by Nicolette Bethel on March 10, 2010
Over on The Bahamas Weekly, a story’s running that announces the release of the fourteen films commissioned by the Ministry of Tourism as part of this year’s marketing campaign for The Bahamas.
For those of you who don’t know, or don’t remember, this campaign has come under considerable fire from local filmmakers, photographers and other artists.
The films are now all finished, and if they’re all like the teaser, they’ll be interesting to watch. There’s no doubt that the idea is a brilliant one from the point of view of marketing The Bahamas The question remains, though: was the campaign ill-conceived from the point of view of Bahamians?
The discussion so far seems to be generating more heat than light. The Ministry of Tourism certainly seems to have gone on the defensive about it. “We are surprised,” said a press statement early in February, “at the criticism that has been directed at this promotion.” And that bemusement is further developed:
It would certainly have made headlines in The Bahamas if, instead of devising a search among Britain’s young film makers to be selected to come to The Bahamas to shoot, we’d announced that we were selecting 14 of our own people to shoot promotional videos of their country to show in Britain, but it would have had minimal impact in Britain. Aside from the interest British citizens will have in the output of their own young film makers, their output is likely to be perceived as more credible than material produced by Bahamians about their own country.
via thebahamasweekly.com – 14 Films Challenge films are ready to watch – Voting ends March 14th.
There’s a whole lot more in this vein, all supporting the idea of breaking into the UK market, attracting attention from the British, widening the tourist net, etc, etc. And the arguments are all good ones. I can’t take issue with them: the attention of BAFTA, the attraction of British sponsorship, the penetration of the British population by appearances in British cinemas, and so on.
But here’s my problem.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this campaign will get the people here. None at all. The British will come as a result of this campaign. And in the short run, it’ll be deemed a success, just like so many marketing campaigns run by the Ministry of Tourism.
But will it last?
I’m going to argue that the likelihood of it lasting is very slim, and the key to that argument is contained in the Ministry’s defensive statement. It’s the idea that lies at the heart of the way in which the Bahamian government spends its money: “their output is likely to be perceived as more credible than material produced by Bahamians about their own country.”
The government of The Bahamas, no matter its colour, stripe or initials, in the end, has absolutely no confidence in the people of The Bahamas to do anything of worth. And because of that, governnment funds, whether collected from the taxpayers or borrowed from some international agency, are almost never invested in projects that will do more than maintain the aging status quo in our economy and our society — tens of millions on the dredging and redredging of our harbour, more tens of millions on the construction of new roads, more contracts with concessions to multinational resorts to come in and “provide jobs” for the least productive among us, more maintenance of inequalities, more skewing of the local GNP by collecting the uber-wealthy to hike up our collective numbers while not doing a whole lot fresh and new to spark economic activity that is indigenous, reproducible, sustainable, resilient. As a result, we spend waste a whole lot of money on packaging and distribution and invest virtually nothing in the product itself.
Because the 14 filmmakers challenge could’ve done exactly what it’s doing now with a different spin. It could’ve got the same mileage — or more — by incorporating Bahamians into the equation. Rather than assuming — and stating that assumption publicly! — that Bahamian work is “less credible” than UK work in Britain, the Ministry of Tourism could have spent the same investment on a competition between young Bahamian filmmakers and young UK filmmakers. It could’ve invested not only in the advertising of The Bahamas — in the packaging and the distribution of the product — but in the improvement of the product as well, with the goal not only to raise awareness in Britain of The Bahamas and its existence, but also to generate some respect for the people of The Bahamas at the same time. Because it’s respect and love and curiosity that keep people coming back, and the hospitality that comes from being respected — not more pretty pictures and stereotypes of “native” activity, no matter how well packaged, how cleverly distributed, how brilliantly conceived the idea.
by Nicolette Bethel on March 8, 2010
International Women’s Day has been observed since in the early 1900’s, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.
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IWD is now an official holiday in China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The tradition sees men honouring their mothers, wives, girlfriends, colleagues, etc with flowers and small gifts. In some countries IWD has the equivalent status of Mother’s Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.
About International Women’s Day.
What did you do today?
by Nicolette Bethel on February 28, 2010
As the Earth warms, the melting of its two massive ice sheets—Antarctica and Greenland—could raise sea level enormously.
via SolveClimate.com.
Last month’s earthquake in Haiti brought out two sides of Bahamians: the all-too-common bigotry that holds tight onto what we’ve achieved over the past forty years and refuses to share our good fortune with others, and a generosity and compassion that signals a possible change in the way we talk about ourselves, our country, and our neighbours.
What struck me, though, was the almost unquestioning subtext of both: the growing-old refrain that we are blessed, we are special, God has smiled upon us, and therefore we must either keep that blessing selfishly to ourselves or spread it more generously than we have done in the past.
And we’ve gone off to thank God, to congratulate ourselves, that we were not so unfortunate as to have had an earthquake here in our land, that we are mostly outside the earthquake zone (except Inagua, which is close enough to the fault that shook Port-au-Prince to have experienced the earth’s shaking at different times in its history).
What I wonder about, though, is the question of why in all our discussions about blessedness, in all our wrangling about who-won-Elizabeth, in all our self-centredness and short-sightedness, no one — not during the debates, not during the discussions on the air, nowhere, not even during the Copenhagen talks last year — has raised the issue that should have every Bahamian deeply concerned: the question of the impact that global warming will have on ocean warming, the melting of the ice caps, and the eventual rising of the seas.
Now it’s possible for us to not-believe all the science about global warming. I myself, while accepting the research and the results, and believing entirely that the earth’s climate is experiencing some major changes, am vaguely sceptical about the stated causes of climate change, and am also not always convinced about the predicted results of it.
BUT. One thing that isn’t in dispute at the moment is that the ocean temperature is currently rising. Or, to be more precise: “July 2009 was the hottest month for the world’s oceans in almost 130 years of record-keeping” (Seas at Risk.Org); and that scientists are noticing a shrinkage of the ice sheets of both Greenland and Antarctica.
Here’s what that means:
If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise sea level 7 meters 23 feet. Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level 5 meters 16 feet. But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise.Senior scientists are noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC projections of sea level rise during this century of 18 to 59 centimeters are already obsolete and that a rise of 2 meters during this time is within range.
via Melting Ice Could Lead to Massive Waves of Climate Refugees | SolveClimate.com.
Here’s what that means to our country.
The Bahamas is flat, low-lying, with few points on any island that can be considered high ground. Our highest point, way away on Cat Island, is 206 ft (63 metres) above sea level. But what’s perhaps more worrying is that our fresh water sources are universally fresh water lenses, which rely to some degree on the stability of the salt water levels to continue to provide us with fresh water levels. Consider the fact, too, that New Providence gets its fresh water barged in from Andros (having long outgrown/contaminated the local freshwater lens, which was once considerable for a Bahamian island, but which can in no way support Nassau’s population of a quarter of a million people, give or take), and that Andros is one of the flatter, lower islands. We don’t know what impact rising sea levels might have on that.
So it’s not inconceivable that rising sea levels will turn Bahamians back into what for the past three generations we have not been: migrants, refugees, emigrants in search of dry land. It’s not inconceivable that Atlantis, for the past decade or so our “saviour”, may be what we actually become one of these days — a sunken country, our property reclaimed by the sea. One of these days, The Bahamas may become just a memory to be kept alive by those most reviled of us all — our artists.
Just saying.
