Two things first – firstly, an interview with Stephen Fry, a Star Trek review and news on the anti-vaccination portrayal on Australia’s Channel 7 news – all on the just released Skeptic Zone Podcast.
Secondly, head to Dr Karen Stollznow’s article called Skepticism: Going Out Of Business? Enjoy the read.
A little while back I got an email, from someone saying that they were from a newspaper from the US and they wanted to interview me. Usually I’m snowed under with emails and try my best – this one looked particularly interesting since it was so far away from me, and I zipped back with a ‘sure, go ahead’.
They sent four, five questions and I responded… and that was it. Maybe it was published, maybe not – I never found out and since it was less than a handful of questions… I suspect I just wasn’t controversial enough or something? Perhaps I didn’t meet their expectations of a stereotype, maybe my answers were just plain pathetic. I don’t know. I suspect in a way, one contributing factor was my not giving the ‘right’ answer to a rather funny question about voodoo – I wasn’t very condemning, because I had an interest in the topic beyond a standard ‘definition’. It was still an odd question:
Would you support the rights to teach children voodoo? How does this right differ (if at all) between parents, adoptive parents, public schools, private schools etc?
Uh huh. Kind of loaded, isn’t it? And it made me realise that there isn’t much understanding of what voodoo is – let alone how many commercialised products there are out there that use ‘voodoo’ imagery…
The Herald Sun – Kids Free 2B Kids Protests Against Smiggle Voodoo Pencil Case:
A VOODOO pencil case could be pulled from the shelves after child advocates claimed it encouraged bullying. The controversial canvas Smiggle voodoo pencil case includes a space to 
put a small photo, but critics say it is simply encouraging children to hex their friends.
On nearby shelves are black and red heart-shaped pins ready to stick into the body-shaped case.
Kids Free 2B Kids director Julie Gale said the voodoo pencil product was typical of companies who produced inappropriate products without thinking about the consequences.
I have about five different ‘commercialised voodoo’ toys now, that are cute, artistic and aimed at the teen or child market. Welcome to a world where anything can be sold, it seems. They’re still selling notebooks, mousepads and other items with stylised voodoo dolls on them – and here’s me in the picture with my plastic voodoo doll luggage tag!
Personally, when I’m needing some notepaper that makes the person next to me in the lecture theatre do a double-take, I highly recommend Smiggle. They also have some very creatively-shaped pens, which feature no paranormal references whatsoever. But yes, selling pins to stick into stuff? It’s a child-to-teen orientated store, and I guess in an ideal world, a kid is not going to pop sharps into other kids. Or do that freaky thing where you slip them under the first few painless layers of skin on your fingers and have them poking out and run around on the playground screaming ‘I’VE CAUGHT PIN POX!!!!’
Also you can see in the picture of me at the top of this blog post, one of my favourite ‘charms’ that use ‘voodoo dolls’ – each one has a different ‘lucky charm’ attached to it. They’re selling for about ten dollars each around the country – I’ve seen them in music stores and in toy stores. The site for the ‘charms’ cover a range of topics, including health, love, luck, protection and punishment.
If you’re a musician, if you’re a student studying for exams, if you’re… erm, trying to look innocent whilst doing evil and alluding to a product name that is already copyrighted by another company for a rather popular iconic figure, there’s one called ‘Hallo Kitty’ … well, there’s one for every consumer’s need for a lucky charm. Here’s some of the research on lucky charms that I’ve done regarding their popular appeal and influence.
I guess the ‘punishment’ element is what is common amongst all of these commercialised, bastardisations of the voodoo doll. I can see the point of the complaint made, saying that they could be used as a bullying method. Having your face put onto something symbolically and have it treated badly would, even if you thought it was just nonsense and had no influence on you physically, could possibly feel a little disturbing regardless. I still like the aesthetic elements of the dolls; as you can see, I have picked up a few of the examples for my own interest and research (a fellow researchers of paranormal beliefs has one I gave to them, attached to a zip drive!).
But like defacing a photograph or drawing a caricature of a fellow student, I would be sensitive as to how it might result in a justifiable complaint, regardless if you kept in mind the additional ‘spiritual’ or ‘paranormal’ elements that someone might have about the doll. After all, they’re hardly the most ‘pleasant’ looking thing to find, even though companies are clearly spicing them up to sell.
