A Critical Review of the highly interesting and rather provocative psychiatric documentary, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’ (Dancing the Stumble)

The biggest problem that I face in strongly recommending this short and also highly interesting provocative and equally subversive documentary to you, which was made on the larger smaller Island of Martinique, in the eastern Caribbean, is the very fact that I have no idea about how you would be able to get your hands on it or see it at present in the United States. The version of the documentary I saw, did have English subtitles, and although I can understand a good deal of French, I cannot understand Creole, so I do know as a matter of fact that this translated version of the very intriguing documentary also exists somewhere. Nonetheless, if you could somehow get your hands on it in one way or the other, I would strongly encourage you to take the time and carefully look at it. It is not a very long documentary, just over one hour, is the length of time to see it, and I guarantee you that every minute of that time, will ultimately be very rewarding to you in the end in many different ways. The limitations, which I will be pointing out in the following, of the important documentary work, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’, is at least in part, I am sure, a direct result of the limited funds available to make the film with in Martinique. This is because it is indeed an extremely difficult economic, financial as well as a quite complex organizational undertaking in order to ultimately try and be able to raise the necessary financial funds, both locally as well as internationally, to make films developed and fundamentally based in the Caribbean region. This is a highly rich and creative Caribbean region, which still has many extremely intriguing stories to tell and films based on these various stories in many different ways and various forms to show everywhere. Nonetheless, Martinique in this regard, still finds itself now, in a much better position than in many other small and smaller Islands in the Caribbean where there is little or no chance of being able to make local and/or local as well as regional films. This is because both the filmic, the financial infrastructure as well as the cultural and the political support structure for films in many of those also very interesting tropical places full of various stories as well, is completely lacking in order to be able to do so.

The very interesting Martinican short documentary about psychiatry on the “French” eastern Caribbean Island, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’, which is translated as ‘Walking the Stumble’, but which I would like to much more exactly translate as “Keep on Living and/or Remain Alive while Slipping/Sliding and/or Stumbling and/or Falling”, which plays with and it also plays off of the fundamental notion and wisdom that if you are slipping or falling in life, and which will certainly sooner or later inevitably happen to nearly all of us, you have to quickly straighten your back and/or get back up once again and do your very best to keep on keeping on moving forward. The title, and I do not know if the filmmakers, were and/or are aware of this, is also a very powerful metaphor for the life of many, who are living and struggling, in the periphery, at present. In the title, there is at the very same time, an inherent call to communal solidarity and also to mutual aid, in the entire and very complex mental healing process, loudly and inherently echoing, and which the short documentary, certainly also touches on in all of its complexity in present-day and also in a highly changed and changing Martinique. A very good example of this ongoing quick change in Martinique, is that while the psychiatric patients and/or the patients undergoing mental care and treatment, pass through in a bus a certain neighborhood by the highway, one of the patients, who used to work there, exclaims in huge surprise about how the place had changed so completely and so quickly since she used to work there. It must equally be noted here that change takes place and it happens extremely quickly and also oftentimes quite comprehensively in small places in relationship to much larger places where change takes some more time to unroll and, in the process, it affords many more people, some more time to adapt themselves to the entire unfolding process of change. This is exactly what is happening now in many places across the Caribbean region with people equally at the very same time, having very little input in all of the changes taking place so very quickly all around them, leaving them in on “ongoing state of local cultural as well as adaptative local identity shock”. In other words, so many of the local Caribbean people, in essence, are facing a situation that can better be referred to as a form of “development enslavement”, and where also most or really nearly all of the economic and of the financial benefits and profits, do not even remain locally, but are constantly being exported to the north and the west. In many different ways, it is now seeing in a neo-colonial neoliberal form, the continuing plundering and extraction of colonialism in the regularly resisting periphery.

