I Can See Clearly Now: Jimmy Cliff, Cool Runnings, and the Case for Appropriate Development
Posted on | August 20, 2026 | No Comments
Citation APA (7th Edition)
Pennings, A.J. (2026, Aug 20) I Can See Clearly Now: Jimmy Cliff, Cool Runnings, and the Case for Appropriate Development. apennings.com https://apennings.com/political-economy-of-media/i-can-see-clearly-now-jimmy-cliff-cool-runnings-and-the-case-for-appropriate-development/
Introduction
I often use a song to set a theme for my classes. For my EST 230 – Information and Communications Technology for Sustainable Development, I chose Jimmy Cliff’s exuberant recording of “I Can See Clearly Now” that became inseparable from the 1993 film Cool Runnings.
In the movie’s final stretch and closing credits, the song’s declaration, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone… It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day,” plays over images of the Jamaican bobsled team. What looks like a simple feel-good and fun montage is, on closer inspection, a compact statement about the strivings of developing countries and the meaning of appropriate development.
The Song’s Emotional Architecture
Johnny Nash wrote and first recorded “I Can See Clearly Now” in 1972; Jimmy Cliff’s version later carried it into the Cool Runnings soundtrack and popular memory. The lyrics move from obstruction to clarity. Rain and dark clouds stand for hardship, doubt, and external barriers. Once they lift, the singer claims not just relief but vision and forward motion.
The tone is neither naïve nor triumphalist; it is earned optimism. Obstacles were real. They have been endured and, in some measure, overcome. The future is now legible. That emotional arc maps readily onto the experience of many postcolonial and developing societies in the late twentieth century. Long periods of structural constraint followed by moments of agency and self-definition.
Cool Runnings tells the story of the Jamaican bobsled team that competed at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. Four athletes from a Caribbean island with no snow, no bobsled tradition, and limited resources enter one of the most expensive and technically demanding winter sports.
They face mockery, bureaucratic resistance, equipment failures, and their own inexperience. They do not win a medal. They do finish the event with dignity, having adapted their approach, most famously the explosive push-start that played to their sprinting strengths, and having represented their country on a global stage.
The film is comic and crowd-pleasing, yet its underlying proposition is serious. A developing country need not accept the roles assigned to it by climate, history, or the expectations of richer nations. It can enter domains previously closed to it. Success is measured not only by podium finishes but by the act of competent participation and the preservation of self-respect.
Appropriate Development, Not Imitation
“Appropriate development” (and its cousin, “appropriate technology”) insists that progress should fit local conditions, resources, skills, and culture rather than simply transplanting the capital-intensive models of the industrialized world. Cool Runnings dramatizes this principle.
The Jamaicans do not pretend to be Swiss or East German teams with decades of infrastructure and funding. They invent a method suited to what they actually possess: speed, teamwork, courage, and a willingness to look ridiculous in the short term. Their sled and technique are improvised and imperfect, yet functional enough to compete. The film rejects both fatalism (“people like us don’t do this”) and uncritical mimicry (“we must become exactly like them”). Instead, it offers adaptive ingenuity, using global rules and venues while remaining recognizably themselves.
This is a durable template for technology and development policy. Importing the most advanced Western systems wholesale often fails when maintenance capacity, energy reliability, spare parts, or cultural fit are missing. Building on existing strengths like agricultural knowledge, local materials, community organization, and educational capacity, while selectively adopting external tools tends to produce more resilient results. The Jamaican bobsledders embody that logic in sporting form.
Sustainable Striving Rather Than Dependency
The song and film together reject two opposite errors. One is resignation: the rain will never stop, so there is no point looking ahead. The other is the fantasy that a single dramatic leap will erase all structural problems. Cliff’s vocal and the team’s arc insist on clarity after struggle, not the absence of struggle. Development is portrayed as ongoing work that requires realism about constraints and confidence that those constraints are not destiny.
In the context of the “Third World” discourse of the 1980s and 1990s, this message carried political weight. Many countries were navigating structural adjustment, technological gaps, and the cultural pressure of globalization. Cool Runnings suggested that entry into global arenas could be authentic rather than derivative, and that dignity was compatible with underdog status. The bright sunshiny day is not the end of history; it is the recovered ability to see and to act.
Enduring Relevance
Decades later, the pairing of song and film still resonates because the underlying tension remains. Developing countries continue to face the choice between passive insertion into systems designed elsewhere and active, selective engagement that preserves agency. Climate adaptation, digital infrastructure, renewable energy, and industrial policy all raise the same question the Jamaican team faced: how to compete and cooperate on terms that fit actual capacities while refusing to accept permanent second-class status.
“I Can See Clearly Now,” placed over the images of Cool Runnings, is therefore more than soundtrack optimism. It is a concise cultural argument for appropriate development: clear-eyed about obstacles, inventive in response, proud of origins, and oriented toward a future that local people themselves help define. The rain is real. So is the possibility of seeing past it.
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Not to be considered financial advice. AI is often used, and results are thoroughly interrogated. Links are used for some citations.
Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.
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Professor (full) at State University of New York (SUNY) Korea since 2016. Research Professor for Stony Brook University. Moved to Austin, Texas in August 2012 to join the Digital Media Management program at St. Edwards University. Spent the previous decade on the faculty at New York University teaching and researching information systems, digital economics, and global political economy
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