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2006-12-07 - 11:33 a.m. MOVIE REVIEW TIME Mostly written while actually watching the movie, with links added later, because I love you all so much that I just wanted to spoil you with things to click on! ... And there's only one being reviewed, so don't say I didn't warn you or something... LIFE AND DEBT C-Light and I rented this brilliant documentary over the summer, but unfortunately the sole copy available at the Movie Studio was pretty fucked up, so we never made it all the way through. Hooray, Netflix! Me and the Canadian Club* are thoroughly enjoying it. *Repatriation or blatant alcoholism, you might ask? Well, neither. I tried to go to bed early, so I could wake up and work on my take-home finals, but of course I drank too much soda at Fresno Family Counseling Center this evening, so I'm buzzed. Damn you, Wild Cherry Pepsi! Damn you! Anyhow, I'm getting incredibly riled up about the Maybe this is a daft or naive idea... but there are do many damn tourists going to that country, bringing so much money in with them... what would it take for one or two of the resorts to commit to purchasing locally-produced produce and milk and other products? Would that hurt anyone? How on earth could that require a price increase for the hotels and resorts? And yet wouldn't it make a HUGE impact on the local economies? And for the record -- Chiquita Bananas killed 23 of its workers when a bunch of them went on strike. Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte bananas are all grown in Latin America, and the workers are paid a non-living wage of US$1 per day. Bananas grown in Jamaica are generally only available in Europe and particularly Britain (due to trade tariffs -- the film did not address the trade situation with Canada) and so I may never again be able to conscienably eat a nnaner. "Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native would like to find a way out. Every native would like a rest. Every native would like a tour. But some natives, most natives in the world, cannot go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the realities of their lives, and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place that you, the Tourist, want to go. So when the natives see you, the Tourist, they envy you. They envy your own ability to leave your own banality and boredom. They envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself." This is an amazingly poignant movie that brilliantly juxtaposes the tourist experience of Jamaica -- the way the Island Paradise is viewed during a week-long visit by a non-native -- with the actual lived experience of Jamaican citizens due to the impoverished conditions that have been forced upon them post-Independence while they were trying to achieve fiscal stability for their nation.
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