'Ghett'a Life': Good entertainment, myopic commentary

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

Chris Blackwell, legend goes (and that is about as corny a pun as you'll read today, since we're talking about the Wailers at this point), was thought to have made a serious business blunder when he handed over £4,000 to Bob, Peter and Bunny in 1972 to make what became the landmark Catch a Fire album.

However - surprise, surprise - not only did Blackwell actually receive a product for his funding, but it was clear to the ear that the cash had actually been sunk into the project and not siphoned off and an inferior album presented.

Fast-forward almost 40 years and we are at another landmark point in bankrolling Jamaica's much-vaunted, but, woefully, poorly funded (at least, by money that can be legitimately accounted for) cultural product in the film Ghett'a Life. This time, the financing of the Chris Browne-written, produced and directed film is Jamaican - not a first, as Lennie Little-White informed me that his Children of Babylon (1979) and Glory to Glorianna (2006) are both locally funded - but the magnitude is unprecedented.

For while US$1.2 million ($102 million) is chickenfeed as far as film-funding, internationally, is concerned, I understand, in Jamaica it is hefty money, by any standards. Even X6 standards.

So what do we have showing in the cinemas currently, after a Jamaican premiere to two full auditoriums at the Carib last Wednesday before general release two Fridays ago? Good production for the Pan Caribbean's money, undoubtedly. Ghett'a Life looks fantastic, from its early overhead shot of a Kingston slum to the closing whitewashing over a late don's image on the wall. It sounds good as well, the music including tracks from Anthony B, Bounty Killer, Buju Banton and Mavado.

Plot, players

In between that wide view of uniform poverty and the close-up erasure of a symbol of oppression, is the story of one young man's (Derrick, played by Kevoy Burton) determination to be a boxer, crossing forbidden border lines into green territory as he is determined to train at Bruising Gym. He is introduced to boxing the hard way, taking a few bruises from Gully Rat (Kadeem Wilson) and his friends when the football he and his friends (including the archetypal pal Big Toe, played by Odane Oliver) goes over the dreaded wall into enemy territory.

Gully Rat just happens to be the brother of the don from the 'other side', Ratchet. Derrick's father is orange side councillor hopeful - Lenford (Carl Davis), who typifies the political die-hard who thinks that he is locked in holy war with the 'devil'. That Satanic force has taken his elder son, he believes, but his wife Dawn (Karen Robinson) is the one who concedes and facilitates Derrick's continued boxing dream when parental consent is required.

Boxing coach Manuel (Winston 'Bello' Bell), one of those good actors boxed in (ah, there's another bad pun for you) by comedy, is the coach. His humour comes in for good use in defining the schism in not only the community of Jungle, but also class lines in the country after he goes to visit Derrick's parents and is let through one of those hodgepodge metal barricades which were used to physically block off some inner-city community roads before last year's Labour Day Tivoli incursion - and the now discontinued scrap-metal trade.

"Blasted downtown gated communities," Bello observes, riding his scooter on the 'other side'.

He has a granddaughter, Camella (Lisa Williams), the all-important (puppy?) love interest for Derrick, and Manuel's attitude towards trading constructive punches across the political borders is very different - at least initially - from Bruising Gym owner Jingles (Teddy Price).

And it is starkly different from the unidimensional Don Sin (Christopher McFarlane), a wicked bastard of an inner-city ruler, if ever there was one. He looks the part, facial scar and all, and sounds the part. Another memorable line from Ghett'a Life is his declaration that if Jesus Christ is to die in the community, then God has to ask his permission.

Of course, he does not put it quite that mildly.

MP Hewlett (Lenford Salmon) is largely peripheral to the action which is, for me, a large part of the conceptual weakness of Ghett'a Life. But more anon. Singer Etana pops up at the end with Lenford and Dawn's grandchild by their dead elder son.

Derrick's determination to box is the thin edge of the wedge that opens up discontent with the iron hand of donship. It also gives Jungle a higher purpose than partisan politics, a Jamaican purpose, with the gold superseding polarised green and orange. There are punches and gunshots, circular saws and tears, some laughter and many confrontations.

Myopic view

So, there you have it. The players, who turn in good performances, and the skeleton of the plot. If you want the details of the action, do the cinematic equivalent of RTFM when it comes to understanding new equipment. Pay your theatre rate and go through the gate.

And, on a purely entertainment level, the fee is well worth it. However, going back to that anon related to Hewlett, accept the lessons on breaking political partisanship with a grain of salt. Sea salt, too, one of those big crystals that come in cardboard containers.

For Ghett'a Life, in living up to the didacticism of its title which literally urges 'get a life', even as it plays on 'ghetto life', is severely limited in its grasp and myopic in its view of political partisanship in Jamaica and what is required to break the power structures typified by orange and green party colours.

Hewlett, even as he tut tuts over the possibility of the green side winning at the polls, is largely peripheral to the dynamics of feral partisanship in 'Ghett'a Life'. With no knowledge of Jamaica's history of garrison politics then, based on Ghett'a Life, one would assume that it is a divide and conflict generated and maintained at the inner-city level, a fallacy if ever there was one. Further, in the movie the onus of breaking the garrison politics system rests upon the people who live in the affected areas, and while a closing scene of jolly persons whitewashing the don's image from a wall is beautiful, symbolic and hopeful, in real life it is outright balderdash.

I would like to see groups of peaceful, happy people try to erase the images of dons, dead or incarcerated, from walls in their community. People would get hurt.

From Ghett'a Life, one would also tend to believe, although it certainly is not stated, that political tribalism is confined to places like Jungle. Yet, the high turnover of upper-echelon employees at some state organisations which tends to follow a changing of the dominant party in Gordon House would indicate otherwise.

But what is most jarring about 'Ghett'a Life' is that the onus of breaking the political system at that level - which comes nowhere close to dislocating it at the level where it originates and is maintained - is rested upon the victims and those who are least equipped to do so. It is like police officers who have a very good idea of who the criminals in a particular community are, yet complain that the residents - who stand a very good chance of facing fatal repercussions - will not come forward to give evidence.

Also, the movie pushes the symbol of the national colour, gold, superseding the partisan orange and green, too obviously. It is, of course, a worthwhile theme, but there is making a point and then there is overselling. Plus, that gold becomes ludicrous at one point, where a grief-stricken Derrick launches a one-man incursion into the 'other side' where Gully Rat lives, after leaving Dawn at the hospital where Big Toe had taken her after she was shot.

Understandable action, given the emotion, but even in that state, a shiny, flowing gold robe and matching shorts is no attire to venture into enemy territory, gun in hand, in the night. Granted, Derrick had been at a weigh-in when he got the news about his mother, but to have him going into enemy turf so strikingly clad is unbelievable.

So, as entertainment, Ghett'a Life is fantastic. As a pointer towards a solution to Jamaica's quagmire of political tribalism, which precedes the Independence we celebrate (or bemoan, if this newspaper's poll on the matter is any indication) a half-century of next year, it falls way, way short.

The shortcoming would not be obvious to those who do not know Jamaica's political history and culture. But I am Jamaican. Not represented in the characters on screen in what is no doubt and important movie, but Jamaican. It is just as, I would think, parts of the Rocky series would be laughable to a boxer and Easy Rider may be odd to a real biker.

Of course, there may be other films in the works that flesh out this tribalism tale into the areas of paucity I have indicted and, taken altogether, the productions would give a true picture of what we as a nation need to tackle - but why do I doubt that such a film would get a life through huge funding?