To show the world as it is, or as it is not: the gaze of Hollywood films about Africa

Abstract

This paper discusses the nature of Hollywood's ‘gaze’ on Africa. The focus is on the import of the claim that the film Hotel Rwanda (Terry George 2004) is based on a true story – and therefore is somehow ‘true’. Indeed, the film appears to be based on a mode of seeing that is constructed to show the 1994 Rwandan genocide as it is supposed to have happened. I argue that the attempt to make ‘truthful’ films is illogical. It is illogical because it is based on an elemental misunderstanding of the function of cinematic images. The function of cinematic images is to communicate specific ways – gazes – of seeing the world. Behind every film, then, is a gaze, or a conscious attempt to see the world in a certain way. Gazes are not objective, nor do they really need to be. Rather, gazes are part of communities of meaning that have no inherent validity, but must of necessity be contested, celebrated, or fought over. Gazes not only imply a source and a sender, but have never had the capacity to show the world as it is. In any case, truth – whatever it is – cannot fit a cinematic frame, but merely exceeds it. Film texts that purport to be able to project Africa ‘believably’, ‘realistically’ and ‘truthfully’ are either carelessly mistaken, or simply working a deception.

Keywords:

• Hollywood
• Africa
• Hotel Rwanda
• representation
• truth
• reality
• ideology
• ideological function
• overprovision
• filmic function
• myth
• stereotype
• Hutu
• Tutsi
• genocide

Notes

1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Rwanda.

2. Apparently, such fixating happens in spite of the fact that films, by their filmic nature, are not fixed or sacrosanct objects.

3. Films are made possible, among other things, by the work of people's gazes. The arbitrariness of the image essentially means that it does not belong to anyone in particular. It is ‘free’ to use. Meanings can therefore be let to proliferate and be contested and celebrated in a range of contexts. The pleasure or displeasure of the text is maximised through and during such contestations.

4. Indeed, any attempts at re-inventing cinema may have to concern themselves not only with slaying Hollywood's dragons and dwarfs, but must also suggest concrete ways for using the filmic function in diverse ways, especially to question the notion of the world ‘as it is’, or status quo.

5. In Rwanda's patrilineal tradition, of course, Paul is correct to say that he is Hutu – even though born to a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother – because, officially, he is one. It is an interesting fact, however, that, because he has both Hutu and Tutsi ‘blood’ in him, his identity is in reality more hybrid than essential. Not only does this fact help further explain why the real Paul Rusesabagina may have decided to ‘save’ Tutsis – his mother's people – but it also brings up a contradiction: if Paul is not a ‘straight’ Hutu, where does that leave his identity? If Oskar Schindler in Spielberg's Schindler's list (1993) were half-Jewish, for instance, would that take away most of the drama of saving Jews from the Gestapo and the SS?

6. See http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue = 13470&article = 4910.

7. See, for instance, Jeff Otto's interview with both Rusesabagina and Cheadle on http://movies.ign.com/articles/574/574554p2.html, or Julia M. Klein's interview with Rusesabagina on http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2006/05/paul_rusesabagina.html

8. Sobchak and Sobchak (1987, pp. 9–10) argue that: ‘Such editorial techniques as matching action, cutting on action, or taking advantage of characters’ sight lines are part of the Hollywood Standard, constituting the staple editorial conventions of classical cinema – and all are used to engage us with the story and disengage us from the way it is being produced'.