Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and The African Body in Trinidad

10
Sexuality in Caribbean Performance:

Homoeroticism and the
African Body in Trinidad
Denise Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson
Introduction
I grew up in Jamaica, where there is pervasive homophobia in the popular
expressive dancehall performance and society. I felt pressed to research sexuality in performance after the controversy over Buju Bantons song Boom
Bye Bye (1992), advocating violence against gays.1 Other DJs and entertainers produced gay-bashing songs as part of their repertoire against gays and
lesbians to the dizzying frenzy of the audiences cheers.2 I was also struck by
the tragic, untimely death in 2004 of Brian Williamson, a well-known gay
rights activist and founder of J-FLAG (Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays).3 The numerous unsolved stabbing murders of rumored or
even perceived closeted or open gays and lesbians have left the most disturbing impressions on me over the years. Williamsons murder in 2004 ignited
debates about human rights violations in Jamaica by the British gay rights
group OutRage, and by the U.S. gay rights groups GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian
Alliance against Defamation) and GMAD (Gay Men of African Descent).4
The issue has gained an unmistakable momentum in this decade, and is center stage in all facets of Caribbean life.
Homophobia in Jamaican society is shrouded in religious fervor, shamefully supported by churches and religious organizations. People, including nonreligious people, claim that homosexuality is against their religion,
thereby justifying collective homophobia and perpetuating emotional and
physical violence against sexual minorities. Therefore, such biased discussions in the public sphere support homophobia in popular cultural expressions, by policing cultural mores and views about nationalist sexuality.
Falola.indd Sec2:237
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
238
Politics of Culture in Popular Representations
Fears of attacks hinder any meaningful, progressive discussions by the

intelligentsia on the issue. Inherited British colonial laws in the Offences
against the Person Act in Jamaica prohibit acts of gross indecency between
men in public and private spaces, and buggery, referring to anal sex; thus
the laws are used to persecute gay men, sanctioned by the nation-state.5 The
laws do not persecute lesbians, but they face just as much discrimination
as gay men in the society. Numerous gays and lesbians have been granted
asylum in Canada, the United States, and England because of the threat of
physical and emotional violence against them, which makes it dangerous to
live freely and out in Jamaica.6 Therefore, homophobia is cause for great
concern in popular cultural expression, since its potency is the heartbeat
of the society, influencing social consciousness. The controversial debates
about homophobia, homosexuality, and sexual politics in Jamaica, particularly in relation to the U.S. and British gay rights movements, also led to
several bans in England and the United States on some Jamaican performance artistes and their lyrics. These performance artistes include Beenie
Man, T. O. K., and Vybz Kartel.7 The controversy raised much-needed awareness about human rights violations against sexual minorities in Jamaica and
subsequently in other African diasporic societies across the Caribbean.
The issue of homophobia in popular culture led to my search for answers
in other performances across the Caribbean. Sexuality is rife, particularly
in former British colonies where sexual illegality was imposed on subjected peoples through the institutions of slavery and colonialism, and is
still enforced in several Caribbean countries that retain the legacy of colonial law. I became increasingly interested in studying the cultural attitudes
toward sexuality expressed through performances in the Caribbean, in
order to understand the historical perspectives and contemporary trends
with regard to this issue. This led to research on the impact of the laws and
controls that governed the body and sexuality during slavery, colonialism,
and in the process of decolonization in African diasporic societies, as vehemently expressed in performance. What are the power dynamics in sexual
politics, and how has sexual transgression been used to express them in performance? I discovered specific Caribbean performances that express the
constraints of slave societies through heteroeroticism, homophobia, and
homoeroticism, particularly in the British West Indies.
In this chapter, I present a critical analysis of homoeroticism in Caribbean performance as a critique of homophobia and heteronormativity, in
order to trouble the issues of the sexual illegality inherited from British
colonialism in Caribbean states and in postcolonial nationalist agendas. The
concept of homoeroticism as sexual transgression, demonstrated in performance, is generated from ideas of emancipation and nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago. Sexual transgression in performance was, and still is, a
form of political and social resistance against the laws and controls of slavery
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
Sexuality in Caribbean Performance
239
and colonialism, and is reflected in nationalist sentiments against neocolonial imposition in Caribbean affairs. Sexuality in specific Caribbean performance indicates historical and political impacts on the African body under
slave conditions, producing certain conflicts and contradictions in the social
body and sexuality.
In my research on homoeroticism in carnival performance, I suggest that
one of the finest examples in Caribbean performance is the Blue Devils
masquerade in Paramin, Trinidad. Martin Walsh describes the Blue Devils
homoerotic performance as elemental rage, insatiable hunger and bestial energy.8 I argue that homoeroticism in the Blue Devils performance,
grounded in slavery and emancipation, asserts sexual freedom and transgression against the symbolic emasculation and/or feminization resulting from
slave experiences, simultaneously contesting historical and contemporary
sexual politics over the body. The enslaved viewed their condition in sexual
terms because sexual politics governed their bodies and interactions. Their
existence was hypersexualized in colonial imaginations, creating a complex
system of metaphors in performance as counter-discourse. Eroticized representations of the sex act in performance, heterosexual and homosexual, are
metaphors against cultural domination in slavery, colonialism, and neocolonial imposition in the region. For example, in forced or coerced sex acts,
the aggressor overpowers the submissive in a metaphorical rape. This
translates to imperialism dominating the Caribbean. The region is therefore
rendered emasculated and/or feminized, in the same way that the slave
body was dominated.
First, I will give a brief history of Trinidad and its carnival culture to demonstrate how its particular history of slavery is integral to the Blue Devils
performance. I will focus on the emergence of the Blue Devils and their
significance in homoeroticism as critique against homophobia in Caribbean
performance. I will show that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sexual
politics in the British West Indian slave society is a lens through which to
expound contemporary sexual politics, in order to explain the laws imposed
on the slave body and sexuality during slavery, which is countered by homoerotic freedom in the Blue Devils performance. Then I will address the
multiple layers in the representations of beatings, sexual violence, and
homoerotic desires by the Blue Devils as polyvalently commenting on the
bodily confinement imposed in the sexual politics of historical and contemporary society and on bodily freedom through homoeroticism.
I will demonstrate how, in contemporary Trinidad, homoeroticism in performance critiques contemporary sexual politics against the heteronormative sexuality that is enforced outside of carnival season. I will examine the
inherited class structures of Trinidad Carnival and the Blue Devils marginality, in the separation of two distinct carnival spaces, one for the upper and
middle classes, and one for the outsider, low class. I will demonstrate how
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
240
the Blue Devils performance troubles inherited colonial hierarchical structures based on race, color-casting, and class differentiations from slavery to
the present, employing homoerotic desire in performance. Finally, I will discuss the design aesthetics in the costume for performance that is integral
to ideas of marginality on the fringes of Trinidad Carnival and in the wider
heterosexist Caribbean society.
Brief History of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and Carnival

