Representing an Icon

Robert Nesta Marley is the most influential musician of the twentieth century. He is also regarded as a philosopher, activist, and revolutionary artist. Writers and filmmakers reference Marley’s thought and music; liberation movements have drawn inspiration from his work; and his image is ubiquitous in public spaces throughout the world. Before Paramount Pictures and the Marley family produced Bob Marley: One Love (released in February 2024), there had already been numerous documentary films on him—among them, Marley (2012), directed by Kevin Macdonald, and the Kief Davidson–directed Who Shot the Sheriff? (2018)—as well as related books such as Rita Marley’s No Woman No Cry (2004), written with Hettie Jones. What do these accounts and Marley’s legendary status mean for narratives beyond documentaries and books? How does one tell a story that allows for affect, emotion, and an exploration of the human behind the legend?

In Bob Marley: One Love, directed by the Black American Reinaldo Marcus Green, the filmmakers focused on the two years spanning Marley’s escape from an assassination attempt in Jamaica in 1976, including the making of the Exodus album in England and his performance at the 1978 One Love Peace Concert in Jamaica.¹ The depictions in the filmic present are supplemented by flashbacks to Marley’s childhood and other important moments. While many critics wrote negative or mixed reviews about the film, audiences generally loved it. Bob Marley: One Love became one of the most popular movies of the start of 2024. Besides its box office success, it generated important global conversations around Marley, reggae music, and the film industry’s depictions of Jamaican stories. In this conversation, three Jamaican scholars ponder the significance of the film to our knowledge of Marley, Rastafari, and the political context in which reggae music developed. We also discuss Marley’s legacies, particularly on the contemporary Jamaican cultural and sociopolitical landscapes. This conversation took place virtually over the course of three weeks, from 23 March to 14 April 2024.

On the Film as a Work of Art

Nicosia Shakes: I think Bob Marley: One Love is a good biopic, which could inspire a more epic movie or series. I was particularly moved by how it delves into Marley’s vulnerabilities, including his childhood, his cancer diagnosis, and his reliance on Rita Marley. Its greatest strength is the actors’ performances. Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch deliver mesmerizing performances as Bob and Rita, and the supporting cast members were also excellent. The performances do much to make up for the limited scope of the story. It is relatively short at one hour, forty-seven minutes, and most biopics are over two hours long.² The effect of this was that many potentially impactful scenes are absent. For instance, the 1980 performance to mark Zimbabwe’s independence was not dramatized, though it was a monumental event in Bob’s life and, in many respects, the culmination of his anticolonial politics and Pan-Africanism.³ Artistically depicting such a climactic performance would have deepened the film’s impact.

How does the film function aesthetically for you, Maziki and Herbie?

Maziki Thame: The beauty of the film for me relates to the parts that made me uncomfortable. The images of violence and poverty moved me, including as foretelling of Jamaicans’ continuing suffering and struggles, juxtaposed against the spirituality of Rastafari and physical beauty of Jamaica. The latter no doubt draws on the notion of Jamaica as paradise, which drone footage captures and which Marley is seen to experience in the hills and by the sea.⁴ These locations represent sites of pleasure related to the spirituality of Rastafari and its potential to redeem us. The symbolic use of fire and the Rastafarian red, green, and gold, as well as the Jamaican black, green, and gold flag colors, gave voice, along with Bob’s music, to aspirations for redemption through Black Nationalist movement.⁵ This promise has no meaning outside of Jamaicans’ suffering and struggles. It was therefore deeply problematic for me that the images of violence were not contextualized as related to the revolutionary aspirations of Marley and the Jamaican people at that time. Indeed, the portrayal fits into the film’s attempts to depoliticize Marley and decenter his connection to the political left. It even equates the violence of the two political parties.⁶

Herbie Miller: Aesthetically, I enjoyed the movie. The atmosphere and soundtrack were beautifully captured. The accents were almost authentic when compared with other foreigners in movies attempting the Jamaican sound. The likeness and body language of the Marley character were close to natural; Rita was motherly and sensitive, and the actress embodied the strength and resilience of Jamaican women. The supporting cast who represented some of Bob’s inner circle could have been more developed. This was disappointing, especially thinking of what a younger audience could have learned.

