Critical Response to the Film, Heading South - "Everything is Different Here"

Perhaps the one bit of dialogue that kept coming back to me throughout the movie and afterward was Eve's quip to Brenda that, "Here, we all become different", and the sentiment that things "are just different here". I think the most telling aspect of the movie was how the relationships between Legba, Brenda, and Ellen played out in the long run - and this whole concept of how things were "different in Haiti". Brenda, Eve, and Ellen of course view "different" as the liberties they were allowed to take: the sexual freedom allowed, their feminine sexual freedom in regards to their actions, their freedom to choose, in essence to rule over their personal pursuits of pleasure. Brenda experienced sexual fulfillment and intimacy for the first time with Legba; Ellen in many ways seems to be "paying back" all those frat boys that mistreat the young female students back home with her hardened possessiveness - in contemporary terms, she's the most distanced, hardened "player" out of all the women; Eve simply wants the freedom of having sex with no attachments, embarrassment, or expectations. For them; Haiti is freedom - they believe they are free to do what they want to, ago where they want and seek pleasure where they want, and the beach boys are "free" because they seem to do what they want and go as they please.

The movie, however, positions these white women - I believe - in a position of ignorance, because ultimately they are outside the real world of Haiti - they see only what they want to see of Legba and his mates. Even the worldly-wise, savvy, hardened Ellen mistakenly states that "Legba makes the decisions" when she and Brenda come into conflict over the latter's "selfish" pursuit of Legba. They are outside reality, looking in, and they only have a small snapshot of what they want to see ** : Legba on the beach, Legba dressed in fancy clothes and adorned with gifts, Legba as the erotic progenitor of their sexual freedom, Legba dancing up the night. This is perhaps the symbolism of Ellen taking the picture of Legba as he lies nude on her hotel bed; he's not a young man prostituting himself to give money to his mother; not a young man who hates to see the injustice of corrupt cops walking his streets, not a young man whose lover was "taken" by a local warlord/general - Ellen wants to freeze him as just a cheerful, willing object of her desire, and nothing more complicated.

Ellen tosses around easily enough that she "respects" Legba, but she respects him just as little as anyone else. Even her feelings are possessive in nature: when he's shot at and they all fear for him, Ellen offers to "buy" him home with a passport, money, anything he wants: not a gesture of respect to the Legba she states "makes the decisions". In this case, he's a beloved domesticate that she wants to save from harm, not man who can make his own decisions.

** Of course - maybe with the exception of Brenda - seeing only what they want to is a willful denial, expressed by Ellen's dislike of and refusal to travel into the city. For her, Haiti must be the beach, the half-naked and promiscuous Haitian men/boys, and not the world they live in: the world of the corrupt cop kicking over a kid's soda stand. Interestingly enough, if we were to invest time deciding which character is more willing to encounter The Other, (term often used to reference natives who are subjected, colonized, or controlled), it would be Brenda, as she does allow herself to wander deep into the city in search of Legba, and after Legba is found murdered with his former love and Ellen's dream of what the island is destroyed - she must flee, while Brenda decides she must see ALL the islands of the Caribbean, because unlike Ellen - who has a job and profession and reputation to return to after she's done "playing for the summer" - Brenda has nothing to return to, and perhaps is less afraid of the Caribbean/Haitian Other?

Albert - the restaurant/cafe manager - expresses his view of these middle-aged white women as the NEW invaders; their lust, gifts, pampering, and affections the weapons they use to enslave the young. They are the new colonizers, the new white people, the new slave masters - and implicit in this is that young Haitian men have exchanged one form of slavery for another.

Legba and Albert I believe are symbolic of older and young generations of Haitian men. Albert is, perhaps, symbolic of the older generation that won it's independence through revolution, and he sees in Legba that revolution all for naught - young Haitian men have simply exchanged one sort of slavery for another (that's a bit repetitive of the above statement - sorry.) Even so, I believe Albert - because of his generational difference - is still outside of Legba's reality, separated by his years and life experience - shown by his inability to save the fifteen year old girl at the begginning of the movie.

Perhaps he's disgusted by Legba as symbolic of young Haitian men and their willful agreement to a new , seductive slavery; but when he's alone - ironically in a bulletproof car, shielded away from the world, or surrounded by his friends - away from the eyes of the beach women and Albert - there is a more complex Legba whose choices are limited. Everything has been and is taken from him; he's been made a possession, and even Albert - if he indeed feels this way - is mistaken that Legba has allowed himself to be enslaved. This is perhaps symbolic of the entire Caribbean - that there is no simple answer, simply because there are too many intersecting lines of confluence to take into account.