Cultural Identity
Watch:
Final Scene from Moolade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjrzFcJ00Y&t=12s
Read
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/movies/13mool.html
Ibhawoh, B., & Ibawah, B. (2008). Moolaadé.
Write:
•
•
New York Times Cornell notes
Cornell Notes Ibhawoh #4
9.
Jamaica
Read:
Gaztambide-Fern ndez, R. A. (2002). Reggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies: Power, Meaning,
and the Markings of Postcolonial Jamaica in Perry Henzell s The Harder They Come. The
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 24(4), 353-376.
Watch:
Dance Hall Queen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSSXwllPKXY
Write:
•
Cornell Notes
10.
Watch:
Tum Bin (2001)
Write:
•
Paragraph response instructions
•
•
o Write each paragraph (5 -7 sentences) response in the following
format:
o Topic sentence which introduces an argument, 2 sub-ideas and
parenthetical citation (1 point)
o Three evidence sentences complete with parenthetical citation. (3
points)
o Synthesis sentence which tells the reader what conclusions,
innovations, inferences, critique, etc. is derived from the evidence (1
point)
What stereotypes do you find manifest across culture in the movie Tum
Bin (2001)?
Is cultural imperialism an issue for image makers creating cinema in
“underdeveloped countries?”
8.
Cultural Identity
Watch:
Final Scene from Moolade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZjrzFcJ00Y&t=12s
Read
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/13/movies/13mool.html
Ibhawoh, B., & Ibawah, B. (2008). Moolaadé.
Write:
•
•
New York Times Cornell notes
Cornell Notes Ibhawoh #4
9.
Jamaica
Read:
Gaztambide-Fern ndez, R. A. (2002). Reggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies: Power, Meaning,
and the Markings of Postcolonial Jamaica in Perry Henzell s The Harder They Come. The
Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 24(4), 353-376.
Watch:
Dance Hall Queen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSSXwllPKXY
Write:
•
Cornell Notes
10.
Watch:
Tum Bin (2001)
Write:
•
Paragraph response instructions
•
•
o Write each paragraph (5 -7 sentences) response in the following
format:
o Topic sentence which introduces an argument, 2 sub-ideas and
parenthetical citation (1 point)
o Three evidence sentences complete with parenthetical citation. (3
points)
o Synthesis sentence which tells the reader what conclusions,
innovations, inferences, critique, etc. is derived from the evidence (1
point)
What stereotypes do you find manifest across culture in the movie Tum
Bin (2001)?
Is cultural imperialism an issue for image makers creating cinema in
“underdeveloped countries?”
Review
Reviewed Work(s): Moolaadé by Ousmane Sembène
Review by: Bonny Ibhawoh and Bonny Ibawah
Source: Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 2008), pp. 1058-1060
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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1058 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 30
V. CONCLUSION
These words-while somewhat muf
by the discourse of the day-still ring
be reaffirmed.
As Aceves’ volume attests, and
the must
Fi/artiga
case is a legal landmark of which we
Beth Van Schaack*
can all be proud.90 The Second Circuit’s
Santa Clara University School of
opinion also recalls a more hopeful and
Beth
Van Schaack
self-assured time. It is indeed
startling
to is Assistant Professor o
with
Santa
Clara University School of
revisit this landmark case in
this
histori
where she teaches and writes in the are
cal moment in which the inviolability of
human rights, transitional justice, internat
the once sacrosanct anti-torture
norm
criminal
law, is
public international law, in
tional
humanitarian law, and civil proced
under attack and the legality
and efficacy
Van Schaack joined the law faculty
of torture-whether used asProf.
an interroga
private practice at Morrison & Foerster LL
tion tactic or even a tool to terrorize a
practiced in the areas of commercial law,
international law, and hu
population-is suddenly up
for debate.
lectual
property,
The United States, oncerights.
a beacon
of trial counsel for Roma
She was
v. Garcia,
human rights case on beha
human rights values, is now
subjectato
three Salvadoran
refugees that resulted
worldwide criticism for having
turned
plaintiffs’ award of $54.6 million. She wa
its back on the human rights
edifice
it
on the criminal defense team forJohn W
helped to build. Likewise,
the the
United
Lindh,
“American Taliban.” A former S
Attorney of
andhu
Acting Executive Director
States credibility as a champion
man rights worldwide and the
its Center
ability for
to Justice and Accountabi
Prof. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stan
exercise global leadership on this score
University and Yale Law School.
have been indelibly stained. In these
author thanks
Jeffrey Larson ’08 and
unfortunate times of moralThe
relativism,
it
Birnbaum ’09 for their helpful commen
is instructive to recall the uncompromis
the draft.
ing words issued by the Second Circuit
in reinstating the Filartiga case:
In the twentieth century the
international
Moolaade,
Director:
community has come to recognize the
bene (2004).
the flagrant
Ousmane Sem
common danger posed by
dis
regard of basic human rights and particu
The facttorture….
that scholars and practitioners
larly the right to be free from
cannot agree on and
how best to describe a
In the modern age, humanitarian
certain
practice is to
an indication of the
practical considerations have
combined
lead the nations of the world
to recognize
controversy
and impassioned debates that
that respect for fundamentalthe
human
rights “Female
topic generates.
is in their individual and collective interest.
circumci
sion,” “female genital mutilation,” and
Among the rights universally proclaimed by
“female genital cutting” are all used to
all nations . . . is the right to be free from
describe the practice, common in some
physical torture. Indeed, . . . the torturer
African and Muslim communities, of
has become like the pirate and the slave
removinggeneris,
varying amounts of the female
trader before him hostis humani
an enemy of all mankind.91genital ia, usual ly in adolescent girls. It is a
90. Anne-Marie Burley, The Alien Tort Statute and the Judiciary Act of 1789: A Badge of
Honor, 83 AM. J. INT’L L. 461 (1989).
91. Filartiga v. Pena-lrala, 630 F.2d 876, 890 (2d Cir. 1980).
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2008
Book
Reviews
1059
procedure that causes
death
of ma
resolute refusal tothe
lift the Moolaade
draws
girls and women,
affects
the
otheradversely
women and girls to her cause
and
sexual wellbeing,
and
sets the
stage for makes
a standoff with thechildbirt
vil
hazardous. For many
lage elders that decades,
erupts in the center ofattempt
to stop the practice
framed
in term
the villagewere
and shatters the
tranquility of
of women’s health
the community.
and addressed as suc
by the World Health
Organization
a
Unlike many recent
films made in
other advocacy Hollywood
groups
but
with
limit
about Africa,
MooIaade
is
success. With the
adoption
of the Unit
a story
about Africa made by Africans
Nations Convention
from a distinctly
on
localthe
perspective.Eliminatio
Yet, it
of All Forms ofspeaks
Discrimination
agains
to universal themes of power, op
Women (CEDAW)
1979,
the pract
pression,in
and emancipation.
In depicting
began to be framed
asothers
a women
one woman’s more
struggle to protect
rights issue. Apart
from
the
human
righ
from an
oppressive and
inhibiting
tradi
dimension,
topic
on
female
cutting
tion, Sembenegenital
brings great sensitivity
and
which
several
themes
nuance to a topicother
that is often discussed
is
int
sect-religion, culture,
from simplistic, patronizing,
health,
and polar
sexuality
izing generational
standpoints. He deftly explores not tension
gender relations,
and
even
issues
and
local only
politics.
the conflict between local
These
traditional
that
film
tackles
in
are
a
veteran
Senegalese
values and the
influence of modern ideas, novelist
director
Ousmane
but also the gender
and generational ten Semben
sions within a community
largely isolated
the engaging
and
provocati
film Moolaade.
