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'Killa' buses
Anthony Gomes
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Lt Cdr John McFarlane is to be commended for reporting the "KillaCoasta bus" which was showing pornographic films on TV while driving along Constant Spring Road, as described in his recent letter to the Observer and the Gleaner.
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| Anthony Gomes |
According to his letter, there was a group of three racing buses weaving in and out of traffic in their inimitable style, one of which he observed through the bus's rear window showing pornographic movies. He then made a report to the police with the expectation they would take appropriate action. There have been numerous notorious reports of bizarre behaviour on board these buses involving female students participating in "no-panty days", "express pockets" (pockets cut open), and other forms of seductive behaviour. Privacy is afforded by the densely tinted windows which the police are now addressing.
McFarlane was moved to write about the incident thus: "I have taken the liberty of writing openly about this because of the destruction it causes to the minds of all those who are exposed to it whether willingly or unwittingly. Willingly because there are those in our society who seem to find nothing wrong with the open display of sex, drug use, or violent actions or reactions. Unwittingly, because an innocent boarding of the bus will result in unplanned and undesired exposure to pornography. I believe, however, that there is a great majority of Jamaicans who find displays such as these offensive, and who deem it their right to be able to use public transport and public spaces without being subject to sights or sounds that debase sexuality to the level of unrestrained animals." The fact that some people are not offended by this aberrant behaviour indicates the extent of moral decay apparent in civil society that has reached alarming proportions. Parents can hardly be blamed in these circumstances as, by and large, they have no knowledge or control over the buses on which they must rely for getting their children to and from school.
The safety of these buses, given their totally unorthodox use of the roadways, is also under scrutiny. They are not only dangerous to themselves and their passengers, but to other road users and bystanders who risk getting injured or losing their lives due to the moronic attitude in the way these vehicles are driven. History shows that when these buses crash the result many times is a large number of casualities, and the press reports usually end with the postscript "the driver fled the scene", indicating the absence of any sense of responsibility.
McFarlane rightly points to the psychological damage to the young and uninitiated. He observes: "I shudder to think how the mind of a teenager on that bus on his or her way to a church young people's meeting would be affected. No amount of prayer can erase the impression, however fleeting, made on that still malleable young mind. It is seared in forever. We may, if we become aware of the experience, be able to mitigate the damage, but the memory will always be there, sometime perhaps waiting for the "perfect storm set-up" to be unleashed. Where, further, that young mind is devoid of strong positive parental or community guidance, and especially so for our young men for whom strong male role-modelling is less likely, the consequences become even more devastating."
Furthermore, Jamaica already plagued by uncontrollable violence does not welcome any more stimulus for violent behaviour, which is linked to pornography according to The Longford Report, chaired by the Earl of Longford published in the UK in 1972: "Nevertheless, although we have not here attempted to deal in any detail with the precise or short-term effects of media violence, perhaps enough has been said for the reader to accept that strong grounds clearly exist for the current disquiet. And we would follow this by suggesting that parallel research on the likely effects of pornography appears to confirm similar findings, that is, that desensitising is almost inevitable over a prolonged period, and that in a proportion of individuals the existing tendencies towards deviant and uncontrolled behaviour are likely to be reinforced; where the two forms of exposure to sexual and to violent material overlap as is increasingly the case in hardcore pornography, the risk of positive behavioural effects must clearly be considerably greater." Following on from the Longford Report, it would seem that exposure to pornography, willingly or unwillingly, could contribute to the high level of violence in schools resulting in a number of student murders and physical attacks against teachers.
In relation to persons standing up for what is good and right for Jamaica versus those who acquiesce, McFarlane states: "The price of the alternative is further decline, ultimate decay of values of decency, respect and human worth, and the destruction of our society as we know it today."
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| One of the heavily tinted buses being boarded by school children. |
McFarlane's conclusion is reinforced by the Longford Report thus: "We submit that where the whole of society is potentially exposed to a volume of violent sexual material that is still on the increase, the painful irony of the present situation is that the young - those who claim to be the most disturbed by the public violence they read about in the press, are precisely those who are, above all, being conditioned to accept, and to participate in private violence such as we have described - the sadistic and brutal hardcore of pornography."
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