Could You Be A Little Less Black For The Camera?
I have just finished watching the documentary "Shake Hands With The Devil", which serves as a companion piece to Romeo Dallaire's book of the same name. It chronicles the Rwandan genocide on the occasion of the 10th anniversary, and Dallaire's first trip back to that country.
I don't know why, but I'm somewhat obsessed with the Rwandan nightmare, and the events that surrounded it. I bought Dallaire's book in hardcover in its first week on the shelves, I read transcripts of the international tribunals and genocide trials, I consume information whenever I come across it. It doesn't make sense - I have been alive through scores of "crimes against humanity", there is a different nightmare every time I look up, and yet this is the one that has marred and marked me in a way I can't explain. I have probably spent more time studying what happened in Rwanda than anyone I know (and when I say "know" I mean in my immediate circle) and yet I know absolutely nothing. I know no more than is accessible in news clips and empty recitations of facts. Even when immersing myself in it, I am only reminded that I know nothing about it, and could repeat almost none of what I know to anyone who asked me. And still it feels indelible.
Something about the whole portrayal of these events in Western media disturbs me terribly. A country in crisis was ignored, a colonized history that cleaved them in two shrugged off by the ones responsible for it, and the horrific deaths of 800000 people essentially chalked up to the erasable blackboard of history. Children were hacked to pieces appendage by appendage in front of their parents, mothers were raped and macheted slowly in front of their children. But what do I hear in the media when it reflects on these events today? I hear the story of a white western general and how he nearly lost his mind because of what he endured in Rwanda. The documentaries are about him, the in-depth looks at the horrors of war repeat his post-mission emotional devastation, the close-ups are all of him as we see his haunted look. We think: what has this terrible human butchery wrought upon this man?
This man. I take nothing away from Dallaire and what he experienced in Rwanda. But I cannot fail to note that he is the person of interest, not those who endure these memories every day because it happened to their mother, father, sister, child - to them. We hear how he must take pills and go to therapy to manage to move on - where are the stories about what the actual individuals who were being stalked and butchered must do to survive today? Where are their books? Why do I not know their names? Why is the name on the book flying off the shelves "Romeo Dallaire" and not "President Paul Kagame"? As leader of the RPF, as a Tutsi, as a man who saw his community, family, troops and friends being exterminated, are his words not the ones we should be beating down doors to get? Has a western publisher given him an advance to tell his story?
It saddens me to realize that, in the now-effortless lamenting of the sins of the western world for not caring about a nation largely because its citizens are black and poor, we are still only interested in the white guy's take on the story, and our hearts still bleed for the white guy's suffering today. If Dallaire were not so dedicated to ensuring that the Rwandan story is heard, and such an unwittingly tragic (thus ultimately romantic) figure, would anyone really talk about it again? Would I have seen a documentary on it tonight? Would the Sundance Film Festival theatres be full? In the end, we are listening because it is a white western man's voice speaking and we are disinterested in seeking the black voices of the people this happened to. Even in our remembrance we repeat the crime.
Nice to see how well we learn.
I don't know why, but I'm somewhat obsessed with the Rwandan nightmare, and the events that surrounded it. I bought Dallaire's book in hardcover in its first week on the shelves, I read transcripts of the international tribunals and genocide trials, I consume information whenever I come across it. It doesn't make sense - I have been alive through scores of "crimes against humanity", there is a different nightmare every time I look up, and yet this is the one that has marred and marked me in a way I can't explain. I have probably spent more time studying what happened in Rwanda than anyone I know (and when I say "know" I mean in my immediate circle) and yet I know absolutely nothing. I know no more than is accessible in news clips and empty recitations of facts. Even when immersing myself in it, I am only reminded that I know nothing about it, and could repeat almost none of what I know to anyone who asked me. And still it feels indelible.
Something about the whole portrayal of these events in Western media disturbs me terribly. A country in crisis was ignored, a colonized history that cleaved them in two shrugged off by the ones responsible for it, and the horrific deaths of 800000 people essentially chalked up to the erasable blackboard of history. Children were hacked to pieces appendage by appendage in front of their parents, mothers were raped and macheted slowly in front of their children. But what do I hear in the media when it reflects on these events today? I hear the story of a white western general and how he nearly lost his mind because of what he endured in Rwanda. The documentaries are about him, the in-depth looks at the horrors of war repeat his post-mission emotional devastation, the close-ups are all of him as we see his haunted look. We think: what has this terrible human butchery wrought upon this man?
This man. I take nothing away from Dallaire and what he experienced in Rwanda. But I cannot fail to note that he is the person of interest, not those who endure these memories every day because it happened to their mother, father, sister, child - to them. We hear how he must take pills and go to therapy to manage to move on - where are the stories about what the actual individuals who were being stalked and butchered must do to survive today? Where are their books? Why do I not know their names? Why is the name on the book flying off the shelves "Romeo Dallaire" and not "President Paul Kagame"? As leader of the RPF, as a Tutsi, as a man who saw his community, family, troops and friends being exterminated, are his words not the ones we should be beating down doors to get? Has a western publisher given him an advance to tell his story?
It saddens me to realize that, in the now-effortless lamenting of the sins of the western world for not caring about a nation largely because its citizens are black and poor, we are still only interested in the white guy's take on the story, and our hearts still bleed for the white guy's suffering today. If Dallaire were not so dedicated to ensuring that the Rwandan story is heard, and such an unwittingly tragic (thus ultimately romantic) figure, would anyone really talk about it again? Would I have seen a documentary on it tonight? Would the Sundance Film Festival theatres be full? In the end, we are listening because it is a white western man's voice speaking and we are disinterested in seeking the black voices of the people this happened to. Even in our remembrance we repeat the crime.
Nice to see how well we learn.
posted by Crowbar at 11:19 p.m.
1 Comments:
We don't learn we never learn. To learn we would have to want change and I don't see people in the streets screaming for change and I don't mean the kind you carry in your pocket.
When are we taking them all out Crowbar?
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