Set in a remote Muslim village in
Burkina Faso, Moolaad6 is the story of
Col le, a defiant and strong-wi I led second
wife of an elder in a West African vil
lage who refuses to allow four little girls
to undergo the traditional circumcision
ceremony. After losing two daughters in
childbirth due to her own circumcision,
Colle had refused to allow her surviving
daughter, Amasatou, to face the ordeal of
being cut. She is thrust into an unfold
ing drama of village politics when she
offers Moolaad6 (protection) to the girls
who escape the circumcision ceremony.
Moolaade is the mystical protection
which in the local custom can be invoked
to provide asylum. Colle’s interference
draws the ire of her deeply patriarchal
community which sees her action as an
affront to its culture and Islamic religion.
Col le can I ift the Moolaade with a single
word and comes under the intense pres
sure of the male elders, her husband,
and some fellow women to do so. Her
from the outside world. Although the film
obviously seeks to challenge the practice
of female genital cutting and raise ques
tions about its legitimacy, it does so with
sensitivity to underlying social complexi
ties. It provides a glimpse into the per
spective of local African tribesmen who
see the practice of female genital cutting
as a process of “purification” and older
women who see it as a necessary rite
of passage for their daughters. However
disagreeable their positions may appear,
Sembene brings their voices to the story
in a way that is neither condescending
nor patronizing.
Beyond its message, Moolaade is a
cinematic delight. Sembene assembles
a group of colorful characters that add
depth to his portrayal of rural African
life and make for a more compelling
storyline. Although this film is essentially
about the local tribulations of an African
village, it still manages to engage the
outside world through two intriguing
characters-a local itinerant vendor,
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1060 HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY Vol. 30
nicknamed Mercenaire, who
previously
14 Kilometres,
Director: Gerardo
worked as an aid worker, Olivares,
and a favored
Country: Spain (2007),
son of the village Chief, Ibrahima, who
Duration: 95 minutes
returns home from his studies in France
to take a bride. Having seen the world
Fourteen kilometers is the geographical
beyond the village and being convinced
distance between the African continent
of the need for change, both characters
and the South of Europe. It is, however,
become unlikely allies of Coll6 and the
more than that. It also serves as the in
village women in their struggles to end
surmountable obstacle that negates the
the practice of female genital cutting.
dreams of millions of African teenagers
Such unlikely partnerships forged across
who see the Western world as their only
ethnic, class, gender, and generational
hope to escape from hunger, misery, and
lines have historically been crucial to the
despair. 14 Kilometres, a movie that
success of human rights struggles. In the
was awarded “Best Film” at the Seminci
campaign against the practice of female
Festival (Valladolid, Spain, 2007), wisely
genital cutting, they are essential, and
Moolaade shows us why.
combines fiction and documentary to
explore the human dimensions (and,
Ultimately, this movie is not simply
unfortunately, inhuman dimensions) of
about oppression and social turmoil or
the dramatic adventure of Sub-Saharan
about progressive citizens and regressive
African migration to Europe. This journey
traditions. It is more about the resilience
can last months or even years, and all too
of the human spirit and the tenacity of
often the final destiny is death-either in
ordinary people determined to change
the sands of the desert or in the danger
their destinies. It is an excursion into
ous waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the
the dilemmas that confront a society
Mediterranean Sea.
caught in the midst of social and cultural
The film 14 Kilometres is based on
change. For the human rights scholar and
the story of Violeta Sunny, Buba Kanou,
teacher, it provides a subtle but invalu
and Mukela Kanou, who represent an
able resource for raising awareness about
entire generation of African young people
the practice of female genital cutting and
whose only desire is to migrate to Europe.
offers a means of understanding and
Violeta escapes from a forced marriage
explaining a controversial topic to an
with a much older man of her village
audience unfamiliar with the social and
and his repeated sexual abuse; Buba
cultural intricacies associated with the
wants to be a football (soccer) star for
practice. Highly recommended.
one of the leading European teams, and
he travels the entire way with a t-shirt
Bonny Ibhawoh*
of Real Madrid and a foot ball; and the
Bonny Ibhawoh is an Associate Professor in
third traveller is Mukela, Buba’s brother,
the Department of History and the Director
who isat
responsible
for convincing his
for the Centre for Peace Studies
McMaster
University, Ontario, Canada. He
is the
author
brother
to leave
his village and make
of Imperialism and Human Rights:
the journey Colonial
but who ultimately dies in
Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African
History.
the harsh desert.
The three initiate their odyssey in Ni
ger, crossing the Tenere and the Saharan
deserts until they reach the Moroccan
coast, where only two of them finally
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The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies
ISSN: 1071-4413 (Print) 1556-3022 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gred20
Reggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies: Power, Meaning,
and the Markings of Postcolonial Jamaica in Perry
Henzell s The Harder They Come
Rubn A. Gaztambide-Fern ndez
To cite this article: Rubn A. Gaztambide-Fern ndez (2002) Reggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies:
Power, Meaning, and the Markings of Postcolonial Jamaica in Perry Henzell s The Harder
They Come, The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, 24:4, 353-376, DOI:
10.1080/10714410214742
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714410214742
Published online: 29 Oct 2010.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 307
Citing articles: 1 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gred20
The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies
Vol. 24:353–376, 2002
Copyright © 2002 Taylor & Francis
1071-4413/02 $12.00 + .00
DOI: 10.1080/10714410290108101
Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández
Reggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies:
Power, Meaning, and the Markings
of Postcolonial Jamaica in Perry
Henzell’s The Harder They Come
Recently, I found myself surfing through some of the demo software in the toddler CD-ROMs that my two-year old often receives
for free in the mail. Curious to see what new characters and
interactive gimmicks might appeal to my daughter’s interest and
add some variety to my time with her at the computer, I discovered Orly.1 Named after Virginia Woolf’s2 gender-shifting hero/
ine—Orly is short for Orlando—the character had been reconceived as a Jamaican child. The reggae music in the background,
the yellow dress with black, red, and green stripes, the short
dreadlocks, and of course, the peculiar melody of his (her?) English served as stereotypical markers of the character’s identity.
As I continued to make my way through the hyperspace of the
demo, I noticed that images of paradisiacal Caribbean beaches
untouched by tourist development were overlapped with images
of run down shacks, worn-out toys, and junkyards. Adding to
the complex collage of dissonant images, the mark of British colonialism literally jumped at the viewer in the form of Orly’s pet
frog, aptly named Lancelot.
This particular juxtaposition of images was not all too surprising. The producers of the children’s game may have had the
good intention of offering an alternative to the hegemonic discourse and imagery of other programs, like Disney’s Winnie the
Pooh and Rolie Olie Polie, or even PBS’ Sesame Street and Arthur.
However, they end up relying on stereotypical images of the Caribbean as an idyllic paradise, they sanitize what are in reality
dreadful conditions of material subsistence, and have illusions
of a patriarchal colonial past in which the crown watched after
its children. But these neocolonial illusions are not new to the
postcolonial Jamaican imaginary. In fact, a similar kind of juxtaposition has been at play since Rastafarians and reggae music
were introduced to the world in Perry Henzell’s 1972 film The
353
354
R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
Harder They Come, 3 in which Rupert, the young son of the
Rastafarian drug dealer Ras Pedro also appeared playing in virgin beaches and living near dirty junkyards. Rupert survives thirty
years of Jamaican political and economic crises and reappears
dancing on a computer screen as the charmingly antiseptic Orly.
