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Georges Méliès

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Required reading

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  • Malthête, Jacques (1996). Méliès, images et illusions (in French). Exporégie. ISBN 978-2-9504493-7-5.
  • Ezra, Elizabeth (2000). Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5396-2.
  • Mannoni, Laurent (2020). Méliès: La magie du cinéma (in French). Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-152147-6.
  • Solomon, Matthew (2022). Méliès Boots: Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris. University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/mpub.12196353. ISBN 978-0-472-90295-8. JSTOR 10.3998/mpub.12196353.
  • Malthête-Méliès, Madeleine (2022). Solomon, Matthew (ed.). Magnificent Méliès: The Authorized Biography. Translated by Pero, Kel. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-13258-4.

Use with caution

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Ceechynaa

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Ardi

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Dédée Bazile

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Dédée Bazile (c. 1736 – c. 1816), better known as Défilée-la-folle or simply Défilée, was a Haitian revolutionary and vivandière.

Early life and military career

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Dédée Bazile was born around 1736 near Cap-Français to enslaved parents.[1] At age 18, she was raped and tortured by her enslaver, a colonist.[2] In turn, she had three daughters, Agate Jean, Victorian Jean, and Annesthine, and three sons.[3] Bazile either escaped or her enslaver abandoned her for another woman.[4] In 1796, during the Haitian Revolution, Bazile joined the Indigenous Army as a vivandière who managed a canteen shop. She sold provisions, especially meats, to the soldiers and often marched with them. When they halted, she ordered them to continue, shouting, "Défilez, défilez!" Accordingly, Bazile came to be known as Défilée.[5]

Multiple written accounts state that Défilée exhibited madness, hence the later nickname Défilée-la-folle.[6] She was homeless and publicly spoke to invisible beings, possibly lwa spirits of Haitian Vodou, which contributed to her reputation as a madwoman.[7] The writer Joseph Jérémie associated her madness with a relentlessness in battle: "In her madness she had set herself the task of giving the enemy no rest ... But Défilée could not conceive of existence without a battle, without an ambush on the winding path."[8]

Written accounts attribute her madness to various causes. One given by the descendant Didi Coudol cited Défilée's abandonment by her enslaver for another woman, though the historian Octave Petit rejected this explanation as implausible and violatory.[9] President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot attributed her madness to the slaughter of her parents by French forces. Pascal-Trouillot explained that the event prompted her "wild passion" for General Jean-Jacques Dessalines and caused her to offer sex to the soldiers.[10] An account by Jérémie, quoted by Jean Fouchard and Petit, cited the killing of her relatives. One night, a few of Défilée's brothers and sons,[a] all enlisted in the army, did not return from a party in the mountains of Cahos, Fort-Liberté.[12] They were among nearly 600 Haitians that had been massacred by French soldiers commanded by Donatien Rochambeau. The event traumatized Défilée, though she continued to follow the Indigenous Army with the same determination.[10] Conversely, the laureate in medicine Louis-Joseph Janvier wrote, "Défilée was not absolutely mad". Rather, he felt that the killing of her brothers and sons led only to a "cerebral disturbance".[6]

Gathering the remains of Dessalines

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The French army were defeated in November 1803, and Dessalines proclaimed Haiti's independence the following January. As Emperor, Dessalines enforced plantation labor to promote the economy and began a dictatorship.[7] He disappointed many nouveaux libres—the newly freed 80% of the population—who felt his rule evoked the slavery they had faced before the revolution.[13] Anciens libres—those freed before the revolution, often mulattoes—were angered by his plans to reallocate land to the nouveaux.[14] As well, high-ranking military officials began to object to his rule.[7] Haitians began an insurrection in the south in August 1806, which culminated in his assassination on October 17.[15] Soldiers ambushed Dessalines in Port-Rouge under orders from a clique of Africans and mulattoes, among them his friend Alexandre Pétion. Dessalines was shot, stabbed, stripped, and had his fingers cut off. His corpse was brought to Port-au-Prince, where it was stoned by crowds and said to resemble "scraps" and "shapeless remains".[16]

