurism under this light, it turns out to be a real resource. When cars slow down at the sight of an accident, it’s not always in hope of seeing blood and guts: our brain is urging us to slow down because it needs time to investigate the situation, to elaborate what has happened, to understand what went on there. That’s exactly what the brain is wired to do — inferring data which might prove useful in the future, should we find ourselves in a similar situation.
Accordingly, the history of theater, literature and cinema is full to the brim with tragedy, violence, disasters: the interest lies in finding out how the characters will react to the difficulties they come about. We still need the Hero’s Journey, we still need to discover how he’s going to overcome the tests he finds along the way, and to see how he will solve his problems. As kids, we carefully studied our parents to learn the appropriate response to every situation, and as adults our mind keeps amassing as much detail as possible, to try and control future obstacles.
By identifying with the father playing a sweet song to his dying son, we are confronting ourselves. “What is this man feeling? What would I do in such a predicament? Would I be able to overcome terror in this same way? Would this strategy work for me?”
The construction of our online persona comes only at a later time, when the video is over. Then it becomes important to prove to our contacts and followers that we are humane and sympathetic, that we were deeply moved, and so begins the second phase, with all the expressions of grief, the (real or fake) tears, the participation. This new paradigma, this modern kind of mourning, requires little time and resources, but it could work better than we think (again, see the success of Mr. Picco’s fund-raising campaing). And this sharing of grief is only possible on the account of the initial curiosity that made us click on that video.
And what about those people who dig even deeper into the dark side of the web, with its endless supply of images of death, and watch extremly gruesome videos?
The fundamental stimulus behind watching a video of a man who gets, let’s say, eaten alive by a crocodile, is probably the very same. At a basic lavel, we are always trying to acquire useful data to respond to the unknown, and curiosity is our weapon of defense and adaptation against an uncertain future; a future in which, almost certainly, we won’t have to fight off an alligator, but we’ll certainly need to face suffering, death and the unexpected.
The most shocking videos sometimes lure us with the promise of showing what is normally forbidden or censored: how does the human body react to a fall from a ten story building? Watching the video, it’s as if we too are falling by proxy; just like, by proxy but in a more acceptable context, we can indentify with the tragic reaction of a father watching his child die.
A weightlifter is lifting a barbell. Suddenly his knee snaps and collapses. We scream, jump off the seat, feel a stab of pain. We divert our eyes, then look again, and each time we go over the scene in our mind it’s like we are feeling a little bit of the athlete’s pain (a famous neurologic study on empathy proved that, in part, this is exactly what is going on). This is not masochism, nor a strange need to be upset: anticipation of pain is considered one of the common psychological strategies to prepare for it, and watching a video is a cheap and harmless solution.
In my opinion, the curiosity of those who watch images of suffering and death should not be stigmatized as “sick”, as it is a completely natural instinct. And this very curiosity is behind the ever growing offer of such images, as it is also what allows suffering people to stage their own condition.
The real innovations of these last few years have been the legitimization of death as a public representation, and the collectivization of the experience of grief and mourning — according to the spirit of open confrontation and sharing, typical of social media. These features will probably get more and more evident on Facebook, Twitter and similar platforms: even today, many people suffering from an illness are choosing to post real-time updates on their therapy, in fact opening the curtain over a reality (disease and hospital care) which has been concealed for a long time.
There’ll be the breaking of the ancient Western Code / Your private life will suddenly explode, sang Leonard Cohen in The Future. The great poet’s views expressed in the song are pessimistic, if not apocalyptc, as you would expect from a Twentieth century exponent. Yet it looks like this voluntary (and partial) sacrifice of the private sphere is proving to be an effective way to fix the general lack of grief elaboration codes. We talk ever more frequently about death and disease, and until now it seems that the benefits of this dialogue are exceeding the possible stress from over-exposure (see this article).
