“Mama, Is That You?”

Abstract

In Dancehall Queen and Babymother, the film medium becomes a site of transformation in which the spectacularly dressed bodies of women in the dancehall assume extraordinary proportions once projected onto the screen. In both films, one set in Jamaica, the other in the United Kingdom, the styling of the body—the hair, makeup, clothes, and body language that are assumed—enhances the illusion of a fairy-tale metamorphosis of the mundane self into eroticized sex object. The fantastic un/dress code of the dancehall, in the original Greek sense of the word “fantastic,” meaning “to make visible,” “to show,” is the visualization of a distinctive cultural style that allows women the liberty to demonstrate the seductive appeal of the imaginary—and their own bodies. In an elaborate public striptease, transparent bedroom garments become theatrical street wear, somewhat like the emperor’s new clothes. And who dares say that the body is naked? Only the naive.