WHEN putting together notes for this column, I asked myself what image most strikingly conveyed the spirit of TT Carnival this year.
It was a short video clip posted online of a man cloaked in a hybrid Batman/bat mas costume closing the gate to his home and stepping out into the chilly, dark knight.
He was being recorded by some macocious passersby in a vehicle. Suddenly, the bat-whatever burst into a sprint in hot pursuit of the vehicle. The driver floored it!
In the shaky footage, the masquerader's wings flared outward in an impressive flourish that seemed to spread inky darkness that almost devoured the marmalade glow of the streetlights. That, to my mind, embodied the true spirit of Carnival.
Of course, we're all different so interpretations of the festival vary.
Carnival began with the French planter class in the 18th century – a series of exquisite balls, dinners and hunting parties. The slaves, naturally barred from such enthusiasms fashioned their own version, rooted in a tincture of mockery of their masters.
There is a direct lineage to this history in the dame Lorraine mas character – expressed in the exaggerated busts and behinds of ladies of the estates and privilege. Through the emancipation proclamation, Carnival as we do not now know it was born.
It's a bitter irony that a festival born of the elite, then claimed by the proletariat, has swung back to the elite. Now the peasantry pay for the honour of economic enslavement!They whip themselves for the opportunity to grow the wealth of the few.
All things must change, but the sole evolutionary track Carnival appears to have travelled is mindfulness to mindlessness.
In Carnival post-mortems/autopsies springing up spontaneously online, there is heated debate over what the annual festival has become. In fact, the Carnal-val has been this way for more than ten years.
Costumes are increasingly revealing – revealing who we're becoming: a feckless people of little substance, forever nursing at the teat of distraction and ignorance.
One of the oft-repeated complaints was the scarcity of spectators.
The apparent decline in crowds was felt most acutely by vendors who invested heavily in the "mother of all Carnivals" only to see slow to no sales. Two years of deprivation didn't produce the explosive numbers expected for Carnival 2023.
There are probably two main reasons for dwindling spectator interest.
Surging violent crime is one factor, but additionally, there is both very little and too much to see.
Parents of young children probably aren't keen on explaining why a half-naked woman has her buttocks pointed skyward while a man is pounding (not wining) on her behind, trying to grind her coccyx into chalkdust.
Rutting behaviour of masqueraders aside, there's a dreary sameness to modern mas. The goodie bag/Shutterstock/Victoria's Secret mas is boring to anyone other than those playing it and those perambulating pervs.
Lingerie mas isn't