Trinidad Carnival has many received cultural influences from the peoples
who settled in Trinidad and Tobago and were forcibly brought there as
slaves, indentured laborers, and free people, including Europeans, Africans,
Amerindians, East Indians, Chinese, and Lebanese, creating a melting pot
society. This hybridization created a new creolized culture, typical of other
Caribbean nations as well as Trinidad and Tobago, with the tensions of
race, class, gender, and color-casting hierarchies associated with colonized
peoples. The traumatic history of conquest, slavery, emancipation, indentureship, and colonialism in Trinidad and Tobago is integral to African
elements of the carnival and in the conflicts of slavery and emancipation.
Carnival culture in Trinidad provides the space to unravel the effects of slavery, colonization, and national identities as expressed in performance, and
to reinvent identities in contemporary society. Enslaved Africans were forcibly taken to Trinidad and Tobago from the mid-sixteenth century until full
emancipation in 1838 in the legal and illegal slave trades.9 They brought
African dance traditions including ancestral masking, which is still prevalent in Trinidad Carnival. Trinidad was colonized by the Spanish from 1530
and was captured by the British in 1797.10 French Roman Catholic planters
also settled in Trinidad in 1783 and initiated the carnival tradition for the
European plantocracy, excluding the enslaved Africans until emancipation
in 1838, when freed Africans were allowed to masquerade.11
Trinidad and Tobago gained independence from Britain in 1962 and
became a republic in 1976, continuing the carnival tradition.12 The annual
carnival takes place in both Trinidad and Tobago, but the official name of
the carnival is Trinidad Carnival. The carnival season lasts from Christmas
to Ash Wednesday, coming from the pre-Lenten Catholic tradition. This
tradition allows revelry before the forty days of Lent, a period of penance
before Easter. Trinidad Carnival officially ends at midnight on the Tuesday
before Ash Wednesday, otherwise known as Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, or
Carnival Tuesday. Trinidad Carnival activities from Christmas to Mardi Gras
include the musical forms of calypsos and socas being recorded and played
on the radio, the selection of costume designs for masquerade groups, also
known as mas bands, carnival fetes, steel pan preparations, and a series of
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
241
competitions.13 The Sunday before Ash Wednesday is known as Dimanche

Gras and involves a huge showcase called the Dimanche Gras Show, featuring carnival king and queen competitions and calypso competitions with the
winner crowned the Calypso Monarch for the year.14
Trinidad Carnival culminates in big street parades on Carnival Monday and Carnival Tuesday. Groups of people, known as bands, wear similar
costumes and dance with their bands to the latest soca music and parade
through the streets. Individuals and communities don their own costumes
and spontaneously join the carnival. There are numerous masquerades and
carnival traditions including Pretty Mas or Fancy Mas, and Traditional Mas
or Ole Mas.15 Pretty Mas consists of large groups of people in similar costume types, usually skimpy and with overt sexual expression. It is associated
with the upper and middle classes, inherited from the white elite plantocracy of nineteenth-century Trinidad.16 These groups perform the dance
called winin, which involves the gyrating of the pelvis and hips with slightly
bent knees. Winin becomes hypersexualized when it is performed in groups
of men and women. Traditional Mas or Ole Mas usually has its roots in slavery and in contemporary politics. It involves small groups or bands, or solo
individual performers, as opposed to the large groups in Pretty Mas.
The Blue Devils of Paramin are one of the Traditional Mas groups emerging from the history of slavery and emancipation. Their performance is integral to sexuality and slavery, with its homoerotic antics described as berserk,
sexual, and ravenous.17 The sexually transgressive performance of freed
Africans in the Blue Devils performance is politically charged with the tensions of symbolic slave confinement and emancipation.
Emergence of the Blue Devils and Significance of

Homoeroticism in Performance
The Blue Devils performance is a traditional masquerade performed
throughout Trinidad during the annual carnival in the towns of Arima and
Point Fortin, and especially in the mountain district of Paramin. Paramin, a
rural agrarian community, has a population of about four thousand people
of Creole origin, with mixed African, European, and Indian ancestry.18 Traditionally, the troupe consists of men, but in recent years teenage girls have
joined the group.19 The Blue Devils belong to the historical carnival character classification known as Jab Molassi or Molasses Devil. This is a traditional
devil character that originally covered its body from head to toe with molasses, a remnant of slavery symbolizing the sugar plantation. In later periods,
performers covered themselves with mud, tar, or grease using a range of colors including blue, red, and white.20 The Blue Devils performers, however,
do not consider themselves as part of the Jab Molassi group. They consider
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
242
themselves to be an entirely different group from the Jab Molassi, but they
have called themselves Jab Jabs or Jabs for quick reference.21
Blue Devils performers smear themselves from head to toe with petroleum
jelly and a bright blue mixture made from laundry blueing tablets ground up
and mixed with water.22 Sometimes the ground tablets are mixed with mud,
making a blue mud used to cover the body.23 The concoction of water and
laundry blueing tablets is mixed by apprentice performers in the troupe. Performers first smear their bodies with petroleum jelly before applying the blue
dye, in order to fix the color on the skin, which could be sweated off during
the performance. As the performers dance, apprentice members carry buckets of the blueing mixture to retouch the performers bodies as required; they
are part of the action in the performance. Performers wear briefs that are also
blued with the mixture so as to appear naked; alternatively, T-shirts, shorts,
and sneakers are worn, also soaked with blue dye.24
The dance is described as winin, that is the gyrating of the pelvis described
by Martin Walsh as sexually explicit.25 Carol Martin states that winin is a dance
with fluid pelvis rotations performed with pelvic contact in the front or back
with another person or persons.26 It is essentially the rubbing of genitals with
pelvic contact when performed with another person, and it is homoerotic
when performed by men with other men in the Blue Devils group. The knees
are slightly bent with legs apart, walking to the rhythm in a strut, while the pelvis, and even the upper body, moves in sexually charged contortions. Other
actions include high jumps in the air, rolling on the ground, and, as described
by a performer, rollin on de groun an winin wit ya partner,27 suggesting
the homoerotic desire of winin men in a sexually explicit performance.
Walsh describes the performance as insatiable sexual maniahumping anything at any time,28 expressed in the bodily contortions of winin.
The principal dancer is called the King Devil, Abyssinian Jab, or
dragon. He is usually restrained with a long rope or chain by other performers known as imps. The restrained devil or dragon pushes and pulls, falling and winin on the ground while being taunted by the imps tugging at
the ropes or chains.29 According to Walsh, the most disturbing antic was
observed in 1997 when a Blue Devil performer bit off the head of a live
chicken in performance and played with the blood and body parts.30 Blood
is typically created by the performers by chewing a red fruit, with ample saliva
drooling a red substance over their chins.31 Chewing the inner pulp of aloes
with red food coloring produces a thick, slimy drool resembling the blood
of victims.32 The ravenous performance of sex, death, gross indecency, and
perversity reflects multi-layers of metaphors that comment on the complex
historical and contemporary Caribbean society.
Typically, performers blow whistles and scream with high-pitched and
rhythmic sounds as they prance around in sexual excitement. Percussionists accompanying the dancers do not wear the blue dye on their bodies,
7/9/2009 9:05:10 PM
243
and are referred to as the engine room, perhaps because they generate
rhythms for the Blue Devils to perform. The percussionists beat biscuit tins
with sticks, and the tins are hung from their necks while they follow the Blue
Devils through the streets of Paramin. The audience consists of the community and visitors, including all ages, from children to adults. The audience
stands away, watching the performance with fascination at the antics. The
performers inspire fear in children. The Blue Devils never touch or interact
with the audience, so there is a clear code of conduct and a distinct line
between audience and performer. However, if an individual spectator initiates a contact, the Blue Devil will perform with the spectator who is willing
to be soiled with the blue dye.33
The Blue Devils performers reenact the European mimicry of enslaved
Africans in pre-emancipation carnivals before 1834. Europeans participating in pre-emancipation carnivals would blacken their skins to mimic the
dark complexions of the enslaved Africans, who were forbidden to participate in the carnival. At full emancipation in 1838,34 freed Africans were first
allowed to join the carnival festivities celebrating Cannes Brles or Canboulay (burnt cane), a performance reenacting enslaved Africans being driven
by European overseers with whips to put out fires set by vandals on sugar
plantations.35 J. D. Elder describes Canboulay as a New World African system of symbols in satire, burlesque, in pornographic expletives and double
entendre that perplexed Europeans.36 In complex parodies, freed Africans
would mock the plantocracy by wearing white masks during the carnival at
full emancipation. Others also blackened their dark skins with black varnish to make their skins blacker, much to the dismay of white elites. Freed
Africans contemptuously parodied Europeans who blackened their skins to
mock enslaved Africans.
Errol Hill states that enslaved Africans blackening their skins with varnish
played on European fears and stereotypes of the African as fearful, pagan,
and devilish.37 Freed Africans embodied and exaggerated these stereotypes
in performance to commemorate their freedom and to re-appropriate
these images against the plantocracy, but also as a counter-discourse against
stereotypical constructions of blackness. They created multiple layers of
metaphorical representations against the slave system and its sexual control
over the body, indicating the tension between sexual violence, pornographic
imagery, and homoerotic desire. Freedom of the body is positioned against
bodily control and restraint. Therefore, freedom in the performance is
expressed in the body with homoeroticism, breaking away from the bodily
restrictions imposed by slavery, punishment, and colonial law.
The Blue Devils performance emerged from Canboulay, initiated at full
emancipation in 1838. It was originally performed on Emancipation Day
on August 1 but was later moved to Carnival Monday before Ash Wednesday.38 According to Walsh, the Blue Devils performance history is passed
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
244
on through oral transmission by generations of performers in families, with

