Monday, December 18, 2006

Blood Diamond

Issue - when will it be OK for Black people to tell their own stories? And here I do not speak of authorship, or even representation, I speak of access to truth. If you have been to the latest Hollywood-loves-Africa spectacle, Blood Diamond, starring Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio (yes, I switched the order), you will understand one thing - no matter how much time has elapsed, it seems the Black man's story is not worth a damn without the White man's stamp.

Blood Diamond is the story of a fisher man in a small village in Sierra Leone who looses his family, unwittingly finds a most valuable and rare diamond which he soon tries to use for the benefit of reuniting his demarcated family. Or at least that is what Blood Diamond should have been. In reality it is the story of how one White, apathetic, diamond smuggler struggles to get sympathy from anyone who will listen, falls for a white journalist (because Black ones don't really exist) and learns to forgive and love himself by loving the red dirt of Africa - GAG!!

Now I have no issue with Leonardo, trust me I don't, the boy acts when he has enough meat to chew on. I only take issue with the string of "Africa stories," told through the White lens. I would not even make this entry except that it was just such and obvious fact that Hounsou's fisherman was the better lead, however his journey was perhaps 40 percent of the movie's scenes - with a kidnapping of his son by rebels, and his son's transformation into a child soldier, reduced to mere montages - while DiCaprio's smuggler gets to parade through a multitude of pointless scenes (faking appalling pidgin English in one scene) apparently being witty and brooding and proclaiming fowl acronyms like 'T.I.A' - This Is Africa. Give me a break! Don't even get me started on the Black female voice in this story - it doesn't exist. The only Black women we see are, wailing, screaming, or prostitues. Accurate depiction right?!

Perhaps the fault lies in the simple fact that out of a movie with more substance, a buddy cop flick was constructed. Some will say, so what, this is a story in Africa right? That should be enough. Well it isn't enough, Hotel Rwanda was a story in Africa as well, and it was honest and told from the right perspective - then again no one was rushing to go see that gem of a film. (Side note: If you're not in love with Sophie Okonedo by now, please begin to fall). The story of blood diamonds is a story deeply integral to Africa, and I am deathly afraid that if you can turn even that into a white-washed Hollywood film, we will never see in popular culture anything better than we have already been subjected to, over, and over, and over again.

1 Comments:

Blogger Cabernet In the Dark... said...

You speak so much f-ing truth it breaks my heart.

11:12 PM  

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