What prompted me to write this post is the feeling, albeit vague and uncertain, that a transition is taking place, before our eyes, even if it’s still all too cloudy to be clearly outlined; and of course, such a transformation cannot be immune to excesses, which inevitably affect any crisis. We shall see if these unprecedented, still partly unconscious strategies prove to be an adequate solution in dealing with our ultimate fate, or if they are bound to take other, different forms.
But something is definitely changing.
All’inizio del secolo scorso la medicina stava entrando nella sua età più matura e progredita; eppure, come abbiamo spesso notato (vedi ad esempio i metodi per aprire una bocca descritti in questo articolo), la pratica terapeutica mancava ancora della doverosa attenzione per il paziente e per la sua sofferenza.
Nei primi anni ’30 il Dr. Hans Killian, uno dei più conosciuti anestesiologi e chirurghi tedeschi, sentì che era tempo di cambiare l’attitudine dei medici nei confronti del dolore. Secondo il Dr. Killian, non soltanto ne avrebbero beneficiato i pazienti in quanto esseri umani, con una propria dignità e sensibilità, ma perfino la pratica medica: riconoscere i sintomi della sofferenza, infatti, avrebbe dovuto essere parte integrante dell’anamnesi clinica. Come esporre la questione in maniera scientifica e al tempo stesso incisiva?
Il Dr. Killian era appassionato di arte e fotografia, ma fino ad allora aveva tenuto ben separati i suoi interessi estetici dalla professione medica. Il suo primo libro di fotografie, intitolato Farfalla, mostrava suggestive immagini delle farfalle che lui stesso allevava, e venne pubblicato sotto pseudonimo, per non mettere a repentaglio la “serietà” del suo status di chirurgo. Questa volta, però, la posta in gioco era troppo alta per non rischiare. Così il Dr. Killian decise di pubblicare a suo nome (anche a discapito della sua carriera) il progetto che più gli stava a cuore, e che avrebbe contribuito a cambiare il rapporto medico-paziente.
Il suo controverso libro, pubblicato nel 1934, si intitolava Facies Dolorosa: Das schmerzensreiche Antlitz (“l’aspetto del dolore”). Si trattava di 64 fotografie di bambini, uomini e donne di ogni età, ricoverati all’ospedale dell’Università di Freiburg in cui egli stesso esercitava come chirurgo. I soggetti dei ritratti erano suoi pazienti, alcuni dei quali terminali, fotografati nei loro letti.
Sfogliando il volume, si avvertiva subito un’evidente (e feconda) ambiguità. Da una parte, la raccolta poteva essere interpretata come testo prettamente medico, un’osservazione empirica relativa al primo stadio di ogni diagnosi, cioè l’esame esterno del paziente: in questo senso, il libro aveva lo scopo di illustrare e catalogare tutti i diversi modi in cui la malattia può manifestarsi sul volto, influenzandone l’espressione. Veniva per esempio mostrata la facies tragica dei malati di ipertiroidismo, in cui la retrazione spastica della palpebra superiore causa una peculiare mimica con “occhi sbarrati”, assieme a diversi altri tipi di “maschera” che indicano specifici disturbi.
Ma la forza del suo libro, il Dr. Killian ne era ben conscio, non stava nella cornice scientifica – che era anzi poco più che un alibi. Molte delle sue fotografie, infatti, non mostravano affatto i segni evidenti della malattia, bensì si focalizzavano sull’ansia, la tristezza e lo sconforto infinito veicolato dagli sguardi dei pazienti. Con la sua Rolleiflex, Killian si prefissava di catturare gli effetti della malattia sull’umore di quelle persone, il loro stato psicologico, la loro essenza umana sotto la fatica e la debilitazione.
Al di là dei dati statistici e misurabili, Killian era alla ricerca di ciò che definiva das Unwägbare, “l’imponderabile”: a suo dire, infatti, ogni diagnosi si affidava anche a una sorta di istinto suggerito dall’esperienza, una fulminea “impressione” che il medico aveva guardando il paziente durante la prima visita. Certo, le analisi in laboratorio avevano il loro peso, ma per Killian l’arte medica viveva innanzitutto di questo genere di intuito.