particular mention of the Joseph family in Paramin.39 Walsh notes that current and retired performers are aware that the performance has something
to do with the end of slavery days but cannot give specific accounts of
slavery days. The Blue Devils still talk about the end of slavery days in
contemporary Trinidad, reflecting their consciousness and embodied orality
in performance relating slavery and emancipation. Therefore their performance reflects the collective memory and subconscious knowledge of events
or political systems echoed in the bones of performers. The first written
mention of a masquerade band reenacting scenes from slavery was observed
by a visitor to Trinidad, Charles Day, in 1848, though it is fair to assume that
slavery reenactments occurred earlier, after full emancipation in 1838. Day
described a gang of almost naked freed Africans daubed with black varnish
or soot and molasses, pulling at chains attached by a padlock to one of the
members of the group.40 The others treated the restrained performer to
mock bastinadoing, a slave punishment involving beating the buttocks or
the soles of the feet with a baton.41
The Blue Devils perform mock bastinadoing with only male performers,42 even though women are now joining the performance group.43 Max
Harris observes that the Blue Devils performance consists of various acts
of transgression, ranging from the comparatively innocent, such as climbing
telephone poles and trying unsuccessfully to enter the school against the
objection of the principal, to the scatological and obscene.44 He states that
scatological mimesis includes the grotesque performances of pretending to
wipe the buttocks with leaves.45 The Blue Devils violently remove each others pants and roll around on the ground. Harris also observes pretended
acts of homoeroticism and homosexual rape [including] fellatio, anal intercourse, and anal penetration with a baseball bat.46 Harris further states that
the supposed aggressors in the performance wear white faces, usually powdered or painted, suggesting a comment on European domination in mock
assaults.47 This imagery of the white face dominating the restrained body of
the Blue Devil is reminiscent of the sexual politics governing slave bodies in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British West Indies slave systems.
The term homosexual rape as used in Harriss observation of the Blue
Devils is troubling, especially given the threats to gays and lesbians and
the growing homophobic trends in several Caribbean societies. The term
has the potential to support anger and physical and emotional violence
against sexual minorities. One can argue that the terms rape and homosexual rape mean the same thing. Unfortunately, they do not in the Caribbean context, and they cannot be equated. The term homosexual rape used
to describe aspects of the performance is even more disturbing because
homosexuality is perceived as a criminal act being forced on heterosexual men by homosexual men. The use of the term does not address the
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
245
underlying heterosexist biases hindering progressive discussions of sexuality in the performance and in the wider society, particularly in relation to
slavery and emancipation. The term homosexual rape also carries far-reaching implications, even in the performance, where pretended acts of anal
penetration may also be read as homoerotic. To ensure sensitivity to the
marginality of sexual minorities in Caribbean society, homosexual rape will
here be referred to simply as rape, or sexual violence, since rape is defined
as forced or coerced sex carried out on either a man or a woman. It is necessary, therefore, to define rape as about power and control over another,
rather than using problematic sexual labels like heterosexual or homosexual, and definitely not to define rape as about sexual desire.
Joseph Dorsey explains that rape was a form of culture in slave societies
because these societies legal practices suggest that sexual violence was a
normal activity . . . and differentiates the Subject and Object of sexual violence according to race, class, and gender.48 This is well documented in
Caribbean slave societies, where rape was not considered an offense.49 Representations of punishment and sexual violence in the Blue Devils performance are comments on domination in the sex act and the effects of sexual
politics on slave bodies. Homoeroticism in performance symbolically liberates the slave body from sexual politics and its legal controls. It simultaneously critiques the sexual politics under slavery and that of contemporary
Trinidad and Tobago and the region.
The etymology of the sexual violence of the word bastinadoing and its association with the buttocks in the Blue Devils performance indicates a connection with homophobia and its association with cultural attitudes toward
homosexuality. The word batty is used colloquially in the British West Indies
for buttocks, as in being hit with a stick on the batty. Batty man is a derogatory term for a gay man. The mock bastinadoing with the baseball bat in the
Blue Devils performance also extends to pretended anal penetration, and
would be associated with the term Batty man. In Trinidad, the derogatory
term for gays is bullers, probably from the French word, boules, for balls or
testicles, which was then used colloquially in the Trinidadian context. The
etymology of the derogatory terms is of interest because it may reveal some
possible associations with slave punishments and cultural attitudes toward
slavery and sexuality across the Caribbean. Could the Blue Devils be telling
us about specific sexual abuses of slaves? Could they be telling us about the
cultural attitude toward the batty and sexual abuse during slavery? I suggest
that, in the same way that the Blue Devils parody the European mimicry of
slaves in the pre-emancipation carnival, the pretended rape in performance
could represent specific sexual abuses. It also simultaneously protests the
sexual politics of violence and asserts bodily freedom through transgressive
homoerotic desires. For example, bastinadoing, the beating of slaves buttocks
with a stick, is exaggerated and sexualized in pretended anal penetration with
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
246
the stick, and can also be read as homoerotic as well as a sexual assault. References to beatings, sexual violence, and homoerotic desires simultaneously
contest the historical and contemporary sexual politics to celebrate emancipation and bodily freedom with homoeroticism.
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sexual Politics under Slavery

