NALA CAN'T HELP BUT CREATE. The multi-hyphenate Barbadian (actor, writer, painter, and playwright) has turned a series of cartoons created and shared over the years, primarily online, into a collection called The Philosophy & Opinions of the $2 Philosopher!! It is a curious but compelling book of situational observations, humour and sometimes critiques of modern values. In this way, the book falls into a more extensive, rich history of cartoons and comics in Barbados.
Nala's cartoons and cartoon alter ego were born in 2009 after he was given some decidedly shallow advice. While selling T-shirts in Anguilla at an arts festival with a friend, the event organizer, an "African American woman approached [my friend] and spewed some canned platitudes," which Nala found annoying. He waited until she left and told his friend to "be careful of these $2 Philosophers who come and spout these deep sounding surface level fallacies." He then was moved to create a cartoon version of himself, "The $2 Philosopher," who makes fun of this "Eat, Pray, Love" type of counsel.
A self-described "devout curmudgeon," Nala is playful in person. However, he also rails against unquestioning thought and has little time for "bad" art, inequality or the world's destruction. When I asked him why he chose the comics medium, he said, "Even with video recording, the spoken word is still too much like writing history with piss in the sand." More generally, the medium has a broader appeal to him because of its lasting power and visual communication. In this way, The Philosophy & Opinions of the $2 Philosopher!! aligns thematically with the work of Barbadian cartoonists Matthew Clarke, Guy O’Neal, Éreque Weekes, and the late Winston Jordan.
A Very Brief History of Cartoons in Barbados
First, a quick primer. Political or editorial cartooning is based on caricatures, a technique dating back to the sketches of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). The early development of political cartoons has been attributed to William Hogarth (1697-1764) . His pictures combined social criticism with a solid moralizing element and targeted the corruption of early 18th-century British politicians. In the 1750s, during a military campaign in Canada, George Townshend (1724-1807), 1st Marquess Townshend, produced some of the first overtly political cartoons. There may have been political cartoons in Barbados during colonial times, but the relatively contemporary history of cartoons concerns us here.
Winston Jordan (1949-2007) was a Barbadian graphic/fine artist involved in the Crop Over festival as a costume designer, costume band leader and costume manufacturer. His vast experience included advertising art, social and political cartooning, cartoon and comic animation, costume design, and stage and theatrical presentation. Jordan popularized the humorous side of Barbadian life in his comic strips Bajan Bellylaff and Jones, featured locally in the Nation newspaper's publications from the 1970s into the 2000s. These cartoons questioned the authority of political figures and satirized public figures. They used the character of Jones, a seemingly simple individual, to cleverly expose inequalities and corruption in Barbadian life but also its everyday humour. The strip grabbed the attention of people and, in turn, inspired other artists to create cartoons that observed daily Bajan life. Similarly, Nala's $2 Philosopher sometimes takes aim at inane utterances, at other times incisively offers his own take on the way we live.
In one cartoon, the $2 Philosopher labours up a hill. "It is easy to talk about riding up the hill once you have gotten to the top," he says. His commentary is clear: people who make life seem easy are often doing so from a place of privilege.
In another cartoon, the lesson is less abstract. The character looks directly at the viewer and says, "It is better to be pissed off than pissed on!"
The latter cartoon, with the character speaking to the viewer in one panel, is a trope that recurs frequently in The Philosophy & Opinions of the $2 Philosopher!! While Nala experiments with multiple panels for the jokes, he often uses the one-panel setup for a sharp observation—very much in the tradition of political or editorial cartoonists, including Jordan, Clarke and O'Neal.
O'Neal, often credited as Guy and the creator of Willi Worm, has presented Willi in the Nation for two decades. Willi often addresses the viewer about some item affecting the country. In a 2017 cartoon, Willi reads a newspaper saying that bus workers are on strike. His response to the reader: "I did not even notice; I thought the bus was late as usual." Similarly, in a 2011 cartoon, Matthew Clarke presents a one-panel observational cartoon of a black swan flattened by a piece of paper by Barbados’ Film Censorship Board, alluding to that review body's ban of the film of the same name.
Clarke, who is currently writing a book about the history of Barbadian cartoons, had some of the most incisive to appear in the weekly magazine Heat. The publication did not have a large platform, but Clarke went on to produce graphic novels, often taking Barbadian folklore as his jumping-off point, such as The Heart Man in the horror genre, and the fantasy adventure Hardears with writer Nigel Lynch. First published by Beyond Publishing, a collective they founded with other Barbadian comic creators, Hardears “takes place in an alternative world on Jouvert Island; a magical analog of the island of Barbados.” The story examines, among other topics, the climate crisis and the two-sided sword of industrialization in small island developing states.
In this way, Hardears is in the tradition of Éreque Weekes' comics, which featured the character of Sly Mongoose in the 1990s and early 2000s to comment on pollution and the environment in Barbados. Unlike Jordan and O'Neal, Weekes' comics were less directly about politics.
Exciting Philosophical Twist
Or were they? As with Nala’s work, we are compelled to look beneath surfaces. In one of his cartoons, the $2 Philosopher says, "If you keep your mind indiscriminately open, people will throw much garbage in it." In another, he sits next to a TV showing "Reality TV News" and notes that unprocessed thought is worse than "processed food."
Thus emerges an exciting twist in The Philosophy & Opinions of the $2 Philosopher!! It starts by satirizing shallow koans and then pushes forward less shallow ones. While not all of these cartoons are equally sharp, a number of their observations are deeper than first thought; and in-between the tongue-in-cheek takes is some seemingly optimistic advice as well.
When I mentioned this to Nala, he scoffed. He said he did not mind if he inspired optimism in others, but "there is no such thing living in his heart."
Nala may wear the air of the curmudgeon. However, The Philosophy & Opinions of the $2 Philosopher!!, like the work of other Barbadian cartoonists, seeks to improve our world, encourage our people to question authority, and always to use humour in the service of both causes.
Khalil Goodman is a writer and photographer. He was the arts and entertainment writer at The Barbados Advocate for several years. He has also written artists' catalogues for Barbados’ National Cultural Foundation, and regularly writes travel and arts articles for SHE Caribbean, Living Barbados Magazine, and MACO.
Last Modified: August 2, 2024
