{"id":1093,"date":"2021-05-10T09:48:59","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T13:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2021-08-14T14:38:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-14T18:38:52","slug":"politicized-space-in-mangrove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/london\/politicized-space-in-mangrove\/","title":{"rendered":"Politicized Space in Mangrove"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his five-film anthology series <\/span>Small Axe<\/span><\/i>, Steve McQueen explores the varied dimensions of Black British life, particularly within Caribbean immigrant communities in the city from the late 1960s through the 1980s. In <\/span>Mangrove<\/span><\/i>, the first film, McQueen depicts the story behind the Mangrove Nine, a group of Caribbean immigrants living in Notting Hill who were harassed by police and arrested after staging a protest. McQueen centers the film on the Mangrove restaurant as a physical and figurative representation of how the characters\u2019 shared Caribbean heritage shapes their experiences in London. Over the course of the film, McQueen traces the Mangrove\u2019s evolution into the political center of the story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span> McQueen opens the film with an overhead shot of Notting Hill, following Frank across the neighborhood. As Frank walks along the streets, the sound transitions from the ambient din of the city into Bob Marley & The Wailers\u2019 \u201cTry Me.\u201d As the viewer sees the setting in which the film will take place, McQueen juxtaposes the sights and sounds of London\u2014playing children, construction projects, and more\u2014with the Caribbean influences that shape Notting Hill. Adding to this effect, layered over the music, Darcus Howe (another member of the Mangrove Nine whom the viewer will meet later) reads the words of C.L.R. James: \u201cThese are new men. New types of human beings. It is in them that are to be found all the traditional virtues of the English nation, not in decay as they are in official society, but in full flower. Because these men have perspective. Note particularly that they glory in the struggle. They are not demoralized or defeated or despairing persons. They are leaders, but are rooted deep among those they lead.\u201d The scene ends with Frank arriving at the central site of the film: the Mangrove restaurant (0:01:00-0:02:48). With this opening scene, McQueen introduces the viewer to the key issue of the story: the Mangrove as a political community space. While Frank is hesitant to recognize it as such at first, this first scene shows that politics inherently inflects Notting Hill because it is a Black immigrant community. C.L.R. James\u2019s quotation emphasizes this point. James was a Trinidadian historian who was pivotal in calling attention to the revolutionary struggles in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean. These lines foreshadow the action of the film. By positioning the camera on Frank as Darcus reads the words, McQueen implicitly presents Frank as one of these \u201cleaders,\u201d and depicts the community in which he is \u201crooted.\u201d McQueen also sets up an argument that the \u201ctraditional values of the English nation\u201d lie with these \u201cnew men,\u201d Caribbean immigrants like Frank, rather than in \u201cofficial society.\u201d In the police brutality and trial to come, the viewer will have the opportunity to judge for themselves which side embodies these values. Thus, McQueen opens the film by positioning the Mangrove as a community space, and a latent political space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to C.L.R. James, McQueen highlights other Caribbean activists alongside important moments at the Mangrove. After the police first violently raid the restaurant, the scene cuts from Frank resisting the officers to a poster of Paul Bogle on the restaurant\u2019s wall (0:18:50-0:19:03). Bogle was a leader of the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, in which Black Jamaicans protested economic inequality in the post-emancipation society. Thus, although Frank has not explicitly linked himself or the Mangrove to a larger political movement to challenge police power, McQueen\u2019s directorial choices highlight that the resistance Frank is waging is still connected to a lineage of Black Caribbean resistance. The poster is also shown in the background of the scene in which Althea offers Frank the Black Panthers\u2019 support (0:19:30-0:19-56). Frank at first fears making more trouble by having the Mangrove serve as a space for political activism, telling Althea that the Mangrove is \u201ca restaurant not a battleground.\u201d But he agrees to let the Panthers meet at the Mangrove if Althea plays in the Mangrove steel band at the carnival (0:20:32-0:21:50). Thus, the Mangrove begins to shift from being a community space into a political space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McQueen further conveys the interconnectedness between the Mangrove as shared community space and as activist space through his filming of the police second raid of the restaurant. This time, the camera takes on Frank\u2019s perspective and the viewer sees through his eyes. The camera sits at floor level, where Frank lies after being tackled, and the viewer sees a colander fall to the ground after an officer knocked it down. The scene stays silent for thirty seconds until the colander stops rocking (0:28:20-0:29:30). Through McQueen\u2019s directorial device, the viewer sees that the Mangrove cannot just exist as a restaurant and gathering space; the police see it as a political space, a political threat, and thus the people of Notting Hill must protect it through activism. By putting the viewer in Frank\u2019s place, McQueen compels them to consider Frank\u2019s point of view, literally and figuratively. This allows the viewer to understand his eventual agreement to participate in protest.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second poster McQueen uses to highlight the latent political potential of the Mangrove comes again juxtaposed between police brutality and Frank\u2019s increasing openness to political action. After a scene in which Frank intervenes in a stop and frisk, McQueen\u2019s camera lingers on a poster of Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the Mangrove, while Darcus tries to convince Frank to hold a march (0:40:55-0:41:07). Dessalines was one of the most important generals in the Haitian Revolution and the author of the Haitian Declaration of Independence as well as its 1805 Constitution. Darcus also alludes to the unfolding Trinidadian revolution when persuading Frank. Thus, McQueen highlights through visualization and dialogue the way in which Caribbean revolutions influence the characters. Demonstrating this further, Darcus repeats the C.L.R. James line that opened the film, this time explicitly identifying Frank as the leader rooted deep among those he leads. Darcus says he sees Frank as a man \u201cof great patience and humility who unbeknownst to him has become\u201d this leader (0:42:44-0:43:23). But while Darcus\u2014and through McQueen\u2019s direction, the viewer\u2014sees a direct tie between the revolutionary politics of the Caribbean and the need for action here in London, Frank is more hesitant, telling Darcus, \u201cWe\u2019re not in Trinidad now, boy. This is Notting Hill.