Atluri, Tara (2009) Putting the ‘Cool’in Coolie: Disidentification, desire and dissent in the work of filmmaker Michelle Mohabeer. Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, 3. pp. 1-25. ISSN 1995-1108

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Abstract

“It’s referencing back all of those Indian women that have come worked
on the plantations and in the cane fields. It’s empowering them to a
degree and yet the dance is South Asian…it evokes Bengali folk dance. It
has an Indianness coded in it….And on the side of that shot is the Guyana
flag which I’ve inverted as well which is a big thing because in not
showing the flag as is, I’m gesturing to the question of sexuality. So there
are many layers there…” (Mohabeer 2008)
Toronto-based filmmaker Michelle Mohabeer’s films offer a rare glimpse into the
multiple layers of irony and resistance that define dissident Caribbean sexualities.
Mohabeer offers what she terms an “oppositional aesthetics” (Ibid) to capture the
disparate layers of politics, memory, and desire which shape dissident sexualities in
postcolonial Guyana and the Caribbean diaspora. In this paper, I am interested in how
the complex entanglements through which Caribbean sexualities are processed are
expressed through avant garde art forms.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Date Deposited:	15 Mar 2018 14:58
Last Modified:	20 Dec 2021 18:46
URI:	https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/2199

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