Si­mon Lee

To con­tra­dict Hen­ry Ford, the man I hold di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for every traf­fic jam in the world, his­to­ry and her­sto­ry, far from be­ing bunk, are presents and pres­ences from the past, the past in present tense and gifts of and for the fu­ture be­cause "time present and time past are both con­tained in time fu­ture."

So at the end of the longest week­end of the year, while you are all re­cu­per­at­ing from cel­e­brat­ing a fair­ly re­cent ar­rival or the de­par­ture, re­turn and ever­last­ing pres­ence of Je­sus Christ, I want to take a turn in­to the re­al and fab­ri­cat­ed past be­fore all the ev­i­dence goes up in smoke, is de­clared in­ad­mis­si­ble, in­ac­ces­si­ble or sim­ply van­ish­es.

We're not dis­cussing e-gate here, al­though to­day's bil­let d'humeur is con­cerned with a text from the past in which we'll find many res­o­nances of our present state of the na­tion. Many will be fa­mil­iar with the18th-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish play­wright John Gay's The Beg­gar's Opera, writ­ten in 1728 on the thresh­old of the Caribbean's "erup­tion in­to moder­ni­ty." Those who don't know Gay's orig­i­nal may have come across the 20th-cen­tu­ry re­work­ing of this clas­sic, The Three­pen­ny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht.

Gay's pro­to­type in­tro­duced a new dra­mat­ic form–the bal­lad opera–which for those of you who recog­nise your kaiso past and her­itage, reads much like the ca­lyp­so dra­mas of the Gold­en Era.Be­sides its im­me­di­ate­ly pop­u­lar form there are oth­er el­e­ments in The Beg­gar's Opera which we in the Trinidad of 2013 will iden­ti­fy with: "caus­tic po­lit­i­cal satire...and a sto­ry of crime and be­tray­al set in the ur­ban un­der­world of pros­ti­tutes and thieves."

But it is Pol­ly, the se­quel to the Opera, banned dur­ing Gay's life­time and re­cent­ly re­pub­lished in the Ox­ford World's Clas­sics se­ries, that I want to fo­cus on here, as Pol­ly is set in the West In­dies. Like a fore­shad­ow­ing of Pi­rates of the Caribbean, but with a set of car­niv­o­rous satir­i­cal teeth sub­sti­tut­ing for spe­cial ef­fects and cameos by rock'n'roll skele­tons like Kei­th Richards, Pol­ly gives us a read­ing of our re­gion which won't be found in tourist brochures or guide­books.

As the blurb says far more suc­cinct­ly than I'm able on just one cup of cof­fee: "With a cross-dress­ing hero­ine and a cast of fe­male ad­ven­tur­ers, pi­rates, In­di­an princes, rebel slaves, and ra­pa­cious landown­ers, Pol­ly lays bare a cul­ture in which all hu­man re­la­tion­ships are re­duced to com­mer­cial trans­ac­tions."

It's in­ter­est­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for those who re­ject his­to­ry, and can on­ly go back as far as their mem­o­ry al­lows, to note that the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the hu­man con­di­tion are not sim­ply man­i­fes­ta­tions of cap­i­tal­ism or more re­cent glob­al­i­sa­tion.

As we can see quite clear­ly though all the smoke­screens, greed (rather than gov­er­nance) and every­thing it is pre­pared to do to sa­ti­ate the in­sa­tiable, is one of the base mo­ti­va­tors for vir­tu­al­ly any man­made sys­tem and its at­ten­dant in­fra­struc­ture, whether the sys­tem is po­lit­i­cal, re­li­gious, ed­u­ca­tion­al or cul­tur­al. Isn't this pre­cise­ly what we are re­fer­ring to when we speak so blithe­ly in our new-found cyn­i­cism (prag­ma­tism?) of our "Eat ah food" po­lit­i­cal cul­ture?

But to get back to Pol­ly, just as kaiso has fall­en foul of the cen­sor along with many kanaval songs in Haiti, Gay's script was banned from the stage by Wal­pole, the Eng­lish prime min­is­ter of the time, be­cause of the po­lit­i­cal chal­lenge it posed, so pa­per trails or their post­mod­ern cy­ber-coun­ter­parts are noth­ing if not old hat.

Pol­ly re­lo­cates the ac­tion of the Opera from New­gate prison to a Caribbean is­land pop­u­lat­ed by colonis­ers, slaves, de­por­tees like Pol­ly's hus­band, high­way­man Macheath (who switch­es iden­ti­ty to be­come ex-slave Mora­no) and (Amer)In­di­ans. Like oth­er Eu­ro­pean texts (Shake­speare's Tem­pest, South­erne's Oroonoko, Swift's Gul­liv­er's Trav­els) Pol­ly presents the con­fronta­tion be­tween colonis­ers and colonised as a plat­form to satirise Eu­ro­pean val­ues. In so do­ing the set­ting al­lows, even if in­di­rect­ly, for an ex­am­i­na­tion of such is­sues as racial dif­fer­ence, the slave trade and colo­nial ex­ploita­tion.

If the high­way­man of the Opera rep­re­sents a "fig­ure of the free play of de­sire," then the pi­rates of Pol­ly stand as New World coun­ter­parts–more ro­man­tic rebels. But it is on­ly Pol­ly her­self, in male drag, who lives up to the brave ro­man­tic ide­al. Her fel­low all-male seadogs, are as cow­ard­ly, cor­rupt and con­flict­ed as the colonis­ers and even the Amerindi­ans, who, far from be­ing ide­alised no­ble sav­ages, are al­so im­pli­cat­ed in a glob­al sys­tem of cor­rup­tion when they hunt down run­away slaves on be­half of their Eu­ro­pean al­lies.

Re­vis­it­ing the past as we've just done, even if it is a past con­struct­ed through text, mem­o­ry, myth and leg­end we might view the present state of af­fairs in T&T as same ol', same ol'. But while we should be alert to hu­man con­cu­pis­cence, prac­tised re­gard­less of race, gen­der, or any oth­er cat­e­go­ry, we shouldn't for­get that ul­ti­mate­ly we have choic­es and need not sur­ren­der to the tide of ex­ploita­tion, or the greed and cor­rup­tion it en­gen­ders