In the short, and in the fundamentally intriguing and in the equally subversively provocative Martinican documentary, we from very early on, see the director and screenwriter, Wally Fall, who is himself of Senegalese-Martinican descent, and he now lives in close-by Guadeloupe, partaking in a lot of the sacred rituals such as the music, by helping to play the drums and in the dance of the local Martinican bèlè tradition, which was nearly wiped out by the French after Martinique, had become an overseas department of France in 1946, as part of the ongoing attempt to “assimilate” the Caribbean Island into French culture. In 1946, when Martinique became an overseas department within France, the French government therefore also set out to control and to dominate the Martinicans by trying to destroy local traditions as well as local ways of thinking and of being, including the destruction of their local bèlè tradition. Post-WWII France did so by imposing a wide variety of French modernization projects, various French institutions and also by indoctrinating them through French cultural programming on the local Caribbean people. The cultural and mental trauma inflicted as a result of this outside directed and imposed foreign European “assimilation project” in the following decades, has led to documented mental health problems within the Martinican population. Nevertheless, the local bèlè tradition, was eventually revived in the 1960s and 1970s, on the eastern Caribbean Island, and it is now being tapped into as part of the mental treatment of the local patients in the innovative Martinican hospital, and which the provocative short documentary, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’ focuses on, dealing with the various Martinican patients undergoing this new psychiatric care on the eastern Caribbean Island. Quickly, we come to realize that the writer/director of the documentary, Wally Fall, is doing all of this in order to try and break down any barriers between himself, and the various local psychiatric patients, participating in the innovative local program and also in the new local psychiatric experiment. The Martinican local bèlè tradition, which is about the celebration of their African forebears and it carves out spaces where the participants can also have conversations and incite action around individual and collective identity through music and dance. Seemingly, the local Martinican bèlè tradition, has remained the most intact despite some changes to it over time, of all of the various other local bèlè traditions being celebrated in other Caribbean Islands.

The documentary focuses especially on the work of a French-Algerian or the Algerian-French psychiatrist, who is originally from Algeria, and whose attitudes and work, has strongly been influenced by the boldly rebelling Martinican psychiatrist, Franz Fanon, who ended up joining the Algerian liberation struggle against France in North Africa the 1950s, and whose work strongly backed the anti-racist and the anti-colonial struggle as well as his emphasis on community and solidarity. The short Martinican documentary starts out by focusing on the work of a young female Martinican artist/researcher, who we often see playing the drum, and who ultimately guides and she also encourages the different local psychiatric participants suffering from various mental disorders to engage in workshops that blend together music, dance, discussions and the sacred rituals of the local Martinican bèlè tradition, in trying to help them better deal with their mental disorders in Martinique, which as an overseas part of France, is still largely being neo-colonized and also equally economically, socially, culturally and politically being dominated by France. Early on, we see the energetic young female Martinican artist/ researcher, in a meeting asking the psychiatrist about what kinds of mental disorders, the various patients that she is dealing with are suffering from, but the French-Algerian or Algerian-French male psychiatrist, categorically refuses to answer her question. He does so by pointing out that if he were to do so that it could potentially create certain hierarchical barriers and maybe even a certain amount of distancing between her and at least some of the different male and female psychiatric patients they are trying to treat and help. This was something that the quite open, critical and compassionate psychiatrist absolutely did not want to happen in this new experimental local psychiatric program they were developing. Nonetheless, the French-Algerian or Algerian-French psychiatrist, equally underscores the fact to the young female artists/researcher that they could only choose certain types of local psychiatric patients to participate, and especially those who could or were able to follow the dictates of the entire program and to participate in the intense Martinican bèlè program, without causing too many problems while doing so. Clearly, we see here already a selection process taking place, which leaves us with the important question, if and how and also to what extent, would participation in the bèlè program, help at least some of the other Martinican psychiatric patients, who were suffering from even much more serious forms of mental illness?? At the end of the documentary, we really never come to understand, if and how successful the bèlè treatment, is for the various Martinican psychiatric patients, and this at least partly has equally to do with the very fact that in the bèlè program, they are, in essence, desperately trying to some extent counterbalance the very strong ongoing multilayered “alienating” French cultural influences in Antillean Martinique at present. We see the psychiatrist referring to all of this when he is asked about it with a tired shrug of his shoulders, and he indicates that the local and the French authorities, also seemingly want to know about the success rate of their local bèlè treatment program. The psychiatrist reacts in this was in all likelihood because for the bèlè program to be able to start taking effect on the diverse local Martinican psychiatric patients, it will in all probability, take some time in order for it to be able to do so.