The Harder They Come is recognized as the first Jamaican
feature film, and it has become a classic cult movie,4 widely credited with setting the stage for the quick international spread of
reggae music.5 First shown in the U.S. in the 1972 FILMEX festival in Los Angeles, the movie was released in 1973, and it initially
attracted an audience that was mainly composed of recent
Jamaican immigrants, both in the U.S. and in Britain, who had
mixed responses to the film. However, the film quickly developed
an audience of “campus hipsters” and became “one of the great
college-town hits of its era.”6 The movie played at the Orson Wells
Theater in Harvard Square for close to seven years, becoming
one of the longest playing motion pictures in the U.S., second
only to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Film director James Foley
recalls the movie as one of his “guilty pleasures” and comments
on how he and his high school friends “became obsessed with
it. . . .It got to be that a Friday night consisted of coming to the
city, getting stoned, and going to see The Harder They Come for
the 15th or 20th time. There was just something hypnotic about
it—a perfect combination of music and movies.”7
Yet The Harder They Come was more than a “movie that made
you understand what smoking dope was all about,”8 or a large
scale commercial for Jamaican music as a cultural commodity.9
“Beginning in the mid-1950s—and continuing up to the present
day—individuals and groups throughout the Third World [sic]
have embraced the film medium as an essential tool for forging a
sense of national identity and cultural autonomy.”10 Ten years
after Britain granted Jamaica independence, this movie was the
first time that the living conditions of the Jamaican city-slums
were presented to a worldwide audience, and Jamaicans were
portrayed without a tourist service uniform. In fact, some
Jamaicans outside of the island had a negative response to what
they saw as a not-so-pleasant image of their island. The social
and political context of Jamaica in the early 1970s was “a far cry
from the Caribbean paradise presented in American-made travelogues.”11 As a reviewer from the New York Times put it: “This is
not a movie to lift the hearts of the members of the Jamaican
Tourist Board.”12 Widespread poverty, unemployment, and economic difficulties challenged the political stability of the island
and triggered a shift in leadership, with the election in 1972 of
Raggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies
355
Michael Manley, the Prime Minister candidate for the socialist
People’s National Party (PNP).
For the first time, during the 1972 election campaign, nationalism and the development of a “Jamaican national culture”
played a significant role in electoral politics. Similar to the development of other national identities like the construction of modern India as described by Historian Gyan Prakash,13 the construction of a postcolonial Jamaican national culture emerged
from the intersection of various, often contradicting, ways of
imagining or “narrating”14 what it meant to be Jamaican. In the
case of India, this national self-representation emerged from a
reconceptualization of science and the modernist scientific project
as a fundamental aspect of Indian culture by an emerging Indian
intelligentsia educated in Europe but with a deep understanding of Indian culture and religion.15 In Jamaica,16 the construction of a national identity took a different turn, as politicians
and intellectuals sought to dissociate from the colonial metropolis
and attain popular support by reclaiming the “traditional” symbols and cultural practices of the majority black population of
the island.
Much like the struggles over meaning and symbolic power
described by Robin Lakoff,17 the two main political parties in
Jamaica struggled over the authenticity of a wide range of markers
of Jamaican-hood in order to gain electoral support. Anita
Waters18 traces this struggle, paying particular attention to how
Rastafarian19 symbols and music were utilized during the electoral campaigns in Jamaica from 1967 to 1983. According to
Waters, the 1972 election was “replete with symbols borrowed
from the followers of Haile Selassie I,20 . . . [and] was the highest
point in the use of Rasta symbols by politicians.”21 Manley’s PNP
swept the election with an overwhelming majority, successfully
merging the symbols of Rastafarians, and the politics associated
with them, with the socialist ideologies he had learned through
his own European education. But what is most remarkable about
the political imagination of Manley and the PNP, is that they
managed to mobilize the support of the majority black and working class electorate through their appeal to black power symbols
and ideas, while maintaining the support of the white educated
dominant class.
Perry Henzell, author of The Harder They Come, was part of
this dominant class that sought to distinguish itself from the
colonial culture of British society by reinventing themselves as
part of an emerging Jamaican nationality. A close associate of
Manley, Henzell was a producer of TV commercials, educated in
356
R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
a British boarding school and at the BBC,22 and with close personal ties to the Rastafarian community adjacent to his family’s
property. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of homology,23
Manley and Henzell could be seen as playing a homologous role,
the former in the political field and the latter in the field of cultural production.24 Through a homologous “revival of traditional
culture,”25 the PNP was able to, as Bourdieu describes, “on the
one hand develop and impose a representation of the social world
capable of obtaining the support of the greatest possible number
of citizens, and on the other win positions (whether of power or
not) capable of ensuring that they can wield power over those
who grant that power to them.”26
The explanatory power of Bourdieu’s framework is clearly
exemplified in the narratives developed by Henzell in his film
and that will be the focus of this paper. While The Harder They
Come portrays and makes explicit the relations of power that
dominate certain aspects of Jamaican society in order to catalyze the political engagement of Jamaican black youth, it does so
without explicitly exposing the role of the white Jamaican ruling
class in these relations of domination. Although Henzell rejects
his identification with this white wealthy dominant class, describing them as a “pompous elite” who are “restricted by their
wealth,”27 it is only through his membership in this social class
that he gains access to the resources necessary to make this
film,28 a medium that is in turn only available to him through
access to a British education. Furthermore, drawing on
Bourdieu’s understanding of political action and effectiveness, it
is only because Henzell is a part of this social world that he is
able to act on his “knowledge of this world.”29
However, as I will argue in this paper, the narratives that
constitute this supposedly subversive representation of Jamaican society fall short of becoming what Bourdieu describes as
“heretical subversion.”30 Instead, I will argue that each of these
narratives contributes to the misrecognition of the white Jamaican ruling class and its role in the relations of domination that
the film portrays by presenting blacks as the exploiters of other
blacks and by commodifying blackness as an object for consumption by an exnominated white audience. I will argue that this
apparent omission allows the movie two crucial accomplishments.
First, it helped mobilize a nationalist political process that included black, working class, and white Jamaicans and that ultimately elected the PNP’s Michael Manley into power. Second, it
presented a new Jamaican imaginary to the world that set the
stage for the rapid spread of reggae and the other markers of
Raggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies
357
Jamaican culture that eventually gave rise to my daughter’s new
digital androgynous friend, Orly.
REGGAE, GANJA, AND BLACK BODIES
In what follows, I will discuss three narratives that are developed in The Harder They Come. First, I will focus on the construction of the Jamaican reggae musician, and the ways in which
the film laces together images from Jamaican folklore and from
commercial films to shape the character of Ivanhoe Martin as
the Jamaican reggae hero. Next, I discuss how the use of ganja,
or marijuana, and the ganja trade are constructed in the movie
as a challenge to authority and to traditional social structures
but, once again, without challenging broader structures of exploitation. Lastly, I will explore the ways in which blackness,
in particular the black body, is objectified in the movie as an
object of desire by a white audience that remains unnamed
throughout the movie. For each of these narratives, I will discuss the explicit as well as the implicit ideas that ground them
by exploring the models, the practices, and the institutions that
shape each narrative.
Reggae and the Invention of the Jamaican Musician
A bright red bus emerges from the green foliage of the Jamaican
countryside along a coastal road and the background lyrics slowly
fade-in as if letting the audience hear the thoughts of the young
Ivan Martin inside the bus on his way to Kingston:
You can get it if you really want it,
you can get it if you really want it,
you can get it if you really want it,
but you must try, try and try, try and try.
These lyrics set the impulse behind the main character of the
movie, who arrives convinced that he can become a successful
singer in the big city’s music industry “if he really wants it.”
Questioned by his elderly mother (who rejects him upon arrival
to the city and sends him to live with a priest) about his plans to
get a job in the city, Ivan insists, “I can sing yaw naw ma.’” Lured
by the rhythms of the developing reggae coming out of some
newly acquired transistor radio, Ivan believes that the praises of
his deceased grandmother for his singing can translate into big
success in the burgeoning music industry in Kingston.
