The bodies participating in Pride, Trinidad Carnival and Toronto’s Caribana are historically considered sites of resistance. They come to life through hypersexual performances, working to counter and invert hegemonic representations and social hierarchies and temporarily re-imagine a space of licentious freedom absolved from homophobia and racism. Hyper-sexualized performances in both Pride and Caribana celebrations attempt to resist social hierarchies that foster homophobia and racism, while also attempting to invert social norms that mediate bodies and spaces. Contemporary politics in Pride and Caribana suggest that the commercialization around Pride and Caribana has created stronger visibility for oppressed groups. This commercialized presence marks the end of a political resistance and continues the presence of colonial and patriarchal systems whose regulation over performances, space and bodies proves detrimental to freedom and equality. Unpacking the notion of the hypersexual performances in Pride and Caribana festivities will include an explanation of how hypersexual performances are transnational, performative, queer and heterosexual. The framework of transnational and performativity will elucidate the ways hyper sexuality is a bodily performance and site of resistance and mediated by commercialization.
Although Toronto claims to be a multicultural place, I would like to analyze how the freedom to resist and perform in this city continues to be mediated by racism, and homophobia. A transnational framework explores how historically diasporic queers and Caribbean’s have used hypersexual performances in Pride and Carnival as a tool of bodily resistance. Through this framework I will explicate how contemporary celebrations in Pride and Caribana continue to use hyper sexuality in performances. However, due to commercialization the meaning of resistance is removed from the performance only to create images that evoke desire and commodification.
Along with this, I will use Judith Butler’s theory on performativity and materiality to discuss the way sex and sexuality is socially regulated through performance and identity, and as such resistance becomes mediated by social constructions and performances of femininity, masculinity, queerness, and heterosexuality. Pride and Caribana ‘s use of sex and sexuality is enacted in different places at different times, for instance the meaning of hypersexual performances changes during Prides and as a result the meaning of such performances varies in time and space.
Hypersexual performances are bodily performances enacted by two people, queer or heterosexual; the framework I will use to elucidate this idea will include how hypersexual performances are transnational, resistant, and performative. Transnational public spectacles are based on the history that makes them, and how the “borderless-world” (664, Grewal and Kaplan ) argument suggests that cultures are more and more important or relevant than nations and that identities are linked to cultures more than to nations or to the institutions of the nation-state. ( 664-5,Grewal and Kaplan ) The notion of culture becoming paramount over nation states suggests that images, artifacts, and ideologies associated with a place now become associated with a group of people. For instance, Caribana in Toronto is known as ‘black event,’ libidinous, and dangerous while Pride is similarly understood as licentious, and transgressive. As a result Caribana and Pride festivities become understood as a cultural event based upon essentialist images and ideas of a homogeneous culture.
A Transnational perspective of Trinidad’s Carnival can be understood as a time of sexual excess, normative inversion and rebellious behavior, originally taking place during the “Christmas- New Year Season, the traditional time of freedom and license for the slaves during the pre-emancipation period.” ( 669, Nurse) The Carnival employed hypersexual performances such as “donning costumes that emphasize sexuality and facilitate wining” ( 673, Nurse ) in order to take over public space, and create an display that disrupts hegemonic notions of white supremacy. This exhibition includes spectacular costumes and masquerades, which work to transform their bodies out of the ordinary and into an imagined space of equality. This hypersexual performance is “an enabling process in that it affords them a freedom which real life denies and consequently makes real life bearable.” (Nurse, 673) The notion of disrupting a space and using oppressed bodies as strong sites of contestation creates positive visibility, which directly opposes a white hegemonic order.
Pride is also a site of transnational hyper-sexuality and resistance, because its historical use of hyper-sexuality in performance was facilitated by the social dominance of heterosexuality and it problematic ability to assert superiority and oppress the expression of queer identities. The Stonewall riots which took place in response to the New York City Police raiding The Stonewall Inn, a local gay Bar, ( 394, Kates and Belk) becomes the culminating push away from oppression. Rioting for the freedom and equality for queer sexual orientation enabled bodies to become sites of resistance ad the following year Queers celebrated this riot through an anniversary that marched though the streets and paraded their sexuality in hypersexual manner. Kates and Belk historicize the oppression that was occurring before this important event: “During the 1960’s homosexuality was still largely debated within a medical discourse and was viewed as a shameful perversion, a sickness, or a moral disorder even some of its proponents agreed that it should be kept discreet, if not hidden.” ( 395) A result of the Stonewall riots in New York City was Pride celebrations that be commemorated the stonewall riots from 1970 onwards. ( 394-5, Kates and Belk) The pride celebrations were hypersexual due in part to the mirroring of ultra-sexual behavior that would normally occur at the Stonewall gay bar. This challenge and rearrangement of space commemorates the anniversary of civil disobedience where revelers display their sexuality through unabashed public displaces of affection, fetish clothing and half naked bodies make up a revolutionary tool that facilitates hypersexual bodies as sites of resistance.
The Contemporary form of bodily resistance at Pride and Caribana continute to use their bodies as sites of resistance through hypersexual performances, which trace back to a historical struggle over oppression and equality. For instance, in Pride two topless lesbians marching down Young Street during Pride can be interpreted as an act of resistance, in much the same way masquerading and erotically dancing down Lakeshore Boulevard during Caribana, is a form of resistance. Unfortunately the bearing that time, space and commercialization have on a transnational performance weakens the spirit and meaning of bodily resistance. For instance when Pride and Caribana are transplanted to Toronto the commercial return and authentic representation gets clouded: “It is also the case that when peripheral societies export their culture they often lack the organizational capability and the political and economic leverage to control or maximize the commercial returns. This is in marked contrast to the capabilities of core societies where there is not only an ability to maximize on export but also to co-opt imported cultures. What it comes down to is who is globalizing whom. In this business there are ‘globalizers’ and ‘globalizees’, those who are the producers an those who are just the consumers of global culture.” ( Nurse, 683) The expression of sexuality is then mediated by the consumers who co-opt cultural ideas and images of femininity and masculinity. When bodies do not adhere to these constructions of sex and sexuality they are punished through essentialist discourses that misrepresent the spirit of resistance. The most salient problem with transnational performances in Pride and Caribana becomes maintaining the historical importance of resistance through the transplantation of these cultural performances in a changing political time.
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