A critical discussion on the documentary film tropical Ceylon:

Topically trivialised tropics

By Dilshan BOANGE

Since the art of the ‘moving image’ or cinema, arrived into the world of communication, the world itself underwent a revolution in terms of the dimensions that define ideas and perceptions. Just as the writer had power to interpret to the reader a world in words, the filmmaker too held an incomparable power of interpreting to the viewer the world in visuals that moved and had a voice.

The word cinema today is mostly synonymous to us with the idea of entertainment more than education. The concept of ‘infotainment’ has become very prominent that education itself has undergone a transformation in the context of audio-visual means of communication. In this light I wish to call the reader’s focus in this article to a matter which may be attention worthy to us in a postcolonial perspective of reinterpreting what was interpreted of us –Sri Lanka, or ‘Ceylon’ (as it was known then) by Fitz Patrick Pictures of the USA back in 1932 through the short documentary film Tropical Ceylon.

Youtube access

I came across this work after being told about it by my friend and former colleague from Bonsoir days Nandana Sitinamaluwe who had watched it on Youtube. This video can be very freely watched in this present day of modern ICT if you were to log on to Youtube and merely search for it by title in the search bar.

The black and white short documentary was obviously produced as a newsreel picture to be shown before a feature film screening in movie theatres.

The likes of Tropical Ceylon would have been undoubtedly entertaining snapshots that were ‘informative’ (as perceived by the European audiences) to a people who were ‘discovering’ the other side of the globe through visuals in motion that were explained through streams of words spoken as ‘voice narrations’.

This documentary ‘produced and narrated’ by James A. Fitz Patrick begins with a cartographical visual of our country speaking of the geographical factor related to India, referring to Sri Lanka as a British Crown colony. At the very outset the narrator Fitz Patrick clearly indicates that the ‘coconut palm’ which grows in abundance in the tropical island was what had caught the attention of the film project and builds a special focus which projects an idyllic and exotic perception of Sri Lanka. The narrator goes on to develop the idea of the coconut tree as being integral to understand the lifestyle of the ‘natives’.

And by the way the story progresses one who is completely ignorant about Sri Lanka is bound to think that all sense of civilisation our country has ever known is bound to the trunk, fronds and fruit of the coconut tree.

Initial impressions of natives

The first sight of a human is met in the image of a man in a loin cloth picking out halves of coconuts laid in the sun to dry. The initial stage of the copra making process. And this bare bodied man whose buttocks are borne to the camera rather naturally (and not cheekily!) is the first impression created in the eyes of a US audience of a Sri Lankan inhabitant. Going to a very benevolently venture to the topic of folk life and take on an anthropological viewpoint the narrator says “...it is generally admitted that the women of Ceylon are more exalted a freer than the women of India, from whom they are said to have descended.”

The merits of lineal classifications being superficially highlighted in the event of discussing the fairer sex may come as rather pointless since the narrator maybe inferring that descent alone stands to determine the degree of liberalness of a people from another who may be connected through ancestral kinships. Then one may easily in that same vein marvel at how freer American women are than the women of Britain from whom they are most likely to be descended.

Children unburdened by attire

Speaking in a blanket statement of how the Sinhala people are adorned with ornaments from ‘the cradle to the grave’ the film shows us a naked toddler with several talismans or ‘sura’ dangling round the waist.

Following the visual of this sobbing infant crawling on the ground is a scene that leaves any self- respecting Sri Lanka in a conundrum of whether to laugh or cry. The former being over the moronic misleading of the US viewer on facts about Sri Lankan folk life, and the latter for the very obvious reason evident to any who watch it.

In this scene of which the time code is about 4:20 a group of gleefully exuberant small boys clad in the shabbiest loin cloth covering merely their genitals, come running towards the camera assembling obediently to honour the occasion of being videoed.

The voice over or narration describes the scene thus “The small boys of Ceylon usually run about as naked as the day they were born. But this particular group is all dressed up for visitors” one cannot help but notice the subtle yet audible hint of avuncular amusement in that voice.

I am more than certain this was nothing short of a well planned scene where the ‘outfits’ or ‘costumes’ were strategically thought of. A very aboriginal aura comes out of the sight of these people the image surely must say to the intrigued Americans back in the early 30s digesting the portrayals of Sri Lankans by Fritz Patrick as though it was the sole truth on the subject.

Surely Fritz Patrick could not have allowed the modest and cultured being in the US of A to be allowed the sight of little buck naked brown brats assaulting their visual senses, which was the reason for the wardrobe department to go into action one may conjecture.

The little pack of impish well dressed children then go rally round a coconut tree and display a communal show of solidarity in trying to get one of theirs to scale up the trunk of a coconut tree. Needless to say it is once more a gleeful display of brown rear cheeks acting very photogenic to the camera, which then moves to a visual of these children playing ‘leap frog’ which mind you is a very unlikely folk game in Sri Lanka and reeks of a western ‘scene arrangement’ for the viewers back home.

This scene which begins to run from the time code of 4: 38 moves to the following words being narrated over it –“...as we see these little fellows now they appear to be as active and as intelligent as boys of their own age in any country. But when they grow up to manhood they will probably subside to languid sensuous beings like their progenitors. Such is the strange fate that befalls the children of the tropics.”