358
R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
Ivan joins a small church choir and eventually gets his break
to record a song for the one and only producer in town, Mr. Hilton.
The film portrays Ivan as a naïve young singer with no musical
background or knowledge of the music industry. He is smitten
by the music playing in his small red transistor radio and inspired by the images of U.S. and European rock n’ roll, represented briefly in the movie by a slick red electric guitar, which
Ivan admires through the glass of a music store window. Despite
his lack of experience, when we see Ivan in the recording studio,
performed by reggae legend Jimmy Cliff, he is suddenly skillful,
self-assured, and stoic.
The music scene in Kingston is replete with singers and
musicians waiting for their big break. Ivan seems to be the youngest of the musicians we see performing in the movie. Additionally, the political and radical content of Ivan’s songs—or song,
since we only see him performing The Harder They Fall (note the
choice for a different title between the song and movie, on which
I will comment later)—stands in stark contrast to the acquiescence and passivity of the other songs recorded in the studio by
an older generation. This contrast in themes is underscored by a
contrast in style. The songs recorded by the older musicians follow the form and rhythm of the rock steady and calypso that
predates and forms the basis of reggae, while Ivan’s song has
clear elements, in instrumentation, harmony, and rhythmic structure from the more contemporary reggae style. Clearly, Henzell,
with Cliff’s collaboration, successfully presents a new kind of
Jamaican music: a mixture of Caribbean ska, calypso, and rock
steady, with American R&B and the evolving traits of rock, layered with politically charged lyrics. These will later become the
markings of reggae music, and within only 18 months of the
release of The Harder They Come, Bob Marley was attracting large
audiences from Boston to Paris wanting to hear the new Jamaican style.
The soundtrack to The Harder They Come has been described
as “one of the best scores in movies history,” and it is widely
recognized as one of “the best reggae samplers.”31 But despite its
great success, it is unlikely that any of the musicians involved,
with exception perhaps of Cliff himself, actually benefited from
the soundtrack, which “spread reggae music to corners of the
world where the film had not yet penetrated.”32 A central aspect
of the narrative of Jamaican music and musicians presented in
the movie is the narrative of exploitation and manipulation at
the hands of the local recording industry mogul who “makes the
hits” and “tells the DJs what to play.” When Ivan refuses to accept the twenty dollars that the producer offers to him for his
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359
song, he finds himself unable to get the song on the air, refused
by the local DJs who only play what the producer has approved.
Once Ivan accepts the twenty dollars, the music is played on a
limited basis on the radio, because the producer doesn’t want to
develop the career of this “trouble maker,” even though he agrees
that it is a good song.
In the movie, the abusive and vituperative music producer,
Mr. Hilton,33 is played by a light skinned Jamaican, even though
the “real-life music producers who run their businesses like dictatorships”34 are mostly white and controlled by companies outside of Jamaica. Henzell, in fact, worked with these producers
through his commercial work, and he had access to their recording studios to record the soundtrack for the film. This narrative
of exploitation by an omnivorous music industry continues to be
central to the narrative of Jamaican reggae.35 Billboard reporter
Maureen Sheridan describes in a lengthy article the details of
the current challenges faced by Jamaican musicians.36 But
Sheridan mostly places the guilt in the Jamaican industry itself,
and barely recognizes that undue influence of multinational corporations, which both Cliff and Henzell recognize.37 This construction of the Jamaican reggae musician—gifted with natural
talents, socially and politically conscious and explicit, and exploited by a rapacious music industry was first presented to the
world in The Harder They Come. Thirty years later, it continues
to shape the narratives of Jamaican music as well as other emerging local versions of reggae as a music of protest from other corners of the world.
The Logic of the Ganja Market
After Ivan accepts the twenty dollars that Mr. Hilton offers for
his new song, he quickly spends the money in new fashions for
himself and his lover, Elsa. Although Elsa is more concerned
with saving the money for food, Ivan is convinced that his song
will get him new opportunities for making money. He takes the
last two dollars and heads off to a dancehall, screaming at Elsa
that he wants his “milk and honey . . . now! Tonight!” Realizing
at the dancehall that his prospects for becoming rich fast are
slim, Ivan accepts an invitation by a local drug dealer to “handle
big money” through an alternative venture. The image on the
screen quickly shifts from the darkness of the night club parking lot to a sunny close-up on a marijuana field, and the driving
song from the beginning of the movie returns to remind us that
“you can get it if you really want it.” The film portrays the ganja
trade in three interlocking planes that sustain each other. Ivan,
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
as the idealistic new comer, begins to challenge what is presented
as the logic of the ganja market, in which profit and security are
carefully controlled for the ultimate benefit of some invisible power
that is referred to but never identified in the movie.
Ivan enters at the lowest tier of the ganja market, replacing
the wife of a local Rastafarian dealer and police informant, who
was mistakenly killed in a police raid. Ras Pedro, the only
Rastafarian to play a lead role in the movie, has a sick son who,
like Ivan, has been left motherless by the living conditions of the
shantytown.38 At this level, the ganja market is simple and selfrestrained, delimited only by the presence of a traffic cop at the
entrance of the town who monitors the comings and goings of
the dealers. Ivan and Ras Pedro distribute the ganja that is produced by the local farmers, and collect the money from the local
bars where the ganja is sold. These transactions and the relationships around them are portrayed in the movie as an essential part of the organic collective dynamics of the local community. In a classic scene, we see the traders, producers, and the
informants smoking from the same pipe in a dark room. But this
quiet, almost religious scene, also begins to shape the tragic end
of the movie, as another dealer offers Ivan two guns. He purchases it hoping to ensure his safety and despite the better judgement of Ras Pedro, who is portrayed throughout the movie as
the moral conscience of the community.
The fragile balance of the ganja market is thrown off when
an airplane is caught exporting marijuana to the U.S., and the
army intervenes by burning the ganja crops without the consent
of the local police detective who controls the area. The second
plain of the ganja trade is less organic and more volatile because, while the police control the trade by managing the informants (who share their profits with the police for protection), the
police cannot always control the army or, even less, public opinion. As the police commissioner explains early in the film to the
detective: “I know you use the trade as a form of control, but I
can’t explain that officially, all I can do is ask the army to cooperate.” In the depiction of these two layers of the ganja trade, as
with the music industry, we only see middle-class black Jamaicans exploiting and taking advantage of poorer black Jamaicans.
But when the local newspapers reports that the airplane caught
was loaded with $100,000 worth of ganja, Ivan begins to question how profits are controlled in the local market. As he begins
to challenge the careful hierarchy of profits and control of the
ganja market, his superiors decide that it is time to get him off
the market. This leads to Ivan killing a police officer and to the
dramatic hunt that is the climax of the movie.
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361
This third layer of the ganja market, which becomes evident
with the capture of the plane, remains invisible through the movie,
and we are left with few clues to help us understand how this
third layer operates and who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the
ganja trade. Only the white pilot in the cabin of the plane begins
to suggest that once again it is the white ruling class who get the
most profit. In Henzell’s own commentary, which was added as a
feature of the 2000 release of the movie on DVD,39 he explains
how “exporting ganja was a gentleman’s sport, fun, and profit for
people who had planes and boats, and then it became a people’s
business.” There is little doubt that the top layer of the ganja
trade, far removed from the activities of dealers on the ground, is
controlled by those who can override the power of the police and
who can afford to loose $100,000 worth of profit in one trip.40
Challenging the logic of the ganja trade leads the hero of the
movie both to his ultimate celebrity and to his demise. While the
movie could be seen as suggesting that the ganja trade is corrupted and that growers and local dealers should aim to control
the trade, the implicit message is more complex and far less revolutionary. In several instances, the local traders and planters
are portrayed as inept and incapable of leading their community
to self-organization. As Mr. Hilton cautions the police detective,
“once these jokers get hungry enough to start trading without
you, you are finished, and the law and order are finished.” Having failed in his efforts to catch Ivan, the detective turns the
tables on the traders, for whom feeding their families become
more important than cheering for Ivan. Angry with them for the
challenge to his authority, the detective impatiently warns the
traders: “I stop chase Ivan, I start chase you, and as of this week
no more ganja coming. I am going to starve you. We’ll see how
much you like Ivan with your stomach empty.” In the end, the
dark and quiet moment of reflection when the Rastafarians gather
to smoke remains “what smoking dope [is] all about,”41 and the
only space worth preserving by ensuring that the hierarchy of
the ganja trade remain intact and in order.
