FAKIR ME OUT:
Thomas Edison and the First American Film About India
American films about India got off to a humble start in 1902, when the motion picture camera, or kinetoscope as it was called, was only about 15 years old. Produced by Thomas Edison, the short was titled The Hindoo Fakir, described in the Edison Catalog as a “remarkable and mystifying picture.” In it, the Fakir first waves his hand and presto! a pretty female assistant materializes out of thin air. Next he props her on the handles of four swords stuck in the stage, and with a fifth knocks the others over. The assistant though miraculously remains suspended in mid-air until she sprouts butterfly wings and flies away. The audience of the time, hardly familiar yet with moving pictures, and certainly not accustomed as we are to computer-generated special effects, must have been quite impressed, even amazed. Then again, the film must have confirmed everything they thought they already knew about exotic India and its “remarkable and mystifying” Fakir-Yogis.
The only problem is that properly speaking “fakir”–an Arabic word that literally means “poor”– refers to a Sufi mendicant and, by later extension, Indian ascetics and Yogis. But as soon as we English speakers latched on to the word, its meaning began to change. Possibly in part because of its similarity in spelling to the English “faker” (which then encouraged its mispronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable instead of the second), “fakir” came to be associated with all kinds of dubious magicians, faith healers, and finally con men.
American films about India got off to a humble start in 1902, when the motion picture camera, or kinetoscope as it was called, was only about 15 years old. Produced by Thomas Edison, the short was titled The Hindoo Fakir, described in the Edison Catalog as a “remarkable and mystifying picture.” In it, the Fakir first waves his hand and presto! a pretty female assistant materializes out of thin air. Next he props her on the handles of four swords stuck in the stage, and with a fifth knocks the others over. The assistant though miraculously remains suspended in mid-air until she sprouts butterfly wings and flies away. The audience of the time, hardly familiar yet with moving pictures, and certainly not accustomed as we are to computer-generated special effects, must have been quite impressed, even amazed. Then again, the film must have confirmed everything they thought they already knew about exotic India and its “remarkable and mystifying” Fakir-Yogis.
The only problem is that properly speaking “fakir”–an Arabic word that literally means “poor”– refers to a Sufi mendicant and, by later extension, Indian ascetics and Yogis. But as soon as we English speakers latched on to the word, its meaning began to change. Possibly in part because of its similarity in spelling to the English “faker” (which then encouraged its mispronunciation, with the accent on the first syllable instead of the second), “fakir” came to be associated with all kinds of dubious magicians, faith healers, and finally con men.
