An inseparable part of any Mystical India setting (and in many Middle Eastern and North African settings too, especially Egypt), the snake charmer — invariably depicted wearing a turban — sits in a Lotus Position and plays an oriental-sounding melody on his pungi, hypnotizing a snake (usually a cobra) sitting in a wicker basket. More than just mere street performers, they often have the ability to exert complete control over any snake with their Mind-Control Music — or, for that matter, over any animals or objects that vaguely resemble snakes, such as vines or ropes. In more comedic settings, any character can spontaneously acquire a snake charmer's abilities simply by grabbing a flute and putting on a turban.
Note that despite a common misconception, real-life snake charmers don't literally hypnotize the snake with their music. Snakes can't hear the melody since they lack an outer ear (though they can sense the vibrations made by sound), and they aren't being hypnotized, either. What really happens is that the snake perceives the movements of the performer and his flute as a threat, and assumes an upright, warning stance, tracking the end of the flute as if it was the head of a rival snake.
A Sub-Trope of Magical Flutist. Compare Music Soothes the Savage Beast, when music is used to make a wild animal calm down. Contrast Hypnotic Snake, which is about the snake being the one with the hypnotic power. Both tropes can be considered inversions of the other. This trope can also be considered a case of Beat Them at Their Own Game.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid has a brief scene where Lucoa (whose true form is a massive Feathered Serpent) is talking on the phone and starts dancing back and forth when she hears the sound of Shouta practicing his recorder for school.
Comic Books
- Asterix: Asterix and the Magic Carpet: Some snake charmers are seen when Asterix and company visit India.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the Donald Duck story "No Such Varmint", Donald discovers that he is completely useless at everything except snake charming. This proves handy when the Ducks run into a gigantic Sea Serpent that responds positively to Donald's musical talents.
- Marc Dacier: The first or second book has Marc meet a snake charmer, who explains to him how the trick really works. According to him, it involves physically hitting the snake with the flute until the animal learns to fear it, freezing at its sight and following its moves.
- "Medusa (1952)": Elfreda presents herself as a snake dancer who makes her living touring with the circus. In truth, she's a goddess in her Native American village, who, bestowed with various powers related to snakes, sometimes leaves the village to avenge a killed snake. Her control over snakes is partially inherent and partially the result of training and at least one of her snakes was a human before she transformed him.
- Nick Knatterton: Snake charmers appear in The Indian Diamond Suitcase — it turns out Nick himself is a dab hand at this.
- Nero: Whenever Nero visits India — even if he's only there for a pitstop in the harbour — he always meets a lot of fakirs and there's always a snake charmer sitting there. Specific albums where this happens are Beo De Verschrikkelijke (Beo The Terrible), Operatie Koekoek (Operation Cuckoo), De Kromme Cobra (The Crooked Cobra), De Matras van Madras (The Mattress of Madras), De Neroberg (The Nero Mountain).
Fan Works
- Danganronpa: Komm Susser Tod: Iori Jabami is the Ultimate Snake Charmer, and carries around a pungi that he uses on occasion. Despite his supreme talent, as Japan doesn't have a rich history with snake charming, he is plagued by self-doubt and a desire to prove himself.
Eastern Animation
- Podróże Kapitana Klipera: Captain Kliper brings one of these on board of his ship for help with untangling a huge knot of ropes.
Films — Animated
- The Chipmunk Adventure: Brittany and Jeanette use the song "Getting Lucky" to charm a bunch of angry snakes into dancing, distracting the cobras long enough to grab the Chipmunk and Chippette dolls that the snakes were guarding.
- Dumbo: In the Pink Elephants on Parade segment, there is a snake charmer elephant who transforms a passing camel-elephant into a cobra.
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: One appears during the Heffalumps and Woozles sequence.
- Sahara: Omar is a human snake charmer who uses his magic flute to control snakes. One of the snakes, Eva, tries to escape him. Little does she know that snakes that hear the flute's music are as good as prisoner to Omar. When he plays, his music enchants her to stay and dance with his other snakes.
Films — Live-Action
- At the end of Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy while playing in an Egyptian nightclub, Bud picks up a pungi and charms two snakes out of a giant urn, which turns out to be the costumed hands of an attractive woman who starts making out with him. Lou sees this, picks up a pungi, and charms out two snakes for himself - except this time they're real snakes.
- The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland: During the "Together Forever" sequence, Elmo is pretending to be a snake charming by playing a flute while his sentient blanket, Blanket, acts like a snake.
- The Battle Wizard: Zhong Ling-erh is a young sorceress-in-training who can command and control snakes by whistling, and hides hundreds upon hundreds of snakes in her sleeves. She's introduced to audience fondling a dozen reptiles draped all over both her hands, and later in the film she can even launch poisonous snakes from her robes like projectiles as weapons.
