Post Seven: Reflection about The Rum Diary.

My Favorite Scene of "The Rum Diary"

The film The Rum Diary directed by Bruce Robinson take place in Puerto Rico in the 1960s. The movie summarizes the Puerto Rican’s life style and it clearly criticizes the discriminations and injustices in the Puerto Rican population. This was showed through Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) who is an author, which works to The San Juan Star Newspaper. Kemp had the homework of discover what the tourist love of Puerto Rico, but in his way he appreciate different situations that show him the Puerto Rican life and customs. Kemp realize how to be a real journalist and he discover the end of one story and the beginning of another listening his own voice.

                                               The Rum Diary - Official Trailer

I classified Kemp as tourist at the beginning of the film, however when he went to live to the little and unkempt apartment he became in a traveler. At the beginning of the movie Kemp just cared about himself and he wanted to escape from his own reality. This is showed when the cabbie ask to Kemp: “Primera vez en Puerto Rico” and Kemp answer: “I don’t speak Spanish, keep the change”. This showed that at beginning Kemp did not want to have any kind of relation with the Puerto Rican people because he really didn’t like Puerto Rican people. Then Kemp’s character transform to a traveler, because he became to relate in the deep problems about the Puerto Rican population and at the end of the film he understood what is really happening in Puerto Rico. At the end of the film Kemp transform his voice in the voice of the Puerto Rican’s country and he want to denounce the injustice made by Edward J. Lotterman (chief and editor of The San Juan Star), Hal Sanderson (a businessman who believe that he is the owner of every single space in the world) and their colleagues. This is showed in the film when at the end appeared “The voice he found was his own and if you were one of the “Bastards” you had yourself a formidable enemy”. This quote represents the general idea of the film. Kemp, of course, is the main character of the film. He really represents the basic idea of a tourist and a traveler.

Forward in the film you can see the basic idea of being a tourist represented in the following characters: Hal Sanderson, Edward J. Lotterman, Donovan, Art Zimburger, Wolsey, Mrs. Zimburger, Davey and Lazar. They are tourist because they just worried about themselves and they did not care about to know Puerto Rico’s places and Puerto Ricans people. These characters just think about how much they can win of Puerto Rico. This was showed by Lotterman’s character when he says: “Determination, balanced with appropriate humanity. This is a schizoid society, Kemp. They got two languages, two flags, two loyalties, and two anthems. We bring them stuff they never had. They either hate it or they want more of it”. Lotterman talked about Puerto Rico like he knows the Puerto Ricans, but he really did not know anything. He just closely lived in his own little world full of discriminations. I consider Lotterman’s characters the best example of a tourist because he had a lot of prejudices and he discriminated his employees and the Puerto Ricans.  For other hand, I consider Chenault (Sanderson’s fiancée and Kemp’s love interest) a mixture of tourist and traveler, but she had more of tourist than traveler. Chenault is a free soul that wants to escape from Sanderson’s oppression. I saw in her character a traveler who is repressed and persuaded by a tourist (Sanderson), because when Chenault was with Kemp she acted as a traveler.

In the film I consider as examples of travelers Bob Sala and Moburg. I think they are good examples of travelers because they are informed about Puerto Rico’s situation and they did not worry about staff that a tourist will worry. This is showed when Moburg says: “This country was built on genocide and slavery. We killed all the black guys that were here, and then we shipped in new black guys of our own and then we brought in Jesus, like a bar of soap”. They also shared the unkempt apartment with Kemp, which means that they were exposing themselves to the Puerto Rican’s life. I consider Kemp, Sala and Moburg the main characters of the film because they represent the different critics about the Puerto Rican culture and the injustices that the Puerto Ricans were suffering. I also perceived in them different situations that reflected the Puerto Rican style of life in the 1960s.  

A quote that clearly relates to the idea of tourist and traveler is represented in the scene in which Kemp as journalist interviewed two tourists, an American fat man with his wife, in the bowling contest. Kemp ask to them: “What would you say you like most about Puerto Rico?”, then the man answer: “The bowling alleys and the casinos, of course she like the duty free” and his wife said: “Well, the more you spend, the more you save”. Then Kemp ask to them: “Have you seen a lot of the island?” and they answer: “We don’t leave the hotel. It is not safe”. This clearly shows the tourist characteristics in which they did not want to know about Puerto Rico and its people. Also, this is connected with Jamaica Kincaid's idea of being a tourist in A Small Place, because Kincaid clearly discuss how tourists never deeply know the place where they visit and how they are ignorant to the situations and the history of the place they are visiting. Kincaid in her essay A Small Place defines a tourist as: “An ugly human being” (14), this is totally true and it is clearly represented in the film by Lotterman’s character when said: “This is America” and Kemp answered to him: “This is Puerto Rico” and by Sanderson’s character when said to the Puerto Ricans that are trying to access to the beach: “This is a private beach!”. Definitively, tourists are ugly human beings who just want to appropriate from the land, which they are visiting. These things create the feelings of hate and angry from the Puerto Ricans toward the Americans. This hate was represented in the film when a group of Puerto Ricans starts to chase Sala and Kemp. The group of Puerto Ricans called Sala and Kemp: “Hey Yankee!” and they also insulted them. This Puerto Rican attitude and hate is similar to the Antiguan’s attitude described in Kincaid’s essay.

The Rum Diary -Car Scene

Finally, the film clearly exposes the idea of being a tourist or a traveler. I love the transformation that Kemp’s character experienced because he shows that everything is a factor of perception. Kemp’s character brings an important message to the public. Kemp says: “He knows the price of everything, the value of nothing” and “I wonder what it is you might think about our different worlds. Human beings are the only creature on Earth that claim a God and the only living thing that behaves like it has not got one”. These means that some human beings believe they are superior to others and some people believe they can go through everybody to achieve what they want. At the end of the film Kemp says: “…because I finally understood the connection between children scavenging for food and shiny brass plates on the front doors of banks”. This is similar to the relation between Puerto Rico and the United States of American in the 1960s until now which was summarized in the film.