Page 54 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

“Don’t Ask Questions, Just Observe!” 39

are] fanatics in other religions also, but they do not attack us. (Mãe Stella,
in Campos 2003, 60)

One can easily see what lies at the heart of Mãe Stella’s concerns. In her
perception the Candomblé of the public sphere is moving eerily close to
what Jean Baudrillard (2001) would call a simulacrum. Not only has the
omnipresence of Candomblé imagery outside the terreiro walls severed this
imagery from priestly control over the production of meaning; the power
of the public forms of Candomblé is such that these forms cannot be dis-
missed as “mere imitations.” They have become a reality on their own,
producing—in the way of the simulacrum—their own reality effects.
Numerous examples come to mind: Joãozinho da Goméia, a priest from
Salvador who already in the 1950s stirred up the nightlife in Rio de Janeiro
by taking his troupe of initiates to perform their rituals and dances in
fancy nightclubs (cf. Lody and Silva 2000); the popular TV talk show in
the 1970s, where a possessed medium was invited over, which then sent the
whole studio audience—including the talk show host—in trance in front
of a nationwide TV audience (cf. Maggie 1992); the initiates who were
found singing sacred texts copied from an ethnographic book (cf. Silva
1995); the woman who told me she became possessed by a spirit when lis-
tening to a carnival song on the radio in which the name of an orixá was
mentioned; the awe-instilling artworks of the Bahian photographer Mario
Cravo Neto who makes ample use of Candomblé as a source of inspiration,
and who, in the words of one critic, is a “magician” himself, “capable to
capture the imponderable mystery beyond the mere images of an initiation
religion” (Ildásio Tavares, in Cravo Neto 2004). 4
In all of these instances, distinctions between “true” and “false,” “orig-
inal” and “copy,” “real” and “imaginary,” “sacred” and “profane” lose their
meaning, causing havoc in the regimes of truth that buttress Mãe Stella’s
religious views (Baudrillard 2001, 171).

Seeking to Undo the Work of the Simulacrum

In Simulacras and Simulations (2001), Baudrillard describes the responses
of societies where the dynamics of simulation are at work as follows:

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full
meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality;
of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation
of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where
the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken