Do You Swear to Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth...unless the MPAA advises otherwise?

Kirby Dick’s “This Film is Not Yet Rated”, while being overly dependant on stirring emotions and rallying people against the “oppressive” ratings board, does raise a very interesting question about the rating of documentaries. In the film, Michael Tucker, the director of “Gunner’s Palace” is the only filmmaker interviewed who made a documentary that received an R rating (this is of course excluding the director of the film “This Film is Not Yet Rated”). His main argument is that you cannot sensor real life, and I find this to be an intriguing idea.

With fiction films, it is easy to make changes to suit the overly critical requests of the MPAA, because as real as a filmmaker believes their characters to be, they are fictional characters. Editing out a few “fucks” or a sex scene may soften the film a bit, but it does not turn it into something it is no. It does not turn gritty truth in to chocolate-coated reality, or even worse, into fiction. With this in mind I must ask whether editing a documentary to appease the MPAA and get a rating that allows for wider distribution is even ethical. One of the biggest debates in documentary film is about how much creative freedom the filmmaker can take in portraying their subjects, so why shouldn’t the same rules apply to the ratings board? Just because reality makes them uncomfortable does not mean it doesn’t happen (or in some cases hasn’t happened), and there is no reason that they should be allowed to prevent a film from opening the eyes of the audience.

A few documentaries other than Gunner’s Palace that the MPAA has attempted to censor include “The Tillman Story”, “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “A Film Unfinished”. The Tillman story is a film about football star turned soldier, Pat Tilllman. During a tour of Iraq, Tillman was killed by friendly fire, and the death was covered up by many layers of the government until his mother made them all stand accountable for their actions. While she failed in seeing justice through the judicial system, the filmmaker helped her bring justice in the eyes of filmgoers who received the opportunity to see the film. I was one of those people and the only thing I remember feeling after seeing the film was “wow, I’m really angry at the government and the people who let this happen,” which is why I was shocked to find that the MPAA had given the film and R rating for “bad language”. I tend to be sensitive to really bad language in the sense that I notice it, not in the sense that I am offended, and I don’t really remember any foul language in that film. This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t any foul language, it just means that because I didn’t watch the film intent on finding something wrong with it, none of the language struck me as inappropriate. Apparently, however, someone from the MPAA did notice the foul language and the board decided it needed to receive and R rating, shrinking its potential audience.

Another documentary that has been given an R rating is “Taxi to the Dark Side” a film by Alex Gibney. This film was given and R rating by the MPAA due to “disturbing images and content involving torture and graphic nudity” (mpaa.org). What I find so disturbing about this rating is that the images the film was criticized by the board for were the same images that the American public could turn on their televisions and see every night before eating their dinner. The only thing that I can think of that were different between the two mediums is that the news may have blurred out the genitalia of the detainees, or had black boxes over them, while the film did not. The pain in the pictures is the same whether we see these or not, so what made the MPAA so uncomfortable? Was it the fact that there were genitalia exposed? Are they that afraid of the human body? Even if they are, the level of comfort the board members have with nudity should not limit the filmmaker’s right to show the atrocities that happened in Abu Grhaib at the hands of American soldiers to any audience willing to listen, yet that is exactly what happened. As for the “content involving torture” issue raised by the board, they need to understand that this film is about actual events. This is not a fiction film like “Hostel” or “Saw” that is created for a scare factor, and it is not something we can argue should not be shown to youth because it might encourage them to do it to other people. Those receiving torture in the documentary are real people, they were tortured and some were killed, and without the filmmaker’s ability to show that, the story dissolves and the issue is swept under the rug. Youth will not see this film and decide to try it because they understand that these are not fictional characters that exist only in the world of the film, Gibney does a marvelous job of depicting the victims as real people, no different than any of us, which gives the violence a completely different connotation.

I think the reason the idea of censoring facts is so disturbing is best described by the Jeffrey Bloomer in “Adam Yauch’s Holocaust Documentary’s MPAA Appeal is Today; Does it Deserve and R Rating?” when he sums up director Yael Hersonski’s argument again the MPAA’s rating system as “an inherent unfairness in the system, which fails to draw a distinction between a gross-out comedy and a holocaust movie but makes an influential decision on what is appropriate for young eyes”. The documentary “A Film Unfinished” is about an unfinished Nazi Propaganda film that was intended to be used for anti-Semitic purposes. The film is currently “unrated” on the MPAA website, which most likely means the filmmakers have yet to accept the “R” rating they have been given based on “horrific footage of death camp atrocities – some of them showing Jews, both dead and alive, stripped naked” (Noah 1). The intention of director Yael Hersonski was to have the film “shown in schools to educate children about the Holocaust” (Noah 1), making its motivation for intense scenes and nudity more noble, but the question is whether or not that nobility should be a reason to soften the censorship on the documentary. In an objective light, the films motivation would have no bearing on how the content is taken. Members of the board would simply watch the film, count how many breasts and genitalia are seen, as well as how many swear words are used, and then issue a rating based on these numbers. This is not how the ratings board works.

(The picture on the left is from theguardian.co.uk used for reporting the crimes at Abu Ghraib. The one on the right is from "American Pie". Both use the same amount of nudity, both give very different impressions. The Abu Ghraib photo, because it is a form of journalism is not censored, the one on the right is censored in the same way that the same photo is when it becomes a part of a documentary. Are these the same kind of image?)

Yauch’s number one defense for “A Film Unfinished” was the precedent set by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation Holocaust documentary “The Last Days”, which “features similar footage but received a PG-13 raging” (Noah 1). Both films are about the terrible crimes committed during the Holocaust. Both films use graphic images to convey the horrors of the Nazi enforced ghettos. The difference? One has Steven Spielberg’s name attached to it, the other one belongs to the independent production company Oscilliscope. This issue is another brought up by Kirby Dick in “This Film is Not Yet Rated” through interviews with filmmakers in the independent world, but according to Timothy Noah in “The 7 Percent Solution” the issue can be proven with numbers from a study at The University of Maryland that shows “films distributed by MPAA members are, on average, about 7 percent less likely to receive an R rating than films that aren’t distributed by MPAA members”. While Kirby Dick may have been trying to cause an uprising against the MPAA, the numbers have no motivation behind them, they are simply telling the truth, and that truth brings up a scary realization when applied to the film industry. Documentary films, by nature, are not films made by or produced by Hollywood or the masses. They are films regarded as “educational and boring” in the words of most people. Paramount, Warner Bros, and Disney rarely make documentaries, and when they do the subject matter is often times light hearted and unimportant in the realm of world suffering. This leaves all other documentaries in that category more likely to be rated R because they are not part of “popular culture”, which means that the people who make the films we need to see to understand the suffering in the world are being censored unfairly because their films are not more popular.

In some cases, documentary filmmakers have been able to repeal their ratings from an R. According to Jeffrey Bloomer, “there is some history of flexibility, especially when it comes to documentaries steeped in history and conflict. In 2005, for example, the MPAA granted a rare PG-13 rating on appeal to a movie with multiple uses of “fuck”. That film was Gunner’s Palace, the one made by the only documentary filmmaker featured in “This Film is Not Yet Rated”. On it’s recent appeal, “A Film Unfinished” was not as lucky. The MPAA “voted to maintain the R rating, 12-3” (Noah 1). This decision means that it will be hard for teachers to show the film to students, as it was originally intended to be, because an R rating requires parental supervision or consent before the student can watch a film, and with schools under so much scrutiny already, sending home permission slips would welcome even more undesired attention about the ethics of the administrations.

In the end, it’s hard to say whether or not the MPAA should have the right to censor reality because there are many factors to be considered. What I can say for sure is that many of the things they try to censor people from are things they see on the news or the internet when they read about current events. It is also safe to say that documentary filmmakers also have an obligation to show the lives of their subjects, no matter how gritty and unpleasant they may be, and no one has the right to take the opportunity away from them. Taking away a documentary filmmaker’s ability to create a true portrait of their subject is like taking away a lawyer’s right to argue their case or a doctor’s right treat their patients. They believe in their cause and they should be allowed to do what they see necessary to get their point across.

Works Cited

Bloomer, Jeffrey. “Adam Yauch’s Holocaust Documentary’s MPAA Appeal is Today; Does it Deserve an R Rating?” Paste Magazine. 5 Aug 2010. Web. 27 Feb 2011. http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/08/adam-yauchs-holocaust-documentary-has-its-mpaa-app.html

Noah, Timothy. “The 7 Percent Solution: A recent study proves MPAA ratings really are biased against independent films”. Slate. 24 Feb 2011. Web. 27 Feb 2011. http://www.slate.com/id/2286404

“Film Ratings”. mpaa.org. Motion Picture Association of America. n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2011. http://www.filmratings.com/filmRatings_Cara/#/home/

Run, Run, get your Gun: Revisiting a Thin Blue Line

“If Randall Adams and Davis Harris can agree on anything, it's that fate dealt them a terrible hand when, on Saturday, Nov. 27, 1976, it threw them together.”

-Janet Maslin, New York Times, 1988

One of the most revealing themes Errol Morris has to offer in his 1988 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, is the role fate plays in our lives. In the film, we are introduced to our protagonist, Randall Adams, who has fallen victim to the phenomenon of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is incarcerated for a Dallas cop murder whom we can only deduce was shot by our antagonist, Davis Harris.

The two met by happenstance, but before Adams knew it, he wound up as Harris' scapegoat for homicide and is stuck serving time on death row. Harris admits at the end of the film that Randall Adams had caught a spot of bad luck.

“You're 16. You're scared. You tell the police it wasn't you, and they believe you.”

Indeed, Harris got off scott free, joined the military, and caused trouble elsewhere. All the while, Adams was locked away in the penitentiary, serving time on Harris' behalf.

In 1985, Morris discovered Adams on death row while conducting interviews with the Texas prison inmates. He was working on a documentary about James P. Grigson, a Dallas psychiatrist known as Dr. Death. One of Morris' interview subjects, as chance may have it, just so happened to be Randall Adams.

“Adams told me he was innocent. Everyone in prison tells you they're innocent. It was only after I met Davis Harris that I began to suspect that the wrong man had been convicted of murder.”

Adams repeatedly states that he has no idea how to explain the “why” of his situation. Why did he run out of gas that morning? Why did David Harris pick him up? Why was he accused of murdering a Dallas, Texas cop? These are the sort of questions we ask ourselves during any unfortunate event that disrupts our lives. One article describes Adam's appearance within the film as “passive and defeated.” The man has fallen into a state of “learned helplessness,” a psychological term used to describe the perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation. In Adam's case, he was plucked from his own mundane life and thrown into a world of chaos. How was he to know that getting in a car with David Harris would forever change his life?

If we were to apply Blake Snyder's beat sheet as a reference to this scenario, Randall Adams would be in the “All Hope is Lost” portion of a screenplay outline. How does a person even begin to cope with such a jarring event that they cannot seem to justify? Richard F. Taflinger may lead to an explanation within his commentary, A Myth of Objectivity in Journalism:

“The brain has no actual, physical contact with the world. It doesn't even have pain nerves, and thus needs no anesthesia when operated upon (of course, the skin of the scalp and the bone of the skull are not likewise blessed). Everything the brain knows or reacts to comes to it in only one way: through the senses.”

There seems to be a point in severe emotional distress where all the senses are dulled and an individual becomes “numb” to their surroundings. This may be mistaken for an apathetic demeanor, or may even, in some cases, explain an apathetic demeanor. However, it is apparent within the film that Randall Adams has been broken of all resolve to defend himself against the judicial system. His efforts didn't even seem to make a dent, despite their potential validity.

This gives rise to the age old question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Well, friends, bad things don't happen to good people. Bad things make good people. Sometimes it takes yesterday's storm to appreciate today's sunshine. Even the most awful coincidences can blossom into beautiful outcomes. I would be interested to hear what Randall Adam's outlook on life is today.

Be that as it may, every time I see this documentary, I think to myself, “What would I have done if it had been me instead of Adams? How would I have come to terms with the fact that my life is spent on death row for someone I have been acquainted with for less than a day?”

They are all rhetorical questions that can never be answered until they actually occur (and hopefully they won't). Nevertheless, I would be equally as interested to see a documentary on how Adam's coped with his unjust imprisonment or, even better, how it has affected his life. Adams has certainly become a hero among viewers, but is an 11 year sentence really worth the rude awakening?

The real horror to this story is this: How many other people are on death row for a crime they didn't commit or, dare I say, have been executed for it? It reminds me of the 1957 film, Twelve Angry Men (Sydney Lumet), where a skeptical juror for a murder trial tries to convince his fellow jurors that there is more to the case than what appeared in court. He is well aware that all things must be viewed with a critical eye, and if there is any breathing room for doubt, then he will never accuse a (wo)man of being guilty.

Unfortunately for Randall Adams, he served as a prime example of “justice being served at any cost.” When people feel they have been wronged, they want someone to suffer along with them. It all seems exceedingly brutal, barbaric even—especially when you lack moral support. Those who sided with Adams were few and far between. It's not a matter of who was wronged. It's a matter of who can win the jury over. That almost makes it seem like dinner and a show—entertainment at the cost of a life. However, it's never to late to count your blessings. In the end, fate dealt Adams a winning hand.

Looking Back

Many people look at the rating of a film before viewing it. But who are the people behind the ratings? The documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, from filmmaker Kirby Dick, gives people an inside look at the MPAA or Motion Picture Association of America. This group pays panels of what they call “average parents” to watch and rate films according to their content. It is comparable to an exclusive club, where public accountability is overseen. Dick points out the controversy over this process in the following questions: Who is an average parent? Why are the rater’s identities kept secret? And finally, why are there so many double standards in the ratings system?

As for the first question, Dick interviews several filmmakers to explore the issue, many of whom are parents themselves. One woman points out that she is a filmmaker and parent, as well as a lesbian. She poses the question “Is there any parent like me on the panel?” After a short pause, she concludes, “I highly doubt it.” After watching this film and learning more about the MPAA, I highly doubt it as well. The MPAA seems to have conservatively set up standards for which they choose the parent raters. As a rule, a rater must have children between the ages of five and seventeen. Raters are also supposed to stay on the rating board for only around five years. However, Dick may have discovered that the MPAA does not follow their own rules. After identifying the raters, it was found that some had adult children living out of the house. And others have served as raters for far more than five years. Hypocritical inconsistencies like these may be one of the reasons why the MPAA chooses to keep the raters unidentified.

Speaking of, the next question relates to the identity of the raters. The raters are given complete anonymity in their jobs in order to “feel secure to come to work everyday,” according to the head of the Classification and Rating Administration for the MPAA, Joan Graves. What sort of threat would it pose the raters if their identities were publically known? Is the job really so dangerous that people must be kept under wraps? Dick implies that the identities are kept from the public because the MPAA has too many inconsistencies in its standards, that it would only cause distrust in the entire ratings system to have the names revealed. In the film, the main plot-driver is Dick’s quest to find out the names of these illusive raters by means of hiring a private investigator. By the end, the current raters are successfully identified and Dick submits his documentary to the MPAA to be rated. This must have been quite an upset, as it showed the MPAA how easily these people can be identified.

One of the most probable motives for the MPAA to feel uneasy about drawing up specific guidelines for what deserves each kind of rating is that there are so many double standards. Dick provides many case examples in which two similar scenes are compared from different films, but given different ratings. When it comes to sexual pleasure, it seems the MPAA raters feel more uncomfortable when being presented with female pleasure over male. Most seem to be uncomfortable with any kind of pleasure, but males are still heavily favored. In this double standard, we may see that Americans in general are not comfortable with female pleasure, especially when it is resulting from masturbation or lesbian sexuality.

Yet another issue raised, if only briefly, in this film is how violence is rated compared to sex. Violence seems to have been overlooked as a bad influence, and sex has been pushed to the foreground. A movie can have as much gunfire as it wants, as long as there is no blood, and be a straight PG-13. This instills in young viewers that violence is non-consequential. It is desensitizing younger generations to violent actions, surely not a goal of the MPAA. It seems you simply can’t win with the MPAA. It would be quite interesting to see what would happen to the MPAA if another rating system were to appear. People assume that the MPAA is necessary, and while it does serve a resourceful purpose in theory, it does not need to be in place. It is a voluntary system and not enforced by law. Films that choose to not be submitted are classified as “Not Yet Rated”, but many large theaters and distributors will not carry the film. Does this implicate that there is some sort of political pull between the MPAA and large film corporations? Even if this were true, I am not sure anyone would favor the option of having the government take over the ratings system. The most optimal solution is to either reform the MPAA or create a new system in which there is a clear list of guidelines to follow. Remove the secrecy and make the process behind ratings publicly known.

It is easy to say what would be best, but in order for that to happen the issue has to be called to the attention of more people. Once the public is aware of the MPAA and its inconsistencies, a movement to put a better system in place will surely follow. I personally have not looked at film ratings the same way since viewing Dick’s film. It is strange to look back to when I blindly accepted a film’s rating, unaware of the people who chose it.

Revisiting Ratings

EXTENDING MY ALREADY EXTENSIVE BLOG ON THE RATINGS SYSTEM

In the first few weeks of January my ‘Cinema and Social Change’ class received a packet of various articles that had to do with a subject I hadn’t really thought about; the ratings system. After watching This Film is Not Yet Rated and digging through the articles I found a passion bubbling from inside. Why was sex such a big deal? I then proceeded to write a 9 page blog post entitled “My Way of Life is Rated X.”

So why I am I revising this subject again even I obviously went in great detail the first time? To tell you the truth, I was going to redo one of my other ones. I had a change of mind when I was flipping through all the blogs posted this semester. I remember barely saying anything during our discussion, mainly because I wanted to hear everyone’s opinion on the matter.

So the decision was made. I decided to read as many blogs on This Film is Not Yet Rated so I can look at perspectives I hadn’t thought of yet. There have also been various events in my life relating to censorship that have given me an even stronger opinion.

First off, lets refresh ourselves on what this whole unit is about. This Film is Not Yet Rated is a documentary directed by Kirby Dick that explores the existence of the MPAA and it’s effect on the ratings system. In class I was transfixed by the debate to whether the ratings system should actually exist. When I watched the movie I was convinced and thinking “Yeah! Lets bring the system down!” Then I listened. Many people agreed that the system was flawed, but there was a very convincing argument to why it exists in the first place.

