Jamaica’s film renaissance: How creative resistance exposes colonialism’s lingering violence through cultural reparation
Original framing: “‘Opening the lid of a horrible secret’: Jamaicans confront enslavement with taboo-busting stories on screen” — The Guardian - World
The Guardian’s focus on ‘taboo-busting’ flattens the **spiritual alchemy** at work in *Possession*, where horror and healing are intertwined. Rastafarian *nyabinghi* drumming, for instance, is used in the film not just as atmosphere but as a **sonic exorcism**—a practice rooted in the idea that sound can disrupt oppressive frequencies, as articulated by Black spiritual leaders like **Archbishop Desmond Tutu** (who spoke of music as ‘the breath of the ancestors’). The film’s use of **syncretic Vodou-Taíno-Christian imagery** (e.g., the fusion of Anancy and the Devil) reflects a long Caribbean tradition of **sacred syncretism** as resistance, a dimension entirely absent from the mainstream framing. This spiritual layer is where the ‘cultural reparation’ happens—through ritual, not just representation.
The Guardian’s framing of *Possession* as a ‘taboo-busting’ spectacle obscures its function as a **multi-layered decolonial intervention**, where **Indigenous Taíno cosmologies, Maroon resistance traditions, and Rastafarian spiritual warfare** converge to expose the **material and psychological violence of colonialism**.
The film is not merely ‘reclaiming narratives’ but **performing reparatory justice**—using the supernatural to **name, shame, and exorcise** the ghosts of enslavement, while also **rebuilding sovereign economies** through cultural production. The omission of **Anancy’s trickster role** and the **land’s agency** (via Taíno and Maroon frameworks) reveals how Western media still **extracts diasporic trauma as content** without addressing its **structural causes**. The solution lies in **redirecting global media power**—through funds, curricula, and land-based reparations—to **center the voices and epistemologies** that colonialism sought to erase, ensuring that the ‘haunting’ becomes a **living, restorative force** rather than mere spectacle.