Oh, my official answer to the question Would you support the rights to teach children voodoo? How does this right differ (if at all) between parents, adoptive parents, public schools, private schools etc? is:
Firstly, voodoo is a religious belief and I’m under the impression that the US Government have particular regulations regarding the teaching of religion? I would have to suggest that someone check with their respective school’s position on the teaching of religion in classes. Are there many voodoo churches in the USA? I’ve never met a practitioner, personally – we don’t seem to have it in Australia perhaps, or not the parts I’ve worked in. I should imagine that factual information about a wide variety of religions would be responsibly taught in most religious education classes in Australia to help promote an educated youth, from a variety of authoritative sources.
Yeah. Boring answer. Yet I kept in mind that for some people, this is a spiritual belief and a child could also be teased for coming from a cultural background that believed in voodoo (even if, perhaps, they didn’t believe in it themselves). Guess that was how I thought was the best way to deal with it – what would your answer be?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have no real answer, but it is probably better to deal with delusional side effects of strange conclusions, than if they were selling do it yourself killer robots, or gene doping pens. I guess what I am saying is, that it could be worse. There was a girl who sat behind me in middle school and she liked to click her stiletto switch blade into the back of my chair during math class.
Paul Mohr
“she liked to click her stiletto switch blade into the back of my chair during math class.” got her number? my kinda girl.
IMO its no worse then teaching kids religion, it all teaches kids to be bigoted and never address the real issues they well face in life , but fair is fair so long as cult groups/originated morons can preach why not voodoo too.
I kind of like the fact that you took the approach that it’s a cultural thing and that if people are going to think that a skeptic is all about whipping out an ouija board and scaring the shit out of kids, they better think twice. I mean, what if people started saying you were in fact DOING witchcraft rather than TALKING about how there were fallacies and assumptions and historical elements that led people to believe it?
I think that’s one of the big things that skeptics don’t realise when you’re trying to teach this stuff to kids – that people might get the ‘wrong end of the stick’ and think that you’re all about MINDLESS ATTACKING or ‘running the risk’ of having demons and stuff appear, because ‘well, I don’t believe it, so it’s not going to happen’. Belief is a really really predominant thing and you have to tread with an intelligent foot.
I think you may have blown a very big opportunity there, but since you don’t seem to have noted the name of the paper, we might never know. That ‘voodoo’ question could imply that they were attacking “Christianists” for trying to get Christianity taught in the public schools — something which is not just ‘against regulations’ but against the Constitution but that doesn’t stop them trying. If so, if the paper was seriously offering an opportunity for a skeptic to be heard, this is so relatively rare in the US that it deserved a more careful answer.
On the other hand they could have been playing into the Christianist movement and the (innocuously named but deadly) “parental rights movement” and would have used a negative answer as a way to support a parent’s right to prohibit teaching children about evolution or homosexuality.
On the third hand, (that’s the one I use to rub my ‘third eye’ with when it gets dust in it) I am not sure it ever makes sense to answer a questionaire without having some idea whose asking and how they would use my answers at any time. (Think of the father who gets the ‘where did we come from question,’ gives the whole sex lecture, then asks why the kids ask. “But, Daddy, the Jones boys come from California, Ahmed came from Pakistan, I was just wondering about us.”)
“A US Newspaper” could mean the NY TIMES, a ‘supermarket throwaway that includes one article a week, or STORMFRONT, the US neo-Nazi paper. I certainly would never answer such a questionaire without, over the next few weeks, googling the paper and seeing how my words were used.
Sorry to be so critical. In fact, your answer was brilliant in that it keeps itself from being misused. But the possible missed opportunity — given the relative inhospitableness of US papers to skepticism in general — bothers me.
Hiya Jim – a few responses to your comment:
1) It was a regional paper in the USA. When I wrote my answers to them, they said that they were ‘preliminary questions’ – and then they didn’t write back. I did indeed ask FIRST before answering, about their paper and got an answer that was vague ( I then “Googled” the name and found that it was just a fairly well-recieved local rag from the East Coast US – something that I didn’t mention in this blogpost. What got me was I couldn’t find anything by the journalist already printed, which led me to think maybe they were a cadet reporter?).
2) When I contacted the paper a week later about the ‘prelim qu’ that I answered, and asked if the journalist even worked for them… no answer. For all we know, it may have been a hoax. Meh, it was a few minutes of answers, no biggie. But the sort of questions intrigued me regardless. I had questions like those posed to me in person in the past, so it wasn’t something I was going to pass up for a nice blog entry on an interesting phenomenon!
3) If I ‘blew an opportunity’, then I can only say that I was honest in my answers and it was what I thought about that topic – that’s not something to sneer at, I’d have thought. I’ve had better opportunities since to speak out, so I’m happy enough – especially in more local (Australian) news venues. The only opportunity I think I missed was having a poorly-organised overseas journalist (?), continuing to ask me questions that weren’t matching their expectations, perhaps?
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