The New Mimic Men (Part 1)

“His Excellency, PNM Leader for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Executive {Insert past despot’s name} Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the Panday Empire in the Caribbean in General and Trinidad & Tobago in Particular", said the Clerk of the House on introducing Trinidad's Executive President {Insert past despot’s name}. What's strange about him though is that new Mugabe-ish / Hitler-esque moustache as well as the pink balisier adorned ascot around his neck. Icy scenes as his 40 MPs pound the desks and bow in reverence to usher him into the hallowed chamber.

Massive motifs in his likeness plaster the country's streets obsequiously foot noted with special purpose company UDeCOTT's logo beneath. Just one of their latest projects to beatify the country. The largest though, saved for the grounds of the pastor's church in Guanapo.

Imagine the physiological distress my body must have gone through to be jolted out of sleep, sweat-drenched in my usually frigid bedroom with the air condition vent streaming directly on me. Nightmares indeed are made of these. And this one comparative of my boyish days when darkness was a sufficient stimulus to awaken dread in my being.

Imagine my relief to turn on the TV to see Jack Warner straddling mud and water and vowing to write AG Ramlogan about resuming hangings. Back to reality though.

In this installment I seek the indulgence on the readers' part to indulge my own peevish indulgence. Whilst controversial in nature (I’ll take my licks), it irks my heart and pains my head to listen to the constant regurgitation of detritus masquerading as issues and decorated with sickening-mind-numbing-vomitous clichés that passes itself off as important and new. In Sir V.S. Naipaul’s 1967 novel The Mimic Men he proffers the premise that a society’s difficulty in coming to terms with its own independence and forging its own identity is inherent to Caribbean society. These problems are still relevant today. One writer summarizes it: The colonial experience has caused the colonized to perceive themselves as inferior to the colonizer. Colonial education and cultural colonization have presented the English world, with its rich culture, as a world of order, discipline, success, and achievement. As a result, the natives consider their own culture, customs and traditions, religion, and race to be inferior to those of their master and try to identify themselves with the empire. Since they are far away from their original homeland, their own original traditions and religions have become meaningless to them, and thus, they cannot identify themselves with those remote rules and codes. However, as they are different from the master in cultural, traditional, racial, and religious backgrounds, they can never successfully associate themselves with the colonizer either.  They suffer from dislocation, placelessness, fragmentation, and loss of identity. They become mimic men who imitate and reflect the colonizer's life style, values, and views. As these psychological problems cannot be solved after independence is achieved, independence itself becomes a word but not a real experience. Without the colonizer, the colonized see themselves as lost in their postcolonial society that fails to offer a sense of national unity and identity

There is little to suggest that the quest to be an original has ever made its way into the minds of those who seek out the limelight in our Republic. Needless to mention, this lack of innovative, creative and analytical thinking has acquiesced the Republic to a neo-colonial state of North America and Europe. A cultural slavery that binds us to everything from Monday Night Raw to Jerry Springer’s “Nazi-lesbian-hookers-from-Mars”. Republicanism has done little in us forging our own collective identity 33 years down. What little we have done holds little if any palatability at all.

Our society of mimic men (women) knows nothing new, creates nothing new and worst of all embraces nothing new without first hearing it from one of the many clichéd talking heads. The celebration of mediocrity and un-original-ness pervades the society like some infusion of insipid nothingness (if nothingness could be more insipid than it already is).

We go on about artist -like imitators who are world class as if looking like a real artist, dressing like him, sounding like him and imitating his work makes him one. Personally I don't have an artistic bone within me but I know what I like. And, as pleasing to the eye as something is a discriminating one would usually find an imitation an irritant. A career in restorative work could be more rewarding than pursuing one with a torrent of duplicates. 

Every year masmen (like the one mentioned) vary themes and colors to come up with the same costumes. Your bikini, headpiece and standard of this year could be recycled next year probably in a next band though. They call this art! To compound it they assign people called "judges" to determine a winner! Did they forget what they saw last year? What I know of art is that its very nature makes it interpretive, yet band after band finds it necessary to appoint a spokesman on the day to do the interpretation for us. I'll admit, there has to be a creative process involved in describing a bikini, headpiece and standard a different way every year. Don't get me wrong; masqueraders aren't pretentious where mas is concerned. They come out to have a good time, to hell with the art. It would be a lot more digestible if the bandleader did the same. Have a good time and make yourself a healthy profit. We pay enough by way of zero-production for those 2 days to have to put up with cliche-riddled-snotty-Minshall wannabes. Do the Republic a favour; abandon this farce of a parade called band of the year. Better to judge each band on who enjoyed themselves the most.  At least in this way art wouldn't have to be consigned to the land-fill on the Beetham and next year the best band can make even more profit under the right pretext.

On to calypso/soca/chutney soca and steel band. Jump. Wave. Flag/hand/rag/bottom inna d air. Whine. Gyrate. Sample. 2K10. 2Kn.  Do we still wonder why only Machel could make it abroad? As distasteful as I find Jamaican music there is originality and its global influence has resulted. Chutney-soca. More of the same. Just go further back, more removed and less obvious in your sampling of dead Indian playback stars. Throw in some inane reference to rum drinking and you're a star.

Social commentary: I've heard the same song used since I was a boy to different words. "DooBai" seems to find its way there every year though. The stench of political agendas overpowers whatever effect might have been hoped for. The rules accent originality but if you carry the same tune year after year you shouldn't even be in the competition.

Steel band: Granted we invented the thing; we haven't made much use or progress out of it. An opportunity lost? Much like Britain being the birthplace of golf. Was it purposeful design that those in the North Stand could not hear the arrangement as clear as those in the Grand Stand? Who could really appreciate a complicated musical arrangement in a drunken stupor or even hear it for that matter?

Now that we've gotten art and culture out of the way we can safely aver that local art and culture is a grotesquely deformed fetus that needs to be aborted before it evolves into an even more monstrous mutant than it already is or at the very least don’t be calling it art and pretending its world-class.

And speaking of abortions, all of a sudden after the rantings of a little insignificant man we've become a Republic of Pro-lifers and Pro-choicers (as if we don't already have enough divisiveness). In my next installment we shall examine how Norma L. McCorvey and Henry Wade made their way from Texas to Trinidad and Tobago and other tid bits of trivia that could qualify as a Jeopardy category.