Dear Editor,
When it suits us we boast a rich and creatively versatile genre. Like anything else with variation, some varieties of an entity lend to particular purposes better than others. Like a personality, there are some basic traits and values that we all generally share. Like a personality, we have things unique to us in a positive way and others in a perceived negative one. I’d hope that we’d have realised in life by now that highlighting the faults of someone else (or another genre for this matter) doesn’t stop ours from existing or being noticed.
The annual telephone directory is meant for every business, every office, every household — indeed, every Jamaican. The variety of dancehall depicted on the 2016 cover was not. Why one might think, from their personal beliefs, that it is fitting for everyone else is another discussion.
If you are a true champion of dancehall, if you believe that it is indeed rich in creativity and versatility, why not be upset then that another depiction was not chosen? One that wasn’t so limiting, one that didn’t allow, yet again, for the whole genre to be relegated to the view of being inappropriate and overly sexual? Or is it that that one depiction of dancehall is all it is to you, the champions of dancehall as well?
In my assessment, everything was fine with the image for mass distribution minus the girl in short dress with legs open bracing on a man, as well as the other female in the yellow tights. Dancehall is broader than that and has been used many times before to advertise many things without offending.
Jodi-ann Johnson
Kingston 19
three-jays@live.com
When it suits us we boast a rich and creatively versatile genre. Like anything else with variation, some varieties of an entity lend to particular purposes better than others. Like a personality, there are some basic traits and values that we all generally share. Like a personality, we have things unique to us in a positive way and others in a perceived negative one. I’d hope that we’d have realised in life by now that highlighting the faults of someone else (or another genre for this matter) doesn’t stop ours from existing or being noticed.
The annual telephone directory is meant for every business, every office, every household — indeed, every Jamaican. The variety of dancehall depicted on the 2016 cover was not. Why one might think, from their personal beliefs, that it is fitting for everyone else is another discussion.
If you are a true champion of dancehall, if you believe that it is indeed rich in creativity and versatility, why not be upset then that another depiction was not chosen? One that wasn’t so limiting, one that didn’t allow, yet again, for the whole genre to be relegated to the view of being inappropriate and overly sexual? Or is it that that one depiction of dancehall is all it is to you, the champions of dancehall as well?
In my assessment, everything was fine with the image for mass distribution minus the girl in short dress with legs open bracing on a man, as well as the other female in the yellow tights. Dancehall is broader than that and has been used many times before to advertise many things without offending.
Jodi-ann Johnson
Kingston 19
three-jays@live.com