Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

A ‘Shero’ is quite simply a female hero. What is it that ‘Sheroes’ want?

A better life; better protections ; better promotion; better empowerment and also: Better Balance … or #BalanceforBetter.

This is important, today and beyond.

From empowerment seminars to street strikes, pop-up art shows to business master classes, female voices will echo across the globe Friday with a resounding message: Women want balance.

#BalanceforBetter is the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day, which is observed each year on March 8. The 2019 initiative is aimed at gender equality, a greater awareness of discrimination and a celebration of women’s achievements, according to the International Women’s Day website. That includes reducing the global pay gap between men and women and making sure all are equal – and balanced – in activist movements, boardrooms and beyond. – USA Today

Today, we acknowledge International Women’s Day 2019, as part of the consideration for Women’s History Month 2019. In addition to #BalanceforBetter in real life (facts), we also want to see more balance in our fiction (movies, novels and comic books).

Life imitating art; art imitating life.

In honor of International Women’s Day 2019, the media conglomerate Disney Pictures is releasing a new film Captain Marvel under their subsidiary Marvel Studios – Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This live-action movie – see Trailer below – renders the comic book superhero Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, in a powerful role where she has to overcome immense odds to protect, promote and empower balance and peace in the galaxy. Forgive the spoiler, but in the film, Carol Danvers begins fighting  for the Kree against the Skrulls, has to endure a hero’s journey in which she learns the truth of herself, her friends and her enemies. In the end, she helps and support the Skrulls; she fights for balance and in pursuit of the Greater Good!

The confluence of Marvel (MCU) and International Women’s Day is the theme of this feature article here:

Title: On International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the women of Marvel, from Black Widow to Captain Marvel
Subtitle: For International Women’s Day and Month, women across CBS Interactive have teamed up to spotlight the fierce ladies pushing Marvel ahead, both on and off screen.
By: Rebecca Fleenor, Caitlin Petrakovitz

Black Widow takes out a room of men — while tied to a chair. Gamora wins an electric sword fight with her sister Nebula. Okoye points a spear at her own husband after he charges her down on a rhino. The women of Marvel, needless to say, are fearless.

CBS Interactive, which CNET is part of, is celebrating the March 8 release of Captain Marvel, and all of International Women’s Month, by highlighting the powerful women of Marvel movies and shows. We’re focusing not only on the incredible women of the MCU, but also on Marvel comics and their impact on pop culture.

Multiple CBS sites have come together to produce this special report on the women of the Marvel universe. CNET has a mega-bracket showdown of powerful women; Entertainment Tonight is profiling prominent women behind and in front of the camera; and TV Guide will look ahead at the future of Marvel’s strong characters on the small screen.

Highlighting the scope of talented women who work at CBS Interactive, women throughout the company wrote, edited and produced every article, gallery and video in this collection — from our long-running compendium of Marvel movies to our roundtable of women talking about more strong ladies and our Q&A with Danai Gurira, Black Panther’s General Okoye, for CNET Magazine.

Captain Marvel sets the stage
Brie Larson stars as Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, the 21st MCU movie now open around the world. For anyone unfamiliar with Captain Marvel’s backstory, check out GameSpot’s comic book history of Captain Marvel. CNET’s Patricia Puentes called the film “two hours of pure female empowerment packaged with all the visual power you’d expect from a Marvel blockbuster.”

Additionally, Entertainment Tonight‘s Meredith B. Kile reviewed Captain Marvel, noting that its “origin-story-in-reverse structure allows Captain Marvel to do away with many of the more overdone origin story tropes.” As the film opens, GameSpot will feature more explainers, spoilers, and breakdowns of how Captain Marvel (and those post-credits scenes!) will tie into Avengers: Endgame.

International Women’s Month
The first National Women’s Day was observed in the United States all the way back in 1909, many years before we’d celebrate Women’s History Month. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter declared the week of March 8 to be National Women’s History Week, and by 1987, Congress had passed a statute designating March as Women’s History Month. We continue to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. Did we mention one or 100 times that’s the day Captain Marvel, the first female-led film in the entire MCU, comes out?

Since the ’90s, the United Nations has focused on an annual theme for International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is “Think equal, build smart, innovate for change.” That’s why it feels appropriate for us to look to the women of Marvel who’ve been working in innovative ways, both on screen and off screen, to get more seats at the franchise’s proverbial table.

Women of the MCU making magic 
Captain Marvel may be taking the lead right now, but many other women have been key to making magic happen in the Marvel universe. CNET’s Patricia Puentes talked to costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who just won an Oscar for costume design for Black Panther. Entertainment Tonight looks at the women of Wakanda, aka all the women behind Black Panther, making Oscar history. And there’ll be much, much more Marvel flying your way.

Source: C-NET.com – Posted and retrieved March 8, 2019 from: https://www.cnet.com/news/celebrating-the-women-of-marvel-from-black-widow-to-captain-marvel-international-womens-day/

This – relevance of fictional heroes impacting real life – is a familiar theme for the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We have published a lot of media advocating for balance and the Greater Good. We have even published many previous Go Lean commentaries that reviewed superhero films; see a sample list here:

These prior commentaries portray how the Caribbean also need heroes and sheroes to impact our real communities – the facts, not just the fiction. This means protecting, promoting and empowering the sisters, mothers and daughters in our society. Our status quo is lacking …

Without the appropriate female empowerment, many of our sisters, mothers and daughters leave the homeland to seek refuge else where – one reports states 70 percent of our tertiary educated citizens have already left and live abroad. It is understandable, justifiable and viable that they would have left; our governing engines continue to double-down of female-dishonoring policies.

We need to stop … and fight these bad orthodoxies. It is so heroic of our Caribbean women who have returned and those who contemplate doing so. We need them! We want them back!

Many women fight the bad orthodoxies in society; they challenge us to overcome obstacles and positively impact our communities. This is a continuation of this series of commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is part 4 of 6 for Women History Month; this series addresses how one woman can make a difference in society; and how society can make a difference for women; other commentaries in this series include these entries:

1. Women History Month 2019: Thoughts, Feelings, Speech and Actions
2. Women History Month 2019: Viola Desmond – The Rosa Parks of Canada
3. Women History Month 2019: Kamala Harris – Caribbean Legacy to the White House?
4. Women History Month 2019: Captain Marvel – We need “Sheroes”
5. Women History Month 2019: Ellevest CEO: Sallie Krawcheck
6. Women History Month 2019: Accepting Black Women As Is

As related in the foregoing, the United Nations designates the annual theme for International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is “Think equal, build smart, innovate for change.” The foregoing article continues:

“That’s why it feels appropriate for us to look to the women of Marvel who’ve been working in innovative ways, both on screen and off screen, to get more seats at the franchise’s proverbial table”.

Ditto … for the Caribbean.

We need more heroes and sheroes … to help us make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix VIDEO – TRAILER: Captain Marvel (2019)  – https://youtu.be/_tnGmshDB4I

FilmSelect Trailer

Published on Dec 3, 2018 – Trailer 2 for Marvel Studios CAPTAIN MARVEL

Release date: March 8, 2019

Category: Entertainment