Africa is still terra incognita

WHEN did Africa become so hip? It seems that everywhere one turns these days there is some pop cultural reference to the continent. There’s Oprah opening a school for girls in South Africa, Madonna’s controversial adoption of a baby boy from Malawi and Angelina Jolie giving birth to her own child in Namibia, after having adopted another child from Ethiopia a few years ago. George Clooney and his father Nick’s new documentary, “Journey to Darfur,” is sure to generate even more attention for the genocide in western Sudan.

For all Africa’s currency, though, we’re still seeing the same representations that we’ve encountered in the past, images of a continent that’s primitive, dangerous, corrupt and in much need of Western benevolence and/or pity. Yet the modern cycle of Africa images, which stretches from the TV miniseries “Roots” 30 years ago through famine in Ethiopia and the end of apartheid in South Africa, emerged in an era that seemed to offer hope for more. With increasing media saturation, there was potential for more depth and nuance.

But the cameras largely moved from crisis to crisis, and in the end, the coverage only reinforced the long-standing Western stereotype of Africa as the “dark continent.” In this regard, there was the ominous-sounding mention of Africa as the place where Saddam Hussein had supposedly tried to buy yellowcake uranium in the now infamous “16 words” from President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address.

Still, if nothing else, the proliferation of these political, humanitarian and pop cultural images has created a larger awareness of Africa. Especially since Hollywood got the Africa memo.

A number of films about Africa are getting their fair share of attention these days. Forest Whitaker has won a Golden Globe award for his uncanny portrayal of former Ugandan strongman Idi Amin in “The Last King of Scotland.” Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou star in “Blood Diamond,” a film about the global politics of war and violence surrounding “conflict diamonds.” And all three have just picked up Oscar nominations. Rachel Weisz won the Academy Award a year ago for best supporting actress in “The Constant Gardener,” a film about the corrupt and deadly practices of a large pharmaceutical company on unsuspecting Africans. Don Cheadle got an Oscar nomination for his turn as Paul Rusesabagina, an earnest hotel manager trying to save lives in war-torn Rwanda, in the 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda.” The evil of apartheid in the days before Mandela’s release was the subject of the recent Phillip Noyce film, “Catch a Fire.”

This recent round of Hollywood films finds itself affirming many of the stereotypes of the past, but it also suggests that there’s potential for imagining Africa differently -- once we get a clear idea of what Hollywood’s “Africa” is all about.

When dealing with Africa it is important to point out what should be obvious: Africa is a continent, not a country. The religious, racial, cultural and economic differences that divide the continent make any attempts to create a monolithic sense of Africa an exercise in futility.

But a film such as “The Constant Gardener,” for example, confuses the issue because even though it’s set in Kenya, this is in no way obvious. Early in the film, Weisz’s character, Tessa, boldly asks the diplomat played by Ralph Fiennes if she can go to “Africa” with him. While saying “Africa” as opposed to saying “Kenya” may seem insignificant to some, it helps erase the reality that each nation is unique.

Tessa’s “Africa” is a mythical landscape where the West can create its own self-serving narratives under the guise of representing a foreign land. This sort of “one size fits all” representation attempts to bring an entire continent down to size so it can assume its place in the Western imagination. And often what we witness as a result is a projection of America’s ideas and images, with Africa serving as an elaborate set against which to screen its fantasies.

Where are the Africans?

IN several of these films, Africa serves as the exotic backdrop for romance between various characters, primarily the white ones. The scandal involving the large pharmaceutical company in “The Constant Gardener” is tied up in a seductively complicated relationship between a husband and wife (Fiennes and Weisz) and one of his diplomatic colleagues. In “Blood Diamond,” a journalist (Jennifer Connelly) and a diamond mercenary (DiCaprio) are unable to consummate a relationship, though her article on conflict diamonds helps to solidify his character’s martyred status.

