Bound by blood: new film highlights Jamaica’s outlawed obeah belief system | Jamaica
A new film from award-winning Jamaican filmmaker Sosiessia Nixon sheds light on Jamaica’s enduring West African tradition of magic and spiritual healing known as obeah.
Nixon’s taut, feature-length thriller, Boiled PeasIt tells the story of Jamaican detective Tessa, who is obsessed with an old murder case.
Tessa’s life begins to turn upside down when it becomes clear that her husband Neil has fallen under the spell of his new maid, Marcia. The story takes a dark turn with the shocking revelation that Marcia has spiked Neil’s food with a secret ingredient: menstrual blood.
“This film focuses on the enduring Jamaican belief in obeah, in which a woman can ‘bind’ a man in a relationship by serving him a traditional pinto bean and meat stew, which, when her menstrual blood is added, becomes a powerful serving of love,” Nixon said.
Nixon hopes the film will spark a dialogue about the tension between Christianity and obeah, which is rooted in the country’s African heritage and is still practiced today despite being outlawed by colonizers in the 1700s.
“The practice of tying a man with a pea remains a huge taboo in Jamaica, and I wanted to open up a conversation. I wanted to look in depth at this belief system. Jamaicans often say that faith kills, faith heals, so no matter what you believe, that’s what’s going to happen. So does this thing actually work?” said Nixon.
Nixon, who hails from St Thomas, an idyllic coastal community on the south-eastern tip of Jamaica sometimes referred to as the “obeah country”, said he was inspired by real experiences.
“Growing up in St. Thomas, I was exposed to a lot of obeah,” Nixon said.
Producer and actress Ava Eagle Brown Jamaica’s Black River film festivalHe said the film will resonate with Caribbean people everywhere. “There’s so much of us in this movie, the things that make us Jamaican, especially if you’re in the diaspora… it brings you back home.”
Brown, who also appears in the film, added: “Some men probably look at their women with suspicion and say, ‘What did you put in my peas?’ “They will ask,” he said. “But seriously, I told my son to make sure he doesn’t eat any woman’s peas!”
Jamaican cultural studies scholar and director Sonjah Stanley Niaah UWI’s Repair Research CenterHe said that belief in peas is linked to the African view that natural elements, including menstruation, have an innate power. The idea was that the red kidney beans would mask the blood so that the fascinated man could not detect it.
Stanley Niaah welcomed the opportunity to explore forms of African spiritualities that he said were often misunderstood after they were denigrated and outlawed by European colonists who associated them with resistance and rebellions among enslaved Africans.
“People in this part of the world are people of African descent, and there is a pantheon of African spirituality that is in our blood, that we inherit… But [today]”African spirituality has no importance, it has no content, it is not taught in schools, we are so afraid of ourselves, we neglect it,” he said.
He added: “What we have now is a very deep, vibrant and long-standing tension between Christian practices and African spirituality. Enslavement was sanctioned by the church. So, some aspects of the legislative architecture in the Caribbean certainly stemmed from the need for enslaved people not to gather together or come together, whether to worship their gods or to plan rebellions. That legislative architecture is very much present even today, when you see the Obeah Act still on the books in Jamaica.”
Stanley Niaah said Jamaica must continue to make films that boldly represent the region, its communities and cultures, even as it grapples with difficult challenges such as rebuilding in the wake of Hurricane Melissa.
Brown, who was forced to cancel this year’s film festival after Hurricane Melissa devastated parts of Black River, where the event is normally held, echoed Stanley Niaah’s sentiments, describing the Stew Peas as “a beacon of hope” as Jamaica’s multibillion-dollar creative industry struggles to recover.
“I had to postpone the Black River film festival this year, which was a real blow because it was part of the way Jamaican creatives were starting to connect with the world, including tie-ins from major networks like Canal+ and Netflix,” he said.
He added: “The hurricane destroyed so much! It destroyed infrastructure, equipment and destroyed some people’s hope. That’s why we need projects like this that show the resilience of Jamaicans and send a message to the world that we are still making music and movies and adding that typical Jamaican green, gold and black tone to entertainment.”
Jackie Jacqueline Jackson, Jamaica’s film commissioner, said films like Stew Peas were “a powerful testament to the resilience, creativity and determination of Jamaica’s creative industry.”
“It’s important to go ahead and show that Jamaica is still open for business. By signaling this, it encourages international productions to return to Jamaica, which positively impacts employment and film production spending,” he added.
