Sweet, Sweet Saint Lucian Carnival!

The feathers have moulted, the tons of garbage have been removed from the streets and the Events Company of St. Lucia has already begun promoting the next big thing: Roots & Soul. Saint Lucia Carnival, the country’s biggest “cultural” showcase, ended this week with an extended Carnival Tuesday as fourteen bands crossed the judging stage. Media, deejays and tourists from around the world were attracted to our shores as thousands of revellers flooded the Gros Islet highway in their brightest colours and glitter while jumping and gyrating non-stop.

As expected, Events Company of St. Lucia and the Cultural Development Foundation have been shouting about “the most successful carnival season”, not without good reason. National events and parties, although increasing in number and entrance fees, were all well attended, up until the eve of the Parade of the Bands. 

Carnival in the Caribbean traces back to African cultural celebrations of freedom from slavery, obscurely mixed with European traditions of final indulgence before the Lenten season. In Saint Lucia the Parade of the Bands would not be complete without complaints on social media, in every workplace and aired loudly on the radio. 

This year, Newsspin host Timothy Poleon expressed particular concern about the rampant exposure of female behinds and breasts in the presence of innocent children at the roadsides. A caller to his radio programme was shocked at the sight of a woman’s posterior that he claimed “just open” in his line of view. Other callers talked about WhatsApped scores of photos and videos that featured wall to wall twerkers, jiggly butts,   splayed thighs and various acrobatic splits.

Perhaps what garnered the most attention was a video of a man seemingly gobbling the thonged derriere of a gyrating female at the side of a parked truck. By all the protesters said, they never saw this sort of public behaviour coming. For some time the carnival costumes worn by women have been growing smaller and smaller. It seemed every band, save Tribe of Twel, displayed female nipples poking out of wired bras, near invisible thongs and shaking bellies of all shapes and dimensions.   

If Soca and Dennery Segment music asked for increased jooking, sticking, vibrating, and shaking; if they encouraged celebrants to get on madder, badder, drunker and wilder, clearly their pleas did not go ignored. Even the prime minister joined in by confirming several energizer-bunny road marchers had appealed to him to “Call My Mother For Me, My Head Bad!”

Arguing for police intervention, Timothy Poleon and others cited the Criminal Code while railing against public nudity or near nudity, to say nothing of sexual activity in the street, whether real or pretend sex. Agnes Francis, chairperson of Events Company of St. Lucia, said: “This is not what our carnival is about. I don’t mind the merriment, I don’t mind adult behaviour, but when you have spectators who are not able to view the event, not able to take their children to view the event, there is something that we have to do. We cannot just put up our hands and say this is the way of the world, this is the way we’re going.” The fact is, most of it like it so, Ms Francis.

As for the revellers, they offer a common defence, and it has everything to do with our African heritage and free expression. One of the laws referenced by Poleon and others: “A person who knowingly and without lawful justification or excuse exposes to view in any public place, any obscene picture, photograph, video recording, drawing, or model or any other object tending to corrupt morals . . . is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for six months.”  

Who is the jury? Saint Lucians who have classified carnival as a major contributor to our economy? And how will the police arrest over a thousand people? Where will they be housed? And for what? Some panty malfunctions? For a nipple that broke loose from its wiring? A misbehaving vagina or two? Imagine the police trying to make their case in court. Imagine the laughter from the gallery!    

We did not arrive where we are in one leap. As for protecting the children from the fall-out of Carnival Gone Wild, considering what today’s kids easily access on their cellphones, is little more than, dare I say it, child’s play. In the world we live in today, we do have a problem with the meaning of such words as decency, morality, culture and good behaviour, freedom, self-respect. There is also a problem with depending for our survival on an industry that demands thrills that require more and more of what was once considered deviant. Now here’s another word waiting to be redefined for the times!