Lands of languidness and indistinguishable sexes

The tropics are seen in the eyes of the American filmmaker as lands of languidness that is not praiseworthy and spoken of as a ‘strange fate’. Clearly this gentleman Fritz Patrick had not heard of the heroics of Lankan warriors who fought with three successive European invaders to defend our land.

And by labelling us as ‘languid’ the inference would be that a lack of industriousness renders us perhaps vulnerable and susceptible to manipulations and coercions? And perhaps to those westerners who believe in the ‘might right’ a nation of languid perennial sunbathers would seem apt for conquest and subjugation.

The theme of anthropology takes on a new turn at around 4:46 as ‘a bust shot’ size visual of a man with a moustache comes on screen. This somewhat traditionally dressed man sporting a nami panawa and hair tied in a small bun turns round to the camera in a manner of modelling himself. The voice over narration that runs with the visual is as follows –“The typical Sinhalese man is characteristically effeminate.

He takes particular pride in his tortoise shell comb and long hair.” As the scene cuts to a visual of a man in (yet again) loin cloth carrying a baby turns round to reveal being a man also sporting a moustache, the voice over runs with the following words –“This long hair also makes it difficult to distinguish the average Sinhalese man from the opposite sex.” If the filmmaker had selected some ‘specimens’ who were clean shaven and long haired, perhaps this theorem based on his subjective perceptions may not have seemed as nonsensical as it does on the physical appearance of the men and women of Sri Lanka.

It is quite obviously only the long hair, which was a symbol of masculinity in our cultures, which intrigued Fritz Patrick and had appeared to him as a common hair style between both sexes.

Categorising long hair as inherently feminine in character Fritz Patrick perhaps surely would never have foreseen how American males of today liberally sport long hair with no association with effeminateness intended in the look they project. The powers of observations of the filmmaker Fritz Patrick were obviously rather limited to superficiality and no attention to detail so it would seem.

A land of unending happiness and childlikeness

A descriptive given the people of the island of Ceylon at one point is –“Happy and childlike people”. Though undoubtedly the perspective of the American becomes avuncular and somewhat patronising by a vantage of maturity being assumed when calling us ‘childlike’, one cannot help but wonder if today we may interpret or reinterpret these sentiments as being indicative of a pristine and unpolluted quality in our hearts and character, as children are said to be in the view of the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.

But such a compliment is unlikely to have been the intended inference behind the words of Fritz Patrick but more likely to trivialise our levels of intellect and make us seem perhaps simpletons.

Appreciating the idyllic in what had been observable to the westerner in our lives he narrates the following “...basking in the shade of the palms there every necessity gratified by nature without struggle we wonder what there could be in the present day dilemma of the white man’s hemisphere that could possibly add anything to their happiness and contentment.”

Noting how once again the coconut tree becomes indispensable in establishing the image of Sri Lanka and her people, one sees how a question is raised on the matter of how ‘consumerist’ Americanism can be planted into a community as that seen by Fritz Patrick.

Perhaps it’s not too farfetched to imagine that the filmmaker was subtly serving the purpose of some market research linked to the larger American strategy of global market controls. And now 80 years from the time Fritz Patrick made his documentary that idyllic nation of ‘happy childlike people’ have been well transformed to be plugged into the dilemmatic market driven consumerist lifestyles of the west that leaves us very little time to frolic under the shade of coconut palms.

The misidentified bulls and cows

One of the most obvious points of misrepresentation in Fritz Patrick’s film is about the animals used for drawing bullock carts. Naming the common cows and oxen used in everyday carting as ‘water buffalo’ the misled filmmaker very confidently describes the pivotal role they play in transportation and even shows a bull being bathed in a stream. And in this context one very curious visual element that becomes detectable in the visual that shows bullock carts passing the camera is that two preteens come into focus clad in white shirt and sarong.

Quite contradictory to what was presented by the filmmaker earlier about Sri Lankan children who were said by him to run around in their birthday suit. One could suggest that the filmmaker has somewhat by his own doing debunked his factually questionable claims.

A monopolised voice of interpretation

The final visual as the narrator prepares to bid adieu to the marvellous coconut grove he encountered in the Indian Ocean otherwise called Ceylon, is of the Hamilton canal. Here at this point of ending the narrator marvels at the comforting thought that in a world moving in a direction towards chaotic rushing around there is still a tropical land hidden and unaffected preserving its idyllic being.

No doubt this perspective on Sri Lanka would have been in line with tourism based outlooks, which would cater to the needs of the industriously exhausted American who seeks respite from his own world.

The locations where this documentary had been filmed in can be seen as clearly without much diversity and within very small proximities, yet purports to depict a well rounded picture about ‘Ceylon’ and her people, and of course lest we forget, the all important coconut tree. With zero reference to the historical heritage sites of the country and our cultural richness Tropical Ceylon renders a disservice to our country’s image the way it was being at the time projected in the western world.

Today in a postcolonial context of rereading, reappraising, and reinterpreting what was misinterpreted of us to begin with, we can voice what should be put right of what was erroneously profiled of us through western eyes to the western minds to define us and our place within the colonial milieu.

In conclusion it must be said that through the doings of people such as Fritz Patrick who had the privilege of being the voices that spoke of us, and not ‘with us’, to the power centres of the world at the time, a gross misdeed had been committed on us by depriving us the right to even define ourselves to the western world.