The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup: 27 minutes
During this weekend event, held every March in Sweetwater, Texas, thousands of rattlesnakes are hunted and captured on local ranches by residents of the town and by people who travel to the area from as far away as Hawaii. The snakes are taken to a coliseum, tossed into pits, milked, butchered, skinned, and eaten. But there's more to this ritual than meets the eye. Participants in the Roundup point to the story of Adam and Eve as "historical" justification for their actions. The night before the Saturday roundup activities begin, the video artist visits the coliseum where it all takes place, a "men only" event that puts her in danger of being gang raped. Any woman who enters the coliseum that night, she is told, could get herself "lined-balled." Perhaps it is more than snakes that the roundup purports to control.

Rape is one way to keep women down. Objectification is another. In the Miss Snake Charmer contest, the girls try earnestly to be the perfect woman, and when asked about their ambitions by the Master of Ceremonies, one answers "I think it don't matter how she looks, if she's purdy or if she's not so purdy; it's just the way how she carries herself." Like the snakes, the girls are stripped of their power. The roundup reveals that myth is alive and well in this contemporary, if somewhat bizarre, West Texas ritual, and exposes the explicit connections between religion, misogyny, and male domination of a difficult environment.