Orville Taylor | Appropriate language and symbols

Once you hear it you cannot unhear it. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Sometimes people go to great lengths in order to defend the indefensible. Something is not right simply because it is popular, and similarly, it may not be wrong if it is not. Over the last week, our identity and morality got put to the test.

Although it was removed before the public outrage, a very provocative billboard left little to the imagination and shocked public sensibilities. An interesting combination of a pair of stockinged legs, split by a drink bottle, whoever was the model must have done gymnastics, with, perhaps the emphasis on the last two syllables.

Funny, the information regarding the other locations for the billboard never came to the public fore until their parish council had made the decision to remove it. Even more interesting, however, is that the mayor of Kingston and St Andrew, Andrew Swaby, revealed that municipal corporations do not have moral oversight regarding the content of the billboards for which they give approval. Rather, his objection was that the offensive display was placed in a location ironically described as sterile. Just the idea of hyper-sexualised images in an area described as sterile raises all kinds of linguistic programming in the minds of the viewers.

Call a spade a trowel, billboards are not calendars. Certain images are simply not to be in public places. And for the hypocritical ones who think there are parallels between that and the unflattering statues in Emancipation Park, there is no comparison.

For the record, the human nude is not by itself sexual. Indeed, standing in a neutral pose, especially depicted by an artist who must have never seen an African man naked, is not profane. There is a big difference between two stripped monuments, in a public place, depicting the strength of the race and our struggles, and an image that those of us from the garrison describe as ‘skin out’. 

Now, there is some merit when one raises the issue of wanton rudeness and carnival. And yes, there is a point. One important difference, however, is that when carnival takes place, while public, it is in demarcated places. Of course, children can see much of the debauchery, but typically, minors and the morally sensitive do not traverse the path of the revellers.

Thankfully also, the media houses are more responsible and generally filter images and sounds.

My friend Clyde Rattus McKenzie raises the question as to whether the billboard was risqué or indecent. My verdict: simply inappropriate for that locale and for billboards on the whole. 

McKenzie raises another question about the relationship between the ready availability of sexually explicit images and male virility.  That is actually a significant question because research does suggest that pornography and intimacy without a partner correlate to some degree of sexual dysfunction and loss of penile muscular mass.

But that is only part of the excitement of last week. Added to it was the well-placed objection of media and cultural icon Fae Ellington, who publicly balked over the misappropriation of the Hill and Gully Ride by Di Genius Stephen McGregor. 

Son of the reggae crooner, who has never sung a slack song since he was ‘Little Freddie,’ McGregor has manned up and asked the public not to disrespect and trash Auntie Fae in their objections.

And for the record, she is right. Once something happens to trifle with something sacred or sacrosanct, it almost never can be rehabilitated. Sometimes the transgressions are funny and harmless. However, even those can be disruptive when seriousness is needed.

For example, how often do we have to avoid the ‘boom’ after Jamaica in our national anthem?  And though mischievous and innocent as children, the ‘weevil flour’ is at the back of our minds.

Just imagine when the cultural relic made popular and preserved by people like Olive Lewin is associated with lewdness. Ask what comes to mind when Hopeton Lewis’ Take it Easy Is played.

Though popularised internationally by Shaggy, Oh Carolina still elicits our ubiquitous expletive, which rebounds like fabric made from bamboo.

For me, that particular ‘bad wud’ is really a Jamaican ethnic marker, and, perhaps, we should think of decriminalising it in circumstances where it is not being used abusively. After all, when Elaine Thompson Herah, ‘The Big Machine’, anchored the 4x100 race two weeks ago, it was very melodious to hear.

And speaking of language, listening to Member of Parliament Nekisha Burchell attempt to speak Jamaican language in Parliament last week was a precious moment. Yet the Speaker was completely in her right to stop her, based on the legislation, dictating that only the English language was acceptable in the House

To be honest, most of those 63 who are in attendance do not speak English. Rather, like most Jamaicans, including the great majority of my students and even some with graduate degrees, speak a mesolect, a ‘mule’ language that is really ‘Patglish’. 

It is a discussion for another time, but Jamaica is bilingual, with the Jamaican Patwa being the primary language. It is not broken English, and we need to educate ourselves that it is not a dialect. 

What is pathetic is that many of those who look down on the native language are themselves not even monolingual because they speak as if their English teacher was killed in grade 6.

Almost all of us who actually speak other European languages as well as Creoles like the Haitian or St Lucian have long gone past this stupid master debate among ignorant people as to what we speak.

For the record, can we stop calling Haiti a French-speaking country?

Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.