I and others I spoke with experienced nostalgia and melancholy at the film’s capture of Kingston and its familiar scenes, including parts of Trench Town and 56 Hope Road, where Bob spent most of his time while home; these related to our experiences with Bob. At times, the portrayals brought tears. The scenes of Cane River, playing football, and jiving around with bredren brought back fond recollections for those of us who were part of that generation and within Bob’s circle. The movie touched us deeply. It is a commendable work of art, but it also established why some consider Bob an iconic figure and a candidate for national hero.

On Marley’s Iconicity and Complexity

NS: Often famous Black persons become icons because the public focuses on a singular character trait that signifies an aspect of the Black experience.⁷ But Marley is so multidimensional, it is hard to pin down a single appeal. He is a revolutionary, a messenger of peace, and a brand whose image and music have made many people rich, including those who control Jamaica’s tourism industry. The film largely focuses on him as a messenger of peace to Jamaicans. This meant there was limited exploration of his human flaws and of some central conflicts, such as his separation from Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, founding members of the Wailers.⁸ Granted, the film touches passingly on Bob’s extramarital affairs, and we see him attack his manager, Don Taylor, for overcharging the promoters of the African tour and pocketing the extra cash. However, sometimes the character reminded me of Brother Man in Roger Mais’s 1954 novel of the same name, wherein the Rastafarian protagonist is a Christ-like figure. This approach produced the fictional scene in which Bob forgives his attempted murderer. His militant anticolonial politics and Pan-Africanism are also somewhat downplayed.

Yet there were some beautiful moments when the film embraced this view of him as a near-divine messenger and blended it with his vulnerabilities. For example, Bob has a recurring vision of being chased as a child through a burning cane field by a man on horseback. The cane field is an obvious reference to slavery, and at first we think the man is his neglectful White father. In the third act, before he goes onstage at the One Love Peace Concert, he has the vision again, and the man is revealed to be Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. He places young Bob on the horse, and they ride off into a beautiful valley. This scene showed the aesthetic power of exploring Marley as a conflicted messenger through Rastafarian iconography. However, the filmmakers seem to have chosen that image of him over his image as a militant revolutionary artist, when in reality the two are inextricable.

I’m curious about what others think of the film’s focus on Bob as an icon.

HM: Many have criticized the biopic for not focusing on several events around Bob’s life. But Bob’s story is too complex to capture in one film. Bob’s iconicity pivots between his music, Rastafari philosophy, social politics, personal life, revolutionary spirit, his crusade for peace—alignments and contradictions, symbolic of his complex persona. In addition to the earthly pleasures he enjoyed, Bob was an anticolonialist, a Pan-Africanist with a Garvey-esque fixation for Black Nationalism and equality. He was a freedom fighter whose battle was not racially exclusive but universally inclusive; above all, he was a staunch humanist, attributes vaguely captured in the film. While the film portrays Bob as an emissary of peace—and indeed he was—he also understood that in many cases, peace comes after revolution. We hear that in the lyric, “I and I a liberate Zimbabwe,” and that until all African nations are liberated, the “continent will not know peace,” there will be “war.” He also said, “I feel like bombing a church,” “Kill, cramp, and paralyze all weak heart conceptions,” “Drive them out of creation”; “I shot the Sheriff” and “If a fire, mek it burn, and if a blood, mek it run.” Add to that, “We got lightning, thunder, brimstone and fire.” These are fighting words, among many more lyrics of resistance, including calls for revolution. Yet a peaceful world was also Bob’s pursuit, as expressed in many songs and brought to a climax in his anthem, “One Love.”

On Gender

NS: Alongside Bob, Rita Marley is the film’s central character, and she is depicted as his advisor, confidante, and loyal companion, even at risk to her life and happiness. What do you think of the film’s gender dynamics, and its depiction of Bob Marley’s masculinity?