\u201d Darcus, however, sees that as all the more reason to protest. He argues that Frank must assert the Mangrove, and by extension Black Caribbean immigrants, as having a right to exist in Notting Hill. \u201cThis place, the Mangrove, it is Notting Hill,\u201d Darcus implores Frank. The Mangrove\u2019s importance as a community space necessitates political action in Darcus\u2019s view, as he tells Frank that \u201cthis is community, the Black community is your community. The Black community who rely on the Mangrove just as much as you rely on them. Take it to the street\u201d (0:43:37-0:44:03). Darcus insists that Frank has a duty to fight back against police brutality because the Mangrove is so central to the Caribbean community in Notting Hill. Thus, the Mangrove\u2019s status as a community space for Black immigrants makes it a locus for political activism as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Darcus\u2019s closing statement at the Mangrove Nine\u2019s trial further shows the Mangrove\u2019s evolution into a political space. He starts by recounting how the Mangrove came to be, stating that \u201cin defending themselves against attack\u201d by the police, \u201ca community [was] born\u201d in Notting Hill. \u201cAnd wherever a community is born, it creates institutions that it needs.\u201d The Mangrove became such an institution not by design, but by circumstance. Frank did not intend for the Mangrove to be the political community space that it became, but Darcus argues that this eventuality was inevitable: \u201cBut that sense of community, born out of struggle in Notting Hill, was so profound that there was no other way for it to be but a community restaurant. We created the Mangrove. We shaped it. We formed it to satisfy our needs! The Mangrove is ours. It is ours, it\u2019s not Frank\u2019s! He lost it to the community, he knows that.\u201d (1:54:11-1:54:33). Here, Darcus extends his logic from his earlier conversation with Frank, articulating how a \u201ccommunity restaurant\u201d is inherently political when \u201cborn out of struggle.\u201d More than just serving Notting Hill\u2019s Caribbean immigrants the food they recall from their homelands, the Mangrove served as an institution for community organizing and coalition building. As Darcus says, activists \u201cformed\u201d the Mangrove \u201cto satisfy [their needs],\u201d including being a space for political activism. Thus the Mangrove was bigger than just Frank\u2019s restaurant\u2014it was the community\u2019s restaurant. In the film, then, it represents the political capacity of London\u2019s Caribbean community, acting as a symbol for the struggles and achievements they experienced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Immigration shapes every aspect of <\/span>Mangrove<\/span><\/i>, as the characters\u2019 shared cultural backgrounds bring them together around the Mangrove restaurant and tie them to one another through the discrimination they face. To visualize the importance of immigration to his story, McQueen uses a number of techniques including allusions to Caribbean political activists and the centrality of the Mangrove itself as a community space. Over the course of the film, the political valence of the Mangrove moves from the background to the foreground, a shift that McQueen conveys through visual symbolism and dialogue, culminating in Darcus\u2019s closing statement at the trial. In an interview about the film on the <\/span>Big Picture<\/span><\/i> podcast, McQueen emphasized the power of representing these stories in film because these histories are not often discussed, even within Black British communities. As a striking example, McQueen said on the podcast that one of his father\u2019s best friends is Rhodan Gordon, but McQueen did not know Gordon was one of the members of the Mangrove Nine until he started working on the film. McQueen also described the post-traumatic stress that pervades the Caribbean community in England because of police brutality, which motivated him to bring <\/span>Mangrove<\/span><\/i> to life. This theme has even more contemporary resonance as the<\/span> Small Axe<\/span><\/i> films debuted amidst the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests that unfolded after a series of police killings in the U.S. Reflecting on the timing of the film, McQueen told the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> \u201cit took a long time for people\u201d in Britain \u201cto believe the West Indian community about what was going on. All of a sudden we\u2019re being believed. It\u2019s taken a man to die in the most horrible way. It\u2019s taken a pandemic. And it\u2019s taken millions of people marching in the streets for the broader public to think \u2018possibly there\u2019s something about this racism thing\u2019\u201d (Clark, \u201cIn \u2018Small Axe,\u2019 Steve McQueen Explores Britain\u2019s Caribbean Heritage). By depicting the complex stories of the Mangrove Nine, McQueen compels audiences to confront the experiences that Caribbean immigrants, and Black Britons more generally, have faced and continue to face.<\/span><\/p>\n

I pledge that this is my own work in accordance with University regulations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\/s\/ Julia Chaffers<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Clark, Ashley. \u201cIn \u2018Small Axe,\u2019 Steve McQueen Explores Britain\u2019s Caribbean Heritage.\u201d <\/span>The\u00a0<\/span><\/i>New York Times<\/span><\/i>, November 11, 2020,\u00a0 <\/span>https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/11\/arts\/television\/steve-mcqueen-small-axe.html.<\/span><\/p>\n

McQueen, Steve, director. <\/span>Mangrove<\/span><\/i>. Amazon Studios, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRewatching \u2018Tenet\u2019 (at Home) in the Year of Christopher Nolan. Plus: Steve McQueen!\u201d <\/span>The\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Big Picture<\/span><\/i>, December 17, 2020,\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-big-picture\/id1439252196?i=1000502767874.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his five-film anthology series Small Axe, Steve McQueen explores the varied dimensions of Black British life, particularly within Caribbean immigrant communities in the city from the late 1960s through the 1980s. In Mangrove, the first film, McQueen depicts the story behind the Mangrove Nine, a group of Caribbean immigrants living in Notting Hill who … <\/p>\n

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