Civil society strikes back

If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth several million! My wife and I were pleased to have been invited to a private screening of the motion picture Ghett'A Life (which opens today), written, produced and directed by Chris Browne of Third World Cop fame.

It is a good show, not just because of the excellent acting and fantastic cinemato-graphy, but because of the message in the movie and the moral of the story.

It tackles head-on the connection between garrisons, guns, murder and politics. In the story, a section of Kingston is divided into two garrison communities by two warring political parties; we are not given their names, but their colours are green and orange (arbitrarily chosen, I'm sure!). Both are armed camps, and the foot soldiers are mostly teenagers packing automatic pistols.

The lead character is Derrick (played by Ardenne High School sixth-former Kevoy Burton), who keeps a gun hidden under the floorboards of his bedroom. He lives on the Orange side of town, and his father is a prominent activist for the party. Early in the movie, we witness his older brother being gunned down in a drive-by shooting with a domino game in the background.

Clear division

The divisive nature of Jamaican politics is vividly portrayed. It is an election year, we are told, and during a strategy meeting, the Orange MP (played by Lenford Salmon) says to the faithful, "We is Jesus, and dem is the Devil." There are invisible lines in the street that neither side can cross. It is alleged in the movie that Derrick's brother was killed because he had a relationship with a girl from the Green side of town.

Derrick is a renowned street fighter, regularly thrashing youths from the Green side. He has aspirations of being a boxing champion, but the gym is on the Green side of town. Derrick's father (played by Carl Davis), who during the film becomes the Orange councillor-candidate for the community, forbids him to train there: "My son not mixin' wit' the Devil."

Dominating the show is the Orange community don and gangster with the eponymous nom de guerre Sin, credibly played by Chris McFarlane; he runs things in the community, and the MP and councillor-candidate have to play along with him if they wish to be elected. At one point in the film, Sin declares: "An' if Jesus Christ waah' crucify bout yah, God 'ave to ask me permission." The Green don is not named, but his shooters are very much in evidence, and the scenes where the Orange and Green foot soldiers run between the zinc fences and through the gullies, shooting at and dodging each other are graphic.

I don't want to give away the plot, which is full of realistic political-criminal intrigue punctuated with Jamaica Defence Force soldiers and helicopters and a healthy touch of very tasteful teenage romance. I think everyone should go to see this movie - especially the uptowners.

Society's elite

The audience especially invited by Gleaner Chairman Oliver Clarke contained the crème de la crème of uptown: business leaders, industrialists, professionals and academics. In the useful onstage discussion and dialogue with Chris Browne after the screening (chaired by Mr Clarke), some wondered whether the scenes of murder and beatings were not overly raw and brutal. Some of the civil-society and human-rights activists present assured the audience that, for the most part, they were not raw and brutal enough. Which suggests to me that many uptown folk are really disconnected from what goes on downtown.

Put another way, many in the business community are grossly unaware of what their political contributions are used for.

Someone from the audience suggested that politicians (both green and orange) should have been invited to the viewing of Ghett'A Life so that their comments could have been solicited. The chairman advised that politicians had been invited, but none had turned up!

If the movie has a serious omission, it is that the private sector is missing from the plot. They fund the politicians and the parties and the garrisons - and provide the resources to buy the guns and keep the divisive dons in business. If the movie - and the screening the other morning - can inspire uptown folk to put themselves into the plot by no longer funding garrison politics and corruption in this country and to stop providing the resources used to divide and underdevelop our people, maybe all of us - and especially those downtown - can Ghett'A Life.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.