Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

From the TV news, and the com­ments sec­tions of my columns, I'm con­tin­u­al­ly awed by the gan­grenous state of the na­tion­al imag­i­na­tion. We live in a hur­ri­cane of ex­pe­ri­ence-from the inane and sor­did to the unique and ad­mirable-which we col­lec­tive­ly have lit­tle ca­pac­i­ty or de­sire to de­scribe or feel. Even worse, many peo­ple are bliss­ful­ly un­aware it's a de­fi­cien­cy, and let the opin­ions fly with the con­fi­dence and force of a Diego Mar­tin mud­slide.

It's not every­one, of course; just a dis­tress­ing ma­jor­i­ty that suf­fers from emo­tion­al anosog­nosia which, as much as any­thing, keeps the na­tion locked in the ig­no­rance we live every day. If you can't ap­pre­ci­ate hu­man com­plex­i­ty and moral am­bi­gu­i­ty, and every­thing is good or bad, black and white (or Afro-In­do), re­spons­es are lim­it­ed to a small lo­cus of pre-pack­aged emo­tions: fear; dis­gust; li­bidi­nous­ness as er­satz hap­pi­ness; re­sent­ment; and rage.

The arts are sup­posed to pro­vide a cure for this-via nov­els, mu­sic, movies, and these days, tele­vi­sion, all of which could ex­pand our moral and imag­i­na­tive ca­pac­i­ties. As US me­dia ex­pand their reach, a par­tic­u­lar West­ern lib­er­al strain of emo­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion per­vades our lives from in­cep­tion. As the fa­ther of a six-year-old, I find my­self watch­ing a lot of chil­dren's tele­vi­sion, and have found my­self quite im­pressed.

From Bar­ney's "I love you, you love me/we're a hap­py fam­i­ly" to the 'tween angst, hu­mour, and mid­dle-class moral­i­ty of iCar­ly, to the imag­i­na­tive en­cour­age­ment of Phineas and Ferb-you get the sense the kids could be ok, watch­ing this stuff. Of course, it's on­ly use­ful if kids see the shows and live in en­vi­ron­ments where they're not abused by win­ing and cussing.

But what about adults? Dick­ens, Flaubert et co are the usu­al sus­pects, but for the av­er­age Joe, who (as E Williams said) lacks mon­ey to buy or in­cli­na­tion to read books, pop movies are a good place for stretch­ing the moral imag­i­na­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly not every movie is rife with moral pos­si­bil­i­ties (like Hot Tub Time Ma­chine), but a sur­pris­ing num­ber are, like David Ay­er's End of Watch, the cop flick with Jake Gyl­len­haal and Michael Pe­na.

It fol­lows two beat cops, Bri­an and Mike, in a squad car in South Los An­ge­les-and the open­ing mono­logue of the cop's an­them sig­nals a for­mu­la romp, but no. The creed, "I will chase you, and I will catch you" etc, is re­veal­ing in that it ar­tic­u­lates an in­stinc­tu­al urge for or­der clothed in an in­sti­tu­tion­al im­per­a­tive. (Now think of what the Tri­ni cops' unar­tic­u­lat­ed creed would sound like.)

End of Watch is valu­able be­cause its whole uni­verse is dif­fer­ent: les­bian, man­ic de­pres­sive, ex-sol­dier, and ex-pot­head cops suit up and line up against male­fac­tors called Big Evil ("be­cause my evil is big"), les­bian thugettes who go mano-a-mano with home boys, and cow­boys with gold-plat­ed, di­a­mond-stud­ded Glocks and AKs.

The in­tri­ca­cies of the gangs­ta world are won­drous. The black mid­dle-aged thug, Tre, who nos­tal­gi­cal­ly re­flects on the chang­ing ghet­to de­mog­ra­phy, in the loss of ter­ri­to­ry to the Lati­nos, calls Mike a "bor­der jumper," and Mike of­fers to fight him for his ho­n­our, sans badge and gun. De­scrib­ing the en­counter, Tre schools younger thugs-the cops showed him love, they kept the fight off the books, didn't charge him with a felony, which would have been strike three, and life in prison.

And here you get a sense of some of the more un­like­ly path­ways in­to love, com­pas­sion and ho­n­our in­side this twist­ed uni­verse, where cops and crim­i­nals alike have on­ly the rules and each oth­er. Ay­er's gift for di­a­logue and the crafti­ly switched op­tics (via dif­fer­ent cam­eras) strip away the inani­ty to find the defin­ing mo­ments of how men speak to each oth­er, and how they come to feel about each oth­er when they guard each oth­er's lives.

It's not just what they say, but what they make it mean in the cab of a po­lice car for 12 hours at a time, like when Mike, a Lati­no, ad­vis­es the white Bri­an to get a Lati­no girl ("some brown sug­ar") and com­pla­cent­ly com­pares his re­la­tions with his wife, "old faith­ful," to Bri­an's as­sem­bly line sex-life.

The skil­ful blend­ing of the mun­dane with the charged vi­su­al­i­ty of adren­a­line-drenched chase and shoot-em-up scenes, and the cuts to the hand-held cams record­ing drunk­en sex-tips Mike's wife gives to Bri­an's girl­friend-"be a freak, give it up all the time"-present a star­tling emo­tion­al com­plete­ness and in­ten­si­ty.

Of course, this (above) is a heav­i­ly bi­ased per­spec­tive. Ig­nor­ing the last decade of free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, it as­sumes every­one has had the ed­u­ca­tion that would en­able them to see those emo­tion­al arcs. It al­so as­sumes that every­one is ca­pa­ble of or wants to ap­pre­ci­ate emo­tion­al anomies-of men, women and crim­i­nals, weird­ly and in­vol­un­tar­i­ly lov­ing and mur­der­ing each oth­er.

And, to end where I start­ed, the imag­i­na­tive in­ca­pac­i­ty to ap­pre­ci­ate these ex­pe­ri­ences and emo­tion­al re­spons­es in our own en­vi­ron­ment is the heart of our so­cial prob­lem. The main state-spon­sored "cul­tur­al" ac­tiv­i­ties are emo­tion­al­ly prim­i­tive, evok­ing on­ly li­bidi­nous­ness, re­sent­ment, and re­bel­lious­ness. But the State is not the on­ly pur­vey­or of cul­ture, if its reach is fright­en­ing­ly long.

From the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed T&T Film Fes­ti­val it ap­pears a le­gion of film­mak­ers now lurks around sweet T&T, but while the films I saw are get­ting bet­ter tech­ni­cal­ly, the ma­jor­i­ty of imag­i­na­tive vi­sions re­main con­cep­tu­al­ly locked in­to the tableau of state cul­ture.

For this, we can blame the State on­ly so much (and blame UWI a lot more). As Samuel John­son put it 300 years ago: "How small, of all that hu­man hearts en­dure,/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure./Still to our­selves in every place con­signed/Our own fe­lic­i­ty we make or find."