Black Bodies, White Sexualities
The narratives of Jamaican reggae and of the ganja trade are, to
some extent, somewhat superficial narratives that are explicitly
developed in the course of this film. These are the stories that
Henzell deliberately sets out to tell and that catch the immediate
attention of the viewer. Below the surface of both of these stories
is a more implicit, one might say repressed, story that underlies
the narratives of the entire film: the narrative of the black body.
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
The easiest way to understand this narrative is to suggest that
black bodies become the object of desire of the white audience,42
or more specifically, of the white director. While this sexual
fetishization of the black body is part of this third narrative, it is
accompanied and complemented by two additional constructions:
the view of the black man-child, and the sexualization of the
black protagonist into a white hero.
In his classic inquiry into the psychology of the colonized
subject, Frantz Fanon suggests that for white Europeans “the
Negro is just a child.”43 To construct his narrative of the black
body, Henzell begins by portraying Ivan as a child who, after the
death of his grandmother, comes to the city in search of his
mother—lives, appropriately, on Milk lane. Ivan’s oedipal drive
is quickly trumped, as his mother, who can barely care for herself, sends him away to seek the help of a minister. Naïve to the
reality of his homelessness, Ivan decides to go to the movies and
finds himself the next morning at a bus stop, awakened by a
splash of water from a passing car. Ivan finds work and shelter
at the home of the minister and builds himself a sort of fantasy
space inside of an abandoned car, where he keeps pornography
(all white women) and a toy space gun. He becomes obsessed
with fixing and decorating an old bicycle, which later becomes
the object of a knife struggle that lands Ivan in jail.
In the jail sequence, the paternalistic stance of the white
man and the infantilization of the black man reach their epitome.
The first of very few white faces we see in the entire movie is that
of a judge walking along a sidewalk towards the court. We hear
the voice of the judge—presumably played by Henzell himself—
in the background as images of cell doors and prisoners shift
quickly on the screen. The judge scolds Ivan for wasting “every
chance to make good . . . and to lead a Christian life” living under the minister’s auspices and agrees to give him another chance,
but not without sentencing Ivan to be whipped. In a scene that
graphically depicts the kind of modern slavery described by Albert
Memmi,44 Ivan is whipped with a switch several times by a black
corrections officer in what looks more like a rape scene from
homoerotic pornography than a sad moment in a film musical.45
Once again, although it is the white legal authority that determines the punishment, it is a black man who carries out the
sentence, giving the impression that the white judge is responsible for the pardon and the black correction officer is responsible for the whipping. After the white authority displays its power
to “discipline and punish”46 the body of the man-child, he is
seen crying with his head on the bosom of his lover, like a child
in his mother’s arms.
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363
In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon also explores the hypersexualization of the black body, and of the black male in particular at length. He explains: “For the majority of white men the
Negro represents the sexual instinct (in its raw state). The Negro
is the incarnation of a genital potency beyond all moralities and
prohibitions. . . . The Negro is taken as a terrifying penis.”47 Although Henzell claims that in The Harder They Come “there is
not a lot of sex,”48 the title of the movie alone is evocative enough
of the kind of not-so-subtle sexual imagery used to construct the
narrative of the black body. In one of the most colorful and dramatic scenes of the movie, we see an aroused church audience
after a minister finishes preaching about love, dancing “as if they
are bringing themselves to orgasms while singing a wild gospel
song.”49 The entire scene is framed by the light blue walls with
the words “Behold I Come Quickly”50 painted on them in large
letters. The scene alternates with images of the minister’s omniscient eyes and a view of Ivan and Elsa making love for the first
time at a beach.
Kenneth Marc Harris argues that The Harder They Come uses
“racial and erotic fetishism . . . designed to appeal particularly to
the white spectator and rock music fan.”51 Although his argument tends to ignore the local circumstances surrounding the
production of the film, the examples that he draws from the film
and his analyses are quite compelling. For example, he argues
that Ivan “is framed as a phallus, upright in the middle of the
screen with a dark column-like space behind him,”52 while recording The Harder They Fall. Ivan’s body is also presented as
an object of desire when the police attempt to ambush him while
he has sex with his declared enemy’s girlfriend. Ivan runs around
in his underwear with his two guns firing at the police as his
black body shines in the darkness, pursued by the black police
and desired by the white audience.
Getting the white audience to desire Ivan is more difficult
than simply showing his naked body. First, Ivan must be symbolically set apart from other black bodies in the movie, and he
must be identified with markers of white desire. Henzell accomplishes this by slowly transforming Ivan into a white hero with
markers of white sexuality. As Ivan begins to challenge the
prevalent authorities both in the music industry and in the ganja
trade he begins to set himself apart from the rest of the characters who are happy to retain the status quo. As his madness,
triggered by the sudden rise to stardom provoked by his criminal
activities, continues to take hold of his actions, he continues to
incorporate markers of whiteness. He begins to hang out in the
hotels and, in another classic scene from the film, forces his way
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
into driving a white convertible over a golf course, wearing dark
golden shades and slick clothes. In this scene, Ivan become “a
typical commercial model, the darkness of whose skin seems
significant mainly for the function of attractively setting off the
whiteness of the convertible.”53
Early in the film, when Ivan arrives to Kingston, his first desire,
after being rejected by his mother, is to go to the local movie theater, the Rialto, to watch a spaghetti Western. The last scene from
the movie Django54 is playing, and the crowd cheers on as the white
lone cowboy gets ready to face a troupe of red-scarf enemies. The
crowd of black faces roots as the hero kills all his enemies with a
machine gun one by one. By the end of the movie, Ivan has become
the white hero. He finds himself alone in an island, having failed
his attempt to escape in a cargo ship to Cuba, pursued by the
Kingston police. In this final scene, Henzell seems to mock Ivan’s
attempts to become the white hero, by showing him almost like a
circus clown, using his gun after he runs out of bullets and making
shooting noises with his mouth. The absurd scene alternates with
the early images of black Jamaicans cheering for the white hero in
Django. The soldiers announce that they are going to “do a frontal
assault,” and Ivan challenges them yelling: “one man just come
out, come on out, one who could draw!” A voice from the back yells:
“shut your mouth! He thinks the hero can’t die until the last reel?”
The incompetent black police shoot him down, and the movie quickly
ends with Ivan grossly incapable of fulfilling his role as the white
hero, murdered and betrayed by his own kin in their desperation.
At the end of the movie, after the hero has been killed and
betrayed by other blacks, Henzell leaves us with the sensuous
sounds of reggae and a close-up on a black women’s pelvis,
dressed in a short mini skirt in psychedelic shiny silver, red,
yellow and blue, swaying back and fourth. After the death of the
black/white hero, the audience is left with reggae, ganja, and a
black body.
