I was pleased to see Forest Whitaker win the award for Best Actor at this year’s BAFTAs. It is indeed, as the critics have said, a compelling portrayal of the dictator Idi Amin.
Remembering a few reviews of The Last King of Scotland, the principle criticism of the film was the slight incongruity of the Dr Garrigan character, a fictional Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy. Why do we need the “white man in Africa” cliche to understand Amin and his rise to power? Why indeed, did the film-makers prioritise Garrigan’s adventure? Why not just call the film Amin and centre every single scene around Whitaker?
The same charge was levelled at Blood Diamond. This time the setting is Sierra Leone, and its brutal civil war. But, what’s this? We have Leonardo DiCaprio, white and tanned, in the lead role! He plays a South African mercenary, befriending a fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) who has lost his family after an attack by the RUF. Lo and behold! DiCaprio the Action Man takes the initiative, rescuing a rare pink diamond and Hounsou’s disparate family into the bargin, before being martyred in the final scenes. How come (they say), yet another film about Africa ends up being about the white man?
In fact, I think the structure and message of Blood Diamond positively demands white characters. It is, after all, about how the global trade in diamonds exacerbates regional conflicts. “If people knew that the diamond on their finger cost someone their arm, they wouldn’t buy it” says one character.
If the white characters are present so European and American audiences “have someone to relate to” then the effect is different in the two films. Blood Diamond draws the white audience into the problem, and castigates them. By contrast, The Last King of Scotland would have been far more challenging if the central British character had been the seedy official from the High Commission (played by the delightfully odd Simon McBurney). His dialogue alludes to the fact that the rise of Amin was aided and abetted by the British… but this aspect is left unexplored. Instead, we see James McAvoy have an affair with Amin’s wife. It portrays the white man as innocent and niaive, the black man as tribal, brutal.
Continue reading
Month: February 2007 (Page 2 of 2)
Over at The Sharpener, Cleanthes complains at the smug tone I took against the Libertarian right. Perhaps he has a point.
I’ve been flicking through this month’s Prospect Magazine. The national discussion about our relationship to Islam continues, and Francis Fukuyama pin-points one of the underlying issues:
It is now the turn of young Muslims to experience this [modernisation]. Whether there is anything specific to the Muslim religion that encourages this radicalisation is an open question. Since 11th September, a small industry has sprung up trying to show how violence and even suicide bombing have deep Koranic or historical roots. It is important to remember, however, that at many periods in history Muslim societies have been more tolerant than their Christian counterparts. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides was born in Muslim Córdoba, which was a diverse centre of culture and learning; Baghdad for many generations hosted one of the world’s largest Jewish communities. It makes no more sense to see today’s radical Islamism as an inevitable outgrowth of Islam than to see fascism as the culmination of centuries of European Christianity.
This cannot be said often enough. Acceptance of this idea is the first step to co-operation with the Islamic world. And yet much of the discussions on this issue begin by implicitly assuming the former. Especially online, I find many pundits are all too keen to (smugly) point out yet another failing of some muslim or other, somewhere. inevitable retort, pointing out some transgression of some Christian group, or some Western government, is quick in arriving. No allies are won in this manner.
Thinking about women rulers, it is interesting to see how progressive South-Asia has been in this regard. Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have all had female leaders. In fact, the latter two have had more than one, as has India if you were to count Sonia Ghandi.
Critics of Asian culture in general, and Islam in particular, do like to remind us of the essential backwardness of the regions and religion, with a general misogyny being the primary exhibit. To those Muslims who voted for Benazir Bhutto, say, this might seem a spectacularly unfair accusation… especially when the USA (moralizer-in-chief) is turning itself inside-out over the question of whether the country is ‘ready’ for a woman (or a black man) to lead.
Perhaps an alternative measure of democratic maturity is not the length of time a country has sustained democracy, but the point at which the populous begins to elect leaders whose sex, race, and religious combination differs from that of the traditional ruling elite.
Continue reading
The Sunday Times has an interesting feature on women leaders. Sarah Baxter asks “Are we ready for a triumvirate of Iron Ladies?” Hilary Clinton in the USA, Angela Merkel in Germany, and Ségolène Royal in France.
Last year, I interviewed Stella Chiweshe, the Zimbabwean Diva, at the WOMAD Festival in Reading. She was the first woman to achieve popularity playing the mbira, the traditional African instrument… so naturally I asked her about the role of women in her culture. She gave me a more globalised answer:
“I tell you: Let the women lead! It is the woman who feels the pain of burying a child. You men just say “my child, my son, my daughter” for pleasure. You never feel these pains. You suffer, I know you suffer, men, but not as women suffer. And if you let us rule, you see how happy you will be! You are only making yourselves sad. You men are creating problems for yourself. They say a man without a wife is not a good ruler. Why is that? It is because we feel he needs that support. So why don’t you sit back and let the women rule, and then support her instead? Then the world will be so peaceful, because we wouldn’t create so many wars.”
As Baxter points out, the evidence so far might not support this view. Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi all became the first women to lead their respective countries, yet all took their country to war.
Over at the Demos blog, Duncan O’Leary notices that several politicians have been invoking the metaphor of a house in order to convey whatever political point they wish to make that day. David Cameron’s renewal of the Tories is being built “brick by brick“, while Gordon Brown wants to raise educational standards by “raising the floor and removing the ceiling.”
I am reminded of how often it is that buildings are used as a by-word for institutions. We do not talk of the office of the Prime Minister: We say Number Ten. When we hear of interference from those next door, we hear of The Treasury. Either might incur the displeasure of The House of Commons. If a member of the Royal Family does something noteworthy, Buckingham Palace or Clarence House issues a statement. It is The Bank of England that rises interest rates. The United States’ Foreign Policy is conceived and implemented by, variously, The White House, Congress and The Pentagon.
These are all familiar, innocent, journalistic short-cuts, but they can be unhelpful. By embodying the institution in the building, they give the impression that these institutions are inpenetratable. It is as if to influence them, we would literally have to penetrate the six-foot thick walls. When we hear (as we so often do), of a feud between “Number Ten” and “The Treasury”, this conjures the idea of two megaliths colliding in a kinetic, titanic battle – Mere flesh and blood mortals do not stand a chance against them. In reality, the ‘clash’ is between less than half a dozen civil servants, men and women shorter and older than you or I, sending curt e-mails via Outlook Express. The Great Failures of the New Labour (read: Alastair Campell’s) spin machine, were precisely those instances where the facade of the institution crumbled, and the profoundly human cogs that drive the system were exposed. Jo Moore’s memo to “bury bad news” and the David Kelly affair are the most memorable examples of this.
A few years ago I spent a short time working for a think-tank in Westminster. One valuable lesson I learnt is that politics and governance are not a high-brow interactions between great institutions of State. It just a load of people wandering around corridors and pavements in the SW1A vicinity of Central London. Most people who spend time working in the ‘Westminster Village’ are already aware of this, but for a provincial suburbanite such as myself, it was a welcome revelation.
Often, ‘taking on the government’ need not mean a well-financed campaign planned with military precision. It just means getting the e-mail address of the civil servant who is best placed to help you: no battering ram required.