AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

The new Greeks the old lead­ers say

Beat yuh books and leh we break away

But that was then but now is beast we cre­at­ing

A fun­ny thing though, the eras re­lat­ing

Cause as a gor­gon shoot an­oth­er gor­gon

The doc­tor job is to stitch up he or­gan

The lawyer job is to keep him out­ta jail

He back on the street

Ter­ror in yuh tail

-An­oth­er Day in Par­adise

David Rud­der

The re­al prob­lem is that we've nev­er had a lo­cal cop dra­ma. Like CSI Besson Street. Or Laven­tille Hill Blues. Or 21 St Vin­cent Street. The fact that the Po­lice Ser­vice has no fic­tion­al he­roes with which we can iden­ti­fy is the void that Ian Al­leyne tries to fill. And his re­al life dra­ma be­comes stranger and more de­li­cious than any fic­tion that we could dream up.

I mean who doesn't love the sto­ry of a crime-fight­ing vig­i­lante out for jus­tice for the poor man? Fun­ny that no lo­cal tele­vi­sion pro­duc­ers have ever jumped to fill that im­por­tant niche. The prob­lem is that me­dia hous­es like CCN are not in­vest­ing in cre­at­ing lo­cal tele­vi­sion con­tent.

News is the on­ly show that any mon­ey gets spent on. And so the lines be­tween en­ter­tain­ment and in­for­ma­tion are fre­quent­ly blurred if ac­knowl­edged at all. We are so ex­cit­ed to see our­selves in­side the tv, we are in a con­stant state of per­for­mance.

News and Crime Watch. The sum to­tal of reg­u­lar lo­cal con­tent for a tele­vi­sion sta­tion that boasts about be­ing the most watched. If that isn't a crime against the view­ing pub­lic I don't know what is. Tele­vi­sion, if we are to be­lieve every­thing that comes to us from out­side, is about cre­at­ing your own mythol­o­gy. About ad­vanc­ing your own ide­ol­o­gy, your own be­lief sys­tems. About cre­at­ing a ver­sion of your­self that is ac­ces­si­ble or at least be­liev­able, that the wider pop­u­la­tion will want to em­u­late.

It is in­ter­est­ing that Ian Al­leyne is the biggest star on lo­cal tele­vi­sion. It is even more in­ter­est­ing that sta­tions like CCN, re­flec­tive of the me­dia as a whole, is part of the fear mon­ger­ing and the mak­ing of stars among lit­tle boys who nev­er got the at­ten­tion they need­ed from their par­ents or the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and how they hold on to that de­sire to be no­ticed and so they per­form their pain in elab­o­rate shoot-out scenes that then get re-en­act­ed on the news at night and in the pa­pers in the morn­ing.

We look on in de­light­ed hor­ror at the spec­ta­cle of how we could end up so. This is part of us but not re­al­ly. It is some oth­er self. The Oth­er­ing of what a Tri­ni is. With­out re­al­ly want­i­ng to deal with the full­ness of the ter­ror we feel or take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the ter­rors we have cre­at­ed.

The mon­sters we cre­ate are on all sides of the law. The law is an­ti­quat­ed and in­ad­e­quate and de­signed to keep us alien­at­ed from who we are. The law is a rea­son for us to not re­al­ly un­der­stand who we are. A con­ve­nient and ul­ti­mate­ly mov­able bound­ary. The truth is that every­body wants to be above the law. Even de­vot­ed crime fight­ers be­lieve that the law does not ap­ply to them.

So the mob turns out to pro­tect their sav­iour. The mob does not turn up when their own rights are be­ing in­fringed up­on. The mob will come to say that Ian Al­leyne has a right to show a lit­tle girl be­ing raped on tele­vi­sion. To poke and prod some­body's dead son. Show the footage of a woman's body parts sev­ered in a car ac­ci­dent. This is in keep­ing with the var­i­ous fic­tions that bom­bard us from abroad every night.

The mob will speed down the high­way to CCN build­ing. The mob will bad-dri­ve peo­ple to get there to de­fend Ian Al­leyne's crime fight­ing. The mob will not go to Po­lice Head­quar­ters to de­mand that the po­lice do their job so that Ian Al­leyne wouldn't be on tele­vi­sion every week­night. Ian Al­leyne is not work­ing to put him­self out of a job.

The mob is full of cit­i­zens shak­ing down the walls of a me­dia house. The mob is full of me­dia peo­ple fight­ing each oth­er for the best pic­ture to sell the most pa­pers the next morn­ing. The mob is full of peo­ple who come just be­cause they can­not re­sist a good bac­cha­nal.

The mob will not no­tice the street chil­dren in down­town Port-of-Spain. The mob will not see the in­dig­ni­ty of their own pres­ence here. De­mand­ing free­dom for a man who is more cult leader than crime fight­er, who is part of per­pet­u­at­ing a prob­lem he says he wants to fight.

The mob is there to pro­tect a ver­sion of re­al­i­ty as imag­ined by the me­dia, as imag­ined by Ian Al­leyne, as imag­ined by a Po­lice Ser­vice that has no fic­tion­al he­roes to em­u­late, ex­cept those from out­side.

Mean­while in Nor­way, the case against An­ders Behring Breivik is tak­ing place in a closed court. For one thing, they don't want to give Breivik the pub­lic­i­ty he wants and sec­ond­ly the things he did are way too grue­some to broad­cast and out of con­sid­er­a­tion for the sur­vivors of that hor­ri­ble day last sum­mer, they are keep­ing the me­dia out.

Mean­while in Trinidad, we prize open our wounds not want­i­ng them to heal. We make our crim­i­nals and politi­cians stars. We are watch­ing their every move. And tak­ing great de­light in the en­ter­tain­ment. We on­ly know how to bawl here. Bawl­ing is the new hap­pi­ness. Like licks is the new love and watch­ing crime is the new spec­ta­tor sport. In the ab­sence of a re­li­able fic­tion, we live a con­struct­ed re­al­i­ty. And the on­ly peo­ple who win are the ad­ver­tis­ers