Erotic and grotesque representations of sexual politics in the eighteenth
and nineteenth century are also found in popular songs and performances
by enslaved or freed Africans across the Caribbean, particularly by the
homoeroticized, transgressive Blue Devils. Expressive culture often reflected
the sexual abuse, carried out by slave masters on plantations, that was the
norm in slave society. William Green argues that the sexual license of plantation owners was the most distinctive feature in slave societies.50 Hilary McD.
Beckles notes that the enslaved had no rights to their bodies or sexuality.51
Bodily rights were given solely to the legal owners of slaves. In performance,
the slave body rebelled against bodily and sexual controls. The Blue Devils
performance indicates the control of the slave body, with some performers
being restrained with chains or ropes. They perform mock bastinadoing
and homoerotic performance to liberate the slave body from confinement.
Homoerotic imagery represents emancipation from slavery, including sexual enslavement.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the laws did not allow
enslaved Africans to refuse sexual advances by slave owners; if Africans did
refuse, they were severely punished.52 Rapes of enslaved women were not
offenses. All this was part of a culture of sexual violence. All males, including black, white, free, or enslaved, could rape slave women with no consequences. Negotiations in the sexual politics of domination and submission
were observed in the way enslaved African women endured encroachments
using coercive mechanisms and sexual manipulation.53 Essentially they
became sex slaves, concubines, and prostitutes in order to survive. Caribbean popular culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contested
sexual abuses with erotic, transgressive songs and masquerades, for example,
in the sexual lyrics of late-eighteenth-century Jamaican popular songs54 and
the lewd songs and dances of the Jammettes masquerade in late-nineteenthcentury Trinidad.55 The Blue Devils performance, which emerged from
Canboulay from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, also carries the
tropes of the sexual politics imprinted on the restrained body of the Blue
Devil performer breaking free with homoerotic expressions.
Homoerotic desire is the distinctive feature in the Blue Devils performance and must be considered in the sexual politics of pre-emancipation.
Sexual interactions between slave owners and slave men were less frequently
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
247
reported than heterosexual interactions. This does not dismiss the idea of
homoerotic desire existing along with slave womens concubinage and prostitution in the British West Indies. The same unrestricted sexual access to
slaves56 was in effect for male slaves, typically valued as laborers whose bodies were hypersexualized in the European imagination. According to Robert
Aldrich, with a bias toward homosexuality as outside and deviant from heterosexist society,
By the late nineteenth century, a widespread belief circulated in Europe that
homosexuality (and other sexual deviance) was endemic in the non-European
world. The perception, and (to a limited extent) the reality, of the empire as a
homosexual playground must not be underestimated. Homosexual men fleeing legal persecution in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands (and cultural
disapprobation, if not criminal prosecution, in France) often found a warm
welcome in the colonies.57
The collective memory of slave punishments and sexual domination as juxtaposed with the homoerotic desire of masters and slave men should be
considered in the representations of same-sex interplay in the Blue Devils
performance. Homoeroticism in performance actually functions metaphorically to liberate the slave body from the confinement of colonial domination
in the body.
Whether the sex act between master and slave in performance is represented as violent or coerced, domination and control in the sex act are
associated with the effects of slavery and colonialism. Cultural attitudes
about sexuality rooted in bodily and sexual restrictions probably arise as a
result of the sexual politics of domination and submission. Beckles states
that the black male and his offspring were fed, clothed and sheltered
by white men whose hegemonic ideology determined that being kept
and kept down were symbolic of submissive inferiority, and gendered as
feminization.58 Beckles argues that black masculinity was constructed as
feminization (or emasculation), imposed by white patriarchal ideology.59
Consequently, slave punishments and abuses were linked to the emasculation and/or feminization of the enslaved. Sexual politics in slavery is therefore associated with a loss of manhood, or emasculation, especially in the
unequal sexual relations of the dominant master with the submissive slave.
Homoeroticism in performance is the liberating force that critiques the
symbol of emasculation and/or feminization in sexual politics. It functions
as an expression of sexual freedom against the enforced heterosexuality
of the former British colony and of the contemporary nationalist ideals of
heteronormative sexuality. Therefore, the Blue Devils performance provides a possibility of redefined sexual identities against colonial legacies in
the process of decolonization.
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
248
Sexual Politics in Contemporary Trinidad

Homoeroticism in performance critiques contemporary sexual politics
against enforced heteronormativity outside of carnival season. It is necessary to unravel the layers of representation including bodily restraint and
sexual liberation in homoerotic desires. In contemporary Trinidad, sexual
politics is negotiated during carnival season, where sexuality is expressed
more freely than in regular society. Consensual sex between adults of the
same sex is illegal across the British West Indies as a result of the legacy of
British colonial law. In Trinidad and Tobago, all forms of same-sex intimacies are illegal.60 The law is not necessarily enforced, especially given Trinidads gay and lesbian tourism during the annual carnival.61 However, there
are high incidences of homophobia and homophobic violence across the
Caribbean, particularly in Trinidad and Tobago, that further repress and
stigmatize sexual autonomy. According to Angela Lee Loy, chairperson of
Trinidad and Tobagos National AIDS Coordinating Committee (NACC),
homophobia and the accompanying stigma hinder HIV education.62 The
cultural fear of the other sexuality, meaning homosexuality, is typically
associated with HIV/AIDS, despite public education. Loy states that gays,
lesbians, transgenders, and people with HIV/AIDS are still being victimized with violence.63 This is the nature of the contemporary sexual politics
of bodily laws and restrictions that stigmatize other sexualities of gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
Carnival culture, however, provides the space to express sexual freedom.
Jasbir Puar notes that carnival the world over [is] becoming increasingly
coded and identified as a gay and lesbian affair, especially by the gay and
lesbian tourist industry, and the case [is] no different in Trinidad.64 She
states that the popular showcase Diva, an annual drag competition performed since 1992, is a recognized space for gays and lesbians.65 Puar shows
how globalization and its networks have impacted gay and lesbian activism
in Trinidad, with an increase in activist organizations such as Trinidads
Caribbean Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (C-FLAG).66 Despite
these developments, the sexual freedom of homoeroticism in carnival performance is not allowed outside of carnival season because of its illegality.
Mikhail Bakhtins carnival theory confirms the inside out, grotesque,
and topsy-turvy sexual expressions allowed within the carnival space,
expressions that are inhibited in regular life. Bakhtin states that during the
carnival, life is subject to its laws, that is, the laws of its own freedom, and
that exaggeration, hyperbolism, excessiveness are generally considered
fundamental attributes of the grotesque style.67 Perhaps sexual repression
in bodily laws and controls fuels the sexually ravenous performances of the
Blue Devils. In carnival life, the law is free, and controlled sexual inhibitions
are released. Sexuality, then, is a site of negotiations of sexual power in the
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
249
Blue Devils performance in Trinidad Carnival. Sexual freedom represents