“The Last King of Scotland” is most extreme in this romantic regard, as it foregrounds James McAvoy, who plays Amin’s Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, the fictional character whose point of view illuminates the film. Even before the opening credits have ended, Garrigan has already engaged in some “wild jungle love” with one of the “natives” he meets on the bus shortly after his arrival in Uganda. He later finds himself enthralled with the wife of a colleague and ultimately sleeps with one of Amin’s wives. Africa is for lovers, it seems.

But is Africa for Africans? “Blood Diamond” and “Hotel Rwanda” feature Hounsou and Cheadle, respectively, as African characters unwittingly caught up in the violent conflicts that surround them. Both characters are so perfectly earnest and selfless in the interest of saving their families and others that they come across less as characters than as human substitutes for self-righteous lessons on liberal morality.

The historical effect of European colonialism on the continent ripples through these films. Amin learned many of his brutal tactics from his British colonizers, and throughout “The Last King of Scotland,” he is shadowed by an eerily suspicious and somewhat cartoonish British agent of rather dubious origin. We are told in “Blood Diamond” that it was the British colonizers who began the practice of cutting off arms, a practice continued by the rebels who police the diamond mines in the film. In “Hotel Rwanda,” we learn that the Belgian colonizers created the ethnic divisions of Hutu and Tutsi, which are engaged in the film’s bloody conflict.

But it’s not always easy to make the connection between the colonized past and the corruption that seems to define the present moment. Colonialism thoroughly exploited the continent and left a culture of chaos and dysfunction in its wake. Those who inherited the chaotic, dysfunctional landscape were left to find a new way forward, and being subordinated in their own land for so long, they cobbled together situations that often went from bad to worst.

Yet the films fail to make these colonial connections clear enough. So we’re simply left with Amin’s brutal tactics as the work of his own demented psyche, instead of seeing how the British played a major role in helping to create this monster in the first place.

In “Blood Diamond,” young boys who have been kidnapped serve as the murderous soldiers who terrorize any and every thing they come in contact with. The Brits long gone, there’s no sense of historical context. Instead, the boys’ heinous acts are attributed solely to the maniacal, eye patch-wearing rebel leader in charge of them. Though these films may allude to a colonial history, it is clear in these representations that the culpability for the contemporary mess lies exclusively with the Africans.

Which brings us back to “The Last King of Scotland,” which is dominated by Whitaker’s performance. Whitaker’s Amin is at once charming, captivating, sinister and dangerous, often moving through these multiple stages in the same conversation. Whitaker’s nuanced performance represents Amin in all of his complexities and contradictions, and it is this performance that allows us to ignore the many shortcomings of the movie itself, especially the “white man in Africa” point of view that is used to frame the film. Such a performance leaves the impression that it is indeed Whitaker’s film and all else is an afterthought.

Some within the African American community may complain that honors for Whitaker are tainted because he plays such a heinous character. Yet Whitaker’s intellectual rendering of the good, the bad and the ugly of Amin is eminently more thorough and compelling than the lifeless, cardboard cutout morality of the characters played by Hounsou and Cheadle.

Beyond box office

ULTIMATELY, one asks: Why all of this attention to Africa, and why now? Well, in a flat world where globalization forces even Hollywood to consider new foreign markets in light of declining domestic box office returns, films about Africa tap a resource that has to this point been underexploited and stand to draw audiences in both the land of the former colonizers and that of the formerly colonized.

And box office concerns aside, that Africa has for so long been ignored in and by the West means that now is as good a time as any. All this new interest is far from the answer to all of Africa’s many woes, but the recognition it brings to a continent in need of all our attention is perhaps, at least, a start.

But if we are to ever see a truly evolved portrait of Africa, we must first recognize the potential that lies between the extremes of brutal dictators and victimized saints. That potential has to do with examining stories about real people in all of their human complexities and contradictions without looking through the patronizing lens of Western condescension. The good will inherent to many of these recent humanitarian efforts can inspire a certain hopefulness that one day we’ll see something more representative of the real Africa on screen. But the films themselves clearly remind us that we’re not quite there.

Boyd is a professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.