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35 t w o The Troubled Terrain of Human Rights Films Blood Diamond, The Last King of Scotland, and The Devil Came on Horseback margaret r. higonnet, with ethel r. higonnet what filmmakers should do is get as much authenticity as possible. —robert F. worth, “Another round of Explosions, but this time it’s Fake” the last decade has witnessed a proliferation not only of low-budget documentary films but of mass-market cinema with an apparent human rights agenda. this phenomenon invites a number of questions about the uses of cinema as a vehicle to effect social change. How has film become the dominant vehicle for getting out the message about human rights? Kevin rozario suggests this question in his study of the red Cross’s paradoxical use of “delicious horrors” to make humanitarian appeals (rozario 2003). whereas nineteenth-century realist fiction staked claims first to mirroring and later to photographing reality, mass-market adventure films stake claims to telling us the truth about humanitarian calamities by literally embedding cameras in the narrative. in turn, as documentary films have developed, they have appropriated older narrative structures borrowed from those of historical fiction. Fact and fiction, naked truth and narrative seem to be in tension with each other, but in fact they are blurred, as Hayden white has argued in his study of the relation between narrative and historical representation . we may expect to find the “true” and “real” in “the chaotic form of ‘historical records,’” but we also are driven to organize these into the “formal coherency of a story” in order to shape meaning (white 1987, 4). to extend Hayden white’s thesis that historians draw on four types of narrative to shape meaning—tragedy, romance, comedy, and irony—we may ask whether the documentarist who depicts the violations attendant on violence 36  M A r g A r e t r . H i g o n n e t , w i t H e t H e l r . H i g o n n e t must draw on tragedy, romance, or irony (white 1973). if we look at films about the violence that has beset Africa in recent decades, it appears that loosely humanitarian films on the topic often fall prey to paternalistic and sentimental narrative forms, precisely the flaw that critics have identified in humanitarianism itself. while richard rorty links the cultivation of human rights to sentimental education (rorty 1993, 122–23, 128–29), beran (2008), Kennedy (2004), and rieff (2002) all by contrast indict the sentimental failures of humanitarianism. the ethnographic cinematographer Jean rouch has commented on “the paternalism characteristic of even the films made with the best intentions” (rouch 2003, 66). Most fall into a class that Josef gugler calls “humanploitation” (letter to the author, 2008). these problems become visible from the outset in the figures selected as the central focalizers to mediate our imaginative reconstruction of events. whose voices, in brief, are heard? As we shall see, cinematic effects may build on narrative strategies familiar in print, such as romance to provide closure, or instead they may seek to engage the viewer “beyond the ending” by cutting short conventions of resolution or by implying a cycle that returns. Can such films shape an empathetic response to humanitarian crises and propel viewers toward active intervention? to explore these questions, this chapter examines three films that span the strategies visible in high to low budget productions. HOw HAs FilM bECOME tHE dOMinAnt vEHiClE FOr gEtting OUt tHE MEssAgE AbOUt HUMAn rigHts? Ethnographic work on Africa using the vehicle of film dates back to the late forties (Au pays des pygmées, 1948), and starting in the 1950s, film in Africa became “an essential medium of mass communication” (rouch 2003, 67). in Africa Shoots Back, Melissa thackway explores the genre of sub-saharan Francophone “memory-history films” that blur the boundary between documentary and fiction, a form that continues to dominate production, if not the market (thackway 2003, 97–119). in the last thirty years, human rights advocacy concerning Africa has increasingly turned to the documentary film, exploiting the power of the visual to awaken the audience’s emotions. Humanitarians have drawn on the shock of the image for over two centuries to effect reforms. Enlightenment philosophers such as rousseau and Adam smith theorized links between images and moral emotions, as richard wilson and richard brown explain in their introduction to Humanitarianism [18.116.51.117] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 05:36 GMT...

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