One reason why the Motion Picture Association of America is to keep the government out of our hair. The system was created to free us from the threat of government censorship or control. This is a noble reason to create an association. I find the ratings system effective when I am too busy to research a film. I know parents must feel the same. Working all day, feeding the kids, and taking care of the house takes up enough time without looking up to see if a film has a curse word that would damage little Jimmies’ ears. It’s a good guideline to determine the content of a movie. The problem? This rating can dramatically affect the success of a film.

I never really thought about the rating NC-17 before this film. I had always assumed it was porn and left it at that. Never have watched porn or wanted to, I hadn’t ever seen an NC-17 film. I was astonished watching Not Yet Rated. So many fascinating films were branded NC-17 and didn’t resemble a porn. I wanted to watch a lot of these movies! If this rating turned me away, how many other people turned the same cold shoulder?

The MPAA’s decision to label a film with an NC-17 directly influences the success of a film. Huge franchises such as Wal-Mart and Blockbuster refuse to carry any film with ratings above an R. That’s straight up loss of distribution! Along with an audiences obliviousness to the content of an NC-17 film , this kills a lot of films. The rating decision also influences the ability of our youth to watch films they may be mature enough to handle.

At age 12 my mother knew I was mature enough to handle adult content in movies. We’d watch movies together that had sex, cursing, sex, violence, and drugs. These were all PG13 movies and above, but she knew me well enough to know that I would ‘watch responsibility.’ Now, my father thought more along the lines of the ratings system. If I am not 13, I shouldn’t watch certain films by myself. What ended up happening was pretty humorous. My sister and I would watch grown up movies with mom with a rule not to tell dad. I was not scarred in any way or forced to watch anything I couldn’t digest. My mother was right, and my father was delightfully ignorant.

I like the idea of the ratings system. I use it often as a summery of the content of a film. , but who is making these choices? Are they filmmakers? Schoolteachers? Policemen? We don’t know! That was the big mystery that Kirby Dick sought to reveal.

I felt the ratings system board were treated like the witness protection program. All barred up and under contract never to release any information. Why? Apparently if the world knew their identity it’d be possible to alter their opinions. In class it was mentioned that Jackie’s mother was a judge. We don’t see her flipping out any secret passwords to get to her workplace. How are we supposed to know who’s determining what we watch?

The film stated that the MPAA is supposed to be composed of regular every day parents determining what they were comfortable with their own children watching. Who picked these parents? Studio Execs. Also, how do we know if we are getting a diverse opinion. One interviewee in This Film is Not Yet Rated said that opposition was often ignored and the head of the panels would go with his or her own decision despite the votes of the group. Is the democratic system that we all stand by when facing our nations’ flag? Why aren’t we allowed to vote in our choices of members.

Here’s my idea. It might be an uneducated Utopian fantasy, but as a student it is the conclusion I have come up with. I think the ratings system should still exist, but only as a suggestion. If a kid wants to see an R rated movie, they are going to find a way to watch it. We all know what happened when the government said no to booze in the 20’s. We did it anyway.

Second, I think the members of the MPAA should be known. We could take practices from our own government and use them in the film business. There could be a vote of people that are elected to the association. Will this diversify the system? We won’t know until we try. This way we also have a say and can’t really complain if we don’t do anything about it.

Violence. I don’t like it. I cringe and close my eyes more in a murder scene then I ever would watching a scene with a woman having an orgasm. Why isn’t it harshly rated like sex? Some say that we see it everywhere in the news so it’s not such a big deal. My problem with this statement? The violence in movies is glorified to the extent where a child can see 30 dead bodies and not even be bothered. We are desensitized. I know that in films with a huge shootout I force myself not to care that multiple people dropped dead. I didn’t want to think that they all had families. I didn’t want to recognize that they would never have another birthday, watch their children get married, or see the new Ipad come out. That would be too emotional for me to handle.

Does this indifference to blood relate to real life? Do kids believe that having a gun isn’t as huge of a responsibility as it is because of how we see weapons depicted in film? Is a significant act of violence related at all to the fact that the same situation was reconciled with a nice beating in the latest Jet Li film? Shouldn’t this altered perception of violence and weapons alter the ratings of films that put death in a hyped light.

This glorification could be said about sex too. One person in the discussion about ratings said that the more fake the sex the lesser the rating. The more realistic the sex, the harsher the rating. This means that children are watching our romanticized version of sex without having a real representation. Shouldn’t it be flopped? Full Frontal Feminism says that woman and children have messed up ideas of what sex should be because of the media. If a young woman only believes she is having sex right if she screams obnoxiously without feeling anything, how is she going to feel if that’s not her first reaction?

Sydney mentioned in her blog that the message of sex in media is often “sex=bad.” Examples of this would be the media treating fornication in news as “sex scandals.” What are the psychologically affects on our society? Not only are we shown how sex ‘should’ be, but also we are told that it’s bad. That’s a lot of guilt to look forward to.

One argument stated in the blogs is that the form of rating may be archaic? Chelsea Turner mentioned the Internet and TV in her blog. She said that form of mass media was so hard to control that it had significantly less censorship than film. Who hasn’t used the Internet to watch something? This open portal of expression hasn’t killed us yet, so why are we still oppressing film? Now, if we can’t see it in film we’ll just Google “dirty.”

Now is when I connect all of the previous statements to my own life. The ratings board is put into place to ensure that our youth is not exposed to inappropriate content. Here is an example where I use my sexual upbringing to prove that honest exposure doesn’t make us all ‘sex demons.’

I’ve grown up with an incredibly open relationship with my mother. From very early on I felt comfortable enough to ask her any question that came to mind and she didn’t feel the need to hide the truth from me. In high school remember having a ‘picnic’ in the living room with my mom, two sisters, and family friends, and telling stories of sexual explorations and experiences.

I graduated high school and went off to Cottey College the year of ’08 and learned even more what it meant to be liberated. Though I felt incredibly open about sex there were still obstacles I couldn’t jump. For one, I couldn’t get myself to verbalize the word ‘vagina.’ I could spout out the word ‘penis’ any time of day with only a juvenile little giggle. This says a lot about societies views of women.

So here I was, way too uncomfortable to say the title of my own genital organ at a school that embraced just that. At Cottey we were proud. For Valentine’s day our feminist club sold chocolate vaginas and buttons that shouted “Vagina Friendly.” The week of love we also demonstrated our pride by performing the Vagina Monologues. My second year at Cottey I was one of the performers. All anxiety and discomfort was gone. I could use the word ‘vagina’ and wasn’t scared of my own.

