"Rum Diary"

Our class is basically all about what are identity and the problems of it. Through all this time we had the opportunity to read stories about other countries and compare them with our situation in Puerto Rico, but not one were Puerto Rico was the place where the story takes place. This opportunity came with the movie: The Rum Diary, one that takes place in Puerto Rico in the 1960’s. The question is: ¿What is this movie about? This movie is about a book written by Hunter S. Thompson where a novelist in the search for a job moves to Puerto Rico to work at the San Juan Star.

           

            One curious thing about this movie is that we can see what Jamaica Kincaid said in her essay about tourists; but now from Puerto Rico. Through the entire movie we see how tourists see or saw our island back then, specially Americans and other problems that affect our society.  They mention the problems of alcohol, culture and even criminality in our island.

            For me one quote that shows directly our problem of identity is when Lotterman said: “This is a schizoid society Kemp. They got two languages, two flags, two loyalties, two anthems. We bring them stuff they never had. They either hate it or they want more of it. It’s a reluctant part of America. It’s like England with tropical fruit.” This shows exactly the problem that Puerto Ricans have, but not only that, it shows what Americans thinks of us. A way where they think they’re superior to us and were just a territory, with people without expectations.  And then we have the fact that when Kemp asked the tourists about Puerto Rico they just said: “We don’t leave the hotel, it isn’t safe.

            Unlike them there is our protagonist, Paul Kemp, a novelist from New York that once got to Puerto Rico he started to see the reality about it, he was an alcoholic, and Lotterman said to him that Puerto Rico wasn’t to place to stop drinking but apart of that he started to see poverty and serious problems that our island has, so he finally decided to speak the truth and write about it. Truth that took all movie to prove, since all they do was to make money and publish they’re stories.

            Personally I found interesting the opportunity to watch this movie while doing this class since it is all about identity. I really enjoyed watching it after I’ve read the Jamaica Kincaid essay, it definitely showed me what I thought about tourists in a movie. But the factor that really got me is that the movie took place back in 1960 but in 2014 we still facing some of the problems they showed in the movie, we still have poverty, we still have alcoholism and we definitely still have the identity problem where all we got is two languages, two flags, two loyalties and two anthems.