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Contemporary Jamaican dancehall culture discloses new variants
of the disguise motifs that are inscribed in traditional folktales.
The glittering strobe-light world of the dance is an idealised
space in which fantastic identities are possible. In Dancehall
Queen and Babymother, the film medium becomes a site of transformation
in which the spectacularly dressed bodies of women assume extraordinary
proportions once projected on the screen. In both films, one
set in Jamaica, the other in the UK, the styling of the body
– the hair, make-up, clothes and body language that are
assumed – enhances the illusion of a fairy-tale metamorphosis
of the mundane self into eroticised sex object. This dancehall
celebration of the pleasures of the body, which is often misunderstood
as a devaluation of female sexuality, can also be theorised
as an act of emancipation: woman as sexual being claims the
right to sexual pleasure as an essential sign of her identity.
Furthermore, the sensuality of the woman that is usually disguised
by her role as mother is released in the taking on of the persona
of dancehall queen. But the disguise motif is not limited to
the eroticised adornment of the body. Disguise enables the exploration
of more profound issues of betrayal as predatory animal nature,
unsuccessfully concealed by the mask of the human face, stalks
its victims. |
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