That’s right, I was scared of my own vagina. I think a big part of that was that I didn’t have representation of it anywhere. Everywhere in the media it seems like “Penis” is posted everywhere, but rarely did I see or hear anything about vaginas in popular media.

Going to a place where it was the social norm to represent vaginas in artwork made me take my very first look down there. I had never done that before! I also masturbated for the first time in my adult life the month before my 21^st birthday. The only other time was one or two little experiments in 6^th grade before I hid the experience away like a dead body. Is this all because I haven’t been exposed to a nationwide liberation of the female genitalia? I don’t know, it certainly didn’t help.

With all this sexual freedom and honesty did I go whore myself about? Nope. I was not the Flathead High School slut. In fact, the information helped me go on my own to make my decisions about sex. I decided, ON MY OWN, that I didn't want to have sex until after high school. I knew that if I had to face any consequences I wouldn't be able to handle them.

Being the 'free being' i am a lot of people were shocked to find that I was a virgin before the event where I 'did the deed'. I waited until I was 21 years old, completely comfortable with my body and responsible with birth control, until I had sex. Guess what? It was great! It felt completely natural. I was ready and didn't feel any ounce of guilt after. In fact, I wanted to do it again:)

[Insert Omitted Section of Blog

One reason why I chose to revisit this particular film is because some of the topics concerned could be connected to my case study. I have chosen to write my 5-7 page paper on the film Passion and Power: The Power of Orgasm. This film explores the invention of the vibrator and then connects this history to a trial concerning vibrators in Texas. The trail? A woman was arrested for throwing a Passion Party in the state. It is illegal to sell ‘devices that stimulate human genitals.” It is, however, perfectly legal to buy and sell as much Viagra as you could possibly want.

This Film is Not Yet Rated touches on the fact that the MPAA is harsher on the display of female pleasure and genitals than they are male. I believe this heightened censorship is a great contribution to the oppression of women sexually. One of the main themes within Passion and Power is Women’s sexual liberation. The film states that the laws against vibrators (Full Frontal Feminism says that there are 8 states with laws against selling vibrators) are a backlash to the women’s sexual revolution. Is the fact that we are kept from seeing a woman’s pubic hair in an R rated film in the same category as a state banning women from selling tools to get off? I think so.

Revisiting The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line is a “non-fiction” film that tells the story of the murder of a Dallas police officer and the man who was accused of the crime. The film is referred to as a non-fiction film as opposed to a documentary; this could be because the film has a distinct narrative tone to it, despite the fact that it also includes interviews. Parts of the film are reenactments of the night of the murder, shown differently based on the perceptions of the different people involved. The film definitely has the feel of a crime drama. Morris says in an interview in “Recovering Reality” that his reenactments are not to be taken literally; their purpose is to put “that night” in the audience’s mind.

Reenactments have always been a question with documentaries, because the images shown on screen are not really what happened, and the point of a documentary is that it tells a true story. Reenactments move a film further into the category of “based on a true story.” Some people are vehemently against using reenactments in documentary films; for example, producer and journalist Ron Steinman thinks that reenactments diminish the integrity of the documentary field. He admits that the documentary was never pure, that in order to bring in an audience and hold it, documentary filmmakers began playing with the form. But Steinman is one of those critics who refer to documentaries that include reenactments as “non-fiction” films. In his article “Mockumentary Flap” in The Digital Journalist, he says, “Frightened producers, distributors, theater owners and TV networks thought documentary films were dull, too often academic and tackled subjects that only a narrow audience could love. They were partly correct. No one wanted to watch these films, especially when they played in theaters, a rare enough event. They came up with a new catchall phrase, and called them the non-fiction film” (Steinman). When this new phrase was introduced, new techniques were allowed, including reenactments, which had previously been looked down on. Steinman fears that if documentaries continue to add narrative characteristics, they will eventually cross into the territory of mockumentaries (Steinman).

Errol Morris wrote a piece for the New York Times discussing his use of reenactments in The Thin Blue Line. Morris reconstructed and reenacted what may have happened on the night of Wood’s murder by using Internal Affairs investigator Dale Holt’s account, his International Affairs report, the drawing of the crime scene, and summaries of interviews with Turko taken at the scene. He focuses his discussion in the article mainly on the reenactment of the milkshake flying through the air and crashing to the ground. The milkshake is the detail that causes the discrepancies in the story told by Theresa Turko about the night her partner Robert Wood was killed. Where the milkshake was found indicates where Turko was located when Wood was shot. Her story is that she was behind the car, documenting the license plate number and other relevant information as was protocol in that situation; the milkshake lying fourteen feet away from the left side of the police cruiser implies that she was seated inside the police car when Wood was shot, then threw her milkshake out the window and got out of the car to fire her own weapon and attempt to help her partner. Morris said in his article, “The milkshake-toss for me is emblematic of the discrepancies between Turko’s account and what really happened” (Morris). Morris changes the reenactments as the story changes; for example, when Turko’s account of how many people were in the car and what the driver’s hair looked like changed between the scene and her testimony in court, Morris showed both versions in his reenactments.
Morris’s opinion on using reenactments is that they are sometimes completely necessary; “A story in the past has to be reenacted” (Morris). He describes his method in the article:

“I reconstruct the past through interviews (retrospective accounts), documents and other scraps of evidence. I tell a story about how the police and the newspapers got it wrong. I try to explain (1) what I believe is the real story and (2) why they got it wrong. I take the pieces of the false narrative, rearrange them, emphasize new details, and construct a new narrative. I grab hold of the milkshake as an image because it focuses the viewers’ attention and helps them to better understand what really happened. The three slow-motion shots of the milkshake – the milkshake being thrown, its parabolic trajectory through the night sky and its unceremonious landing in the dirt at the side of the road – are designed to emphasize a detail that might otherwise be overlooked and to focus attention on where Turko was and what she saw.”