HM: Bob was physical. He challenged everyone and anyone fearlessly. At times he greeted friends by bumping chests, a sign of toughness. He stepped with his chest pressed outward, wore a screwface, jived a lot, and played football hard. He was the Skipper, the Gong, the Tuff Gong. And yet he had a way with women. He was a lady’s man—gentle, tender, charismatic, and caring. Nightclubbing at Turntable and Dizzy, dancing and fun loving, he was just another guy, never exalting, no ego trips.

MT: Jamaican masculinity is on display throughout the film, not through the figure of the womanizing Marley but through the confident expression of Black masculinity of all those around him and of Bob himself. I thought this portrayal captured the beauty and swag of Jamaican men. But the emphasis on romantic love in the film should give us pause. There is a distinction between the 1970s vision of “one love” as a counter to political tribalism, a route to peace, and a force for humanization of especially Black people, and its use in the film. The transformation of one love to a commercialized vision of Jamaica that has been offered to tourists is adopted in the film’s aesthetic and its portrayal of the intimate partner love of Rita and Bob, which is also consistent with the focus on the Exodus album. Mike Alleyne points out that as an expression of the influence of Island Records’s bid for global appeal, Marley’s Exodus album contained more love songs than his other albums. He says this had gendered implications in the use of love as sexual aura.⁹ But love replaces sex in the film. It represents an idealization of the nuclear family that displaces a more nuanced, popular appreciation of Bob as a sex symbol who fathered children with many women This allows the film to exclusively anchor Rita and her children to Bob. But it also centers the iconicity of Bob as “saint,” as beyond social and political scrutiny.

Rita’s central role as spiritual guide to Bob’s Rastafarianism, as a sometimes mother to him, and as a depoliticizing agent who pushes him to be a spiritual over a political messenger is both affirming of our hopes to uplift Black women and problematic. Bob and Rita’s joining through the strength of their faith is inspiring but required greater nuance, including Bob’s involvement in everyday politics. The portrayal of their romance hid the reality of gender power of the day. The scene where Rita claims space for herself and slaps Bob seems out of sorts with popular knowledge of him and his treatment of her, captured in her own autobiography, though it is consistent with an attempt to redeem her power. The emphasis on the nuclear family is also problematic because it hides Rita’s acceptance of Bob’s other children, which is common in Jamaica and a representation of the retention of African communal mothering practices.

HM: Rita symbolizes the traditional wife. She endured much. Despite the women Bob pursued and who threw themselves at him, that trait [as a womanizer] was not unique to Bob, particularly as he became an international star. Many, if not most, Jamaican women accepted that phallocentric attitude by their men. They lived with it, some even taking in their husband’s “outside pikni,” believing in keeping the family together and thinking that in the long run, their man would be exclusively theirs, if even only in old age. So Rita didn’t rock the boat; she was in for the long haul, and didn’t she win?

NS: Regarding that scene depicting a fight between Rita and Bob: I wish the filmmakers had done more than have Rita provide exposition about the extramarital affairs. They could have at least included scenes that visually hinted at sexual activity with some of the many women he is shown meeting. A major controversy on social media concerned the limited depiction of Cindy Breakspeare, one of Bob’s girlfriends and mother to Damian Marley. Many people who favored this limited depiction were frustrated with the way the media has for years provided a racially tone-deaf platform for Breakspeare (who is White) to talk about their relationship, as against the other women Bob had children with (who are Black), and with the continuing disrespect toward Rita. Others thought Breakspeare’s relationship with him was long enough to merit inclusion. However, I think complaints about particular individuals’ rights to inclusion ignore the fact that this is essentially Rita and Bob’s story. There were other key people who are missing or not central in the film. Second to Bob and Rita, Bob’s mostly male creative team is centered. This is consistent with the story; however, I noticed that the other members of the I-Threes—Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths—though present, barely speak.¹⁰ Perhaps a film on Rita would give them more of a voice.

On the 1970s, Marley’s and the Film’s Impacts, and Authenticity

NS: Herbie, you have been integrally involved in the development of reggae, and you knew Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, and most of the main people depicted in the film. Also, Neville Garrick is your cousin. Is there any authenticity to the story? And any significant fabrications?

