Janie Connelly's Sugar Cane Alley Response

“Sugar Cane Alley” directed by Euzhan Palcy traces the growth of a poor black boy named José living in the 1930s French island colony of Martinique, as he ambitiously struggles to define his own future against the odds of an oppressive and seemingly inextricable system of sharecropping and segregation. The movie initially begins with no clear protagonist, the camera following a group of rambunctious children, José among them. Such a strategy, however, parallels the way José learns about his world, through observation and experience. It becomes abundantly clear that all the inhabitants of the street are in the same situation: everyone works in the cane field for subsistence wages, everyone lives in a shack, and everyone is constantly in debt. It is only after the children almost burn down the street that it becomes clear that José is the main character. The rest of the movie follows the way in which José is educated through visual osmosis, for he learns more from the people and world around him than in any textbook. His grandmother M’Man Tine plays a huge role in his pursuit of knowledge in that she refuses for him to end up like all the rest of his neighbors: wasting away in the corn fields, or as she says, working “a prideless job.” She wants to save José from her same fate so she works tirelessly to pay for his primary education in the city and later in Fort-de-France. It is a sad realization that the only hope of transcendence and success in José’s world is to become assimilated into the Frenchman’s world, yet his ambition is nevertheless commendable and viewers, of course, “roots for him.”

He also learns a lot from his quasi-father figure, Medouze, a man who has given his entire life to the cane fields and dreams of an Africa he has and never will see. It is through Medouze that José and the viewer learn about the disillusionment of the people of Martinique in the post-slavery and post-independence era. As Medouze explains, the old French slave-owners simply became oppressive bosses. Although it seems José disagrees with Medouze’s bleak outlook of the black man’s need to accept that which he cannot change, José definitely learns more about his perceived identity. He also learns from Carmen, an ambitious older boy who dreams of becoming an actor in Hollywood. Carmen himself learns much from José, for José teaches him to read and write. But when José turns to Carmen for comfort after his schoolmaster wrongly accuses him of plagiarism, Carmen instead merely boasts of being the lover of lady of the house- whom he’s a servant for. The absence of music in this scene highlights the disappointing realization that José makes, that even someone he has looked up to all his life is allowing himself to be used and exploited by the French. José on the other hand, learns to refuse exploitation in any way, be it by working in the cane fields for abysmally low wages- which we later learn are being stolen by the manager- or cleaning for the woman in town who makes him late for class. José learns from almost all people and settings that he can achieve a better life for himself through education and resisting being exploited by anyone.