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#2409: Sweet Micky : A comment
From:Ninaclara@aol.com
Thank you to Charles Arthur for posting that Sweet Micky article. I find
Micky a fascinating phenomenon in Haiti (much to the annoyance of my Lavalas
friends, who hate him for very understandable reasons). My fascination stems
from Micky's contradictions--on the one hand his Guede vulgarity which makes
him hugely popular with 'peup-la' and his puschist/fascist political leanings
on the other. Vulgarity, betiz, the Guede persona etc. are connected in my
mind to the oppositional, everyday politics of 'peup-la' confronted with the
conservative moral politics of the bourgeoise and the Catholic church. And
yet Micky clearly represents this dominant class. When I see Micky perform in
Kanaval or at a bal I am always struck by how similar his performance persona
is to a Guede and sometimes joke with my friends that Micky has a permanent
Guede fixed in his head. The similarities are striking--especially given the
radically different contexts in which Micky and the Guedes 'perform'--the
ambiguity around sexuality--Micky's cross dressing and constant flow of
homophobic-homoerotic jokes, the use of 'betiz' to throw into question
accepted social values, the ridiculous posturing which relativizes political
power, the intense give and take between the performer and the audience, to
such an extent that it is not always clear which is which and so on. It is
strange to me that Micky has such a fine tuned understanding of popular
politics and a huge following while clearly and overtly defending the
interests of the bourgeoisie.
I have never taken Micky's presidential aspirations seriously; I tend to view
the whole thing as a parody of Haitian political life. Heaven forbid Micky
ever takes his popularity too seriously and actually enters the formal
political arena; we would lose a great musician and social satirist and gain
an ugly politician.