The demythification of Magun

"An evil man makes his race bad even when that race is filled with angels; but a race is a race and a man a man."

This is a quote I got from Thunderbolt (Magun), A Mainframe Yoruba movie on the subject of magun, the superstitious ideology that curbs unfaithfulness. As much as I would like to be discussing why a man's action has effect on his race or whatever group he identifies with like how a catholic girl getting pregnant having an abortion and them marrying a divorcee might make people think catholic girls don't hold true to their Christian beliefs. That said, what I intend to rant about is how adultery is handled in the society and how this is another level in which women and men are differentially treated.

PLOT: A young married woman decides to go back and finish her uncompleted NYSC programme a compulsory year of service to to the country after one finishes from the university but gets deployed to a rural city far from her husband and child. The husband feels insecure as he believes his wife is very beautiful and would command many male attention and in his sour of jealousy he laced her with Magun after he believed rumours of her continuous affairs with co workers and a particular doctor. The film actually addresses the concept of a spiritual aspect to our existence that is slowly been eradicated by our lust after western civilisation i.e are Yoruba mythology and superstitions actually true?

MAGUN: A sort of voodoo charm (for lack of a better word) to prove/punish adultery and in the many superstitions surrounding it, if a woman 'infected' with magun becomes intimate with any man either the man or herself and the man crosses to the life beyond or remain alive and be worth no more than vegetables. The situation can only be remedied if the aggrieved husband was ready to forgive the cheating or in the case of the movie the not cheating wife.

Now magun from what I know about it can only be placed on women albeit there are love potions that a woman can use to enslave her husband. The fact that this potentially deadly mythology is only in place for unfaithful women causes me to think about the time it might have been invented and what the plight of women might have been then when it comes to adultery but the consolation to that is times have changed but looking at the modern and globalised society we live in today I still see discrepancies as to if a woman cheated to if a man cheated.

There is shame for a woman if she is found to have multiple affairs but a man is a conqueror if he can juggle a wife and three mistresses. But I am not trying to remove shame from a woman who cheats because that would be accepting something of which I am very much against but to put into our society shame for men who are unfaithful. Equality isn't about being able to do the same thing but about being able to take same amount of responsibility for the same action.