Dancehall furore

Once more, the Mirror proves that its progressive credentials are nothing but trendy posturing. In her Aug. 12 review of Beenie Man's latest offering [Back to Basics, Discs], Erin MacLeod waxes lyrical about the Jamaican's "eloquent… ghetto suffering," but fails to make any mention of the suffering incited by his lyrics - and inflicted on some of those who hear them - on Jamaica's queer population.

In what might be one of the most overtly homophobic societies on the planet, queer people face not only legal censure, but also frequent violent harassment and murder, to such an extent that asylum applications by gay Jamaican men in the U.S., Canada and Britain have become commonplace. Judging by his lyrics, Beenie Man must be ecstatic.

I am not arguing that a critic put her object's politics before its artistic appeal, rather that the job carries responsibility as well as authority. By recommending to readers that they buy Beenie Man's output, MacLeod encourages the bankrolling of bigotry, persecution and killing, and the smallest mention of this in her review might just show a little sensitivity to the plight of queer Jamaicans, as well as to those elsewhere who haven't forgotten them in our zeal to fetishize the displaced barbarity of a culture less cozy and two-faced than our own. Erin MacLeod, Queer Shame on you!

» Adrian T.A. Varney

[Erin MacLeod replies: Although I am relieved to see the renewed attention being given to the appalling homophobia that I am aware exists in Jamaican music and society, this is an extremely complex issue that cannot be properly addressed in a short article - much less in a 100-word album review. When Shabba Ranks and Buju Banton faced a boycott of their music and concert cancellations 10 years ago due to their virulent homophobia, I hoped that this would be a positive development. But boycotts and bans only helped to drive dancehall off the international radar. Attacks - both verbal and physical - on queer Jamaicans continued unabated. In order to first understand and then address this issue, we need to see dancehall as a powerful cultural form that speaks about the horrible violence, poverty, oppression and homophobic attitudes that exist in Jamaica. Rather than either fetishizing or outlawing the displaced barbarity of Jamaican performers I would hope that my role as a critic of this music should be to encourage people to listen and thereby attempt to understand the people and the society through which it is created. Dancehall is exceptional in that it gives an international voice to some of the world's poorest, most oppressed peoples. It is important that we continue to listen - even if, occasionally, we are distressed by what we hear.]

Sweatshops and smokes

So American Apparel is now our ethical alternative for buying casual clothes [Letters, "Mirror going Maxim," Aug. 5]. Instead of a guilt-ridden day of shopping at any given store for clothing made half way around the world using suspicious labour standards, we have American Apparel, where all the work is done in the good ol' USA under fair labour standards.

It seems funny then that this "ethical" company uses tobacco to promote its product. Yes, tobacco, the substance everybody not living under a rock for the last 40 years knows causes cancer and is extremely addictive. Tobacco, a product that has been banned from advertising on Canadian airwaves for over 30 years.

So what do American Apparel and the Mirror team up to do? They print a full-page back-cover ad in the July 29 issue promoting tobacco use among youth. So on one hand, American Apparel claims to liberate workers from sweatshop conditions, but then they pay a model to consume an extremely addictive substance and in effect are doing the promotional work for the big tobacco companies trying to hook young people on their weed for life because they are no longer legally allowed to do so themselves!

» Geoff Donaldson

Cosmo in Quebec

So the Mirror got tired of spouting out platitudes about Toronto and decided to take it out on Quebec City [Kristian Perspective, "Quebec City blues," Aug 19]. For someone who criticizes the flea-brained inanities of Jeff Fillion, Gravenor does a good job of pulling off something comparable.

I live in Quebec City and will be the first to agree it is a provincial place on the whole. What stuns me is that Gravenor seems to think Montreal is exempt from provinciality because it has more ethnic minorities. The presence of ethnic minorities does not confer open-mindedness (eg. Jerusalem, Marseilles, Johannesburg). Cosmopolitanism is a state of mind fostered through travel, reading and a grasp of subtlety. A subtle mind understands that a predominantly white city is not necessarily a racist city.

I grew up as part of a small English-speaking minority of 15,000 people in Quebec City. Having lived in both Montreal and Quebec for considerable amounts of time, I have felt less cultural tension on the whole in Quebec. Montreal is linguistically divided into two enclaves that mostly stick to their own; the West Island and its frustrated Alliance-Quebec anglos on one side, and East-End francos who perceive the other side as a major cultural threat. I suppose there's a minimal amount of mingling along the dividing line of boulevard St-Laurent. I tried living in that area for a while but quickly got sick of people who equated urbanity and cosmopolitanism with the latest post-trucker-cap trend showcased in Details, Wallpaper and Jive.

» Patrick Donovan, Quebec City

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