In 2007, the Sengalese-American hip hop star, Akon, put down an ordinary dutty wine on a teenaged girl in a Port-of-Spain nightclub and respectable T&T was horrified to the core that such a thing could happen; as if they don't glance out of their car windows and see it every weekend night and all day Sunday. Play two notes of a drum-and-bass loop anywhere in Trinidad and, before the hi-hat can clash, you'll have an instant passa-passa, including open displays of intimate depilation; I've seen, eight o'clock Sunday morning, at the side of an otherwise quiet country road, a small maxi, parked, blasting dancehall for the benefit, apparently, of the wild-meat of the area-which showed itself in the form of a glassy-eyed 40-something skettel with a beer in one hand, backing it up against a shirtless, drooling man chooking waist like a dog; Akon could take lessons from any Trini lime, anywhere; they are as proud to get on bad in Lange Park as in Laventy.
This week another local teenaged girl is in the spotlight on YouTube, but it's her dirty mouth, not her dirty moves, that have outraged "decent" T&T. If you've not see the video by now, you need to upgrade your attention to September, 2011, or widen your e-mail circle. It features a 16-year-old girl-maybe a year or two older or younger-speaking direct to her computer camera in a foul-mouthed videoblog. The last film clip I saw with a comparable obscenity rate was Scarface (in which, the urban legend says, Al Pacino uses the eff-word 182 times, giving rise to the name of the pop rock band, Blink 182). The four-minute video is crammed with profanities directly addressed to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and is not shy of racist terms. But it is still plainly an attempt at humour; not a very successful one, perhaps, but nevertheless obviously intentioned as entertainment. Remove the effs and mother-cees-which are deliberately overdone, in an attempt to get the role right, because, when the teenager slips out of the aged woman character, she reverts to what you imagine is her normal "fricking"-and the Granny Quilla video is not so different from the very funny Trini Slap Chup infomercial voice-over (except, of course, that it doesn't make you laugh).
It's surprising how many supposedly intelligent grown-ups have not noticed that the entire video is called "Granny Quilla Spouts Abuse": the young girl is "in character," playing the part of an aged pensioner. Her performance is actually good and one or two of the bits are even clever. The whole thing fails because there isn't a successful marriage of character with content, but it is failed comedy, not deliberate racism that is at play. Everyone scandalised by a young girl suggesting that maybe it was a mosquito that flew up the PM's nether regions needs to step back and ask themselves if they really think she literally meant that. (Of course it's a separate, and heartbreaking, discussion of what passes for "culture" and thought here.) The girl has posted an apology but she should never have; indeed, I'd have encouraged her to post another video: "Granny Quilla Tells All Them ------- to Firetruck Off." No artist should be required to explain art. Like hundreds of thousands of her contemporaries across the Internet-including my own daughter and her friends-the girl was trying a thing using tools available in the IT Age to reflect the age she lives in.
With all the "nastiness" in the video, it was not itself nasty. Indeed, it parodies everyday life in Trinidad very well, for an unrehearsed live blog by a child, who has found out the hard way that not everyone has the talent, wit, scope of reference and high-speed comedic brain of Rachel Price, whose own vidblog inspired by the state of emergency is not short on effs itself (and features a topnotch rephrasing of a great David Rudder song in, "This is not a curfew in here/ This is madness"). Like Rachel Price, Martin Daly and other non-aligned commentators, Granny Quilla is actually discharging her civic responsibility in criticising the misuse of the most draconian powers of the republic in the very shoddy way they have been so far. The young girl should be praised, not pilloried. I'd rather my own daughter embarrass me for four minutes with her cussing on YouTube than shame me forever by not thinking at all about what's going on around her. And what's going on around Granny Quilla is shaming, not her, but the so-called adults of Trinidad. (Think about the name, "Granny Quilla" for Christ's sake: it's plainly mocking attitudes, not supporting them.)
In his worst public moment ever, the Attorney General has called for the young girl concerned to turn herself in and let the law take its course. What the firetruck is he going to charge her with? Being clever? Is that an admission that the People's Partnership requires stupidity as a qualification for membership?
The AG has not just prejudged a non-issue arising out of a YouTube video, he has prejudged it wrongly, and made himself look foolish in viewing comedy as sedition. If Granny Quilla has committed a crime, long live criminality, otherwise known as freedom of speech-a freedom the AG himself took to the extreme limits of taste in his own former Sunday Guardian column, in which he wrote lurid prose so purple it made baigan feel shame.
Like Akon in 2007, the person who has really done something wrong skips away from notice while all of Trinidad beats up on a little girl. The state of emergency is likely to be extended in Parliament today, causing more hardship on the law-abiding and not seeming to bother the law-breaking too much. For his sake, I hope Akon Ramlogan will not soon be required by AG Ramlogan to turn himself into the police to answer charges of how he and the People's Partnership have squandered public goodwill to such an extent that the biggest criminal fish netted by a whole state of emergency is Granny-firetrucking-Quilla.
BC Pires is a granny interlocutor. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com
