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Mustapha Matura’s Playboy of the West Indies: The Politics of the Carnival Imitation

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2008, 21(2), pp.51-76
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Choi, Kyunghee 1

1서울과학기술대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Mustapha Matura who was born in Trinidad of the West Indies contributed to the writing that reflects the racial and cultural conflict and identity crises of the intellectuals under the British colonial rule. One of his plays, Playboy of the West Indies is an adaptation of John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. Everything is reinterpreted and modified to reflect a West Indian reality. For this purpose, Matura uses the concept of Carnivalesque imitation as the framework of adaptation and transformation. For Matura, the Carnival masquerade, essentially masking and imitation, is imitative and original at the same time since it adopts forms and images from various cultures. Synge's play was recreated according to the New World code by significant changes such as Discovery Day, the calypso of the Trinidad Carnival, overt West Indian sexuality, and the rum shop and Ken's job as a cane man. As a result, Synge's play takes on new life in the historical and cultural context provided by Matura's Discovery Day celebrations in a fishing village in Mayaro. Like their Irish counterparts, Matura's Trinidadians welcome the father-killer because he satisfies their subconscious yearning for rebellion against the oppressive patriarchal authority, whether that of a church, family or colonial government. Matura's play reveals the resistant power of adaptation, and places Synge's The Playboy of the Western World as the proto-postcolonial narrative. He blurs the cultural, national, and sexual boundaries and transcends the Manichean dualism by borrowing a Bakhtinian Carnival frame. By doing so, Matura relates the play with Homi Bhabha's theory of mimicry in that the Carnivalesque imitation produces "crossover", or "hybridities" that are the core of the life for the postcolonial subject.

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