the bodily freedom that was restrained by the slave system and is currently
restrained by sexual illegality in the contemporary nation-state. The carnival, then, offers an opportunity for homoeroticism that is denied outside of
carnival season.
Carnival culture in Trinidad and Tobago blurs the boundaries of sexuality, race, and gender, in, for example, cross-dressing or transvestism between
men and women, or the performance of other sexual expressions of homoeroticism and heteroeroticism. Masqueraders simply assume a character,
preferably one that is not theirs in normal life. Anything goes during the
carnival; everyone understands its boundlessness. After the carnival, society
reverts to regular life. This notion of blurred boundaries can be used to
discuss issues of historical and contemporary sexual illegality, homophobia,
and the threat of violence against gays and lesbians, who are increasingly
visible across the Caribbean. I believe that the culture of masquerading, like
the Blue Devils performance, provides an outlet for personal and collective
expressions not allowed outside of carnival season. Absent this outlet, cultural tensions and conflicts reveal undercurrent volatility. Historical tensions
of hierarchies including race, color-casting, gender, and sexuality, typical of
African diasporic societies in the Caribbean, find their therapeutic space in
Trinidad Carnival.
Collective tensions can be explosive, however, in Caribbean nations
without masquerade outlets. In contemporary Jamaica, for example, even
the performance of cross-dressing in a showcase is intolerable, leading to
violent consequences. In April 2007, men who cross-dressed for a carnival
event in Montego Bay, Jamaica, were physically attacked by an audience
assuming the men were gay.68 Jamaica does not have a long carnival tradition like Trinidad. A Trinidad-style carnival was introduced on a national
commercial scale only in 1990,69 primarily to boost tourism. Church leaders opposed the carnival in Jamaica as appealing to the carnal-minded,
and the lusts of a depraved people,70 echoing the sexual illegality even in
carnival performance. According to Sandra Richards, Jamaicas early masquerade traditions, particularly Jonkunno in the nineteenth century, were
heavily suppressed, criticized, and eventually restricted by British colonials
who feared riots and anarchy.71 Carolyn Cooper states that British authorities were disgusted and offended by Jonkunnos sexually transgressive performance in the nineteenth century.72
Perhaps the historical suppression of Jamaicas masquerade traditions,
and the policing of sexuality in performance, led to current tensions in body
politics that hinder certain sexual expressions. Trinidad and Tobago, under
British colonization, endured masquerade censorship just as in nineteenthcentury Jamaica. However, the African presence in the postemancipation
Trinidad Carnival fought for its freedom to masquerade, often expressing
7/9/2009 9:05:11 PM
250
sexual transgression. Contemporary Blue Devils masqueraders are examples

of such hard-earned freedoms of expression that challenge notions of sexuality and the current nation-state. Therefore Trinidad Carnival, particularly the
Blue Devils masquerade, offers a lens with which to consider both homoeroticism in performance as critique of contemporary sexual politics, including
homophobia, and sexual illegality and censorship in performance.
Pretty Mas, Traditional Mas, Class, and Homoeroticism

The Blue Devils also continue to persist because of the inherited hierarchical structures of racialized class inherited from the white elite of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These structures further marginalized the
African body as identity-less through emasculation and/or feminization.
Homoerotic expressions reveal the tension between sexual imprisonment
during slavery at the hands of slave owners and its subsequent release in
sexual expressions as emancipation in performance for a renewed identity
through the body and sexuality. Therefore, sexuality intersects with race and
class in Trinidad Carnival and in the wider contemporary Caribbean society,
indicative of the history and divisions of two types of masquerades or mas
based on the racialized class system during slavery and the postemancipation period in Trinidad Carnival, as performed island-wide.
The two masquerades based on the historical, racial, and class distinctions
are Pretty Mas or Fancy Mas, and Traditional Mas or Ole Mas. Pretty Mas
resembles the masquerades that were involved in the carnivals held by the
plantocracy or European planters during slavery. The performance consists
of large groups of people or bands in matching costumes, usually skimpy
and with overt sexual expression. The costumes are highly decorated with
glitter, sequins, and ostrich feathers, usually imported for the carnival season
and reflecting the finest costumes of people of means. Traditional Mas or
Ole Mas represents memories of slavery and contemporary politics. It consists of small groups or bands or solo individual performers as opposed to
the large groups in Pretty Mas. The Ole Mas costumes are individually generated from the surroundings and the environment; for example, scraps are
reused, reflecting the notion of a personal and collective identity formation
while excluded from Pretty Mas. The racialized class divide exists in Trinidad Carnival with the Pretty Mas that is descended from the white elite and
the Traditional Mas that has emerged from the underclasses of slaves. The
inherited class structures in contemporary Trinidadconstitute a reminder of
the simultaneous enforced sexual politics and control over the slave body
in historical and contemporary Trinidad, which is still laboring under the
legacy of colonial laws. Therefore, homoeroticism in the Blue Devils is as relevant today as it was at emancipation. It continues to trouble contemporary
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
251
society in the throes of decolonization with the inherited legacies of slavery