MARKING POSTCOLONIAL JAMAICA
In the previous section, I discussed three narratives that the
movie presents in its construction of postcolonial Jamaica. First,
reggae musicians are presented as having natural talents that
are exploited by a music industry controlled by a few light-skin
black Jamaicans. In the movie, a young generation of musicians,
represented by the young and naïve Ivan, arrives in the scene to
replace the old musical styles and mild lyrics with the more politicized and apparently autochthonous reggae. Disillusioned by
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365
the antics of the music industry, the protagonist ends up as a
ganja dealer. The film exposes the various levels and political
hierarchies of the ganja trade, again portraying a world in which
blacks manipulate and exploit other blacks. The consumption of
ganja with the local Rastafarians in the darkness of a slum basement is the only venue for spiritual solace and satisfaction, and
even this space begins to become corrupted when the logic of the
ganja market is somehow altered. Lastly, the film portrays poor
black Jamaicans as children whose disciplined bodies are seen
as sexual objects to be desired by the audience.
What is most salient about each of these narratives is the
ways in which each contributes to the misrecognition55 of a white
Jamaican dominant class that wields the most power within each
of the narratives and in the very construction of the narratives
themselves. Perry Henzell, the white producer of the film, whose
class privilege allows him to make a film about black Jamaicans,
is the clearest example of this omniscient white power. But white
Jamaicans also go unnamed and their power unchallenged as
the ultimate beneficiaries—perhaps even protectors—of the ganja
trade and the ultimate judges and paternalistic “owners” of the
black body.
Although Henzell states in retrospect that his goal with this
film was to unmask authority and to educate poor blacks about
their own political condition,56 this supposed revolutionary intent of the film is markedly limited by its own political and social
context. Henzell is ultimately incapable of unmasking his own
power as a white Jamaican, but instead, accomplishes an identification between white and black Jamaicans that dissociates
them from their colonial past. In this identification lies the ultimate success of the film as a representation of postcolonial Jamaica and as a tool for political manipulation. Manley and the
PNP had already began to engage cultural and identity politics in
their presidential campaign, and Henzell provided them with a
tool for mass appeal. But the political success of the movie as a
cultural product depended on whether it could accomplish two
important tasks: mobilizing a nationalist political process and
presenting a postcolonial Jamaican imaginary.
Mobilizing Jamaican Nationalism
As in most postcolonial nations, an important interstice opened
up in Jamaica between the margins of various racial identities
when political powers began to redefine what constituted the
new national culture.57 The end of the first decade of Jamaican
independence from Britain saw the rapid development of a Ja-
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
maican nationalist movement. While this movement was not new
in Jamaica, it wasn’t until the late 1960s that the interstices
opened up and gained political salience.58 According to Waters,
this salience was triggered by the need of the Jamaican elite to
distinguish itself from the British colonial power and by the
economic challenges that Jamaica faced as an independent nation.
The Harder They Come appeared in Jamaica at a crucial
moment in the politicization of Jamaican blacks, who were largely
alienated from the political process. Manley and the leadership
of the socialist PNP needed to gain the support of the majority
black population to win the election, and the movie uncovered
Jamaican power structures just enough to get blacks interested
in politics. Through the movie, the white educated elite, which
mostly supported the PNP, utilized their own cultural modes of
production to celebrate and sanction the symbols and cultural
practices of the Rastafarians, an explicitly Africanist group, as a
way of making connections with the black majority. Although
early in the decade white Jamaicans saw Rastafarian practices
and views as threatening, they realized that these were important sources for the construction of a new Jamaican national
identity, and these eventually came to “inform the thinking and
even the public policy of the nineteen seventies.”59
In this film, Henzell “is very careful not to portray whites as
the oppressors.”60 In order to protect their own economic and
political interests, the white ruling class constructed a radicalized
vision of black Jamaicans that involved them in the political process while obscuring and protecting their own dominant role.61
Embracing certain symbols associated with black power and
Rastafarians, the image of the “white Rastas” 62 emerges as a
powerful marker of postcolonial Jamaica. In this process, white
Jamaicans neutralized the subversive potential of Rastafarian
imagery by co-opting their symbols into a more broad Jamaican
national culture. The cultural imagination of Jamaican nationalism, then, included both the politicized blacks and the powerful white ruling class as part of the same nationalist movement.
As The Harder They Come introduced Jamaica to the world, it
spread this new Jamaican imaginary.
The New Jamaican Imaginary
In order to present this movie as a “true” representation of Jamaican culture, the film relies on two narrative techniques. First,
Henzell’s depiction of postcolonial Jamaica gains credibility by
presenting itself as a “realist” film. Henzell utilized various cin-
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367
ematic techniques to accomplish this sense of realism. First, most
of the actors in the movie, including Cliff, are untrained or mostly
inexperienced film actors. In addition, many of the scenes depicted in the movie are not staged and take place spontaneously
in the spaces where they typically occur. For example, Ivan’s
introduction to the seedy Kingston nightlife is filmed in the actual pool halls and betting rooms, as if the movie was “part Third
World documentary.”63 According to a reviewer, “the movie’s enduring, primal strength rests on [its] quasi-documentary foundation.”64
Despite the realism, Kevin Thomas argues that the movie “is
above all concerned with myth making”65 The second way in which
Henzell claims the authority of his representation and captures
the attention of Jamaicans themselves is by drawing heavily on
Jamaican tradition and folklore. Most obviously, the character
to Ivanhoe Martin and most of the details of his story are drawn
from a historical character who, “for a few brief weeks . . . astonished Kingstonians with a flurry of robberies and shootings and
a Robin Hood-style bravado.”66 In fact, most of the screenplay’s
most colorful and symbolic moments are adapted from the details of the real “Rhyging.”67 In reviving the story, Henzell gets
Jamaicans interested in the movie and makes a first contact
between white cultural producer and black culture. Henzell relies on the real story to present the narratives that he is constructing as part of the Jamaican national storybook; he becomes,
in fact, a mythmaker.
However, this new myth “becomes a new form of exoticism.”68
The three narratives that are developed and analyzed above become the new Jamaican imaginary that is presented to the world.
Having gained credibility through the use of folklore and history,
combined with documentary cinematic techniques, The Harder
They Come stands in for Jamaica on the international screen. As
the movie receives positive reviews, the narratives of the film
capture a new audience beyond Jamaican immigrants. This audience, mostly made up of college-age, educated, and politically
radical white students, finds the pseudo-revolutionary image of
the reggae singer appealing, or at least nonthreatening. The use
of subtitles, “which amusingly makes this one of the rare, if not
the first of English-language films with English subtitles,”69 adds
to the exotic character of this particular black hero, making him
nonthreatening to the white college audience, while at the same
time appealing to some desire for revolutionary social change.70
The narratives of revolutionary music produced by exploited,
naturally talented musicians; the spirituality associated with
Rastafarians and the allure of smoking ganja; and the presenta-
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
tion of black bodies as the sexual fetish of whites all combine to
secure a steady audience of college students who kept the movie
playing for seven years. In the process, the film gives the appearance to some analysts that it “was produced as part of a well
planned campaign for advertising and marketing reggae
records.”71
Whether the film was indeed produced as a commercial or
not,72 here I am more interested in why the movie had such an
apparent impact on the spread of reggae around the world. While
there may be more at play than the connections drawn to these
three narratives, I believe this analysis does begin to illuminate
this phenomenon. After The Harder They Come, reggae carried
with it these three narratives of music, ganja, and the black body.
The postcolonial Jamaican imaginary is attached to these
narratives and to the music that came to stand for them. Producing and consuming reggae becomes consuming and producing Jamaica.
