Bri­an Mac Far­lane has pulled the con­tentious sec­tion, La Belle Dame and Gar�on de la Mai­son (The beau­ti­ful woman and the house boy), from his 2017 Car­ni­val pre­sen­ta­tion.

Mac Far­lane made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing a live pan­el dis­cus­sion from Ki­ne­sis Stu­dio in an ap­par­ent re­sponse to a bar­rage of crit­i­cism of the sec­tion from the pub­lic.

"I have made the de­ci­sion not to move for­ward for this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion from the 2017 pre­sen­ta­tion. I am deeply sor­ry for the pain I have caused," Mac Far­lane said.

The sec­tion had formed part of Mac Far­lane's "Caz­abon: The Art of Liv­ing" and he point­ed out he vis­it­ed this par­tic­u­lar part of his­to­ry to achieve a sense of free­dom, ex­pres­sion, iden­ti­ty, her­itage and cul­ture.

How­ev­er, the sec­tion was heav­i­ly crit­cised by many for its de­pic­tion of slav­ery by us­ing a house boy along­side a cau­casian woman and led to heat­ed de­bate on so­cial me­dia.

In ad­dress­ing the de­bate over the past 72 hours, Mac­Far­lane said when he em­barked on the project he had in­vit­ed de­sign­ers of fash­ion and mas to share in the cre­ative process.

He said the over­all ti­tle of the band was based on the amaz­ing ar­chi­tec­ture of the late 1800s and ear­ly 1900s, which ex­ists up to this day in com­mu­ni­ties like Bel­mont, East Port-of-Spain, Wood­brook, across the Cen­tral plains and parts of To­ba­go, in ad­di­tion to the more recog­nised spaces, such as the Mag­nif­i­cent 7.

He said while do­ing re­search he re­alised many of these homes and struc­tures de­pict­ed in­flu­ences from Africa, In­dia and even Far East Asia and he want­ed to help pro­tect and pre­serve our her­itage spaces the best way he knew how, through his art.

"Truth be told, there is a tremen­dous amount of good em­a­nat­ing from our so­ci­ety spend­ing time de­bat­ing the his­toric pe­ri­od, ori­gin and in­flu­ences of a Car­ni­val band," he said of the de­bate on the sec­tion.

"When we ac­knowl­edge and present the im­agery of our her­itage, we have to see that out of these lived ex­pe­ri­ences came the free­dom to walk and wor­ship, to dine and dance, to love and laugh.

"To­day, so many of us seem to take these lib­er­ties for grant­ed and I don't ex­clude my­self from that. So while I want to en­sure al­ways that I ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect our in­cred­i­bly mul­ti-di­men­sion­al his­to­ry, I un­der­stand that there is still a lot for me to ex­plore, to un­earth, to un­learn and to learn," he said.

He added: "My in­ten­tion was nev­er to of­fend any­one, or to come across as ig­no­rant of our truth, or to ide­alise in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty. It was to de­pict the cloth­ing of the time. How­ev­er, I un­der­stand how and why it hurt some of us.

"And it is with this re­al­i­sa­tion that I have made the de­ci­sion to not move for­ward with this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion from the 2017 pre­sen­ta­tion."