HM: While the biopic is generally authentic, there were some excesses and missing pieces. It was surprising that of the three or so scenes when football was being played, at no time was Bob’s friend and business associate Allan “Skill” Cole, arguably Jamaica’s most outstanding football player and Bob’s closest confidant, depicted. Also, I do not believe the idea of the soundtrack for the 1960 movie Exodus is the source of inspiration for Marley’s song of the same name. The slap from Rita, while not unbelievable, appears fictionalized, especially because she has documented Bob’s aggression toward her in her autobiography without any such retaliation. Throughout my time around Bob, Bunny, and Peter, sharing and hearing stories of how badly they were treated by producers, including Coxsone Dodd, no mention was ever made that Dodd pulled a gun on the Wailers. No one else, as far as I know, who chronicled the Wailers’ history has mentioned any such thing either.

There is also more to be said about Bob’s advocacy and benevolence and his connections to Michael Manley. We would understand better the attempted assassination if the Smile Jamaica Concert was contextualized within the politics of the day. Before that the Wailers—Bob, Peter, and Bunny—were headliners on a series of bandwagon performances around the island that brought Manley’s People’s National Party to power in 1972. They also performed with Marvin Gaye at the Carib Theatre and the National Stadium in 1974—concerts organized by the Manley government, particularly the housing minister, Anthony “Tony” Spaulding, to benefit the Trench Town Sports Complex in his constituency, where the Wailers came of age.

NS: Maziki, are there lessons from Bob Marley’s story beyond this film and a reexamination of the 1970s to understanding contemporary Jamaican political culture and praxis?

MT: The 1970s was a period of national political movement in Jamaica. Marley’s revolutionary message (emerging out of the communalism of Rastafari) was both aligned with left politics, and a driver of the consciousness of the day. Critically, collectivism was an important reference point. The film tells a story of the rise of Marley to stardom consolidated in Europe, independent of Tosh and Bunny Wailer and decoupled from collective thought in creating his message. I believe the film’s lens is more suited to neoliberal, brand-oriented understandings of individual success than the communal character of the 1970s, Rasta, and visions of Black liberation. It presents Marley as an individual peacemaker rather than a participant in a grassroots process leading to the One Love Peace Concert. For me this is a tremendous failure, cemented by the film’s ending at the One Love concert with footage of the symbolic joining of the hands of Manley and Edward Seaga because we know that that moment does not usher in the peace Marley hoped for and there is more to be said.¹¹

Such a telling is consistent with upholding the status quo of the present. If the film were telling a story of Marley in the context of a grassroots and collectivist effort, we would have to deal with Bob in relation to Tosh and Bunny; the role of community in making music; Gabon and Zimbabwe as against the European tour;¹² and the One Love concert as emerging from the grassroots peace movement. We would not have seen a story of Manley and Seaga and Black men shooting guns at each other in the streets of Kingston without context. The focus on the three men is part of the orientation to study history as the creation of individual men who, in the Caribbean, are meant to be our saviors.¹³ The lens of individual success robs us of the possibility of locating the I and I, the humanizing impulse of Bob and Rastafari as means to imagine alternatives in and to the political present.

On the Broader Industry Context

MT: Nicosia, how would you assess the film in relation to the broader Hollywood and Jamaican film industries?

The film set a high standard for how non-Jamaicans can portray a Jamaican story, and this could resonate in and beyond Hollywood. (It helped that members of the Marley family were producers, even if their involvement limited the scope of the story.) This is the first Hollywood film to show significant respect for Jamaican language and accents; most other depictions have bordered on caricature (e.g., in Cool Runnings [1993]; and How Stella Got Her Groove Back  [1998]).¹⁴ Jamaican broadcaster Fae Ellington and linguist Joseph Farquharson, among others, were hired to coach and advise the actors on language.¹⁵ Also, many of the actors in the film are Jamaican born and raised. The list includes Sheldon Shepherd, who plays Neville Garrick, and Quan-Dajai Henriques, who plays a young adult Bob. Others, like Lashana Lynch, who played Rita Marley, have Jamaican parentage, though they were born abroad. The casting of Kingsley Ben-Adir, a Black British actor, to play Bob was controversial because of Marley’s stature, his rootedness in Jamaican culture, and Jamaicans’ reverence for him. Hollywood’s history of mostly casting non-Jamaicans in Jamaican roles is partly indicative of the limited access Jamaican actors have in US film networks. But ultimately, nationality could not be a major casting criterion, given how much the film relied on the main actor’s skill and marketability.¹⁶ Moreover, I think a more poignant question is, Why was there no Jamaican screenwriter on the team? Screenwriting and directing are key to film development, and we should appreciate those professions more. In another respect, this film belongs to the valuable repertoire of movies set in early postcolonial Jamaica, including The Harder they Come (1972), directed by Perry Henzell; Smile Orange (1976), directed by Trevor Rhone (based on the play of the same name); and Storm Saulter’s Better Mus Come (2011).

