In the movie, "Life and Debt," Jamaica Kincaid is also heavily involved, using narration from her book, but altering it slightly (basically just by changing the name from Antigua) to fit the story of the island of Jamaica. She recites the lines above, with their slight alterations, while overlapped with the images of tourists landing in the Montego Bay Airport in Jamaica. There is then a clip shown of Jamaican people, in 'authentic', bright clothing and with huge (fake) grins on their faces, welcoming in white tourists with cheerful song and dance.
I feel that not only does this passage of words show a great deal about globalization in today's world, but the fact that these two countries can be interchanged in this manner to describe simmilar histories and current situations, is very telling about the way that a gap has been created between Westerners and 'third world' island nations, so as to clump either group into a generalizable set of peoples.
-First of all, just the idea of tourism (which both the movie and the book spend a good deal of focus on) is a telling aspect of life becoming globalized. Globalization has, in a way, 'shrunk' the world so that it is no longer uncommon for people around the world to travel to far off, foreign lands, to spend just a matter of a few days to check out the country. These people who are to travel, however, must be relatively wealthy in order to afford such a luxery as to escape from their mundane daily life to speculate on the average lives of others (poorer, less privilaged, others.) Also, the mention of 'other islands that you have seen' in this excerpt, alludes to the idea that these people who are touring Antigua (or Jamaica) have been around to many other nations like these, and therefore have a basis of comparison. This illustrates the frequency of people touring about the world to see various cultures and to partake in tourist-like activities (especially in the Caribbean region). However, at the same time, this mention gives way to the idea that these tourists often dont consider the vast historical, cultural, and ecological differences between these different nations, as they compare them to one another based on the 'prettyness' each holds.
- Another factor that depicts a globalizing world, is that not only are the two islands and thier peoples used interchangeably between the film and the book, but that the tourists are constantly referred to as being from North America (or worse, Europe), which denotes a sense of interchangeability between all tourists, and even all white people. This contrast of the locals and the foreigners, as both groups view the other as a generalized whole without individualism, shows that our world has become increasingly unable to escape the gap between wealthy countries and poor ones, between industrialized societies and those less industrialized, and even between dark ethnicities and light-skinned ones. In a sense, everything has become black- and - white, and we see other people by the differences they have from us, not the similiarities we share. So, according to Jamaica Kincaid, to tourists, a person could be Antiguan, or Jamaican, or any other Caribbean race, and it would all be the same; she also inadvertantly shows a similar case for the locals considering Europeans, Americans, and any other wealthy white race to be one in the same as well.
- Finally, along with many other facets of this movie, the film clips of Jamaican people dancing in the airport to welcome the oncoming tourists depict many stereotypes of both the dancers (wearing brightly colored costumes and hairstyles one would 'expect' from the Caribbean), and of the tourists (all white, in Hawaiian style shirts, wearing fanny-packs and funny attire). This is an illustration of what many people (especially from the US and European countries) would expect that landing in Jamaica would be like. The stereotypes of carelessness and cheerfulness in Jamaica are depicted and perpetuated by the music, dance, dress, and attitudes that are sold to tourists so they will come to this island where "the sun always shines", so they will help out the country financially. However, in doing this, many tourists wouldn't stop to think (or wouldn't allow themselves to while on vacation) about the less happy aspects of these peoples' lives, nor about the struggles they face every day before, during, and after work- in which they are required to maintain the careless attitudes. The opposite is also important to consider though; that many of these tourists who are seeking carelessness in the Jamaican spirit of things, may also have very serious things going on in their own lives, and though they are almost certainly more wealthy and privillaged than those who they speculating upon, the tourists may also have reasons to escape their lives back home which the Jamaicans (or other locals in tourist areas) are hostile and unconsiderate of. The locals don't often express their feelings or inquiries towards the tourists (as is true the other way around much more frequently), but they often have extremely unflattering images engraved in their minds about the true home-lives of these tourists. I think it is very important to realize that our beliefs of uniformity in other peoples' cultures comes directly from the 'shrinking' of our world, for we come in contact with so many different people and cultures on a day-to-day basis now that it would be nearly impossible for everyone to understand the intricacies within each major grouping. With all of this said, globalization, especially speaking about the tourist aspect of it, has been very helpful in alotting widely differing experiences for those with money as well as those who are visited by people with money. But, at the same time, this narrowing in of the global view has created many issues involving our perception of foreign cultures, and our lack of ability to understand specific people who we interact with, without assigning them to generalizations and stereotypes which are familiar to us.
This is a very thoughtful working through of the issues that Kincaid's book raises. I'd go further to say that the very idea of "culture" and "multiculturalism" that we have today is, along the same lines, an effect of the mask of authenticity that people have to put on when they encounter the tourist, or capital. That's the concept of culture that this class is working to dismantle.
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