No Telephone to Heaven

In No Telephone to Heaven, Cliff examines the romantic images Jamaicans receive from the media of England, (via the comic books Clare and her friends read as schoolgirls). In these comic books, English boarding schools are illustrious institutions covered in ivy (unlike the actual institution Clare later sees in Gravesend, which is cold and “Dickensian”). Cliff suggests that these images are designed to encourage Jamaicans to elevate England in their imagination, and thus maintain their lifelong allegiance to “the mother-country” (109).

The novel also critiques the nefarious “magic of television […], [Clare’s] ability to conjure images by switch, to change the images as she wished” (93), and cinemas in Jamaica, where viewers had little control over which films were shown. Specifically, Cliff critiques the damaging effects of Hollywood films—like Gone with the Wind—that presented racist propaganda in disguise. When Boy Savage attempts to win over a racist motel manager in Georgia, he defends the KKK, citing his exposure to the group in Gone with the Wind. Clare later recalls how her white American history teacher, Miss Perkins, believed that Gone with the Wind was a documentary about the Civil War.

Cliff also critiques the ways in which television prioritizes certain stories over others. For example, while Clare looks at her photo of a young black girl killed during the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, John F. Kennedy’s funeral plays in the background. The implied message is that in America, the death of a prominent white man is more important than the death of four black girls.

Finally, the book presents the inaccurate film about the Maroons as a glaring example of grossly appropriated history. The actress playing Nanny is described as a stock black character, “called in whenever someone was needed to play a Black heroine, any Black heroine, whether Sojourner Truth or Bessie Smith” (206). The actor playing “Cudjoe, tiny humpbacked soul” is “a strapping man, former heavyweight or running back” (206). Thus, the revolutionary group’s attack on this film production team is a significant political act, an attempt to prevent the stealing and misrepresentation of the Jamaican people’s legacy.