The Seduction of Good Friday

"The Town is Nocera Terinese, and it is situated in Calabria, Italy. It's Good Friday."

With those fateful lines, a poor forgotten village in Southern Italy was shaken awake to world civilization via the film camera. Observed during their traditional Holy Week festivities, the Calabrians were placed into a narrative of tradition-versus-modernity against their will by the rich Northerners who made the now-infamous 1962 psuedocumentary Mondo Cane. In less than three minutes, Mediterranean peasants going about their business were injected into highly foreign socialist and artistic agendas.

"The police try to carry out the wishes of the parish priest, who for several years, has been trying to induce his flock to give up the rites of the vattienti."

The symbolism of this Good Friday rite, opposed by the cosmopolitan, nationalist police (and the unseen priest) but loved by the people, is intriguing in what it ventures to represent. A man, garbed in rustic finery and some kind of laurel (thorned?) runs bare-legged and barefoot through dirt-and-cobblestone streets, carrying a piece of cork inset with pieces of glass with which he scores his legs. He does this in order to stain the street behind him red with his own blood, where a boy, dressed as a monochromatic red Christ-person, follows, attached to the man via a cord tied around the latter's waist (the photo above is taken from Nocera Terinese's Italian-language tourist website, and it looks exactly the same as the event did 46 years ago). What sort of mystery play are these two engaged in? If the child does indeed represent Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha (a particular "view" of Christ, given the forshadowing prevelence of red) who is this man, "invisible" in front of Christ, shedding his blood so that He may walk on it? This is certainly the Calabrians' own allegorical twist on the Gospel incident, given the ambiguity of this living symbol. In this ambiguity is the attraction of the symbol and the play in which it is engaged.

"Nocera Terinese is a poor forgotten village in Calabria. Today, as before, in this manner, they exalt the flagellation of Christ."



It's interesting that today, Nocera Terinese has harnessed its homegrown rite into a cash-generator, using the legacy of Mondo Cane to bring (some) tourist dollars to their little village. Perhaps not all the visitors drawn to the village by the ritual's charm have seen the film, but I'd bet that Mondo Cane indeed injected the image into the media, the popular mind. So much for resistance-through-performance; what was once framed as strict opposition to modernity has been enlisted in its own ranks.

You can watch the original Mondo Cane segment on Nocera Terinese and the vattienti here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QFaTSi6_uO8

And here's a contemporary video camera's view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6MeT84NQp4

As I mentioned before, I was initially surprised as to how little the rite has "changed," as if change were some kind of expected given. The real question is, what did the event look like before 1962? How can we be sure that the "real" event in 2007 isn't just copying, re-enacting, the film's gestures? Once Good Friday is recorded on film, and world history floods into (or out of) this small town, there's no distinction between the event and the visual copy created, how we as modernity grasp the image. The mind's eye (in the most literal sense) knows Nocera Terinese through the lens of the psuedocumentary.

Maybe it's not as cut-and-dry as "authentic" or "fraud," but somewhere in between. It's obvious that Nocera Terinese is aware of the interest that its culture generates for the rest of the world; otherwise there would be no reason to pimp the event on the web. This interest, most likely, is due in large part to Mondo Cane, that is; that particular depiction, recorded at that specific time, sometime in the early 1960s. As this scrap of film would prove to be Nocera Terinese's double in the world media imagination, every color, every face, and every detail of that day, present on that filmstock, contributed to the modern imaginary of the Good Friday event, the image that glides through the minds of tourists when Nocera Terinese comes to mind. Nocera Terinese knows this, and thus they are seduced by their own double, and, for better or for worse, takes on its likeness. So, every spring, do these Calabrians enact an ancient rite, or commemorate a recent one? Maybe both.