and colonialism. Homoeroticism in the body of the Blue Devil performer
expresses the release of legal and societal confinement expressed within the
carnival space.
Sexuality was also performed by the white elite in the carnival, embodying the sexual politics of the period. Pretty Mas emerged from the colonial
carnivals of the pre-emancipation and especially the postemancipation periods. In pre-emancipation carnivals, the plantocracy held elaborate masked
balls and carriage processions for the upper classes.73 According to Bridget
Brereton, these constituted an elegant social affair for the white Creole
upper class, and the masquerades were mainly European.74 However, slave
costumes and references were also incorporated and performed by the
white elite. Europeans also negotiated their sexual desires for the enslaved
in the carnival space in pre-emancipation carnivals. In addition to mocking
enslaved Africans by blackening their skins, Europeans in the carnival would
dress up in decorated and fancy costumes, or dress down in skimpy costumes reminiscent of sexual fantasies75 among themselves, but also of their
sexual fantasies about the enslaved. The European sexual representations
of the enslaved deprived the African of identity by eroticization. The slave
body was dominated through emasculation and/or feminization. The Blue
Devils performance restores identity through re-representation of the tension of sexual confinement juxtaposed with the release of homoerotic desire
as bodily emancipation.
The enslaved were sexualized in the European masquerades with the
negue jardin (garden negro) and the mulatress (a biracial woman of African
and European ancestry). Europeans would dress up as garden negroes, eroticizing the male slave working outside in the field or garden. The European
women dressed in the mulatress costumes. The mulatress was an object of
sexual desire for European men in the colonies.76 Mulatresses were often
kept as concubines or domestic slaves working indoors. Green states that the
mulatress was most desired openly; however, black-skinned women would be
secretly desired. The sexual politics and practices were acceptable among
the plantocracy. European women masking as mulatresses fulfilled the myths
and sexual fantasies by objectifying the enslaved. Harris notes that it was the
European womens dream to be desired by their husbands like the mulatress.77 The sexual politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was
imposed on the enslaved through popular imagination in European carnival performance in Trinidad, and in the everyday existence of the enslaved.
The Blue Devils performance counters the effects of sexual subjectivity by
reenacting sexual politics in same-sex interplay, and re-tells the other story,
to restore identity and bodily freedom through homoerotic desire.
When the freed Africans joined the carnival festivities in 1838, the Europeans separated themselves from the freed Africans and created the Pretty
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
252
Mas or Fancy Mas. Europeans thought that Africans in the carnival ruined
the elegance of the carnival as they knew it. They waged hostile campaigns
in the press against the African presence in the carnival that found its place
as sexually transgressive and of the lowest classes. Brereton notes that by the
1850s, the carnival was considered as immoral and disreputable with the
African presence.78 After the confinement of the body in slavery, the slave
body would rebel with obscene lyrics and sexually explicit performances
during and after slavery, notably against the plantocracy. When freed Africans joined the carnival festivities, the masquerades were made even more
obscene by European standards of the day. For example, the Blue Devils
perform with sexually explicit same-sex interplay in performance indicating
a release from the bodily confinement enforced during slavery. This also
documents sexual violence and encroachment as part of everyday life during slavery.
The postemancipation Trinidad carnival was sharply divided by class and
race, with the freed Africans in the lowest class and the plantocracy in the
highest class, as the product of a racialized slave society. This is contrary to
Bakhtins carnival theory of equality and the blurring of class divisions in the
medieval European carnival space. Bakhtin notes:
Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from prevailing truth and from the
established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges,
norms, and prohibitions. . . . Rank was especially evident during official feasts;
everyone was expected to appear in full regalia of his calling, rank, and merits
and to take the place corresponding to his position. It was a consecration of
inequality. On the contrary, all were considered equal during carnival. Here,
in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among
the people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age.79
Bakhtin argues that all are equal during the carnival, but this is true only in
the European context. In contrast, in pre- and postemancipation Trinidad,
the carnival space was deeply divided and unequal. Enslaved Africans were
forbidden to participate in pre-emancipation carnivals. The postemancipation carnivals of the colonialists were reserved for the privileged upper-class
European planters.
Europeans could not bear to have enslaved Africans included in the carnival, because this would signal African equality with Europeans in society
and in the carnival. Divisions had to be maintained to preserve whiteness at
all costs. The ruling white elite held power even during the carnival. Emancipation from slavery signified freed Africans being supposedly allowed to
participate in the carnival as equals. Freedom signified equality. But even
though enslaved Africans were freed, European colonials still maintained
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
253
confinement and control of the body in the free society. The Blue Devils
persisted in performance against the upper-class white elite, the former
slave owners. Homoeroticism in the Blue Devils performance functioned
as a release from the hierarchical control of the white elite over the physical
body. The white-faced Blue Devils dominating the other Blue Devils in the
sex act or rape commented on the cultural oppression by the white elite,
and reclaimed the body and identity against symbolic emasculation and/or
feminization as an identity-less body.
Pretty Mas then became a symbol of the upper class, and of mobility for
the emerging middle class later, toward the pre- and postindependence periods. Today Pretty Mas depicts exotic or historical themes rather than memories of slavery.80 It is performed on Carnival Tuesday, the last day before Ash
Wednesday, and is performed with large groups of people, known as mas
bands, sponsored by big businesses and corporations. Pretty Mas has moved
from being an event for the plantocracy to being an event for the emerging
middle and upper classes in Trinidad. The Blue Devils in Paramin continue
their performance tradition in contemporary society, interrogating the past
and present with sexual politics but also with the emergence of class divisions as a legacy of the former plantocracy. The big business sponsorship
and state support for Pretty Mas reflects control by the independent nationstate and the suppression of slavery depictions, perhaps the final chapter in
the process of emancipation and independence from colonial control.81
Traditional Mas or Ole Mas tends to preserve memories of slavery. It is
local, with small groups or bands or solo individual performers as opposed
to the large groups in Pretty Mas.82 It was increasingly marginalized because
of the lack of state support and the power of the upper and middle classes
now in big businesses and corporations that seemingly would suppress or
even try to erase masquerades83 grounded in slave society and the eroticism
of sexual politics on the slave body. However in the past twenty years, Traditional Mas has been revived for the preservation of national culture.84
Traditional Mas is performed on Carnival Monday before Ash Wednesday
and is composed of set characters played usually with historic or political
significance. It is satirical, involving skits, wordplay, and puns against the ruling class of the day.85 Examples of the traditional characters include Dame
Lorraine, sailors, black Indians, or Amerindian maskers, burokits (donkey
characters), dragons, and devils, including Blue Devils with homoeroticism
in their performance.
Pretty Mas, emerging from the plantocracy, and Traditional Mas, developing from the underclass of slaves, recreate the tension of the hierarchical,
racialized class structure of pre-emancipation carnival society; and the tension
of the confinement and release of the slave body in homoerotic desire is recreated in the Blue Devils performance. The sexual politics of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries and contemporary Trinidad intersects with class in
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
254
the Blue Devils performance. The upper classes consisted of the white elite,
and former planters and slave owners; the lower classes consisted of the freed
Africans and coloreds. The white elite or Europeans governed the sexual
politics both during and after slavery, so class issues must be considered in
tandem with sexuality and transgressive performance documenting and commenting on the plantocracy. The Blue Devils, with their depictions of the
white-faced performer sexually dominating the others in the masquerade,
clearly indicate the forces of sexual politics in performance. Homoeroticism
functions as a critique of the hierarchical structures still in force in contemporary society in the process of decolonization.
Even though the twin republic, Trinidad and Tobago, gained independence from British rule in 1962 and has moved beyond slavery and colonialism, the effects of the colonial hierarchy persist in class struggles today. The
class struggles between the upper, middle, and lower classes are structures
inherited from slavery and colonialism and are implied by and implicated in
Pretty Mas and Traditional Mas in Trinidad Carnival. The Blue Devils performance is a process of gaining temporary agency in performance that may
be missing in real life outside of carnival season. It is a historical text that
tells the unspoken story of the sexual exploitation of enslaved men during
slavery but also reveals homoerotic desire as a break from bodily confinement, a metaphorical emancipation of the body. The Blue Devils stand as a
critique of the sexual politics of the past and present, intersecting with the
contemporary middle and upper classes that emerged from the ruling plantocracy of pre-emancipation Trinidad. In contemporary Trinidad, the Blue
Devils exist in the hell on the fringes of an affluent society. In this way,
the memory of slavery becomes a sexualized, bodily performance in protest
against the persistence of class hierarchies since emancipation. Perhaps it is
a reminder that emancipation is still incomplete.
Design Aesthetics and Marked Marginality

The marginality of the Blue Devils, outside of the Pretty Mas carnival paradigm, is reflected in the Blue Devils design choices in costumes and space,
pushed to the edge of the society, and expressing sexual transgression
through homoeroticism against symbolic emasculation and/or feminization. The fabulous costumes and spectacle of Pretty Mas is state sponsored
on a large scale and supported by the upper and middle classes. The Pretty
Mas costumes are ornately decorated with sequins, glitter, shiny surfaces;
the color-coordinated costumes with elaborate headdresses reflect class
and even inherited color-casting distinctions and status in Trinidad Carnival. The Blue Devils costumes are generated from the waste or refuse
of the society. The use of materials refashioned for performance speaks to
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
255
the regenerating, reinvigorating force of creativity in identity formation.

