Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to cre­ate a new cre­ative in­dus­tries com­pa­ny to re­place ex­ist­ing state cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions has been mak­ing the rounds of late. The con­cern is that the State is dis­man­tling func­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, like the film com­pa­ny, to make way for a new one whose pro­posed man­age­ment is du­bi­ous, and whose aims are un­clear.

Rubadiri Vic­tor and the artists' coali­tion are, like they used to say about Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, "spear­head­ing" the coun­terthrust, and I wish them well, but we all know how it'll turn out.

The Gov­ern­ment will get its way. The new com­pa­ny will be formed. It will fail. But some peo­ple will get rich. Things in "the arts" will re­vert to their ac­cus­tomed state of de­spair and in­er­tia. A few cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neurs and artists will find ways to work around it. Some artists (un­for­tu­nate­ly, not al­ways the best) will sur­vive, and the rest will fall by the way­side where most of them be­long. So it has been, so it ever will be.

Apart from the ob­vi­ous is­sues of gov­ern­ment in­com­pe­tence and ig­no­rance, two points are in­ter­est­ing here. First, here is as good an il­lus­tra­tion as you could hope for of the meet­ing of pol­i­tics and artists – the artists nev­er do well.

Rubadiri, with whom I gen­er­al­ly dis­agree on artis­tic mat­ters, has done pret­ty well over the last few years in pre­sent­ing an or­gan­ised, co­her­ent face of the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty, and a clear agen­da, to the pow­ers that be. In fact, he pre­sent­ed these to said pow­ers be­fore they got in­to pow­er, sup­port­ed them at risk and per­son­al cost, and now finds him­self in a mon­key pants. I sym­pa­thise, but can't of­fer com­fort. These are politi­cians. This is what they do.

Which leads to the sec­ond thing. This bunch of PP politi­cians and their at­ti­tude to art are es­pe­cial­ly in­trigu­ing since they have been cul­tur­al out­siders for much of their lives, sur­round­ed by PNM cul­ture, which shaped their at­ti­tude to art and na­tion­al cul­ture. As I've ob­served be­fore, Tri­ni Hin­du or­tho­doxy (the PP base) ap­par­ent­ly has no con­cep­tion of art in the Arnoldian sense.

It's clear (fol­low­ing from this) that the PP con­sid­ers "cul­ture" as lit­tle more than po­lit­i­cal ma­m­aguy. Hence their com­ing in­to pow­er and dou­bling the Car­ni­val prize mon­ey even as Di­manche Gras win­ner, Karene As­che, was spit­ting the vilest poi­son at them, and the PM pre­sent­ing her­self on stage with Machel Mon­tano, and so on.

And this at­ti­tude has de­fined the PP's ap­proach to cul­ture pol­i­cy: the cyn­i­cal ac­cep­tance of Car­ni­val as cul­ture, and treat­ing cul­ture as a wine-down, drink-rum, eat-ah-food or­gy whose pur­pose is to dis­tract the elec­torate from the enor­mi­ties of gov­er­nance.

If this sounds fa­mil­iar, it's the PNM's phi­los­o­phy, with a slight dif­fer­ence. The PNM's ei­dos ac­com­mo­dat­ed an (ad­mit­ted­ly small) space for con­ven­tion­al fine art like paint­ing, lit­er­a­ture, mu­sic (re­al mu­sic, not pan) and so on. Car­ni­val was elec­tion­eer­ing, but the oth­er bits were thrown a few crumbs and em­bod­ied in a small com­mu­ni­ty lo­cat­ed in Port of Spain. And some in­ter­est­ing art came out of it.

The rea­son for the PNM's tol­er­ance was nos­tal­gia, since the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty was com­prised of the rem­nants of the ed­u­cat­ed bour­geoisie who fled as the PNM rev­o­lu­tion be­gan to take shape post-1962.

In their fi­nal term, the "new" PNM, com­prised of the younger flow­ers of PNM so­ci­ety in full bloom, had lost this tol­er­ance and seemed con­temp­tu­ous at the thought that any­thing but Car­ni­val was art. But from the start, no con­scious­ness of non-Car­ni­val cul­ture seemed to ex­ist in the PP. The no­tion that con­ven­tion­al art pro­vides some­thing of val­ue that mon­ey can't buy was nev­er in its con­scious­ness.

Hence the new cre­ative in­dus­tries com­pa­ny, as I un­der­stand it, will adopt the fi­nan­cial­ly-ex­ploitable el­e­ments of "cul­ture": film, Car­ni­val, fash­ion, and so on, and is a crea­ture of the Min­istry of Trade. The rest (po­et­ry, dance, mu­sic that isn't pan) sim­ply doesn't ex­ist for them.

In this, the PP's at­ti­tude rep­re­sents the pre­dictable cul­mi­na­tion of post-in­de­pen­dence PNM so­ci­ety and cul­ture. The con­tempt and ig­no­rance they're show­ing for art is pre­cise­ly what was taught to them, and which is still taught in schools, at the uni­ver­si­ty, and in pub­lic cul­ture. The Prime Min­is­ter is a prod­uct of the UWI, as are some min­is­ters, and they're sim­ply do­ing what they were trained to do.

The sad part is that the artists fight­ing the Gov­ern­ment are prod­ucts of the same en­vi­ron­ment and so­cial-po­lit­i­cal forces. I've at­tend­ed sev­er­al cul­tur­al events in the last few months, be­gin­ning with the film fes­ti­val (TTFF), a few art ex­hi­bi­tions, and have gen­er­al­ly seen the work of the younger crop of artists and their cul­tur­al sut­lers. It ain't a pret­ty sight.

As I've men­tioned in this space be­fore, the na­tion­al imag­i­na­tion is in a state of at­ro­phy and from what I've seen the film­mak­ers, writ­ers, and younger artists are feed­ing the at­ro­phy. The gap be­tween the 40-some­things and 30-some­things is a chasm in terms of tal­ent, imag­i­na­tion, and skill.

What saved the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was the abil­i­ty to go abroad rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, that ease of move­ment is over. Now, those who man­age to get out, stay out. Those left be­hind get trapped in the Tri­ni ma­trix.

The on­ly en­cour­ag­ing thing that I can see in all this is the po­ten­tial ma­te­r­i­al for an­thro­pol­o­gists and cul­tur­al crit­ics. The no­tions of dead and dy­ing cul­tures are tropes of the var­i­ous lit­er­a­tures. Trinidad man­ages, in this re­gard, to be a bril­liant­ly-doc­u­ment­ed case of what hap­pens when a pop­u­la­tion is de­prived of art and cul­ture by ni­hilism and ridicu­lous racism dis­guised as "cul­ture," chas­ing ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple away, and pro­mot­ing fas­cism as na­tion­al­ism.

The re­sult is so­cial sui­cide, com­mit­ted at great ex­pense and with great de­lib­er­a­tion, over half-cen­tu­ry.