Clevon Raphael

T&T is yet to ben­e­fit in any sub­stan­tial man­ner, while help­ing to de­vel­op car­ni­vals in al­most 300 coun­tries around the world, says Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas. He says part of the prob­lem is the lack of prop­er man­age­ment from lo­cal in­ter­est groups. He says his min­istry is work­ing to­wards trans­form­ing Car­ni­val from a fes­ti­val to a more sus­tain­able in­dus­try.

Q: Dr Dou­glas, what is it with that white wide-brim hat of yours...is it a fash­ion state­ment?

A: (Laugh­ing at his Nicholas Tow­ers of­fice, at Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon) I re­al­ly don't have an an­swer to the ques­tion ...That's the Japan­ese con­cept for the align­ment of en­er­gy...feng shui.

OK. How is Car­ni­val com­ing along...any hic­cups?

I think it is com­ing along fine. We are mov­ing to­wards a har­mo­nious Car­ni­val. We hope that all the parts of the cel­e­bra­tion will work well and that our in­volve­ment in Car­ni­val this year would re­al­ly jump-start us to a se­ri­ous tran­si­tion...to an in­dus­try.

Hasn't it al­ways been said that Car­ni­val is an in­dus­try?

Yes. But to have an in­dus­try, there is a whole set of vari­ables that need to be in place: pro­duc­tion, process­es, dis­tri­b­u­tion etc.

Are you sug­gest­ing that the in­dus­try as­pect hasn't come of age as yet?

I think we have mas­tered the fes­ti­val part of it, that is, the prod­uct, de­vel­op­ment of the prod­uct, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion... We have come pret­ty good at that. But in or­der to cre­ate the fes­ti­val, some­how we have to take ad­van­tage of all the car­ni­vals that we are re­spon­si­ble for around the world, which in our es­ti­mate is al­most up to 300 by now.

If we can take the cred­it for the start­ing up of car­ni­vals all over the globe, why shouldn't we be able to de­rive some sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits from those car­ni­vals, Mr Min­is­ter?

Well, that's where the con­cept of an in­dus­try comes in. Be­cause the in­dus­try takes up all the var­i­ous things like the prod­uct, the mar­ket for the prod­uct, de­liv­ery struc­ture and what to do with the re­turns that you get: how to rein­vest in that.Now, these things have been hap­pen­ing on a kind of ad hoc ba­sis and the min­istry is fo­cus­ing on how we could re­al­ly en­cour­age our mak­ers of the prod­ucts to get more in­volved, and it has to do with a lot of sup­port–from cor­po­rate cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly.

Dr Dou­glas, you have been in­ti­mate­ly in­volved in many as­pects of our cul­ture. What's your per­son­al view on the parad­ing of vir­tu­al­ly half-naked women on the streets on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day?

(A sur­prised ex­pres­sion fol­lowed by a deep chuck­le) My per­son­al view is that this has to do with the moral and so­cial im­pli­ca­tion of Car­ni­val. We have not in T&T made that a study: what are the­moral and so­cial im­pli­ca­tions of Car­ni­val? And we have to ad­mit that there are some ad­verse ef­fects of these prac­tices; but in re­al­i­ty, in most cas­es, you can­not re­al­ly leg­is­late moral­i­ty. I have spo­ken to the band­lead­ers on a few oc­ca­sions about what can be done.

What did you sug­gest?

I had sug­gest­ed that we cre­at­ed mas that had high artis­tic val­ue, high com­mer­cial val­ue and that we pro­tect our peo­ple from harm or from any kind of moral degra­da­tion.

Is the moral degra­da­tion re­flect­ed in the half-naked­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly of the women mas­quer­aders?

Well, moral­i­ty re­al­ly comes from the state of your mind, right? Be­cause there are coun­tries where peo­ple dress half-naked...it is their way of life and they walk the streets half-naked, so it re­al­ly has to do with an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your mind. The whole at­mos­phere of Car­ni­val pro­motes a kind of–if you want to call it–sex­u­al­i­ty.