On Marley’s Enduring Legacy and Major Contributions

NS: Bob Marley contributed to taking two important creations by poor Black Jamaican people and making them global: reggae music and Rastafari. However, his most important legacy is in the way his work fully exemplified the power of art in forging and spreading revolutionary ideas around Blackness, Africanness, and racial equality.

MT: The music is the record. I read of the efforts in getting the band to Zimbabwe to celebrate its independence at the request of the Zimbabweans.¹⁷ That Africans in the bush fighting a guerrilla war against White settlers gained inspiration from Marley and his music—this descendant of enslaved Africans, speaking of the power of Black survivors in the world—reflects our promise. The film brings Marley’s music and message back to our consciousness and makes you want to disturb your neighbor with it.¹⁸

HM: To believe in yourself like he believed in himself is among Bob Marley’s legacies. After being rejected by the prosperous side of his family, Bob remained determined. He kept the Wailers going after Junior Braithwaite’s emigration to the US and, later, after the breakup with Bunny and Peter at a point when they were considered the most recognized group out of Jamaica.¹⁹ Bob never allowed that to deter him. He reconfigured the Wailers, and they became perhaps the most influential group spreading peace and love for humanity and waging a relentless resistance against oppressive forces in “high and low places” globally.²⁰

Nicosia Shakes is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced. Among her publications is Women’s Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa: Gender, Race, and Performance Space (University of Illinois Press, 2023). She has also published on theater, film, gender, and Black activism in journals and edited books.

Maziki Thame is a senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Her research and writing focus on Blackness and intersections of class and gender in political life. Her recent publications include “Sovereignty, Freedom, and the Problem of Blackness in Jamaica,” (Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2023) and, in the creative genre, “It Will Be Better before You Marry” (BIM Magazine, 2023).

Herbie Miller is a cultural historian, songwriter, producer, and sociomusicologist. As the director/curator of the Jamaica Music Museum (a division of the Institute of Jamaica), he has curated multiple exhibitions and symposia, including the flagship Grounation series, now in its fifteenth year. His influence extends far beyond academia: as a producer and as the manager of renowned reggae stars—including the Skatalites, Toots and the Maytals, Third World, and Peter Tosh.

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[1] Green and screenwriter Zach Baylin took a similar approach in King Richard (2021), the film about Richard Williams, the father of Serena and Venus Williams. Instead of telling a story beginning with the protagonist’s birth and ending in the present, the focus was on the few years in which Venus Williams rose from being an amateur player to playing her first professional match under Richard’s guidance.

[2] For example, Bohemian Rhapsody (2018; dir. Bryan Singer), about Freddie Mercury and Queen, is two hours and eighteen minutes long; Elvis (2022; dir. Baz Luhrmann) is two hours and thirty-nine minutes long; and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022; dir. Kasi Lemmons) spans two hours and twenty-four minutes.

[3] There is very brief, unclear footage of the Zimbabwe concert at the end of the film.

[4] The beach scenes are shot on Bob Marley Beach, where through the efforts of the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environment Movement there is an attempt to maintain the beach as public and to stop the displacement of Rastafarian families who have been living there, some since their earlier displacement from Back-o-Wall in the 1960s.