Morris’s problems with reenactments are not with the reenactments themselves but with the way they are used. They become a problem when they are used deceptively, as in the case of Mighty Times: The Children’s March, a 2005 documentary that won an Academy Award. The filmmakers used vintage cameras, distressed film stock, and over 700 extras to make the reenactment virtually undetectable; most audiences believed that the reenactment was real verite footage. When the filmmakers were questioned, they admitted to the falsehood, and on further examination it turned out that over half of the film was reenacted. Morris does not believe in deceiving the audience. He says, “There is no veritas lens – no lens that provides a ‘truthful’ picture of events” (Morris). His claim is that it was not a cinéma vérité documentary that got Randall Adams out of prison; it was an investigation in the form of reenactments in a film (Morris).

Ultimately, I agree with Morris. Though the idea of faking a scene in a documentary film seems like a negative thing, sometimes it is the only choice a filmmaker has. As long as the audience is made aware that what they are watching is a reenactment, and the filmmaker is not trying to fool anyone into believing that the footage is real, I think that reenactments are perfectly acceptable to use in a documentary film.

Works Cited

Morris, Errol. "Play it Again, Sam (Re-enactments, Part One)." The New York Times. 3 Apr. 2008.

Steinman, Ron. "Mockumentary Flap." The Digital Journalist. June 2005.

Something to think about further

Today I decided to internet a bit, and found out a bunch of fun facts, for instance some of the questions on the immigration test are wrong, facebook is a terrible company compared to Google and Twitter especially during the Egypt protests, and some people besides us are still questioning the MPAA.

I found the Article from Slate Magazine (Linked above) and just thought I would give it a looksy to see if there was any new information or ideas about the MPAA. There is apparently this site, Kids-In-Mind that rates movies for parents with no judgement upon who made it, just the movie (what the MPAA is supposed to do). I just thought the article was interesting and hoping some of you would too. There was an interesting quote as well "I would never suggest that the United States government take over the MPAA's ratings function. It's none of Uncle Sam's business! But if it ever did, Uncle Sam would probably show less favoritism toward the big studios."

I took this into mind and did some research on Kids-in-mind and found that a French animation, The Illusionist, was given a rating of 1 nudity, 2 violence, and 0 on profanity while the big budget Just Bieber Movie got a 2 nudity, 1 violence, and 1 profanity. Guess who got G and who got PG? you would think the Bieber movie would be PG but no, the less offensive French film did. This is not only a problem with falsify information for parents but this is a problem for filmmakers, who we are correct? Unless you want to work for a corporation (I certainly do not) then say good bye to some prime screenings those who make movies that challenge people!

thank you, and good night.

Hotel Rwanda: Real Life can be a real bummer

Hotel Rwanda is the story of Paul Rusesabagina, a Hotel manager living in Rwanda in 1994 during a political coup. In the movie, Paul saves his family as well as a hotel piled high with refugees from the murderous rebel forces outside the hotel gates. The plot follows these peoples' experience in a life threatening situation where the western world has abandoned them. These people are essentially stranded in a sea of racist killing. This was an incredibly emotional movie that left me as a viewer wondering why genocide is ever something that has to happen, why other countries don't step in to help?
In the article Film Fatigue, Manohla Dargis talks about how the "film about Africa" genre has started to lose its shock value in a sense. She talks about how the power of these narrative films about Africa have lost their power because it seems to be another story about African suffering made to make the viewer feel so bad about themselves that they are moved into action. The sad truth is that this is often not the case. Viewers will watch the film, think wow, that really sucks, and then continue on with their day. Even in real life media coverage of genocide in African countries like Sudan, the coverage somehow does not get a real shocking response from viewers, because as George Clooney says, we have "tragedy fatigue" on the television. In America for example, we are already bombarded with a million awful stories on the news every night, involving countries world wide, and the war that we are involved in currently, so when we see another awful story come up about Sudan, it's just like wow another horrible thing going on in the world. We are desensitized as a nation to the problems of our own, and other countries.
The article that caught my attention the most was the one describing Mr. Rusesabagina's life now, after his fame from the movie. It is interesting, but at the same time not very surprising to me that there is a lot of speculation about how much of this movie is true. The reason I think this is because in the movie he is made out to be such a good person. He seems unable to do anything wrong, and he saves all of the people in the hotel, risking his own life. I don't doubt that Mr. Rusesabagina is very brave and was willing to risk his life for these people, but it is unlikely that the movie is the exact story of what happened there. There are some people who say they want him to be put into trial for war crimes, according to the Wall Street Journal article by Christopher Rhoads. In such a chaotic situation over in Rwanda, it is hard to know exactly what the facts are, especially since there wasn't a bunch of reporters hanging around to record what was actually going on.
My opinion about all of this, is that it isn't any one country's fault that none of the western world has stepped in all that much to help these people. The problem is that there is a universal sense of 'us' and 'them' between the western world and Africa. It seems that western countries are too caught up in their own political agendas to actually help out people who really need it.
Possible Discussion Topics: If America stepped up and helped out in Africa do you think the rest of the western world would follow suit? Or would it be another Vietnam/Iraq? Everyone in the world seems to think that America steps in too much in other country's affairs, how involved should the U.S. be in this situation? Do you think that films like Hotel Rwanda help in educating the western world about African suffering, or do you think it is ineffective?

New Terminology: Trepidation:
trep·i·da·tion/ˌtrepiˈdāSHən/Noun
1. A feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen.
2. Trembling motion.

An Extension of To live, or not to live...

Tears welled up in my eyes as I watched Don Cheadle work his way into my life as Paul Rusesabagina, a house manager for the hotel des Mille Collines in Hotel Rwanda. After the murder of Hutu President General Juvenal Habyarimana the Hutus begin the Rwandan genocide, and try to kill off all Tutsi's and Tutsi supporters. During this time, Paul finds himself struggling to keep his family, and inadvertently hundreds of other people alive. While Paul himself is a Hutu, his wife is Tutsi so she is a target for the Hutu assassins. Since he tries to save her life, that eventually makes him a target as well.

All the while this is going on, Western Civilization turns it's head, ignoring the deaths and cries of thousands of our African brothers and sisters. There seemed to be an air of "See no evil" in the way that the white guests boarded the buses and turned their backs on the Rwandan people. Helplessness floated through the air as one by one, day by day, the Tutsi's were murdered and/ or displaced and captured from their homes. Some were held prisoners, while others lifeless bodies were left to rot in the streets. One particularly gut wrenching scene for me was when upon hitting bumps in the road, Paul gets out of the hotel van to find the bumps are human bodies. As they are backing up, the silence settles into the pit of your stomach allowing you to feel the same nauseating pain that he feels.

