#caribbeancinema : trip down memomy lane with "Nèg Maron" by Jean-Claude Barny
Note : this article was first published in French on May 6th 2016 on myinsaeng.com.
For this second trip down memory lane, I chose “Nèg Maron” by Jean-Claude Barny. I include it in the theme of the representation of slavery because it deals with the inequalities within Caribbean society in the 21st century by linking them to the society structured around legalized slavery between the 17th and 19th centuries. I wanted to review it, but frankly, the film left me with more questions than overwhelming enthusiasm, so I prefer to refrain. Nevertheless, because of its very existence, I consider “Nèg Maron” to be an important film as a milestone in the history of Caribbean cinema.
As a teenager, I dreamed of love by re-watching "Love Jones", "Love & Basketball", "Brown Sugar", "Drumline". Then one day, a high school classmate told us that singers Admiral T and Daly were shooting a movie and the film director was looking for a girl to play Admiral T's little sister. I remember that the discussion was more like "a film in Guadeloupe? Why? With Admiral T? Why? What’s the film going to tell? What can the film actually tell?" and then we quickly moved on to something else. Fast forward. The film is now ready to be released in theaters. Everyone is curious, impatient because the film is sold as "the harsh reality of Guadeloupean youth rebelling against the system".
With hindsight, I think there was a marketing glitch, starting with the title which wasn’t really explained and which blurs the message of the film, i.e. "a part of the Guadeloupean youth trying to survive as best they can in an oppressive system inherited from slavery". Well, I think that's what the film meant. This review published on grioo.com reflects the paradox I felt and still feel. Fangirlitude aside from Daly-and-Admiral-T-all-fangirl-scream, I didn't really understand the parallel between enslaved people fleeing and freeing themselves from their chains vs. two young people who steal (not even as Robin Hood or to help out their family) in the contemporary context... We can take the opposite view by saying that Josua and Silex starting to steal for a white Creole is what the system expects of them, so they keep their chains on. Well, I said I won't talk about the interpretations that can be made of this film. It took seven years to make “Nèg Maron” a reality. I think that the original 140-minute director's cut would give a better understanding of the characters. Back to my memories.
“Nèg Maron” touches on the complexity of Caribbean youth. It’d be inappropriate for me to speak in the place of those who have lived this life of hustle similar to what the characters went through because I don’t know their hustle. And that was the main criticism of the film in my entourage. There are already so few opportunities for us (young people as a whole) to see us on the big screen, so why put the spotlight on the only negative and depressing image that French mainstream media already conveys? People going to college also struggle as they’re told it will lead them nowhere, that their diplomas mean nothing because they’re from the Caribbean. I’m not saying that one struggle is harder than the other, nor that those who try to follow the laws of the system deserve a medal. I’m just saying that my disappointment came from being told "this is what Guadeloupean youth of today looks like" as an entity, as if those who aren’t doing illegal stuff aren’t suffering from the inequalities that the economic, political and social system creates and maintains.
On the other hand, always with hindsight, I understand the necessity of the representation shown in this film. Today, more than ever, the idea that the Caribbean are living an idle life under the sun persists in the collective imagination and takes away all credibility and even legitimacy when a voice is raised to talk about problems. Beyond the question of the realism of the plot, the subject had every reason to exist at the time and it still does today. The problem comes from the fact that it’s the only striking representation, even ten years later. Caribbean cinema is still at the stage of a dilemma: to show those who succeed, have succeeded at the risk of invisibilizing the problems of others (i.e: the Cosby Show family) or to show those who reject the system that rejects them at the risk of invisibilizing the diversity of the means that some people put in place to get by (i.e: French “banlieue films” genre since the 80’s)? The dilemma exists because the viewer doesn’t have the luxury of having lots of different films to select the alternatives that match their taste. “Nèg' Maron” also deals with themes such as family, women-men dynamics, Black people-White people dynamics, young people raised in the Caribbean vs. young people raised in France. There would be something to say about the representation of women, masculinity, especially the image of the father and male friendship...
At the time, the scene where Josua and Silex ransacked the office of the white Creole man they had come to rob when they saw drawings of a slave ship has often been talked about. It' isn’t so much their reaction that left me puzzled but the way they got there and I am not sure that the editing as it stands enlightens the viewer who doesn’t have a minimum of historical and cultural knowledge about the Caribbean. However, what I found most interesting in this film is the representation of family, especially how difficult it is for Josua to communicate with his parents as we can see in the sequence right after the theft scene. We can break it down into three parts:
1: Josua publicly "denies" his father who gets drunk at the local grocery store. His uncle explains that his father has become an alcoholic because he was fired for his actions as a trade unionist.
2: Silex drops Josua off at home and tells him to keep his head up, that he knows Josua is fronting but deep down suffers from seeing his father like that.
3: Josua's mother wakes him up the next morning. In yet another argument, she demands that he has dinner with the family tonight, and he says he’ll have dinner with them when his father has dinner there too. He doesn't understand why his mother doesn't support his father more and she replies that she sacrificed her life for him but that she has children to raise so there is no time for self-pity. With his mother gone, Josua watches TV and comes across a report of a strike in which his uncle is taking part. He thinks his uncle will end up like his father.
This sequence anchors the origin of the characters' problems in the economic and political history of the Caribbean but also in the past. The depiction of a Josua expressing his rage and even his despair at living in an unequal system where he isn’t the one with the privilege reminds us the role that slavery still plays in the organization of contemporary French Caribbean society.
Pour en savoir plus sur la société antillaise post-abolition de 1848 :
– un article concis mais clair sur les inégalités en Guadeloupe : Refonder le politique en Guadeloupe : une société particulière construite sur des bases inégales
– réflexion sur ce que c’est être citoyen pour les ex-esclaves alors qu’ils ne bénéficient pas d’une égalité réelle : Silyane Larcher, L’autre citoyen. L’idéal républicain et les Antilles après l’esclavage, Armand Colin, 2014, 384 p.
– Michel Giraud, Isabelle Dubost, André Calmont, Justin Daniel, Didier Destouches et Monique Milia-Marie-Luce, « La Guadeloupe et la Martinique dans l’histoire française des migrations en régions de 1848 à nos jours », Hommes et migrations [En ligne], 1278 | 2009, mis en ligne le 29 mai 2013, consulté le 01 mai 2016. URL : http://hommesmigrations.revues.org/252