Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The CNC3 Morn­ing Show last week showed an in­ter­view with a fel­low who start­ed an on­line pe­ti­tion to re­in­state the death penal­ty, and calls for it seem to be build­ing. The trag­ic death of the young bank clerk seems to have found a spot on the na­tion­al body which isn't numb from in­ces­sant bat­ter­ing, and has elicit­ed an­oth­er scream of pain.

Sad­ly, it'll die down soon, with­out any­thing use­ful re­sult­ing. The TTPS, gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion will re­main the beasts they are, and the pop­u­la­tion will sup­press its trau­ma through the usu­al means: al­co­hol, most­ly, with large el­e­ments of sex­u­al, do­mes­tic and so­cial vi­o­lence ac­com­pa­ny­ing as usu­al, and a gen­er­al deep­en­ing of the malaise.

But can any­thing be done oth­er than point out the ob­vi­ous? Maybe. I've writ­ten more than once in this space that the crime and vi­o­lence which man­i­fest all round don't just ma­te­ri­alise. They are the end points of streams of so­cial en­er­gy, pol­i­cy, in­di­vid­ual and taught and learned be­hav­iour.

We be­have the way our en­vi­ron­ment con­di­tions and teach­es us to be­have. Be­cause of oth­er pre­dis­pos­ing fac­tors (ge­net­ics, home en­vi­ron­ment, church and com­mu­nal so­cial­iza­tion) most won't go out and mur­der peo­ple (not yet, any­way). Most will, how­ev­er, in­ter­nal­ize and project some de­gree of the vi­o­lence around them. You see the an­i­mus flare on so­cial me­dia, hear it on ra­dio talk shows, in the streets (a la #lifein­leg­gings). But is there a way to change the en­vi­ron­ment?

There is a specie of in­ter­ven­tion which has worked in the past with great ef­fect to change the mood and even be­hav­iour of Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans. It is that no­ble tele­vi­sion genre, the soap opera. And it's fun­ny, but it's not a joke.

Soap op­eras. In the late 1980s, the coun­try had a rare col­lec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence of shared val­ues: those they saw in the soaps The Young and the Rest­less, and to a less­er ex­tent, The Bold and the Beau­ti­ful. Lo­cal aca­d­e­mics missed this phe­nom­e­non com­plete­ly, but for­tu­nate­ly a for­eign an­thro­pol­o­gist, Dan­ny Miller, no­ticed, and stud­ied it. (It's pub­lished in the Me­dia Stud­ies Read­er.)

It's easy, if you were not there, or in hazy ret­ro­spect, to down­play the mo­ment. But for a few years, the coun­try was con­sumed by the soaps. News­pa­pers ran dai­ly soap up­dates, they were dis­cussed in taxis, homes, tem­ples, church­es. I re­mem­ber ca­lyp­sos be­ing sung. Their reach was in­cred­i­ble. And to what end? As Miller not­ed, peo­ple were us­ing the soaps as a medi­um to dis­cuss and de­rive per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al moral­i­ty.

Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans were, to be crude about it, de­ter­min­ing right and wrong from the be­hav­iour of soap opera char­ac­ters. This was the 1980s, when Kim Kar­dashi­an and her ilk weren't even born yet. And the phe­nom­e­non of me­dia-con­di­tioned be­hav­iour had been the­o­rized among aca­d­e­mics, but was on­ly just com­ing in­to main­stream con­scious­ness.

Did it make T&T a bet­ter place? We'll nev­er know be­cause of 1990. (I'm guess­ing mil­i­tant Is­lamists didn't watch TV at the time, as they do now.) But it did man­age to take the edge off the NAR aus­ter­i­ty. De­spite the har­row­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties, there was a (how­ev­er slight) lift­ing of the na­tion­al mood. The soaps pro­vid­ed emo­tion­al respite, as art, high and low, is sup­posed to do.

As if to un­der­line the ef­fec­tive­ness of me­dia in al­ter­ing the na­tion­al mood, the op­po­site hap­pened in 1997, when talk ra­dio ar­rived. For the next decade of eco­nom­ic boom, the op­po­site of this gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive con­di­tion­ing hap­pened. We be­came rich­er, but more so­cial­ly hos­tile, crim­i­nal, and patho­log­i­cal.

So is there a les­son here? Here's where my pal, The Hon Max­ie Cuffie, per­haps the most beloved Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions the world has ever seen, comes in. Per­haps the gov­ern­ment could as­sist in bring­ing this elec­tron­ic unguent to a trau­ma­tised pop­u­la­tion. Use the re­sources of the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (GISL) to pro­duce au­dio-vi­su­al works (ra­dio plays, TV shows, movies, doc­u­men­taries, pub­lic works of art) and dis­sem­i­nate them wide­ly. No mon­ey? No prob­lem: take the hun­dreds of mil­lions wast­ed on Car­ni­val.

Of course, im­me­di­ate prob­lems arise: What kind of shows would be pro­duced, who would pro­duce them and which sto­ries would be told? We all know the flock of vul­tures that de­scend on state fund­ing al­ready have their for­mu­las. Can­boulay. Re­sis­tance. Pan. Black em­pow­er­ment. A lit­tle Di­vali and Ram­leela for colour.

From that, you might get the idea that the pro­duc­ers of cul­tur­al prod­ucts are imag­i­na­tive­ly lim­it­ed, but you'd be wrong. There are many film­mak­ers, an­i­ma­tors, TV pro­duc­ers, play­wrights, artists man­qu�, in the coun­try now with sol­id projects, bawl­ing for fund­ing. So here's the idea: open the gates to them.

Car­ni­val got over $200 mil­lion last year. Take a quar­ter of that, and dis­burse among the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty, with a min­i­mum qual­i­ty bar. En­cour­age or man­date young­sters to pair up with ex­pe­ri­enced hands. Cre­ate TV shows, ra­dio plays, com­ic books, and pub­lic spec­ta­cle events, but with one caveat: No "cul­tyere", no "trah-dish-an". The fo­cus would be on con­tem­po­rary do­mes­tic, so­cial and even po­lit­i­cal is­sues via com­e­dy, dra­ma, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion and doc­u­men­tary.

With­in a year, there would be a flood of work in a num­ber of gen­res and me­dia. It could se­ri­ous­ly al­ter the na­tion­al emo­tion­al land­scape, change the con­ver­sa­tion. It could make peo­ple feel bet­ter, more op­ti­mistic, more thought­ful.

It could work, al­though there are lots of rea­sons it won't. Politi­cians dis­trust any­thing that's sim­ple, that works, and helps peo­ple feel bet­ter with­out con­tracts, fren­zy, and "Vote PNM" at­tached.

There's al­so a pre­ex­is­tent ecosys­tem of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion which will re­act im­me­di­ate­ly to hi­jack the process. But none of this means it couldn't be tried. Here's the gov­ern­ment's chance to ac­tu­al­ly do some­thing. Will they take it? Max­ie? Over to you.