While I understood that the film was based on a true story, and that some of the characters and events might be fictional, I couldn't help but to be drawn in and convinced that everything Terry George was telling me in this film was true. He did an exceptional job of connecting you with the characters and making you ride the emotional roller coaster scene for scene, word by word. I too felt a lump in my throat as Paul's wife cried, reaching out for her husband over the tailgate of the refugees escape truck.

I liked the way Leshu Torchin described the film as "Transforming the story of genocide, a story where hundreds of thousands of people died, into a story of those who survived." I feel as if that line was very accurate. George took a story that was so hopeless and negative, and brought it light.

Often people shy away from negativity because the body and mind can only process so much pain, guilt, remorse etc... Eventually our minds become numb and we block things out so we don't have to deal with them. I felt like George did a good job of building that connection and forcing the audience to become involved in the lives of Paul and his family. I feel like that is the work of a true genius, and that the movie should be perceived as just that.

After watching Hotel Rwanda, I became extremely interested in what affect that film had in America so I did a little research. In our packet alone, it mentioned that the U.S President had requested to see the film not once, but twice. Did it touch as many people across our nation, the way it did him?

"All told, I’m glad the stars aligned so that this film could be brought to a larger audience, but in many ways, it’s yet another tale of atrocity and victim-hood that may elicit tears for a moment, but will be filed away as the world inevitably produces more barbarism in the years to come. " This was the post left on Ruthless Reviews, a film critiquing website. "Rwanda lacked money, oil, and strategic importance, so we turned a blind eye because in the end, humanitarianism remains a conditional enterprise — if you can’t do anything for us, we’ll sit the whole thing out." I feel like this post had a very intereseting perspective. One that I strongly believe is correct. We discussed in class how many people and countrys will donate a small, or lump some of money, yet when it's asked to get up and take action, many people (especially in western civilizations) will turn their backs in order to prop them comfortably up in their La-Z-Boy lifestyles.

A nation who has become so spoiled, always questioning what they can have in return stood by as thousands of people were murdered for no reason other than the ethnic stereotype forced upon them by the germans, and later the belgians. In the end all people are created equal, and had those children been born in America, versus Africa, they might have had a better chance for not only an easier life, but also for survival. Instead, the two groups were forced into division in order to maintain control of Rwanda from the Belgian perspective.

Another article I read pointed out something I also found to be very interesting. As I said before, the discrimination between the hutu's and the Tutsi's seems to have been created and pushed by the Belgian's, which is referred to in the article as White Power, then it goes on to discuss how in America as well, often African's fight amongst each other via gangs or crew's trying to maintain their lifestyles, feed their families, or protect their territory. What is it the creates this idea of inequality due to race. It dates back as far as slave trade amongst America and some European countries.

I feel as if the Western countries, while ignoring the situation for so long, sat back and watched as Rwanda experienced a more efficient, modern day holocaust, and then after a lot of the fighting was over, supplies had vanished, and both sides had begun to falter, W. Civilization stepped in and said, "Oh what a tradgedy this is, here, let the world know that we as caring people were the first to help." And did it as publicly as possible, so as to appear fair and just. Who gets to determine the quality of a life? Who says whether or not it is beneficial to save someone else, or if we can afford to let them die, and when are we held responsible and considered an accomplice, for turning our heads?

Emotional Overload

I think it would be hard for anyone to accuse Americans of being unaware of all the terrible things that are going on around the world, because we spend so much time acknowledging them in a kinda of twisted, voyeuristic entertainment. Every night when you turn on the news there are countless stories about unrest in this country, uprising in that one, and disease in another. If you follow even moderately famous people on twitter or facebook, they are constantly updating to let you know that there is something bad happening. When you watch awards shows, the stars will coyly slip in something about their latest cause, and the movie theater always seems to have a story about problems in another country, or at least one coming soon. It has now gotten to the point that we are simply overloaded with pain. As Manohla Dargis put it in Ideas & Trends:Film – Film Fatigue; Africa, at the Cineplex”, “For the last few years or so, every week seems to bring another documentary, another song, another campaign, another press conference, another celebrity sighting”. To add to that he says “my problem, rather, is al those films filled with suffering, struggling black Africans who, for the most part, seem to be on camera to make me feel bad,” which points out yet another devastating truth about over exposure to traumatic stories: we are going numb. When people are bombarded with news of murder and famine, it becomes second nature to tune it out, because if you don’t you will never get out of bed.

Terry George’s 2004 Hotel Rwanda would seemingly be another film that gets lost in this pessimistic propaganda, but some reason it has risen along with films like Edward Zwick’s 2006 film Blood Diamond to be one of the more powerful films about conflicts in Africa. Hotel Rwanda tells the story of the genocide that occurred when the Hutus began their attempt to exterminate the Tutsis. The film touches briefly on the reason for the genocide, but focuses more on what actually happened than on the exposition of the situation, most likely because trying to get to the root of the problem would have taken up the entirety of the movie and prevents the demonstration of the monstrosities that occurred from entering the film.

Now you might be asking why this film was so much more powerful than a documentary about suffering such as Sauper’s Darwin’s Nightmare. In all honesty, I don’t have the answer. I can’t even say for sure that it is a fact that Hotel Rwanda was the more powerful film. I can simply give you my analysis, which is that George’s film made us connect more with the people of Rwanda, followed a narrative story line that made the people real, and gave us hope.

In “Hotel Rwanda” Anthere Nzabatsinda wrote. “The remarkable performance of Don Cheadle (Paul Rusesabagina) makes us believe that he really belongs to that space, to that population, to those events. His talent, as well as Terry George’s craft, make the fiction almost fade in front of the reality, but again the dialogue between the two levels of representation succeeds in achieving an interesting balance that stands out in regard to many other films shown on the same topic of 1994 Rwandan tragedy”. Don Cheadle is an American actor, someone that we know to be talented, so when we see him onscreen we see another American who cares enough about a story to be in a film about it. We do not see an unknown actor cast because they are Rwandan and experienced the tragedy, which tells the audience that the filmmaker was not trying to beat them over the head with realism. Cheadle also plays the part of a Rwandan who lives in a house that resembles many American houses, and goes to work in a nice hotel, one that you would see anywhere in the world. This makes the character seem much more like an American, someone that we can identify with. He is not a poor African in danger of starvation while he and his wife slowly die from AIDS, leaving their three children with nothing, which has become a typical story from Africa. Instead, Americans can identify with this very westernized character, we can feel his love for his family and his pain when they are in danger.