The smearing of mud or petroleum jelly mixed with laundry blueing on
the body, and the blood drooling from mouths, reeks of disgust to polite
society. The bodily contortions and the winin on others with homoerotic
desire are also in sexual contempt of the bourgeois society that represents
the old plantocracy.
The distinctions in the costumes between Pretty Mas and the Blue Devils
represent wide differences in class. The glitter and glamour of Pretty Mas
are differentiated from the filthy and earthy Blue Devils with their bodily
excretions, their disgusting spitting and grunting, and their wildly homoerotic winin. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White explain the binary social
order reflected in the costumes of Pretty Mas and the Blue Devils:
Differentiation . . . is dependent upon disgust. The division of the social into
high and low, the polite and the vulgar, simultaneously maps out divisions
between the civilized and the grotesque body, between author and hack,
between social purity and social hybridization. . . . The bourgeois subject continuously defined and re-defined itself through the exclusion of what it marked
as lowas dirty, repulsive, noisy, contaminating. The low was internalized
under the sign of negation and disgust.86
The Blue Devils performers, in relation to the glitzy Pretty Mas, are those
who are excluded from polite society. Their noisy yelps and screams, their
winin on each other and rolling around on the ground, and the messiness
of the concoctions smeared on their bodies reflect their marked marginality in Trinidad Carnival culture. Their homoerotic desire is also marked as
outside of heterosexist society. It counters the inherited enforced colonial
heteronormativity in contemporary Caribbean society by breaking bodily
confinement with homoerotic desire imprinted in the wild, sexually liberated slave body.
Conclusion
Homoeroticism counters homophobia in Caribbean performance, as can be
seen in the potential of the Blue Devils of Paramin, Trinidad. Their performance holds the possibility for progressive discussions on sexuality and cultural attitudes to homosexuality in particular. The performance intersects
with the issues of the body and sexual politics in British West Indian slave
society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The slave society is
a lens through which to view contemporary issues of sexual politics in Caribbean countries still in the decolonization process, where issues of the past
impact contemporary society that is currently unraveling the long-lasting
7/9/2009 9:05:12 PM
256
effects of slavery and its power over the slave body and sexuality. Homoeroticism critiques misconceptions of African diasporic societies in the Caribbean
as inherently heterosexual. It symbolizes bodily freedom by breaking away
from bodily confinement with homoeroticism performed through sexually
charged men winin on each other.
Homoeroticism in the Blue Devils emerged from Canboulay in 1838 and
continues today, still carrying the tropes of sexual politics imprinted on the
restrained bodies of the Blue Devils. Freedom is positioned against legal
bodily restraint. Therefore freedom is expressed in the body, with homoeroticism symbolically breaking away from imposed bodily restrictions and
punishment. The multiple registers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
sexual politics in the British West Indies, and in contemporary society,
implicated in the legacy of racial class divisions, are simultaneously contested in the Blue Devils performance. Sexual violence and homoerotic
desires in the performance are interchangeably commenting on the past
and on contemporary society while celebrating bodily freedom with homoerotic performances.
The Blue Devils performance continues in the contemporary Trinidad
Carnival because of the hierarchical structures of racialized class inherited
from the white elite of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The tension in the slave body between sexual imprisonment during slavery at the
hands of slave owners and its subsequent release in sexual expressions at
emancipation is embodied in the Blue Devils performance. Sexuality, therefore, intersects with race and class in Pretty Mas and Traditional Mas in
Trinidad Carnival and in the wider contemporary Caribbean society.
The class structures inherited from slavery and colonialism and still
existing in contemporary society are reflected in the collective memory
in the Blue Devils performance of the sexual politics of the past but also
of the contemporary society that is still laboring under the legacy of colonial laws. This is particularly noted in the costumes, in the distinction
between the sequined Pretty Mas of the middle- and upper-class society,
inherited by the white elite from the nineteenth-century plantocracy, and
the marginality of the Blue Devils with the messiness of mud, saliva, and
sweat and the insatiable bestial sexuality, which are disgusting to polite
society. Homoeroticism in the Blue Devils remains as relevant today as it
was at emancipation. It disrupts contemporary society with homoerotic
desires in performance, and expresses the release from legal and societal
confinement expressed in the body within the carnival space. Homoeroticism in performance, therefore, breaks the confinement of the body to
redefine sexual identities in the process of decolonization. It continues
in the contemporary carnival to critique the sexual politics of enforced
heteronormative sexuality outside of carnival season, and challenges ideas
of emancipation and freedom through the vulgar, grotesque bodies and
7/9/2009 9:05:13 PM
257
sexual expressions in the Blue Devils performance. Perhaps homoeroticism in Caribbean performance holds the potential for progressive discussions on sexuality in Caribbean society, actively challenging homophobic
nationalist debates in Caribbean popular culture.
Notes
1.
Timothy S. Chin, Bullers and Battymen: Contesting Homophobia in
Black Popular Culture and Contemporary Literature, Callaloo 20, no. 1 (1997):
12741.
2.
Kavelle Anglin-Christie, BujuToo Bad to Contain, Sunday Gleaner, September 3, 2006, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com (accessed April 18, 2007).
3.
Claude Mills, Gay Rights Activist Killed, Daily Gleaner, June 10, 2004,
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com (accessed April 18, 2007).
4.
Andrew Clunis, Outraged! British Gays Use Brian Williamsons Death to
Push Agenda, Sunday Gleaner, June 13, 2004, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com
(accessed April 25, 2007).
5.
Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), http://www.
jflag.org/ (accessed April 25, 2007).
6.
J-FLAG, http://www.jflag.org/ (accessed April 25, 2007).
7.
Alicia Roache, Black Music Council Defends DJs, Daily Gleaner, December
12, 2004, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com (accessed April 18, 2007).
8.
Martin W. Walsh, The Blue Devils of Paramin: Tradition and Improvisation
in a Village Carnival Band, in Carnival: Culture in ActionThe Trinidad Experience, ed.
Milla Cozart Riggio (New York: Routledge, 2004), 150.
9.
Dawn Baston and Milla Cozart Riggio, Trinidad Timeline, in Riggio, Carnival: Culture in Action, 31.
10. Ibid., 31.
11. Ibid.
12. Sarah Cameron and Ben Box, Caribbean Island Handbook: With Bahamas
(Bath, UK: Footprints Handbooks, 1998), 873.
13. Milla Riggio, Play MasPlay Me, Play We: Introduction to Part II, in Riggio, Carnival: Culture in Action, 46.
14. Carol Martin, Trinidad Carnival Glossary, in Riggio, Carnival: Culture in
Actione, 286.
15. In Trinidad, mas or mas is short for masquerade. Playing mas also refers to
masquerading. See Martin, Trinidad Carnival Glossary, 289.
16. Max Harris, The Impotence of Dragons: Playing Devil in the Trinidad Carnival, Drama Review 42, no. 3 (1998): 10823.
17. Martin, Trinidad Carnival Glossary, 284.
18. Harris, The Impotence of Dragons, 108.
19. Walsh, The Blue Devils of Paramin, 152.
22. Ibid., 149.
7/9/2009 9:05:13 PM
258

