By Tanya Batson, Staff Reporter
A section of the massive crowd that attended the Red Stripe 'Level the Vibes Street Jam' on Sunday on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
A section of the massive crowd that attended the Red Stripe 'Level the Vibes Street Jam' on Sunday on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston.
IT IS easy to associate rats and other vermin with living in the tunnels which writhe and burrow beneath the huge metropoles of the world. As high-speed trains whiz by, taking safely boxed-in passengers from one subway to the next. The rats take over the unused areas. There, in worlds defined by darkness, they scurry about searching for food and eking out survival.
It is not only rats who call these tunnels home, however. Loud, often violent, desperation has also sent some humans seeking haven in these dark recesses. The 2000 documentary Dark Days takes a look at 12 persons who made their homes in the tunnels surrounding Penn Station in New York City in the United States.
Written and directed by Marc Singer, the documentary gives an insightful and sometimes disturbing look at some of New York's homeless. In doing so, it helps to bring faces to those most easily ignored members of society. For most, the homeless are almost blurred figures, very few of whom manage to leave an impression on our retinas. Their struggle-filled lives often seem to cast a shadow of blame on those of us who manage to stay above their state. The reactions to them therefore often range from shame and anger to disdain or pity.
It is partly because of this that Dark Days succeeds. In going to live among these 12 tunnel dwellers, Singer is able to show their lives, separate from their contact with the rest of humanity. With the exception of a few questions of his own, no other voice is allowed to come through.
As such, the viewer is forced to see them only through their eyes and words. One quickly realises that these tunnel dwellers are not quite homeless. Most of them have built sturdy one-room shacks. They think of the tunnels as home and argue that it is safer there than living on the street or in shelters.
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Their sense of reality seems to have mutated to fit their situations. Although they cannot be thought to be hopeless (some even brag of being able to do better), they have accepted their strife as a normal life. They argue, laugh together, cook together, have pets and even cut each other's hair. They do all this in a world where broken pipes are a source of running water and a bucket takes the place of toilet. A world where the rats are as huge as cats and do not fear them. A world where the sun never shines.
Although it takes place in tunnel many miles away, the situation featured in Dark Days often bears a striking resemblance to the situations lived in by Jamaica's tragically poor - those too often ignored many who only occasionally make the headlines when someone feels it is prudent to point out how horrible and unhealthy their living condition is.
Most of the dwellers in Dark Days, however, have been brought to their current state through drug abuse and all of them have had hard knocks. Far too often, these knocks came from the points of needles in their own lives. Some are, however, seeking refuge from a fate not of their own making.
Interestingly enough, though they remain unable to pull themselves up from their squalor, some of these tunnel tenants have realised the destructive power of drugs and attempted to stay clean.
Dark Days allows them to tell their stories. Some of it makes for uneasy listening, while other bits of philosophies of life and survival can come across as funny. Dark Days is shot in clean black and white simplicity, which only serves to bring home which enhances the vision of the squalor in which they live. It is a story, disturbingly well told.
The documentary is a part of the series of five movie screenings being put on by the 'Calabash Literary Festival', which will take place in Treasure Beach, May 23 to 25. Like the other movies being screened, Dark Days comes out of the Palm Pictures catalogue. Next Thursday, 'turntablism' will take over the screen at the Bob Marley Museum in Scratch.