THE LAST “REDEMPTION SONG,”73 SELLING JAMAICA
Thirty years after the release of The Harder they Come, the narratives and the images that the movie presented in 1972 remain
a central aspect of a broader Jamaican narrative. In the interim,
the political scene in Jamaica has experienced volatile and often
violent changes.74 Large multinational corporations like Sony and
MCA have replaced the Mr. Hiltons of the early 1970s, Jamaica
has become a bridge for transporting cocaine between South
America and the U.S., and “Uzis have replaced hand guns.”75
The tourist industry continues to thrive, achieving more and more
isolation from the daily lives of most Jamaicans, and Jamaicans
continue to migrate to Britain and the U.S. As reggae has spread
through the world, like most music of “the black atlantic,”76 it
has undergone tremendous transformations and mixed with rap
and other forms of music.77 As Maureen Sheridan reports, “reggae
today is a true world music. From Siberia to the Seychelle Islands, from Agadir to Tokyo, the talking drum and bass of Jamaica
have spread their seductive message, and there are no signs of
its movement slowing down.”78
Some social theorists and arts intellectuals speculate on the
power of popular music style like reggae and rap to trigger social
consciousness and radical change.79 However, this analysis of
The Harder They Come illustrates the precarious balance between
music as a revolutionary force and the cooptation of cultural
products for “producing, reproducing or destroying the repre-
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369
sentations that make groups visible for themselves and for others.”80 Ultimately, the effectiveness of a cultural product like
reggae does not rely in itself as an artistic form, as Herbert
Marcuse would argue.81 Instead, the subversive potential of the
arts lies in the practices and the struggles over meaning around
which they are produced and consumed. When new cultures
encounter each other and when political processes force different cultural practices, symbols, and values to intersect and interact with each, as in the case of India or Jamaica, interstices
that emerge are the true “location of culture,”82 defined as an
active process of negotiation, redefinition, and re-presentation.83
The images and the narratives presented in The Harder They
Come have been modified, translated, and recreated to suit new
contexts and emergent struggle over meaning. However, the Jamaican imaginary remains alive and dancing, and perhaps
Rupert, the prodigal son of the Rastafarian moral authority in
the film representing the future of Jamaica, is embodied in Orly.
As a cultural icon, Orly is the latest redemption of the Jamaican
national imaginary, and his “imagination takes flight,”84 as a
new inter-space85 is created within the space of an electronic
digital island. The Harder They Come depicts Rastafarians as an
idyllic, erotic fantasy, in charge of protecting the motherless86
Jamaican future. But only the Rastafarian child survives, as all
the adults have failed Rupert, including his own father, who ultimately sells Ivan for his right to sell ganja at the lowest level of
the hierarchy. Therefore, when we encounter the child in the
digital world of the twenty-first century there are no adults, and
only the Arthurian knight-turned-frog remains; the child is the
“prince/ss”87 of the idyllic kingdom, playing in the junkyards of
a digitally sanitized Jamaica.88
Yet perhaps there are ways in which Orly does offer the possibility of “heretic subversion.” While this computer game does
enact racist and colonialist elements of the dominant Jamaican
narrative from the 1970s, it is distinct in two crucial ways. First,
Orly invites its young “users” to co-construct and “make thier
own story”89 through a hypertextual, rather than a linear, narrative; second, the ambiguous gender identity of the protagonist
suggests that there may be other ways in which Orly resists and
destabilizes identity boundaries while reproducing racism. Then
again, at the end of the demo software, the potential buyer, presumably a parent like myself, is presented with the monotonous
“To purchase your copy of ‘Orly’s Draw-a-story’ call 1-800-. . . to
order now for $19.95.”90 This “selling” of a new Jamaican narrative betrays the neoliberal co-optation of cultural production for
market profit. But maybe dismissing this enactment of the Ja-
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R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
maican imaginary as just a new incarnation of what Theodore
Adorno described as the “culture industry”91 may be as misguided
as the simplistic assumption that popular music might be inherently revolutionary. In the end, with Orly, as with Ivan, we
are left with the practices, the ideas, the institutions, and the
possibilities of engaging these in a process of “heretic subversion” that is more complex and far less predictable than the
deconstruction of its meanings might lead us to believe or dismiss. The selling of a new Jamaican narrative that is ambiguous
about sexuality and that allows room for “making [our] own
stories” might begin to open the necessary interstitial space to
follow Bob Marley’s call, and begin to “emancipate [ourselves]
from mental slavery” and to “free our minds.”92 Perhaps even in
this neoliberal globalized world, there is room for Orly to sing the
last redemption song of the postcolonial Jamaican imaginary.
Notes
1. Orly’s Draw-a-Story Ver. 2.1, ToeJam & Earl Productions.
2. Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1992).
3. The Harder They Come directed by Perry Henzell, International Film, Ltd.,
Kingston, 1973.
4. Danny Peary, Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the
Wonderful (New York: Dell, 1981); J. P. Telotte, The Cult Film Experience:
Beyond All Reason (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1991).
5. Most reviews of the film after 1980 and almost all reviews of the recently
released DVD credit the movie and its soundtrack with launching the international success of reggae. See for example Jim Bessman, “‘The Harder
They Come’ Debuts on DVD with Cliff’s Commentary,” Billboard, November
4 2000; Jay Carr, “‘The Harder They Come’ Still Beats with Vigor,” review of
The Harder They Come in DVD, The Boston Globe, July 25 1997; Robert
Palmer, “The Pop Life: Rap and Hip-Hop Music in ‘Wild Style’,” review of The
Harder They Come, The New York Times, February 22 1984; Peter Stack,
“Movie That Set Off Reggae Boom Returns 25 Years Later Harder They Come
to Screen at Red Vic,” review of The Harder They Come, The San Francisco
Chronicle, November 14 1997; James Sullivan, “Harder They Come Back
and Worth a Look, Listen,” The San Francisco Chronicle, July 2 1997. In a
2001 interview, Perry Henzell comments on this issue. See Jermey Sigler,
Perry Henzell, 2001 Interview [Online magazine] (index magazine.com, 2001
[cited May 4 2002]); available from http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/interview_henzell.html.
6. Michael Sragow, The Harder They Come [Online Magazine] (Salon.com, 2000
[cited May 4 2002]); available from http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/dvd/
review/2001/11/20/harder_they_come/print.html.
7. James Foley, “James Foley’s Guilty Pleasures,” Film Comment, SeptemberOctober 1992, 78.
8. Ibid.
9. Kenneth Marc Harris, The Film Fetish (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.,
1992).
10. Julianne Burton, “Marginal Cinemas and Mainstream Critical Theory,” Screen
26, no. 3-4 (1985): 3.
Raggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies
371
11. Peary, Cult Movies, 132.
12. Vincent Canby, “Those Films Which Refuse to Fade Away,” The New York
Times, July 14 1974.
13. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
14. Homi Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990).
15. Prakash, Another Reason.
16. I would speculate that this phenomenon of cultural appropriation and of
representing the nation through its cultural rather than scientific developments is present in other Caribbean nations, but this question remains to
be explored.
17. Robin Tolmach Lakoff, The Language War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
18. Anita M. Waters, Race, Class and Political Symbols: Rastafari and Reggae in
Jamaican Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985).
19. There is not enough space in this paper to discuss the history and the role
of Rastafarians in Jamaican culture broadly. Relevant details will be discussed as they become relevant, but for more information, see Barry
Chevannes, Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (Syracuse: Syracuse University
Press, 1995); Nathaniel S. Murrell, William D. Spencer, and Adrian A.
McFarlane, eds., Chanting Down Babylon: The Rastafari Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).
20. Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, is believed by Rastafarians to be the
biblical Messiah and the direct descendant of King Solomon and Queen
Makeda of Sheba.
21. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 123.
22. British Broadcasting Company, where Henzell studied filmmaking and TV
production.
23. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and
Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 214219.
24. Bourdieu describes homology in relation to the political field, but most of
this description would apply to the field of cultural production as well.
