What constitutes a superstition?
Viewers of this documentary will probably identify or agree with some of the religious assumptions or herbal prescriptions of the treaters, but they are likely to see other beliefs and practices as superstition. Regis suggests that "superstition" is highly relative: "Superstition is a label that people usually put on someone else's religion. So if you don't understand someone else's beliefs, then that's superstition."
Even in these rural communities of Southern Louisiana, there is much variation in what is labeled superstition. Every person that knows about traiteurs defines what they are and do differently. Although Lawrence and Miss Ella readily admit that witchcraft or "crossing-up" exists and that they treat for it, if asked about it, Shannon would denounce its existence or refuse to have anything to do with it. Some practitioners and patients view anything outside of herbal teas, prayers and the laying-on of hands as utter superstition. The commercialized, week-long candle work used by Lawrence and Pop Joe F. also is seen by many as superstitious. Some locals even profess that anyone who claims to be a traiteur yet works with witchcraft (either for or against it) is not a legitimate traiteur.
How does one judge the authenticity of tradition?
A common stereotype about folk healing systems is that they are static and unchanging. When talking about tradition, people generally tend to romanticize the past. In the last segments of the documentary, the evolving nature of this system is explored. For Barry Ancelet, adapting traiteur to the needs and resources of the 1990s is an on-going process that must incorporate the technology of the times:
Somebody had to figure out: can [traiteur] work on the telephone? Can this work on videotape? Can this work on a fax? Can this work on e-mail? Because though faith healing and folk medicine are ancient, they are also absolutely contemporary. They are absolutely modern. They don't go away — they constantly re-negotiate themselves to function in whatever new reality is occurring.As the traditional evolves in response to the "outside" world, viewers may question the authenticity of its practitioners. How much can a tradition change before it becomes something else? With a practical look at this question, Helen Regis asserts, "Living traditions are constantly changing. People have to use their knowledge, their faith, their practices to deal with their real-life problems, their real-life circumstances. So of course, it's got to change."
Shannon, the twenty-eight year old Cajun traiteuse, is a case study in adaptation. A modern woman, who both herds cattle and does contract work on the computer for a tourist bureau yet maintains a strong love for the traditional, uses modern language to voice her hesitancy about treating one of her grandmother's friends for shingles. Realizing that the treatment, which involves anointing sores with chicken blood, may seem a tad odd to the 1990's patient, she considers, "She might be really offended by that," yet tells her grandma, "If she really wants to have it done, well, I'll do it, but it's gonna be up to her." Giving this woman a choice instead of assuming her need for the treatment, Shannon illustrates the malleability of tradition as it confronts changing societal norms for belief and behavior.
How does TV affect a traditional healing system?
How does a filmmaker represent the reality of a personality as he/she sees it?
The issue of authenticity becomes more concrete when analyzing it in the context of Lawrence's practice. Before the filming of this documentary, Lawrence had already experienced considerable community fame as a result of two programs broadcast in his immediate locale by a cable access channel. First, an interview with him discussing his traiteur gift appeared on a Cajun French morning talk show. Then, the same station ran an interview with him in English in which he was also shown treating.
Because he had been away from the community for a few years, Lawrence had practically no clientele when we first began interviewing him. The first cable television program brought him around twenty patients; however, after the English-language program, a virtual deluge of patients from up and down the bayou began calling and requesting help. Does the way in which Lawrence obtained his clientele alter his legitimacy to you as a traditional healer? Does it taint your initial impression of what a Houma Indian traiteur should be like?
Questions about authenticity are hardly new in the field of anthropology. For Anthropologist Donald Joralemon, watching on a TV series the effects of the "New Age" movement and commercialization on Eduardo Calderón, a Peruvian shaman, invoked in him embarrassment, anger, betrayal, and superiority (Joralemon, 1990). After closer inspection of the situation (and of his own emotions), Joralemon reconsidered the appropriateness of his reaction. After all, in a capitalist world economy, shamans, like everyone else, must adapt to what the market demands if he/she wants to survive. Although Calderón's practice of leading New Age tour groups may not have been what Joralemon considered "authentic" Peruvian shamanism, "for tour members 'authentic' [was] redefined to mean 'effective' (Joralemon 1990)." The validity of Calderón's (and Lawrence's by extrapolation) altered practices was legitimate for the New Agers in that those practices agreed with the pilgrims' ideas of what cross-cultural shamans do, yet they were invalid for anthropologists who had other notions of how Peruvian shamans conduct themselves. Nevertheless, the authenticity of those practices, or the source of their alteration, is legitimate on both accounts, since, after all, it is the healer who determines what must be done to heal.* For Lawrence, questions of authenticity become more complicated when considered in light of issues about the reflexive process of making the documentary.
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* For a more general discussion of authenticity and validity, refer to Richard de Mille's article listed in the bibliography.