- Combined with blatant Fanservice in the Fritz Lang movie The Indian Tomb (1959). A woman is being sacrificed to the snake goddess, so she throws off her robe to reveal a Theiss Titillation Theory bikini and dances to mesmerize the cobra which is her means of execution. It works until she stumbles and the cobra rears to strike, but fortunately a watching Indian prince had been quite mesmerized by her performance as well, and saves her life.
- The Lair of the White Worm: The vampires are Snake People who can be charmed by bagpipes.
- The Master of Disguise: One of Pistachio's tests is whether or not he can imitate a snake charmer. Once he gets into character, he plays "Songbird" by Kenny G on his recorder and has a snake thoroughly pacified.
- Octopussy: Bond's contact Vijay is posing as a snake charmer in the marketplace. He comments that it is a really bad cover because he hates snakes.
Gamebooks
- Sorcery!: The Seven Serpents: You can encounter Manata the Snake Charmer, who lives in an underground pit with his numerous pet snakes, which he keeps in line by playing his bamboo flute. If you try intimidating Manata or draw a weapon on him, you risk falling under Manata's magical tune... at which point you realize all his snakes used to be human adventurers who attempted challenging the powerful charmer, just like you.
Literature
- Hitty, Her First Hundred Years: After Hitty the doll is accidentally dropped by her original owner Phoebe in India, she's picked up by a snake charmer, who uses her as a prop for his cobra to slither around while he plays the flageolet.
- Malgudi Days:
- "The Snake-Song": The Talkative Man unwillingly becomes this. After not allowing a beggar inside for food, or even to hear him play the flute, the beggar places a curse on him and walks away. Later, while he's playing the titular tune, a black cobra slithers in through the open door, enchanted by the music. Each time the Talkative Man stops playing the snake-song, the serpent prepares to attack him, and each time he plays it again, the serpent remains still. This forces him to play it all night to survive, until he collapses from exhaustion.
- "Naga": A father goes around houses charming the titular snake to make a living for his son and himself. He eventually runs away with a woman, forcing the son to take up the snake-charming business himself.
Live-Action Television
- Our Miss Brooks: In "King and Brooks", Miss Brooks dreams that she's married to a maharajah. In the dream, Mr. Conklin is a snake charmer practicing his craft outsider her windows. Conklin fails to charm the snake with his music, but makes his necktie curl up.
- Kamen Rider OOO's movie-exclusive form, Burakawani Combo, has a molded cobra sculpted into its helmet; by using a pungi flute he can bring the cobra to life and command it to attack his enemies.
Manhua
- Shows up in a few Old Master Q shorts.
- There's short set in a restaurant where Master Q is a waiter, serving a patron spaghetti, and then the spaghetti starts dancing to the patron's shock. Master Q promptly walks outside where a snake charmer is playing his flute and scolds the guy; "Will you please stop playing with that during dinnertime!?"
- In another strip, Master Q trolls a snake charmer by dumping a bucket of water on the guy. The charmer retaliates using his flute by reanimating a coil of rope to drag Master Q out of hiding.
Music
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis has made "The Streets of Cairo" the unofficial theme song for such a character.
Newspaper Comics
- The Far Side:
- A snake-charmer's cobra is poking his head out of his basket wearing a pair of Groucho glasses, with the charmer thinking "I'm going to kill him."
- A charmer with a normal flute and basket setup stares at the guy next to him with the tuba and very large basket whose lid is starting to shift...
Pro Wrestling
- Parodied on a 2013 episode
of WWE SmackDown where during a six-man tag-team match against 3MB, Santino Marella, partnering with The Great Khali and Hornswoggle, is about to do his Cobra finisher (where he puts on a snake sleeve on his arm) on Heath Slater, only for Jinder Mahal to start playing a flute to force him to use the Cobra on himself like he's charming Santino's arm. And then Khali pulls out his own flute and starts to charm the Cobra into attacking Slater. This lasts until Hornswoggle attacks Jinder and breaks his flute, allowing Khali to play his flute and helping Santino win the match.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- The Complete Adventurer book has a magical item called "Flute of the Snake", which can be used both to control and summon snakes.
- Inverted with the necrophidius, a construct resembling a giant skeletal snake with a fanged, humanoid head. These creatures can sway hypnotically as they approach a victim, maintaining eye contact in a way that can leave their prey unable to do more than stand and stare at their assassin.
Theme Parks
- The Arabia scene in "it's a small world" at the Disney Theme Parks features a man hypnotizing a snake.
Video Games
- AFK Arena: Thesku is a snake charmer who is himself a snake person. He rides on his three serpent companions in the lotus position, using his flute to instruct them on which attacks to use.