L’opera del Dr. Killian è tutta racchiusa in questa duplicità, in questa tensione fra la solidità apparente della presentazione scientifica e la dimensione emotiva della sofferenza. Paradossalmente le fotografie di Facies Dolorosa, nonostante non mostrino morbi o deformità particolarmente scioccanti, colpiscono in maniera ancora più profonda l’osservatore: in luogo dell’asetticità che ci si aspetterebbe da un atlante medico, propongono una visione partecipe dello sconforto e del dolore dei soggetti rappresentati. Talvolta i malati guardano in macchina, talvolta il loro sguardo sembra perdersi oltre l’obbiettivo, in una commovente contemplazione della propria condizione. I pochi e spogli dettagli, oltre al volto, concentrano tutta l’attenzione sul corpo, divenuto una gabbia penosa e desolata.
Che l’empatia fosse ciò che davvero interessava a Killian risulta evidente nei due casi in cui l’intimità dell’obbiettivo si spinge fino a fotografare il soggetto prima e dopo la morte.
Il libro ebbe probabilmente un ruolo fondamentale nell’evoluzione del rapporto medico-paziente; oltre a questo, Facies Dolorosa scavalcò coraggiosamente i confini tra scienza ed arte in un periodo in cui queste due discipline erano largamente considerate contrapposte. La sua aura di poetica umanità colpisce anche oggi, tanto che l’esperto di storia della fotografia Martin Parr lo ha definito “forse il più melanconico di tutti i libri fotografici”.
Pannocchia strappò i biglietti.
Zucchina e Broccolo entrarono nella sala e si sedettero sulle poltrone, emozionati.
Zucchina: – Ma fa davvero tanta paura, questo film?
Broccolo: – Dai, fifona, ci sono qua io!
E così dicendo, allungò ridendo un ciuffo di rametti sulla spalla di Zucchina.
Si spensero le luci, si udì una musica tenebrosa e il titolo apparve sullo schermo: LA NOTTE DEI VEGANI!
Di tanto in tanto i giornali pubblicano la notizia che nessun vegetariano vorrebbe mai sentire: alcuni scienziati avrebbero scoperto che anche le piante hanno un sistema nervoso, che pensano, soffrono ed hanno addirittura una memoria. Ma quanto c’è di vero in queste evidenti semplificazioni giornalistiche? Le piante sono realmente capaci di pensiero, di percezioni ed emozioni? Perfino di “ricordare” chi fa loro del bene e chi invece infligge del dolore?
Tutti abbiamo sentito dire che le piante crescono meglio se con loro si parla, se si lavano le loro foglie amorevolmente, se le si riempie di affetto. Alcuni esperti dal pollice verde giurano che facendo ascoltare la musica classica a una piantina da salotto crescerà più rigogliosa e i suoi colori si faranno più intensi. Quest’idea è in realtà nata a metà dell’Ottocento, ed è attribuita al pioniere della psicologia sperimentale Gustav Fechner, ma è stato lo scienziato indiano Chandra Bose che l’ha presa sul serio, tanto da sviluppare i primi test di laboratorio sull’argomento, agli inizi del Novecento.
Chandra Bose si convinse che le piante avessero un qualche tipo di sistema nervoso analizzando le modificazioni che avvenivano nella membrana delle cellule quando le sottoponeva a diverse condizioni: in particolare, secondo Bose, ogni pianta rispondeva a uno shock con uno “spasmo” simile a quello di un animale. Le cellule, osservò, avevano “vibrazioni” diverse a seconda che la pianta fosse coccolata o, viceversa, torturata. Pare che anche il celebre drammaturgo (vegetariano) George B. Shaw fosse rimasto sconvolto quando, in visita ai laboratori di Bose, vide un cavolo morire bollito fra atroci spasmi e convulsioni.