The documentary cuts to a younger middle-aged man driving a car in Martinique, who says that he has not experienced any great benefit from participating in the bèlè program, but that it has also not caused him any problems in anyway as well. He explains that he had been declared to be insane, but he also points out that he had spent some time in Canada where they are much more circumspect in making such an important psychiatric diagnosis. He tells the filmmaker that he had never attacked or hurt anyone and that the only thing, which he does, was to scream out at and to, in effect, peaceful confront French policemen and the French authorities stationed and living in Martinique. He says that he is living in Martinique under an insane set of socio-economic, cultural and political circumstances, which he is opposed to, and that he therefore does not view as wrong or as crazy what it is, he was doing. There are also clear echoes here of the work of Michel Foucault, to be detected as well, and again I am also not aware if the psychiatric patient is conscious of any of this. In many ways, the younger middle-aged male Martinican psychiatric patient undergoing the bèlè treatment program, and I do not know if he is even aware of doing this, is quoting the anti-psychiatrists (Laing and Kraepelin) here, in the position, he is taking vis-à-vis his psychiatric diagnosis, in that the anti-psychiatry movement, was arguing that it was indeed a deeply unhinged and insane society that was driving people insane, and that, in essence, to be called insane under such conditions, was, in many ways, the ultimate sign of being sane. It was the so-called “sane people”, who were calmly and cooly living under these inhuman and unjust conditions in such “insane societies” that were, in reality, the most insane. Again, it is also important to emphasize the fact here that the anti-psychiatry movement, has indeed been criticized for not paying enough attention to the very serious mental problems and challenges regularly being faced by some people. Still, we only have the word of the younger middle-aged psychiatric patient to go on, in this regard, but clearly, if he was a great danger to others, the Algerian-French psychiatrist, overlooking the new local bèlè mental treatment program, would have certainly not allowed him, to be part of the new program, as he had already indicated above. Interestingly, in this context, is also the very fact that the young and somewhat resistant middle-aged male Martinican psychiatric patient, does not point out or even underscore his ongoing participation in the traditional new local bèlè treatment, even if he feels that it is not really doing very much for him, as also indirectly a part of his ongoing protest and resistance against the domineering French presence in Martinique as such. This is because to dance and drum traditional bèlè in Martinique, is at least at some level also on the part of some Martinicans, to resist this one-way racist colonial “assimilation project” began by France in 1946, after Martinique, had become an overseas department of France, and it is also an ongoing local resistant Martinican attempt, to not only reclaim their mental health, but also their local multilayered cultural connections as well as their local well-being on the larger small “French” eastern Caribbean Island.
Another good example of this in a very natural and also very beautiful sequence in the rather interesting short Martinican documentary film, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’, is when we see the various male and female psychiatric patients together with the local energetic young female artist/researcher and the psychiatrist, standing in a streaming local Martinican river, playing drums on top of the clean streaming cool water while singing and dancing in the local bèlè tradition, on the larger small eastern Caribbean Island, and, in so doing, also helping them all to start reconnecting themselves with the different inherent rhythms in their very own mixed indigenous Martinican culture, and equally at the very same time in order for them in the process also to start reconnecting with their surrounding beautiful natural environment, which ongoing socio-economic development and societal modernization, in and across the Caribbean region over time, causes many more local people, also increasingly to become estranged from as well, as had also happened in the north and west, in the late 19th century and even much more so in over the first half of the 20th century with ongoing urbanization and industrialization. In this section, we can see the local Martinican psychiatric patients, truly coming alive in the entire process, again, it is an absolutely magnificent sequence, certainly worth seeing the documentary for all by itself.