According to Bourdieu, by pursuing the satisfaction of the specific interests imposed on them by competition within the field, professionals satisfy
in addition the interests of those who delegate them: the struggles of the
representatives can be described as a political mimesis of the struggles of
the groups or classes whose champions they claim to be. But on the other
hand, this homology also means that, in adopting stances that are most in
conformity with the interests of those whom they represent, the professionals are still pursuing—without necessarily admitting it to themselves—the
satisfaction of their own interests, as these are assigned to them by the
structure of positions and oppositions constitutive of the internal space of
the political field. Ibid., 182–83.
25. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 10.
26. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 181.
27. Perry Henzell, Commentary for the DVD Release of ‘the Harder They Come’
(Criterion, 2000), DVD Commentary.
28. In several interviews, Henzell explains how it was the funding he obtained
through his contacts and friends in these circles that he able to produce
the film in its entirety. See for example The Islandlife Interview with Perry
Henzell [Website] (1998 [cited May 4 2002]); available from http://
www.islandlife.com/thtc/perryinterview.html; Sigler, Perry Henzell, 2001
Interview.
372
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 127.
Ibid.
Peary, Cult Movies, 131.
Palmer, “Pop Life.”
Perhaps the name serves as one implicit connection between the manipulation of the music industry and the control of the Jamaican economy by the
tourist industry.
Peary, Cult Movies, 133.
Chuck Foster, Roots, Rock, Reggae: An Oral History of Reggae Music from
Ska to Dancehall (New York: Billboard Books, 1999); Norman Stolzoff, Wake
the Town and Tell the People: Dancehall Culture in Jamaica (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2000). The proliferation of reggae styles
around the world in the last 20 years has carried this part of the narrative
to other contexts. I deal with this phenomenon in Rubén A. GaztambideFernández, “Prophets of Culture: The Puerto Rican Reggae of ‘Cultura
Profética’” (paper presented at the HGSE Student Research Conference,
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA, February 23 2001).
See also Jorge L. Giovanetti Torres, “Rasta Y Reggae: Del Campo De Batalla
Al Salón De Baile,” Revista Universidad de América 7, no. 1 (1995), and
Brian Jahn and Tom Weber, Reggae Island: Jamaican Music in the Digital
Age (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998).
Maureen Sheridan, “Jamaican Musicians Still Not Receiving Fruit of Their
Labor,” Billboard, April 4 1992.
Jimmy Cliff, Commentary for the DVD Release of The Harder They Come
(Criterion, 2000), DVD Commentary; Henzell, DVD Comment.
Rupert plays an important metaphoric role as a signifier for the future of
Jamaica. His uncanny resemblance to the character Orly from the opening
of this essay will be explored in the conclusion.
Henzell, DVD Comment.
Jose, the police contact with the local trade, tells Ivan untroubled that if
one plane got caught, two others made it.
Foley, “James Foley’s Guilty Pleasures,” 78.
Harris, Film Fetish.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markman (New
York: Grove Press, 1967), 27.
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfeld
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1991).
This scene was censored in some countries. The Islandlife Interview with
Perry Henzell [Website] (1998 [cited May 4 2002]); available from http://
www.islandlife.com/thtc/perryinterview.html.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A.
Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979).
Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 177.
Henzell, DVD Comment.
Peary, Cult Movies, 133.
Holy Bible, Revelations 22:7
Harris, Film Fetish, 90.
Ibid., 93.
Ibid., 98.
Django. directed by Sergio Corbucci, Italy, 1966. Spaghetti Westerns like
this one, as well as other Hollywood produced films were very popular in
Jamaica and other Caribbean countries.
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.
Henzell, DVD Comment; The Islandlife Interview with Perry Henzell [Website]
Raggae, Ganja, and Black Bodies
373
(1998 [cited May 4 2002]); available from http://www.islandlife.com/thtc/
perryinterview.html.
57. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1997); Bhabha,
Nation and Narration; Prakash, Another Reason.
58. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols.
59. Rex Nettleford, Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica (New York: Willima
Morrow, 1972), 111. Cited in Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols, 7.
60. Canby, “Films Which Refuse.”
61. Bourdieu brilliantly (though densely) describes this process in his chapter
Description and Prescription. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.
62. Nettleford, Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica, 44. Cited in Waters, Race,
Class, and Political Symbols, 7.
63. Kevin Aylmer, “Towering Babble and Glimpses of Zion: Recent Depictions of
Rastafari in Cinema,” in Chanting Down Babylon, ed. Nathaniel S. Murrell,
William D. Spencer, and Adrian A. McFarlane (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 285.
64. Sragow, The Harder They Come.
65. Kevin Thomas, “An Exception to a Film Rule,” review of The Harder They
Come, Los Angeles Times, November 13 1972. Thomas was the first U.S.
critic to review the film, and he sparked interest on it during the 1972
Filmex in LA.
66. Aylmer, “Towering Babble”, 285.
67. Jamaican slang for raging. It is the nickname commonly given to the real
life as well as the film character.
68. Pauline Kael, “Review of The Harder They Come,” The New Yorker, February
24 1973, 121.
69. A. H. Weiler, “Review of The Harder They Come,” The New York Times, February 8 1973. See Ella Shochat and Robert Stam, “The Cinema after Babel:
Language, Difference, Power,” Screen 26, no. 3-4 (1985) for an insightful
discussion of the role of language differences in film. Specifically, Shochat
and Stam discuss the role of “accents” and dialects in marking the social
class of the characters in The Harder They Come.
70. Telotte, Cult Film Experience.
71. Harris, Film Fetish, 90.
72. Given the context and the history of the film, I find it highly unlikely that
the film was indeed planned deliberately as a large advertisement. I am
more willing to consider that indeed Henzell had more than a local audience in mind or that, as he argues, he made the film for the poor and
disenfranchised of the world. But it is very likely that the movie was crucial
for the spread and popularization of reggae music.
73. Bob Marley, Redemption Song (Kingston, Jamaica: Tuff Gong, 1980), CD.
From the Uprising album, 1980. Also in the Songs of Freedom album, 1992.
74. Waters, Race, Class, and Political Symbols.
75. Henzell, DVD Comment.
76. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
77. In Gaztambide-Fernández, “Prophets of Culture.” I offer my analysis of the
highly eclectic form of Puerto Rican reggae that has been developed by the
group Cultural Profética.
78. Sheridan, “Jamaican Musicians.”
79. See for example Michael Eric Dyson, “Gangsta Rap: Representation, Transgression, and the Race Artist,” in The Artist in Society: Rights, Roles and
Responsibilities, ed. Carol Becker and Ann Wiens (Chicago: New Art Examiner, 1995); Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Values of Popular Music
374
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
R. A. Gaztambide-Fernández
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Cameron McCarthy et
al., eds., Sound Identities: Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education, Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education (New
York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999); Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory:
An Introduction (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1996).
Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.
Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978).
Bhabha, The Location of Culture.
Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practice, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage Publications, 1997).
From the sound track of the CD-ROM demo. Orly’s Draw-a-Story Ver. 2.1,
ToeJam & Earl Productions.
Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández, “The “Inter” Space: Connecting with the
World through Interdisciplinary Arts Education,” DRCLAS News, Winter
2001.
Perhaps Henzell still longs for the comfort of the colonial caretaker.
Orly Ver 2.1.
In the film, Henzell shows entire families living in the Kingston City Dump.
Ivan refuses this alternative and resorts to his first attempt at stealing
early in the movie, but is caught by the watchful eye of a young woman who
admonishes.
This is the premise of the interactive software. Orly.
Ibid.
Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” in Critical Theory: A
Reader, ed. Douglas Tallack (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995);
Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture
(London: Routledge, 1991).
From Marley, Redemption Song.
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