Multiple modern sources maintain that Défilée gathered the remains of Dessalines for burial.[17] Some suggest that she also carried the remains to a cemetery,[18] or that she led his burial.[19] The historian Thomas Madiou stated in his account that Défilée was wandering when she found a group of children stoning Dessalines and shouting joyfully. She asked them who the corpse belonged to, and when they answered, "her wild eyes became calm" and "a glimmer of reason shone on her features".[20] The historian and claimed eyewitness Beaubrun Ardouin, who was ten in 1806, stated that Défilée found Dessalines at noon. She was a madwoman, but in a moment of lucidity and compassion, she lamented alone beside him.[20] The scholar Anténor Firmin maintained that Dessalines lay abandoned in the street for two days before Défilée found him, but the scholar Jana Evans Braziel found this incredulous.[21]

Madiou further stated that Défilée reassembled the remains of Dessalines, gathered them into a sack, and carried them to a cemetery. Pétion later sent soldiers to bury him for a generous sum.[22] Conversely, Ardouin claimed to have met Défilée and rejected Madiou's suggestion that she could have carried him: "Perhaps Madiou did not recall that Dessalines was hefty, weighing perhaps 70 to 80 kilos: how could a rather weak Défilée carry such a weight?"[20] According to Ardouin, Pétion's soldiers had carried Dessalines, and she followed them to the Trousses-Côtés cemetery.[22] The historian Joan Dayan also considered it implausible that Défilée carried his remains alone, but suggested that a madman named Dauphin assisted her.[20] Ardouin further stated that Défilée left Dessalines's funeral ceremony last and, for a while afterwards, returned to his grave to spread flowers over it.[22] Jérémie added that Défilée composed the earliest elegy to Dessalines and often sang it while kneeling before his grave after kissing it three times.[23]

An embodied, fully immanent ritual—Défilée's gathering of Dessalines's remains—traverses and confounds boundaries dividing body and spirit, state and ritual, death and life, gesturing toward infinity.

Jana Evans Braziel, Small Axe[24]

Dayan argued that by gathering the remains of Dessalines, Défilée showed concern for proper burial rites and a fear of the undead. She understood Défilée to have acted as a manbo, a Vodou priestess, who intended to prevent Dessalines from resurrecting. Dayan explained that Vodouists strongly worried that sorcerers might ressurect unburied human remains or use them for harmful magic.[25] The sociologist Sabine Lamour, who believes Défilée buried his remains, further argued that the act constituted an anti-colonial political gesture. Lamour premised that Défilée's identities as a freedwoman, a poor person, a canteen worker, a bereaved person, and a war survivor each suggested a strong commitment to community. In particular, working in a canteen implied serving a larger cause. She argues that by burying the remains of Dessalines, Défilée rejected the sociopolitical erasure he would have faced if left desecrated in the street. Lamour considered the burial an attempt to disccourage Haitians from the colonial practice of bodily desecration: "Défilée invites Haitians to renounce the terror and cruelty to which people were accustomed during slavery, and to rebuild the world with a different outlook. The anciens libres and nouveaux libres would need to give up their enmity in order to establish a new society." Lamour added that Défilée continued to visit his grave while he was deemed a tyrant, his name was banned across the country, and government officials ordered his supporters to be banned from national politics.[26]

Later life and death

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Little is known about Défilée's life after she gathered the remains of Dessalines.[7] She settled in Fort-Saint-Clair, Port-au-Prince, and lived in poverty on welfare spending. She was found dead on a road around 1816. Jérémie claims that Défilée was buried in the city's main cemetery and that her grave had disappeared.[27]

Legacy

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Her lamentation eventually shifted public perception of the assassination of Dessalines and led Haitians to express sorrow for it;[28] Hénock Trouillot's 1967 play,[29] Massillon Coicou's 1906 play.[30] Some writers interpreted the event as a faith healing miracle for both Défilée and the Haitian people; Windsor Bellegarde's statement. Other writers interpreted the event as an exorcism and loosely compared Défilée to Mary Magdalene. Oral tradition remembers Défilée, but unlike written folklore, does not sanctify the violence committed against Dessalines.[31] The Haitian people sang a song written in Défilée's perspective out of regret for his assassination. Dayan dates it to Henri Christophe's rule over northern Haiti or Jean-Pierre Boyer's presidency.[32] The drama in the song stems from the suffering in both Défilée's life and the political enviornment, as well as the legend that the spirit of François Mackandal, a Maroon leader, warned Dessalines not to go to Pont-Rouge.[31]

