ALL OF THE important American writers on film, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.L. Doctorow, Dudley Nichols, Robert Nathan, Pauline Kael, Gore Vidal, Peter Bogdanovich, David Denby, among many others, have identified and bemoaned the fact that films have not only caused the decline of reading novels, short stories and plays, but largely replaced literature as a passion, even though the entire history and achievement of cinematic culture is based on a foundation by writers.

This repeated criticism of film productions becoming the popular replacement of the very novels, stories, plays etc, it was nurtured on, is quite normal in metropolitan cultures that  have  (or had?) millions of highly literate readers who supported the diverse billion-dollar publishing industry of North America, Canada, and Europe. Their publishing industry certainly took losses when consumers started accessing films rather than the literature they were adapted from, even though such books were generally more detailed and educationally beneficial to literacy than their film versions.

But what happens when we shift our attention from the mostly literate North American and European consumers of films, and focus on lesser literate populations with less leisure time to consume books in the so-called ‘Third World’?  What we realize is that those citizens, who had little present possibility of reading and comprehending an endless list of classic and contemporary international literature, saw and largely felt the general meaning of such literature when it was transformed into films.

Not all such texts were rendered by films equal in quality, and exactly as they were originally written. In fact, many films simply could not equal the literature they were taken from, but many did equal it and even improved on the power of the text. It was cinema-going that collectively utilized the basic oral/audio-visual abilities of all Guyanese with little or no literacy skills,  and these films served as a stimulus  to their further acquiring reading and writing skills, especially due to the once increasing prevalence of non-Anglo European and Oriental films with English sub-titles.

The topic of the educational value of films to Guyanese was presented in my first essay on the topic, ‘The Role of Hollywood Films in the Education of Guyanese’, published in the July 16, 2000 issue of ‘Pepperpot’. But there was much more to the topic that space did not permit, and this involves the importance of film to literature. However, even before the 1980s collapse of a cinema industry of quality in Guyana ,the example of film’s  oral/audio-visual power was perceived as a monopoly of the Guyanese citizen’s attention by the rise of post-independence nationalism which ushered in a simplistic pride in many things that were  of ‘non-Western’, or ‘non-white’ literate origin.

Increasingly, the vacuum left by dwindling Guyanese exposure to collective cinematic culture  was filled by a new insular emphasis on oral/audio-visual transmitted ideologies, potentially divisive, and aimed at collective audiences who were now deprived of the slower and more thoroughly sound  and mentally liberating cultural and educational lessons of collective cinema-going. It is quite interesting to note that one of the last colonial laws Dr Jagan’s government removed in the early 1960s was the British Guiana legislation that prevented cinemas from publicly functioning on Sundays.  Dr Jagan knew that for working class Guyanese, Sunday was the one complete leisure day at their disposal. Now why would he even care to provide them the opportunity to collectively see what was mostly American/Hollywood and European films playing at local cinemas if such films were divisive propaganda mouth-pieces for anti-socialist and racist American sentiments, or Westernised Euro-centric prejudices trying to brainwash Guyanese or ‘Third World’ people?

The truth of the matter is that Guyanese politicians and intellectuals of all parties, colours and creeds who supported an anti-colonial pro-Independent Guyana (even those who were less radical) knew that American and European models of freedom-of-expression produced a colossal amount of superb literature and films which were independent, and critical of old or new imperial, colonial, racial, or class-prejudice ideas, and these books and films were educationally, intellectually, and morally beneficial to Guyanese as a whole, regardless of whether the North American and European societies from which they came made use of such artistic positions.

Indeed, most of these literary and cinematic works consistently exposed and criticized the bigotries and hypocrisies of the very nations and societies from which they originated. By traditionally participating in a literature and cinematic culture of such qualities, the definition and expression of Guyanese identity is not limited to the production of cultural items by Guyanese, but extends to the acceptance and traditional use of cultural forms and cultural structures which support smooth and pleasurable local human interactions.

Most of Guyanese culture is originally linked to sources outside Guyana’s geography. For example, if we look into the archives of Guyana’s Press, we will see from time to time photos and listed names of prominent local society leaders: State Ministers, Politicians, Judges, Lawyers, Doctors, Commissioners of police, Educators, Priests, etc, all attending the premier of profound Hollywood and European classic and contemporary films that no person of sound mind could dismiss as irrelevant to Guyanese society. Films like ‘To Kill A Mocking Bird’, ‘Anatomy Of A Murder’, ‘Twelve Angry Men’, ‘Judgment At Nuremburg’, ‘My Fair Lady’, ‘Advise And Consent’, ‘The Visit’, ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’, ‘The Unforgiven’, ‘The Big Country’, ‘Spartacus’, ‘Ben-Hur’, ‘Room At The Top’, ‘Hud’, etc. Such Guyanese society leaders had front-row seats in Balcony, while below in House were middle-class patrons, and at the front of the cinema, the ‘Pit’ or Stalls, were mostly filled with proletarian or working class patrons.

The occasion is a progressive intelligent one, not simply one of fickle entertainment. Together, with differing powers of comprehension no doubt, but in one architectural and influential collective environment, they absorbed these enormously valuable masterpieces of cinematic culture.

Such an egalitarian social process of receiving intellectual and moral stimulation cannot be re-evaluated today as simply a disposable and irrelevant old ‘foreign’  method of ‘entertainment’ without causing serious insidious damage to the traditionally cohesive and calm upkeep of contemporary Guyanese society.

Similarly, when we turn our attention to the many immediate social problems  affecting Guyanese society today, such as increasing violence in schools, families, and communities, violent competition and rivalry, lack of interest in constructive creative endeavours, such as an open-minded approach to classic older films, the pursuit of modern creative writing and film making OF QUALITY, we find that even a single novel and film like ‘To Sir With Love’ has the power to tackle both educational and diplomatic problems relevant to Guyanese within and outside Guyana, and to foreigners.
E.R. Braithwaite’s novel is a radical and exciting perennial handbook for the re-education of delinquent and disinterested students, as well as a symbol of Guyanese modern culture with a highly tolerant civilized social attitude, without displaying reactionary nationalistic insularity. It is also the example of a film being equal to, and perhaps even surpassing the influential powers of the novel.  It proves where the transition of Guyanese literature
to creative film-making can be powerfully helpful in addressing visible social problems in today’s Guyana in an exciting popular manner.

There should be no hesitation in considering the possibility of making such a film compulsory viewing for Guyanese High School and College students, along with other  vitally relevant films, such as ‘Blackboard Jungle’, ‘West Side Story’, ‘Rebel Without A Cause’, ‘East Of Eden’, ‘Hud’, ‘A Raisin In The Sun’, ‘Dangerous Minds’, and others which share similar topics.

Whether the books most of these films are based on are better is beside the point, since the films themselves discuss and visualize a variety of problems concerning education and social reform.   

Caption:
Film poster for the origin Guyanese novel