That in it­self is what cre­ates the moral co­nun­drum that we face or that we might be in, be­cause it is at­trac­tive in one sense, and the band lead­ers' re­sponse was that they have tried. That they tried to cre­ate dif­fer­ent kinds of mas and peo­ple just won't buy it.

Dr Dou­glas, I am sure you could re­call the glo­ri­ous days of our mas with fan­tas­tic cre­ations from band­lead­ers like Stephen Lee He­ung, George Bai­ley, Wayne Berkley, Ed­mund Hart, Ir­win McWilliams, and with­in re­cent years, Bri­an Mc Far­lane brought back some pre­sen­ta­tions rem­i­nis­cent of those days. Where and when did we lose that cre­ativ­i­ty?

I can't say when we lost it. But you know, a lot of the mas lead­ers are busi­ness peo­ple and they kind of go with what the con­sump­tion is. You see it is more than just Car­ni­val, it is the whole so­ci­ety that has to put a so­cial val­ue on cer­tain types of be­hav­iour.

Does the Ro­man Catholic band counter the two-pieces-of-cloth-and-beads cos­tumes?

It might be that it is time for the peo­ple who don't like what is go­ing on to present their views in a way that sug­gests: 'Hey, there can be some­thing else.' This is how a more civilised so­ci­ety or a more de­vel­oped so­ci­ety makes the dif­fer­ence.Part of the strug­gle is to cre­ate the pow­er of a civ­il so­ci­ety to pro­vide a coun­ter­bal­ance to what is hap­pen­ing.

There­fore, what is your per­son­al take on this is­sue?

My per­son­al view is that I would pre­fer more cre­ative mas. I think that would au­gur well not on­ly for the coun­try's sense of per­son­al moral­i­ty, but in terms of tourism. There is still a lot of cre­ativ­i­ty that ex­ists in chil­dren's mas...where mas is an ex­pe­ri­ence as op­posed to a ser­vice in­dus­try which is (what the) adult mas (has be­come).

Very well. Sev­er­al years ago, Dr Dou­glas, the three in­ter­est groups in Car­ni­val–ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, mas­quer­aders and steel­bands–were charged with the task of be­com­ing self-suf­fi­cient by the Gov­ern­ment. Yet, each year, they still go cap in hand beg­ging for State funds to run their shows. Why?I per­son­al­ly am not sure why they do but I would prof­fer that man­age­ment is the pri­ma­ry is­sue...

I think Pan Trin­ba­go is the on­ly one which made any sig­nif­i­cant move­ment to­wards achiev­ing that goal?

They all have been try­ing to work cre­ative ways to in­crease their in­come with­out de­pend­ing on the tax­pay­ers' purse and that is the rea­son why they were brought in­to place, as you have quite right­ly said, to be giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come self-suf­fi­cient.Most of them claim they are not giv­en enough re­sources to de­liv­er in such a way that they would make a prof­it. Of course, some of them turn it around on the Gov­ern­ment.

But, of course, it has to do with vi­sion and man­age­ment: to be able to cre­ate new op­por­tu­ni­ties of mak­ing an in­come and the State would have to find ways of push­ing them more and more to­wards that end.The de­pen­den­cy syn­drome is part of the colo­nial brain­wash­ing that says you can't do any­thing oth­er peo­ple could do for you, that oth­er peo­ple are bet­ter than you, and if we don't get some­thing, you can­not do any­thing.

Dr Dou­glas, do you be­lieve the day would come when our fe­male mas cos­tumes would ex­act­ly copy the Brazil­ian mod­el?

Are you talk­ing about the nu­di­ty?

Yes.

(Laughs) Well, you know cul­ture is not sta­t­ic. We make our cul­ture every day by our thoughts, our ideas, our words and our ac­tions, and un­less the peo­ple rise up and de­clare what they want their cul­ture to be, then the few peo­ple who are do­ing things will de­ter­mine what it will be.

Do you buy the say­ing of some that your cul­ture is like your face: you can­not run away from it?

Well, you can­not run away from your cul­ture but you can cer­tain­ly make your face look good. It is not cool to be ug­ly (loud and pro­longed laugh­ter) I re­al­ly don't think that (peo­ple are ug­ly), but some peo­ple make them­selves ug­ly by the things they do and they say.