Screenwriting : screen writers the entire Caribbean does not speak with a Jamaican accent by Anderson Percival

Why does every international film depict all Caribbean people speaking with a Jamaican accent? In reality we don’t, we all have different accents and languages. Just travel through the Caribbean you will realize that each island is unique in its own way so are the people who live there, but for some reason international screen writers have lumped all Caribbean people into one category which states that we all speak with one accent and have one culture. This gives the world a wrong perspective of the people of the Caribbean. Example for the film Speed 2: Cruise Control which was partly filmed on the island of St. Maarten, an actress who depicted a local spoke in Jamaican accent. This film did not truly showcase the island where everyone speaks two languages or more such as English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Papiamento, Creole from Haiti, Dominica and St. Lucia just to name a few. Imagine how much better film would have been with the scene of the ship crashing into the island; and all the citizens ran for their lives while speaking in different languages and Caribbean accents. St. Maarten is the world’s smallest land mass that has the most languages in the world; this is just one island in the Caribbean archipelago that is made up of about 7000 islands. We as screen writers need to do proper research when writing a film, so that we can give authentic depictions of real cultures and nations of the world. We as writers are responsible for how we depict cultures and nations with in our films, because our sphere of influence is much larger than we think it is. This is one of the reasons that I became a screen writer. I’m determined to highlight the truth of my fellow Caribbean people as they are meant to be seen. We are a proud, determined, resilient, creative people who love life and we live it to the fullest. This is how the world should view Caribbean people.