BABYLON

I stumbled across this movie while I was researching why the term Babylon was being used so often in Reggae music. In case you are wondering, yes, that was my exact question to our dear friend with all the answers Google. I was listening to Bob Marley & The Wailers 1999’s music album Chant down Babylon, and I realized I had no idea why Babylon was being used not only in the title of the album but in many of his songs. The answer explains many of today’s world racial issues and how history is very often taught only from one’s side of the many parts involved.

Babylon refers to the corrupted, capitalist, colonial world according to the Rastafarian belief. The term Babylon is familiar to Christians, as it is the place where the Jews were capture and forced to go through hardships. The Rastafarians identify the connection between this and the harsh and awful reality lived for those Africans taken and slaved by colonialist when the Triangular Trade was established. Since most enslaved Africans were deprived from culture and forbidden from learning to read, biblical terminology (the term “Babylon”) was the best way of communication. 

Babylon was filmed in South London and the West End in less than two months. The reason why this movie was filmed in such short time and the cast was carefully selected – the main character in the movie Blue is Brinsley Forde, the founder member of Britains’ reggae band Aswad – was that the movie reflected the existing and yet ignored racism and the forever oppression against black people, and the fact that it was being shoot in a place of London were racial tension existed. The most interesting bit is that this movie was prohibited in the United States in the 1980s, and it wasn’t actually released until March of 2019. 

A quote from the movie that clearly reflects how different your experience can be as a human being just by the color of your skin, is when Beefy, one of the characters filled with rage says to the woman who is yelling from the other building accusing them of ruining her lovely part of the town: “This is also my country, lady, and it has never been fucking lovely”

This movie is something everyone should watch, especially those who lack empathy. It is a movie to reflect on racism and the hardship black people can face in their daily life. At the end of the day, I think the fact that it was forbidden in the United States for so long speaks for itself.