“COME TO LIFE”: AUTHENTICITY, VALUE, AND THE CARNIVAL AS CULTURAL COMMODITY IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Abstract

This essay explores the tension between processes of cultural commodification and processes of authentication in the marketing of the Trinidad Carnival. The Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Development Company, the National Carnival Commission, and the University of the West Indies have worked with the travel business in Trinidad and Tobago and abroad to appeal to both “cultural tourism” and “sun, sea, sand, and sex tourism” markets while maintaining what they see as Trinidad's cultural uniqueness. The presentation demonstrates the tense, sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary relationship between competing desires for cultural integrity and economic autonomy. This essay explores how concepts of authenticity, processes of cultural objectification, and international marketing are intertwined in the name of economic and cultural nationalism.

Key Words:

• carnival
• Trinidad and Tobago
• tourism
• authenticity
• commodification

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Anthropological Association Meetings in 2001 and the European Social Science Conference in 2002. I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions as well as the editors for this special issue, Deborah Thomas and Karla Slocum, and the editors of Identities, Thomas M. Wilson and Jonathan D. Hill. I also thank Philip Scher, Kevin Yelvington, Grant Jones, Joel Silverman, Deborah Poole, and Frank Trentmann for their comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes

1. A multiethnic Caribbean country, Trinidad and Tobago's population is about 40 percent of African descent, 40 percent of East Indian descent, 18 percent self-identifying as ‘mixed,’ with the rest being composed of small numbers of Syrian-Lebanese, Chinese, and whites (Trinidad and Tobago 2000 census).

2. For more information on the history and nature of these traditional masquerades see Alonso (1990), Bellour and Kinser (1998), Brereton (1981), Crowley (1956), Franco (1998), Harris (1998), Hill (1972, 1976, 1985), Honore (1998), Liverpool (1998), Pearse (1956), Walsh (1998), Wüst (1990).

3. I am indebted to Anonymous Reviewer 1 for emphasizing how culturally marked commodities attain greater value due to their being so marked and how the form of commodity fetishism characteristic of cultural commodities varies from the form described by Marx in Capital.

4. Early works in the anthropology of tourism tended to chronicle the misrepresentations of authentic indigenous cultures perpetrated by rapacious exploiters often associated with the state (Smith 1989; MacCannell 1974, 1976).

5. The literature on representations of Caribbean states and other areas of the developing world frequently address this question of authenticity and the appeal of place (Harkin 1995; Hughes 1995; Cohen 1995; Silver 1993).

6. Scher (2002) has an extended treatment of the impulse among officials in the government and cultural elite of Trinidad to exert control over the Carnival by claiming copyright protection for traditional Carnival characters as aspects of Trinidad's cultural heritage and patrimony.

7. Among the attempts to alter the Carnival are changes in rules governing how masquerade performances are judged, how masquerade bands may move through the city, and especially how they may move on the main stage for review, as well as attempts to control the venues and organization of significant Carnival shows such as the steelband competition, Panorama, and the Dimanche Gras show, which is the finals of the King and Queen of Carnival costume competition and the finals of the Calypso Monarch competition.

8. A pseudonym.

9. I have discussed the efforts of one cultural entrepreneur to bring his business acumen to the Carnival in another essay (Green 2002).

10. The idea that foreign influences are the root of all evil in Trinidad has a long history. Complaints about the violence and obscenity in the Carnival of the 1880s singled out immigrants from the other West Indian islands as adding to, if not causing outright, crime and prostitution. In addition, complaints about the influence of succeeding genres of music—ragtime, swing, jazz, rumba, mambo, samba, rock and roll, soul, and dance hall or dub music—have been criticized for undermining the purity of the calypso, infiltrating the music of Carnival and drawing the youth away from their heritage. American films, television, and now, cable television are also seen as part of this long trend of foreign disruption.

11. The phrase “coming different” refers to the expectations that the public places on a designer to present new designs for each Carnival. Designers must refrain from bringing out a masquerade band that resembles those he or she created in the past. The emphasis on “newness” extends to calypsonians and steelband composers and performers as well.