Spirit Of The Mask

The Spirit of the Mask, hosted by author Wade Davis (The Serpent and the Rainbow), looks at the significance of masks in Native American rituals, focusing on the tribes of the Northwest Coast. Nicely filmed dramatic re-enactments of Inuit and Kwakiutl ceremonies and initiation rites provide more eye candy than insight into the relationships between Native Americans and the supernatural, but present-day footage of potlatch ceremonies featuring masked dancers is consistently interesting. Ranging from the sacred to the slapstick, masks might take the form of a revered creature such as an eagle, or large-nostriled creations known as the "snot nose" masks. The program drops a few notches during a visit to Big Sur, California where silly white people say that "masking...enables us to merge into other physical and spiritual dimensions." (Big Sur, of course, has been a long-standing lodestone for non-traditional Americans who come up with extraordinarily bizarre rationales for engaging in their favorite sport of encounter group-grope.) At its best, however, Spirit of the Mask offers an interesting glimpse into the Northwest Coast people's elaborate spiritual traditions built around the mask. Recommended. (Available from most distributors.)