- Aladdin: Snake charmers are a type of enemy, who have their snake leap out and bite you if you're near.
- Banjo-Kazooie: In Gobi's Valley, the protagonist duo meets Rubee, a snake charmer. When Kazooie lays eggs in Rubee's basket, Rubee plays his pipe and Histup the Snake will emerge from the basket. Banjo can then climb up Histup to get the Jiggy near the ceiling.
- Densetsu no Stafy 3: Music from record players in the treasure cave will entice the snakes hiding in there to emerge from holes in the wall, letting you use them as platforms until the music stops.
- Dusty Revenge: Aliciaconda controls her giant snake mech by playing her flute.
- EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: A snake charmer is among the fanatic types guarding the desert around Blackberry's pyramid, using his snakes to attack for him.
- Morpheus: You become one within one of the dream worlds in order to distract a cobra that has a Plot Coupon in its basket.
- Petz: Exclusive to the Arabia playscene is a snake basket. Hovering the flute toy around it will trigger an animation where the snake comes out and sways.
- A few installments in the Rampage series allows you to destroy New Delhi. You'll occasionally find snake charmers there, and eat them (both charmer and snake).
- Raving Rabbids: A minigame in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, appropriately named "Snake Charmer", involves the players doing this in order to earn points and win the game.
- RuneScape has one in the desert town of Pollnivneach. He sells the player a "snake charm" and basket, which are used in a couple of quests.
- Scribblenauts: A snake charmer is one of the characters possible to summon. They're able to make snakes tame.
- Skylanders: Trap Team introduced the Magic Skylander Cobra Cadabra, who takes multiple motifs from this trope. One of the most obvious is his design: an anthropomorphic cobra in a basket wielding a flute. His power set also fits with this: his primary attack has him play notes and is similar to a Rhythm Game, as if the notes are played to the beat of the background music, his notes will deal more damage. He can also send out baskets filled with snakes that attack opponents to the beat, and one upgrade path lets him play a solo that enchants enemies to fight one another.
- Splatoon 3: Frye plays a pungi to command a group of flying eels during her boss battle.
- Terraria has the Snake Charmer's Flute item, obtainable from Underground Desert chests. When used, it spawns a magical snake (with the pot!) that will rise and extend to a certain height or until it hits a block. The snake can then be climbed upon like a rope, and it will disappear after half a minute.
Web Original
- This T-shirt design by Glennz Tees, where the charmer is controlling a line of Tetris blocks.
Western Animation
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998): "Slave the Day": The Salami Swami uses his flute to control long sausages into stealing art from Townsville Museum.
- Bugs Bunny: "Rabbit of Seville": Bugs as a snake charmer controls a wired electric shaver to attack Elmer.
- "Have You Got Any Castles?": A snake charmer (in stereotypical turban and cloth) plays a flute while two snakes dance to the beat on the cover of a book named Mother India.
- The Herbs: Pashana Bedhi is able to charm snakes using a magic flute which makes them float out of their baskets. Parsley is given the idea to try this flute to lift Sage's nest back into the tree from which it fell during a thunderstorm.
- "Hero: 108": "Snake Castle": Mystique Sonia manages to soothe the snakes by using a flute the Panda King gave her as a gift earlier in the episode.
- Jonny Quest
- "Calcutta Adventure": When the Quests first meet Hadji in India, he is charming a cobra while playing a recorder-like instrument.
- "The Curse of Anubis": Hadji uses his flute to control deadly snakes and send them away.
- The Simpsons: "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore": When Mr. Burns introduces himself to his outsourced employees in India by emerging, snake-like, from a wicker basket as Smithers plays the pungi.
- The Adventures of Tintin (1991): Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh: The evil fakir uses music to make a rope stand. It's less ridiculous than what he did in the book,note but still completely unexplained.
- Ninjago: Dragons Rising: "Crashing Together": A Serpentine plays a flute while a human pops her head out of a garbage can.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- "Boast Busters": Trixie "charms" a rope and uses it to tie up Applejack.
- "Somepony To Watch Over Me": Applejack uses an actual flute to charm a snake that is part of a chimera.
- Ready Jet Go!: "Sunspot’s Sunspot": Carrot plays some typical snake charming music, and Sunspot's tongue wiggles like a snake.
- Sesame Street: An animated short had a snake charmer demonstrate the letter S by summoning a snake. It turns out the snake doesn't like "The Streets of Cairo" and takes away the flute to play something jazzy himself. There was also a Spanish version.
- Santa's Christmas Crash: While loading up his repaired sleigh to deliver the toys the desert kids made, Santa is given a woven basket. One of the kids starts playing a flute, causing a snake to rise out of it. Santa rejects it as a present for fear of the reaction he'd get from the parents.