During the meeting where we see the young and energetic female Martinican artist/researcher asking the psychiatrist about the mental situation of the psychiatric patients, she was doing the traditional bèlè program with, we also hear the highly critical French-Algerian psychiatrist saying that in his opinion and given the existing complex and highly contradictory socio-economic, institutional and political situation, in which Martinique finds itself trapped into in 2023, when the film was being made, one could certainly argue that at least many or maybe even most of the people in Martinique, are living in an ongoing schizophrenic situation on the eastern Caribbean Island, creating ongoing mental problems on the Caribbean Island. Interestingly, the psychiatrist, who has already indicated that he has been deeply influenced by the ideas of Franz Fanon, does not in this context, also refer to Fanon’s notion here about the fact that the violently racist plundering European colonial system, had distorted, deviated and it had also confused Native African identity in the process, and it constantly did so through its arrogant imposition of European institutional structures, European education as well as European culture on the various African locals. This important notion of Fanon regarding Native African identity can also be used to analyze what is happening in the Caribbean as well. One could have then come to understand even better why the critical and the compassionate Algerian-French psychiatrist, would be interested in experimenting with the tradition local bèlè program as a way to try and treat local Martinican people suffering from mental illness. Nonetheless, therefore, a local Caribbean political situation, which exists in different forms and to different extents, not only in the so-called French Caribbean, but also in the so-called British, Dutch and U.S. Caribbean as well, that in my opinion, better can be summed up, and although schizophrenia obviously also exists, under DID — Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is better known as multiple personality disorder, and it is fundamentally a severe form of dissociation or a mental process that produces a lack of connection in your thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of identity. This should come as no surprise to anyone, who is aware of how the local people in the Caribbean, are oftentimes constantly being forced to live in an ongoing highly ambiguous and a highly contradictory local and even regional socio-economic, cultural and political situation, which they have little or no input in let alone control over. Therefore, once again it really should come as no surprise to anyone that you have local people suffering from all kinds and types of mental illness as a direct result of all of these various things combined continually impacting upon them in many different ways often also at the very same time. Still, while I was growing up in the Caribbean, local people suffering from various forms of mental illness, were mostly taken care of by their friends and family members, but with the oftentimes quick multilayered societal transformation over the last forty to fifty years in many different places in the Caribbean, Caribbean society, which for a very long had been based on various importantly anchoring communal solidarities, has indeed become much more highly individualized and fundamentally atomized as well as much more obsessively focused on material success and possessions, and on also money-making in the process. Now, and equally as a result, there is much less space available for people suffering from mental illness in many more places in and across the Caribbean region than in the past. The documentary really does not in any meaningful way touch on this significant societal change, which has occurred, in many of the larger and smaller Islands in and across the Caribbean region over the last four to five decades.

I would like to end this review with a good example of this important societal change in the very interesting Martinican documentary, ‘Mantjé Tonbé Sé Viv’, of an older Martinican woman, who used to work and was part of the Martinican society, and is suffering from mental illness and is also now a part of the new local bèlè program. We never get to know exactly what type of mental illness, she was suffering from, at least according, to her psychiatric diagnosis. She explains to the filmmaker, Wally Fall, that she had seemingly earlier on been involuntary hospitalized based on her mental illness, and where she was regularly being treated with psychoactive drugs, which she oftentimes refused to take. This is because she did not like what they were doing to her, but when the hospital found out that she was throwing away the drugs instead of taking them, they forced her to take them in front on the nurses. She constantly demanded to be let out of the psychiatric hospital she was being held in, which they eventually clearly decided to do. It is not clear if part of that release was her agreeing to participate in the new local mental health experiment, but she says that while she was being treated for her mental illness, her husband had decided to divorce her, which obviously points to a certain amount of stigma, in regards to mental illness, in a somewhat more developed and modernized Martinique at work now. From a progressive mental health standpoint what the Martinicans in a still French-dominated Martinique, should absolutely over time strive to achieve, is not a society based on the fact of how well an individual or individuals, can adapt themselves to society, but to build a widely-socially just constructed society that in general fundamentally deals with and addresses the needs of all of its people. In other words, a society that one of the most important Caribbean people ever, the constantly rebelling Cuban, José Martí, describes as one that is centrally organized around the emancipatory notion of “with all and for the good of all,” and therefore equally including the interests of those struggling with various mental illnesses as well.

©Gregory Gilbert Gumbs