“What? Nobody got shot?”: Representations of Caribana violence
Caribana in the Toronto Print Media
Of course, the story of the Police is only one angle of Caribana’s representation. This was the other point of interest in our research, as every article we examined contained some negative reference to the festival. The list of possible negative statements mentioned in each article included one or more of the following:
- Actual significant violence (in the rare instances when it occurs)
- Insignificant arrests by police
- Police efforts to keep the parade under control
- Past incidents of violence
- The financial troubles of the organizing committee
- Conflicts in the black community over the direction of the festival
Even the most positive Caribana article we found ended on the note: “When the music stopped just short of the scheduled 8 p.m. wrap-up time, the soaked, but happy masses made a dash for the ferry docks under the watchful eyes of dozens of police on foot and on horseback.” (Welsh A6) The implication again is that, at Caribana, violence is only an arms-breadth away and can strike at any moment, and the “watchful eyes” of many police officers are the only things that keep the situation under control.
However it was not so difficult for us to find overwhelmingly positive coverage of the Gay Pride Parade. One only had to look as far as their most recent march downtown on June 26th 2006. The Toronto Star article by Debra Black covering the event features not a single negative comment. The police were quoted, but only in reference to their enjoyment of the parade; “one Toronto police officer joked with a reporter that he was sorry he hadn’t worn his chaps.” At the gay pride parade Police officers can joke and laugh, but at Caribana they are only happy at the end, if nothing has happened. Compare this to coverage for Caribana a little more than a month later in the same newspaper, there we find a quote that is isolated in its own paragraph just for emphasis, “I just hope there’s no violence.” (Maughan A2)
Violence that is not related in any way to Caribana, other than the fact that it occurs during the same weekend, is even put together in newspaper coverage of the event. For example in 1992, the year of the domestic dispute that resulted in a shooting, in an article entitled “Caribana parade too big, police say”, the writer, after a run down of police suggestions for the next Caribana parade, continues with “Two other shooting incidents not directly related to Caribana marred the long weekend’s festivities.” (Small A2) The writer then proceeds to recount shootings from night clubs over the weekend, long after Caribana would have ended. Of course, the writer took pains to stress that the shootings occurred at “an after-hours reggae club” to give some semblance of a connection.
August 2nd, 2009 at 8:29 am
Pride has never has a homocide where millions of people gather each – just like Caribana – but unlike Pride looking at pure stats, statistically Caribana party-goers are more prone to be violent.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
@ Seth. You missed the point. (or proved the point) Completely. We are talking about representations of violence.
The gay pride parade is used as a counter point to highlight how violence is portrayed in the media. It is pointless to compare the two as festivals because they are different kinds of events.
The point is not which festival attracts a more violent crowd, the point is how ‘the story’ of Caribana can not be told without some mention of violence, whether or not any violence even took place.
The question is why does the media work to portray Caribana as inherently violent even when nothing happens?