Voodoo doll gives Sarkozy pain in the neck

DO Voodoo dolls work? If you make a doll to represent, say, your enemy, and you start poking it with a pin, will that person feel pain?

Currently, one of the latest hot selling toys in France is a voodoo doll of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The stuffed doll, which features the president's likeness, comes with a set of pins and an instruction manual on how to inflict curses on him.

Sarkozy is not amused, and is suing the producer of the doll, which he says is an affront to his reputation and a misuse of his personal image.

According to a BBC news report, 20,000 dolls were produced by publishers K&B, to let folks vent their frustration on what they didn't like about Mr Sarkozy's policies, said a company official.

When you stick the pins into the puppet doll, it will scream out his most famous quotes, such as, “Get lost you pathetic asshole!”; his words to a bystander who refused to shake his hand at a farm show last year.

Mr Sarkozy may be relieved to know that genuine voodoo worshippers do not stick pins in dolls representing their enemies to curse them from afar. This practice was started by Hollywood! Still the hot selling soft toy is proving a pain in the neck. His lawyer Thierry Herzog wrote to publishers K&B stating that "Nicolas Sarkozy has instructed me to remind you that, whatever his status and fame, he has exclusive and absolute rights over his own image."

Western media, however, operate on the understanding that once you run for public office and put yourself in the limelight, your image doesn't belong to you any more. It becomes fair game for cartoonists, reporters and just about anyone who wants to insult you. (Think of US presidential candidate Obama being constantly insulted by his rival McCain's team.)

Of course, in well-behaved places like Singapore, political leaders have to be treated politely, or else... No one would dream of even drawing and publishing a caricature, much less make a voodoo doll of them!

Voodoo originated in West Africa, and means "spirit" in the local language. It probably evolved there from ancient traditions of animism, or the belief that the spirits of ancestors can inhabit the body of living humans and animals (read more in Things Fall Apart, a 1959 novel by Chinua Achebe).

Anyone can become possessed by the spirits, who offer help to the living in the form of good harvest, luck and protection from evil. The religion followed the African slaves who were captured and sent to the Americas in the 17th and 18th Century. Today, it thrived in Haiti, and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

In this aspect, the core beliefs of voodoo and other traditional West African tribal religions are somewhat similar to Chinese ancestor worship. We also have mediums who could be possessed by the spirits or even by minor deities, who then communicate to the living, such as giving advice and even hints of winning lottery numbers.