Ma Bose non si limitò a questo: scoprì che una musica rilassante aumentava la crescita delle piante, e una dissonante la rallentava; sperimentò con precisione l’effetto che veleni e droghe avevano sulle cellule. Infine, per dimostrare che tutto ha un’anima, o perlomeno una matrice comune, si mise ad avvelenare i metalli. Avete letto bene. Bose “somministrò” diverse quantità di veleno all’alluminio, allo zinco e al platino – ottenendo dei grafici straordinari che dimostravano che anche i metalli soffrivano di avvelenamento esattamente come ogni altro essere vivente.
Se vi sembra che Bose si sia spinto un po’ troppo in là con la fantasia, aspettate che entri in scena Cleve Backster.
Nel 1966, mentre faceva delle ricerche sulle modificazioni elettriche in una pianta che viene annaffiata, Backster collegò un poligrafo (macchina della verità) ad una delle foglie della piantina su cui stava lavorando. Con sua grande sorpresa, scoprì che il poligrafo registrava delle fluttuazioni nella resistenza elettrica del tutto simili a quelle di un uomo che viene sottoposto a un test della verità. Era possibile che la pianta stesse provando qualche tipo di stress? E se, per esempio, le avesse bruciato una foglia, cosa sarebbe successo? Proprio mentre pensava queste cose, l’ago del poligrafo impazzì, portandosi di colpo al massimo. Backster si convinse che la pianta doveva in qualche modo essersi accorta del suo progetto di bruciarle una foglia – gli aveva letto nella mente!
Da quel momento sia Backster che altri ricercatori (Horowitz, Lewis, Gasteiger) decisero di esplorare il mistero delle reazioni emotive delle piante. Attaccandole al poligrafo, registrarono i picchi e interpretarono le risposte che i vegetali davano a diverse situazioni. Gli strumenti regalavano continue sorprese: le piante “urlavano” orripilate quando i ricercatori bollivano davanti a loro dei gamberetti vivi, si calmavano quando gli scienziati mettevano sul giradischi i Notturni di Chopin, si “ubriacavano” addirittura se venivano annaffiate col vino. Non solo, mostravano di riconoscere ogni ricercatore, dando un segnale diverso e preciso ogni volta che uno di loro entrava nella stanza; “prevedevano” quello che lo scienziato stava per fare, tanto che per spaventarle gli bastava pensare di spezzare un rametto o staccare una foglia.
Il libro che dettagliava tutti i risultati di queste ricerche, La vita segreta delle piante di Tompkins e Bird, fu pubblicato nel 1973 e divenne immediatamente un caso sensazionale. Venne addirittura adattato per il cinema, e il film omonimo (musicato da Stevie Wonder) suscitò infinite controversie.
Tutti questi scienziati interessati alle misteriose qualità paranormali delle piante avevano però una cosa in comune: mostravano un po’ troppa voglia di dimostrare le loro tesi. Successive ripetizioni di questi esperimenti, condotti da ricercatori un po’ più scettici in laboratori più “seri”, come potete immaginare, non diedero alcun risultato. Ma allora, dove sta la verità? Le piante possono o non possono pensare, ricordare, provare emozioni?
Cominciamo con lo sfatare uno dei miti più resistenti nel tempo: le piante non hanno un sistema nervoso. Come tutte le cellule viventi, anche le cellule vegetali funzionano grazie allo scambio di elettricità, ma questo passaggio di energia non si sviluppa lungo canali dedicati e preferenziali come accade con i nostri nervi. Talvolta le piante rispondono alla luce con una “cascata” di impulsi elettrici che durano anche quando la luce è terminata, e questo ha portato alcuni giornalisti a parlare di una “memoria” dell’evento; ma la metafora è sbagliata, sarebbe come dire che i cerchi sulla superficie dell’acqua continuano anche dopo che il sasso è andato a fondo perché l’acqua è capace di ricordare.