[5] The Jamaican flag colors are routinely worn by Jamaicans to “rep their nation,” but the Rastafarian/Ethiopian flag colors represent identification with Africa and the spirituality associated with Rasta. This harkens to the use of Rasta colors in the first major Jamaican film, The Harder They Come (1972), directed by Perry Henzell. Similarly, Spike Lee, in films such as Chi-Raq (2015), has used red, black, and green, the colors of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and associated Black Nationalism.

[6] The 1970s was marked by political violence between the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Peoples National Party (PNP). The two parties were ideologically opposed—the PNP on the political left and the JLP on the right. The violence is also associated with the presence of the CIA in Jamaica acting in the interest of the United States on the side of the JLP. PNP supporters thus also saw themselves in a battle with imperialism. US intervention was understood as an extension of cold war politics and its determination to contain the spread of communism but also as related to its management of Black radical internationalism.

[7] See Nicole Fleetwood, On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015).

[8] Winston Hubert McIntosh (Peter Tosh) and Neville Livingston (Bunny Wailer) left the Wailers around 1973, after the release of the sixth album, Burnin’.

[9] See Mike Alleyne, “Positive Vibration? Capitalist Textual Hegemony,” in Eleanor Wint and Carolyn Cooper, eds., Bob Marley: The Man and his Music (Kingston: Arawak, 2003), 18.

[10] The I-Threes, composed of Rita Marley, Judy Mowatt, and Marcia Griffiths, provided backup vocals for Bob Marley and the Wailers from 1974 to Bob’s death in 1981. In the film, Mowatt and Griffiths are played by the singers Anna-Sharé Blake (aka Sevana) and Naomi Cowan, respectively.

[11] At the time, it was hoped that the concert would put an end to political violence. Bucky Marshall and Claudie Massop, opposing political figures shown in the film, had been jailed at the same time, and there they came to their own agreements to make peace after their releases. They were part of the grassroot effort that led to the One Love Peace Concert. When Marley brought the leaders of the JLP and PNP on stage to make a symbolic gesture of unity, he no doubt hoped that this would inspire further negotiation for peace. The violence, however, continued to spiral, leading in 1980 to Jamaica’s bloodiest election. That election brought the JLP to power.

[12] The film’s focus on the European tour places Marley’s success therein and is a focus on him as a music star, overshadowing his revolutionary ethos. As a political figure, Marley was deeply invested in African liberation and saw his music as a conduit to liberation. His African performances, missing from the film, would have represented that ethos.

[13] See A. W. Singham, The Hero and the Crowd in a Colonial Polity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968); and Louis Lindsay, “The Myth of Independence: Middle-Class Politics and Non-mobilization in Jamaica,” Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies Working Paper no. 6, 1975.

[14] Directed by Jon Turteltaub and Kevin Rodney Sullivan, respectively.

[15] See Lanre Bakare, “‘We Will Not Accept Fake Patois’: Jamaican Linguist on Dialogue in Bob Marley Biopic,” Guardian, 16 February 2024; www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/16/we-will-not-accept-fake-patois-jamaican-linguist-on-dialogue-in-bob-marley-biopic.

[16] According to the director, Reinaldo Marcus Green, the casting team viewed hundreds of audition videos before selecting Ben-Adir; see “One Love: An Ethos on Film,” Life, Bob Marley special issue, March 2024, 82. Ben-Adir is a rising star in film. Among his roles is that of Malcolm X in the Regina King–directed One Night in Miami (2020), for which he won a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor.

[17] See Sifelani Tsiko, “Bob Marley: One Love Biopic Evokes a Jumble of Memories of Zim’s Independence,” Herald (Zimbabwe), 1 April 2024; https://www.herald.co.zw/bob-marley-one-love-biopic-evokes-a-jumble-of-memories-of-zims-independence.

[18] Marley sings of the power of disturbing his neighbor in Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Bad Card,” 1980.

[19] Franklin Delano Alexander “Junior” Braithwaite, an original member of the Wailers, left the group in 1964.

[20] Marley sings of fighting “spiritual wickedness in high and low places” in Bob Marley and the Wailers, “So Much Things to Say,” 1977.