Let’s start this conversation by throwing 3 words at Google. One of the words is parody. You are smart enough to figure out the other two by looking at the answer.

“Caribbean carnival has deep historical roots in the parody and mockery of plantation slavery. Enslaved Africans used masquerade, dance, and satirical imitation of their masters’ fine dress and behavior as a form of psychological release, cultural survival, and subtle resistance. Today, celebrations like Antigua Carnival directly commemorate emancipation and freedom.”

It’s one thing to put words on paper; it’s a completely different task to allow the words to make flesh. This is neither the time nor the place for joking that “culture made flesh” was what we saw in the heaps and hips of human flesh at carnival as many revelers tried and succeeded in diminishing the word costume, to nothing. Our culture must become and remain incarnate in a wide range of form and format.

I want us to engage an idea and practice that are essential to the future of our beloved Antigua and Barbuda. These essentials are not new. We employ them from time to time. But we need to underscore them to remind us how fundamental and indispensable they are and how extensive they must be allowed to propagate and permeate.

The emancipation of black people demands that we do unto ourselves what we did unto others. We have to parody our lives in all media to allow our inner collective, native self to breathe. We have to laugh and make fun of ourselves. Without this vent, we will explode and choke each other to death. When you consider the massive sufferings of this world wantonly executed by the British Empire, you understand why British comedy is the best in the world, bar none. Someone remarked that the inimitable phrase, “The sun will never set on the British Empire”, was absolutely true because God could not trust the British in the dark.

Here’s a brutally amusing game we played as teenagers when cars drove by on Factory Road, between Scotts Hill and St. Johnston village. After they passed our spot, we would wave frantically at them. If the car stopped, we would gesture negatively; they would drive off, and we would laugh at them. If they didn’t stop, we would shower them with a string of words bordering very closely on bad words.

Parody and satire are crucial elements for our emancipation. We have to know and accept our current, modern, native truths to allow the parody and satire to work. Google again: “While both parody and satire use humor to mock their subjects, a parody imitates and exaggerates a specific creative work or style for comedic effect, whereas a satire uses irony and wit to critique broader societal flaws, human vices, or political systems.”

Latumba said culture must be free. Indeed and in deed. But culture must also be responsible through its clever use of parody and satire, double entendre and the ingenious use of language. Kaiso! Maybe our creativity has become as naked as, or a reflection of, the very rabid nakedness we decry at carnival.

In manifesting our culture, the truth must be known and accepted, even after and especially after reasoned debates and fierce arguments. If the truth is latent, we must use our creativity to eke it out in song and dance and in all pressure-release media. A country without a regular dose of native humour will cry itself to death.

Here is one local truth that must be told to counter a common, bizarre and deliberately misleading, one-sided point about the COVID-19 vaccine. If you did not want to take the COVID-19 vaccine, for whatever reason, you were wrong to demonstrate your dissent in a mass gathering, in a public demonstration, during a pandemic of a highly contagious disease. This was a national, medical prescription. Find other ways of objecting; use the media, but stay away from crowds, stay home, play dolly-house, or your favorite game, or masturbate if you have to.

Equally wrong was the security response to the demonstration. First, I confess I was not at the demonstration, and hence my comment might be totally off the mark. But unless there was an imminent threat to life and property, it would have been better to allow the walking, potential fire to burn itself out.

We are about to celebrate 45 years of Independence. This is coupled with hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). There is a huge amount of work to be done before November. We have to approach our first 45 with an admission of our faults and our desire and promise to ourselves and to each other to do better for the next 45. We have to regard and activate our native commonwealth. Otherwise, what’s the point when at the end of the celebration we say, “Out, out, brief candle”? It cannot be all “sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

The world and his wife are coming to us. We do not have to guess who is coming to dinner. The most important guest that must be satiated will always be with us. Our beloved Antigua and Barbuda.

This article was originally published by Antigua News Room. Read the original article here: COMMENTARY: Guess Who’s Coming? By Dr Lester Simon.