Se il ruolo dei segnali elettrici nelle piante è ancora in larga parte sconosciuto, questo non ci autorizza ad attribuire categorie umane ai loro comportamenti. Certo, alle volte è difficile ammirare le meraviglie del mondo vegetale senza immaginare che nascondano un qualche tipo di coscienza, o di “mente”. Pensate al geotropismo e al fototropismo: non importa come girate una pianta, le radici si dirigeranno sempre verso il basso e i rami verso l’alto, con puntuale precisione e a seconda della specie di pianta. Pensate all’edera che si arrampica per decine di metri, alle piante carnivore che scattano più veloci degli insetti, ai girasoli che seguono il nostro astro in cielo, alle piante che fioriscono soltanto quando i giorni cominciano ad allungarsi e quelle che invece fioriscono non appena le giornate si accorciano. Esiste perfino un certo tipo di “comunicazione” fra le piante: se un parassita attacca un pino in una foresta, la risposta immunitaria viene riscontrata contemporaneamente in tutto il bosco, e non soltanto nell’albero che è stato attaccato – la “notizia” dell’arrivo del nemico è stata in qualche modo segnalata al resto degli alberi. Prima di precipitarci a concludere che esiste un linguaggio delle piante, però, faremmo meglio a tenere i piedi a terra.
Le piante, come la maggior parte degli organismi, percepiscono il mondo attorno a loro, processano le informazioni che raccolgono e rispondono agli stimoli esterni alterando la propria crescita e il proprio sviluppo, e mettendo in atto tecniche e strategie di sopravvivenza a volte sorprendentemente sofisticate. Ancora oggi alcuni di questi processi rimangono effettivamente misteriosi. Ma Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh, botanica dell’Università di Washington, chiarisce una volta per tutte: “un grosso errore che fa la gente è parlare delle piante come se ‘sapessero’ cosa stanno facendo. Insegnanti di biologia, ricercatori, studenti e gente comune fanno tutti lo stesso sbaglio. Io preferirei dire che una pianta avverte e risponde, piuttosto che dire che ‘sa’. Usare parole come ‘intelligenza’ o ‘pensiero’ per le piante è un errore. Alle volte è divertente, un po’ provocatorio. Ma è scorretto.”
Quando parliamo di piante che riflettono, decidono, amano o soffrono, staremmo quindi commettendo l’errore di proiettare caratteristiche prettamente umane sui vegetali. Bisognerebbe forse pensare alle piante come a una specie aliena, con cui non è possibile adottare metri di misura umani: parlare di emozioni, ricordi, pensiero è illudersi che le nostre specifiche caratteristiche vadano bene per tutti gli esseri viventi, è voler vedere noi stessi in ciò che è diverso. Così, domandarsi se una pianta prova dolore è forse un quesito senza senso.
Per concludere, è buona norma prendere sempre con le pinze le divulgazioni spacciate per “clamorose scoperte”. Allo stesso tempo, se la prossima volta che affettate un pomodoro, cogliete una margherita o addentate una mela avrete un attimo di esitazione, o un leggero brivido… beh, qui a Bizzarro Bazar potremo ritenerci soddisfatti.
Oggi parliamo di un argomento estremo e controverso, che potrebbe nauseare parecchi lettori. Chi intende leggere questo articolo fino alla fine si ritenga quindi avvisato: si tratta di immagini e temi che potrebbero urtare la sensibilità della maggioranza delle persone.
Tutti conoscono le mode dei piercing o dei tatuaggi: modificazioni permanenti del corpo, volontariamente “inflitte” per motivi diversi. Appartenenza ad un gruppo, non-appartenenza, fantasia sessuale o non, desiderio di individualità, voglia di provarsi di fronte al dolore… il corpo, rimasto tabù per tanti secoli, diviene il territorio privilegiato sul quale affermare la propria identità. Ma le body modifications non si fermano certo ai piercing. Attraverso il dolore, il corpo così a lungo negato diviene una sorta di cartina di tornasole, la vera essenza carnale che dimostra di essere vivi e reali.