List of sources about Défilée, from Madiou's 1846 Histoire d'Haïti to Dayan's 1995 Haiti, History and the Gods.[33] Nationalist nature of some early accounts.[34] Contradictions and gaps in sources.[35] Braziel's interpretation, inspired by Dayan, that Défilée and Dessalines represent marassa-twa.[36] Braziel's interpretation of Défilée as a lieu de mémoire.[37]

Early timeline of Défilée's depictions in media.[38] Depiction in Coicou's play and how Coicou rejects earlier literary interpretations of her and Dessalines.[39] Depiction in Christian Werleigh's 1927 poem in the literary magazine Stella.[40]

John F. Matheus and Clarence Cameron White's 1932 opera Ouanga! follows Dessalines, who as Emperor, adopts autocracy, a form of government prevalent in Europe, and rejects Vodou. He abandons Défilée, his longtime lover, for Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité, a member of the elite. These decisions alienate his officers and soldiers, who ultimately assassinate him.[41] In his 1936 play Emperor of Haiti, Langston Hughes rewrote Défilée as the character Azelea. She is Dessalines's wife while they are both slaves and helps him prepare to lead the revolution once it begins. As Emperor, Dessalines evicts Azalea from his palace because she is illiterate. She refuses his offer of a pension out of pride and becomes a poor fruit vendor in a coastal village. After his assassination, she and a group of fishermen find his body, and she covers him with a shawl. Azelea and the final scene were part of Hughes's critique of paternalism in Haitian politics and his argument that blue-collar workers would determine the country's future.[42]

Manno Charlemagne's 1994 song "Defile" and RAM's 2008 song of the same name describe Défilée as courageous and patriotic and encourage listeners to follow her example.[7] On January 31, 2020, the Haitian feminist organization Solidarite Fanm Ayisyèn (SOFA) held a gathering titled Ann Refè Jès Défilée a! (Let Us Repeat Défilée's Gesture!) to commemorate the victims of the 2018 La Saline massacre. Family of the victims and activists from human rights organizations such as SOFA attended the gathering.[43]

Notes

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  1. ^ Sources count between one to three brothers and two to three sons.[11]

References

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  1. ^ Lamour 2022, p. 65.
  2. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 40; Knight & Gates Jr. 2016.
  3. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 65.
  4. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 40; Braziel 2005, pp. 65–66.
  5. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 40; Lamour 2022, p. 66.
  6. ^ a b Braziel 2005, p. 66.
  7. ^ a b c d e Knight & Gates Jr. 2016.
  8. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 44; Lamour 2022, p. 67.
  9. ^ Braziel 2005, pp. 65–66.
  10. ^ a b Dayan 1998, p. 44.
  11. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 44; Braziel 2005, p. 65; Lamour 2022, p. 65.
  12. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 44; Braziel 2005, pp. 65–66.
  13. ^ Knight & Gates Jr. 2016; Lamour 2022, p. 68.
  14. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 24–25; Lamour 2022, p. 68.
  15. ^ Lamour 2022, p. 68.
  16. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 17; quoted in Braziel 2005, p. 67.
  17. ^ Wilks 2008, pp. 1–2; Clitandre 2018, p. 68; Fradinger 2023, p. 143.
  18. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 68; Stieber 2020, p. 318.
  19. ^ Knight & Gates Jr. 2016; Lamour 2022, p. 62.
  20. ^ a b c d Dayan 1998, p. 41.
  21. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 68.
  22. ^ a b c Dayan 1998, p. 41; Braziel 2005, p. 68.
  23. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 45–46.
  24. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 71.
  25. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 45.
  26. ^ Lamour 2022, pp. 69–75.
  27. ^ Braziel 2005, pp. 65–66; Lamour 2022, p. 67.
  28. ^ Dayan 1998, p. 40.
  29. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 40–42.
  30. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 41–42.
  31. ^ a b Dayan 1998, p. 42.
  32. ^ Dayan 1998, pp. 42–43.
  33. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 62.
  34. ^ Braziel 2005, pp. 63–65.
  35. ^ Braziel 2005, p. 63.
  36. ^ Braziel 2005, pp. 69–71.
  37. ^ Braziel 2005, pp. 75–76.
  38. ^ Stieber 2020, pp. 224–226.
  39. ^ Stieber 2020, p. 226.
  40. ^ Stieber 2020, pp. 235, 237–239.
  41. ^ André, Bryan & Saylor 2012, pp. 122–126, 128–129.
  42. ^ Farooq 2016, pp. 177–178.
  43. ^ Lamour 2022, p. 62.

Bibliography

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