24. The significance of the blue color is not documented. However, tar, black
varnish, or molasses were originally smeared on the body to represent the makeup
used by Europeans in the preemancipation carnival to mimic the dark complexions of enslaved Africans, for example, in the character of the negue jardin (garden
negro). Freed Africans parodied Europeans by exaggerating African blackness and
daubed themselves with black varnish, tar, and molasses, contemptuously creating
for themselves the blackness despised by the plantocracy. I suggest that the blueing
of the body is a variant of the exaggerated blackening of the body. See Errol Hill, The
Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre (London: New Beacon Books, 1997),
24, and Walsh, The Blue Devils of Paramin, 149.
28. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 149.
34. The Emancipation Act was passed in Britain in 1834, with a five-year period
of apprenticeship until 1840, when full emancipation was expected. Due to unrest
in the British colonies, the apprenticeship period was cut to four years, with full
emancipation granted on August 1, 1838. See Baston and Riggio, Trinidad Carnival
Timeline, 31.
36. J. D. Elder, Cannes Brles, in Riggio, Carnival: Culture in Action, 48.
37. Hill, The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre, 24.
38. Baston and Riggio, Trinidad Carnival Timeline, 31.
40. Hill, The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre, 24.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 109.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid
47. Ibid.
48. Joseph C. Dorsey, It Hurt Very Much at the Time: Patriarchy, Rape, Culture, and the Slave Body-Semiotic, in The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, ed. Linden Lewis (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 296.
49. Hilary McD. Beckles, Property Rights in Pleasure: The Marketing of Slave
Womens Sexuality in the West Indies, in West Indian Accounts: Essays on the History of
the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy. ed. Roderick A. McDonald (Kingston,
Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1996), 170.
50. William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great
Experiment 18301865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 21.
7/9/2009 9:05:13 PM
259
51. Beckles, Property Rights in Pleasure, 170.

52. Ibid., 174.
53. Ibid., 171.
54. Carolyn Cooper, Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the Vulgar Body of
Jamaican Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 24.
55. Bridget Brereton, The Trinidad Carnival in The Late Nineteenth-Century,
in Riggio Carnival: Culture in Action, 55.
56. Beckles, Property Rights in Pleasure, 170.
57. Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London: Routledge, 2003),
5.
58. Hilary McD. Beckles, Freeing Slavery: Gender Paradigms in the Social
History of Caribbean Slavery, in Slavery, Freedom and GenderThe Dynamics of Caribbean Society, ed. Brian L. Moore et. al. (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press,
2003), 206.
59. Beckles, Freeing Slavery: Gender Paradigms, 207.
60. The Sexual Offenses (Amendment) Act, 2000, http://www.ttparliament.
org/bills/acts/2000/a200031.pdf (accessed April 25, 2007).
61. Jasbir Kaur Puar, Global Circuits: Transnational Sexualities and Trinidad,
Signs 26, no. 4 (2001): 103965.
62. Angela Lee Loy, Remarks by Angela Lee Loy at the Closing Reception
of Caribbean Radio Programming Workshop on HIV/AIDS, January 24, 2007,
http://www.cbmphiv.org/pdfs/Angela%20CBMP.pdf (accessed April 25, 2007).
63. Ibid.
64. Puar, Global Circuits: Transnational Sexualities and Trinidad, 3.
65. Ibid., 9.
66. Ibid., 67.
67. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1984), 78 and 3034.
68. Angelo Laurence and Edmond Campbell, Witter Warns GaysFlaunting
Sexual Preference May Incite Violence, Daily Gleaner, April 25, 2007, http://www.
jamaica-gleaner (accessed April 25, 2007).
69. Adventist Leader Lashes Carnival, Daily Gleaner, April 23, 1990, http://
www.jamaica-gleaner (accessed April 18, 2007).
70. Ibid.
71. Sandra L. Richards, Horned Ancestral Masks, Shakespearean Actor Boys,
and Scotch-Inspired Set Girls: Social Relations in Nineteenth-Century Jamaican
Jonkunno, in The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities, ed. Isidore
Okpewho, Carole Boyce Davies, and Ali A. Mazrui (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1999), 266.
72. Cooper, Noises in the Blood, 25.
74. Brereton, The Trinidad Carnival in the Late Nineteenth-Century, 53.
76. Mulatto is derived from the Spanish word mulato, referring to the offspringof
a horse and donkey, called a mule. See T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe, ed., Black Africans
in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xv. The term
mulato was applied to a male, free or enslaved, who was of mixed African and Euro-
7/9/2009 9:05:13 PM
260
pean ancestry. Mulatress was the term applied to women. These terms are pejorative
in contemporary usage.
78. Brereton, The Trinidad Carnival in the Late Nineteenth-Century, 54.
79. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 10.
81. Ibid.
82. Riggio, Play MasPlay Me, Play We: Introduction to Part II, 101.
84. Ibid.
85. Riggio, Play MasPlay Me, Play We: Introduction to Part II, 101.
86. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (New
York: Cornell University Press, 1986), 191.
7/9/2009 9:05:13 PM

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and The African Body in Trinidad

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance: Homoeroticism and The African Body in Trinidad

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

10

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance:

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Fears of attacks hinder any meaningful, progressive discussions by the

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Brief History of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and Carnival

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

competitions.13 The Sunday before Ash Wednesday is known as Dimanche

Emergence of the Blue Devils and Significance of

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

on through oral transmission by generations of performers in families, with

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sexual Politics under Slavery

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Sexual Politics in Contemporary Trinidad

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Blue Devils performance in Trinidad Carnival. Sexual freedom represents

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

sexual transgression. Contemporary Blue Devils masqueraders are examples

Pretty Mas, Traditional Mas, Class, and Homoeroticism

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

society in the throes of decolonization with the inherited legacies of slavery

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Design Aesthetics and Marked Marginality

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

the regenerating, reinvigorating force of creativity in identity formation.

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

23. Harris, The Impotence of Dragons, 108.

Sexuality in Caribbean Performance

51. Beckles, Property Rights in Pleasure, 170.

Politics of Culture in Popular Representations

Você também pode gostar