E la libertà di giocare con la forma del proprio corpo porta agli estremi più inediti (belli? brutti?) che si siano mai visti fino ad ora. Ci sono uomini che desiderano ardentemente la castrazione. Donne che vogliono tagliare in due il proprio clitoride. Maschi che vogliono liberarsi dei capezzoli. Gente che si vuole impiantare sottopelle ogni sorta di oggetto. O addirittura sotto la cornea oculare. Bisognerebbe forse parlare di “corponauti”, di nuovi esploratori della carne che sperimentano giorno dopo giorno inedite configurazioni della nostra fisicità.
Alcune di queste “novità del corpo” sono già diventate famose. Ad esempio, il sezionare la lingua per renderla biforcuta: le due metà divengono autonome e si riesce a comandarle separatamente. La divisione della lingua è ancora un tipo di pratica, se non comune, comunque almeno conosciuta attraverso internet o il “sentito dire”. La maggior parte degli adepti dichiara che non tornerebbe più ad una lingua singola, per cui dovremmo credere che i vantaggi siano notevoli. Certo è che gran parte di queste modificazioni corporali avviene senza il controllo di un medico, e può portare ad infezioni anche gravi. Quindi attenti.
Diverso è il discorso per le amputazioni volontarie di genitali o altre estremità. Nelle scene underground (soprattutto americane) si ricorre all’aiuto dei cosiddetti cutters. Si tratta di medici o di veterinari che si prestano a tagliare varie parti del corpo dei candidati alla nuova vita da amputati. E i tagli sono di natura squisitamente diversa. C’è chi decide di farsi portar via entrambi i testicoli, o i capezzoli, chi opta per sezionare il pene a metà, chi ancora si fa incidere il pene lasciando intatto il glande, chi vuole farsi asportare i lobi dell’orecchio. La domanda comincia a formarsi nelle vostre menti: perché?
Scorrendo velocemente il sito Bmezine.com, dedicato alle modificazioni corporali, c’è da rimanere allibiti. Sembra non ci sia freno alle fantasie macabre che vogliono il nostro fisico diverso da ciò che è.
Per rispondere alla domanda che sorge spontanea (“Perché?”) bisogna chiarire che queste modificazioni rimandano a un preciso bisogno psicologico. Non si tratta – soltanto – di strane psicopatologie o di mode futili: questa gente cambia il proprio corpo permanentemente a seconda del desiderio che prova. Se vogliamo vederla in modo astratto, anche le donne che si bucano i lobi dell’orecchio per inserirci un orecchino stanno facendo essenzialmente la stessa cosa: modificano il loro corpo affinché sia più attraente. Ma mentre l’orecchino è socialmente accettato, il tagliarsi il pene in due non lo è. Lo spunto interessante di queste tecniche è che sembra che il corpo sia divenuto l’ultima frontiera dell’identità, quella soglia che ci permette di proclamare quello che siamo. In un mondo in cui l’estetica è assoggettata alle regole di mercato, ci sono persone che rifiutano il tipo di uniformità fisica propugnata dai mass media per cercare il proprio individualismo. Potrà apparire una moda, una ribellione vacua e pericolosa. Ma di sicuro è una presa di posizione controcorrente che fa riflettere sui canoni di bellezza che oggi sembrano comandare i media e influenzare le aspirazioni dei nostri giovani. Nel regno simbolico odierno, in cui tutto sembra possibile, anche la mutilazione ha diritto di cittadinanza. Può indurre al ribrezzo, o all’attrazione: sta a voi decidere, e sentire sulla vostra pelle le sensazioni che provate. Certo questo mondo è strano; e gli strani la fanno da padrone.
