I rarely, if ever, respond to critics but in this instance Raymond Ramcharitar so distorts the cumulative and tangible cinematic significance of Calypso Dreams and The Glamour Boyz Again, as well as the universal international laurels these two films have received, that respond I must.
Beware the reviewer that states: "I doubt it would make much sense to someone not already familiar with the society and its cultural politics." Ramcharitar makes a claim to other peoples' mindsets about which he apparently knows nothing. It's a slippery slope for a journalist to take.
The proof, it would seem to me, is in the pudding, is it not? Calypso Dreams over the last decade has been celebrated by many worldwide "as the best film ever made about calypso." It was named Best Caribbean Documentary at the Jamerican Film Festival.
It has won audience-favourite awards, not only in the Caribbean, but from coast to coast in the United States–from the Mill Valley Film Festival to the Washington DC International Film Festival. It has been selected for a variety of film festivals across the globe–including the First Traveling Caribbean Film Showcase, sponsored by UNESCO.
Glamour Boyz has already won awards for both the Mighty Sparrow and Lord Superior at the Caribbean Tales Film Festival in Toronto.So it would seem to me that Ramcharitar's "doubts" about those "not already familiar with the society and its cultural politics" are unfounded. Funny, isn't it, how he never mentions any of this?There's a lot that Ramcharitar doesn't mention and, apparently, doesn't grasp. And an under-current of jealousy oozes inevery paragraph.
Notice that Ramcharitar didn't directly quote a single line from either of the two films. That's also intellectually irresponsible. Of course it's in that very "narrative" that the dramatic arcs of both films are located. And both films raise very conscious questions about where calypso has matured and where it's going as an art form.
And they allow for their audiences to ponder those questions themselves. Ramcharitar champions a didactic approach to cinema that I find abhorrent. Let him peddle his cultural admonitions elsewhere.
By this point in my response, I've already quoted more from Ramcharitar's work than he did from either film. But let me cite him again here: "There's no sense of a wider location in a heterogenous society, and being one amidst multiple, simultaneous and intersecting historical narratives within the same space."Now that's some memorable prose! It's about as clear as the Caroni River following a rainstorm. Try and translate that line to the screen.
What Ramcharitar apparently objects to is the fact that we fashioned a history (or histories) of calypso "from the mouths of its exponents." Heaven forbid that the makers of history have their own point of view, are given their own voice on the big screen.
The fact of the matter is that meta-voices are often given preference in the arrogant and elitist intellectual hierarchy of academics. But I would rather hear about calypso history from the likes of kaiso stalwarts–Sparrow, Superior, Rudder, Calypso Rose, Lord Blakie, and Melody–than a self-appointed meta-critic. A million times over.
That said, doesn't it make sense that a film released in 2004 would have "a youthful looking David Rudder" in it? Is there really a problem with that? Or does Ramcharitar not understand that Calypso Dreams was released a decade ago?
He asks, for example: "I wonder if any of the people singing along with Jean and Dinah understand just what it is you could get from them for two shillings if they're broke, what it means to earn from "the sweat of their brow," and what is being laughed at and celebrated here?"Is Ramcharitar so dismissive of Trinbagonian audiences that he really believes that? Laughter takes many forms and swims many waters, not nearly so shallow as some might think.
Finally, I put my resources where my mouth was and dedicated a decade-and-and-a-half of my life to making a pair of films that celebrate the history of the calypso art form in T&T over the past 70 years. Raymond Ramcharitar has limply thrown some tomatoes at the wall and called it cultural criticism. In the long run, I know what will stick and what won't.
So, yes, these films are celebratory, not overtly critical. Triumphantly so! They are nostalgic. Of that I am most guilty–full of nostalgia and reverence for a moment in Caribbean culture that is fastly fading, and for the artistes who forged it.So here is my challenge: I look forward to seeing a "meta-historic" film on calypso by Ramcharitar when it premieres in Port-of-Spain at some later date. I'll fly in for the premiere. We'll see if it's a sellout at the 1,200-seat Globe Cinema when it screens. I'd bet otherwise.
Geoffrey Dunn,
geoffreydunn@comcast.net