Hotel Rwanda also carries the audience through a narrative journey. Instead of bouncing back and fourth between interviews that have been pieced together to tell us what happened during the 1994 genocide, the film is easy to follow, allowing the focus to be on the atrocities. The being said, as Anthony Daniels acknowledges in “New Again, That Time”, “The director obviously decided that what is implied acts upon the mind more profoundly than what is shown”. George doesn’t show the audience dozens of images of people being murdered with machetes or piles and piles of bodies. He spends most of the film in the hotel with the people who are surviving, the people with hope, who are worried about their friends and family outside the hotel, a worry which the audience feels thanks to the powerful performance by the actors. While a documentary may rely too much on stock footage of what happened to relay the intensity of the situation because their interviews were not quiet powerful enough to get it across, Hotel Rwanda can rely on the actors and recreate only a few graphic images to drive the point home at key dramatic moments. One of the most powerful moments in the film, I think, was the point when Rusesabagina and his helper are driving home to get supplies, and in the fog they think they have driven off the road. When Rusesabagina gets out of the car to se where they are, he falls on several bodies and the fog clears showing a road littered with bodies. There is no violence hear, only the aftermath that allows the audience to imagine what happened. It is also one of the few times we see dead bodies, which makes it a much more powerful image than if we had been seeing them the entire time.

Ultimately, what made Hotel Rwanda such a powerful films was not the fact that Don Cheadle was in it, or the powerfully used images. It was the talent on behalf of all involved combined with their passion to tell the story in a way to make people feel, and their trust in the medium to do the job. In Ideas & Trends: Film – Film Fatigue; Africa, at the Cineplex”, Manohla Dargis wrote “one of the truths about the movies is that, no matter how high-minded a director or how earnest his intentions, what he puts in front of his camera usually talks louder and more honestly than anything he himself might say”. Had George or Cheadle simply stood in front of a microphone or camera and told us we needed to care about this issue, we would have tuned it out because it seems as though another celebrity has simply taken on another issue to feel better about themselves. Seeing the story of these people unfold before our eyes, however, got us involved in the issue. It made us forget that it came from someone with an agenda and allowed us to experience briefly the tragedy that occurred so that it has become part of our subconscious, part of our memory.

In the wake of the films release, something that I found very interesting was the response to Rusesabagina. While Americans and Western countries acknowledge him as a hero, his own people say that he has rewritten history. According to Christopher Rhoads in “Hotel Rwanda Hero Hasn’t Fared Well Back Home Lately; Paul Rusesabagina Now Has Detractors in High Places; A Young Critic in Arizona”, the situation for the real life hero has become one of death threats from his own country accompanied by denouncement by his own people. They accuse him of selling their tragedy for money as well as rewriting history, yet they are the same people who quoted a disguised the statement of a 12 year-old boy as being from a renowned journalist, simply because it made it seem as though the United States didn’t truly regard Rusesabagina as highly as it seemed. This alone shows the dishonesty that still rages in the country. It also demonstrates the effects that a film can have on the person who’s life it was based upon. Being a hero on the screen doesn’t necessarily make life easier.

In the end, there is no way of knowing rather or not a film will help a cause or hinder it. There is no way of knowing whether it will help the subject or put his life in danger. The only thing that matters is whether or not you want to tell the story. Everything else can be dealt with as it comes.

New Terminology

In Hotel Rwanda by Anthere Nazabatsinda, he accuses the film of being between fiction and quasi-journalistic”. “Quasi” is a word I hear and use often, but one in which the meaning has come second hand, so I decided to look it up.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary it means “resembling; seeming; virtual”. In this case, I don’t agree with Nazabatsinda’s statement. The film, in my opionion, does not pretend to be journalism. It does not seek to uncover the root of the problem, nor does it try and clutter the story with facts or testimonies. It tells a story, one based more on emotions than facts.

Rwanda’s Genocide, Self Inflicted Wound

Rwanda’s Genocide, Self Inflicted Wound
Elizabeth Oyelola

Hotel Rwanda depicts the 1994 Genocide of Rwanda, where a brave hotel manager harbors refugees amidst the war torn country of Tutsi and Hutu. Initially reluctant to take on refugees, Rusesabagina later realizes that the European government that once embraced him has deserted him. The film shows how genocide, bribery, violence, and corruption has transformed a civilized nation to savageness.

As viewers, we are trained to respond emotionally to narrative films by having a build story around the issue. For example, the film Titanic, a film about a sinking ship, would not have been so successful had it not had a love story. However, although, Hotel Rwanda isn’t a love story, we connect through the personality, his bravery, and his relatability.

The article Hotel Rwanda by Anthere Nzabatsida, initially stated that this was a work of fiction. Hotel Rwanda isn’t a work of fiction by based on a true story, it tells that Genocide happened in Rwanda. Regardless of fiction or not, it tells the same story, it shows a prettier version of what happened for four months in Rwanda. I agreed with the point that the Europeans who no longer had financial responsibility or interests there, left those in need with lo hesitation. Moreover, I agree completely that “it hurts to see Africa represented in cinema only in negative shades.” I’m looking forward to the day that someone African/European/American will finally portray Africa in a positive light. It is not only literally the DARK CONTINENT, but figuratively speaking, in that nothing positive is ever heard about Africa. I love how the author brings out the distinction between “tribal” and “ethnic” groups. It is very important to understand the difference between these two groups. It is often believed, through western eyes, that a whole group of people are tribal not ethnic. Because African’s seem to look the same, in the westerner’s eyes, it is stereotypical to categorize the Genocide of Rwanda as tribal as opposed to ethic.

In the news article Ideas & Trends: Film Fatigue; Africa, at the Cineplex by Manohla Dargis, I appreciate how the author recognizes that African movies now are starting to have black Africans as the main Protagonist and white actors in the peripheral. I’ve heard that a Haitian movie was so close to be made, however, they needed a lead white protagonist.

Hollywood is slowly but surely changing, though taking baby steps. It’s no longer a white man/woman leading African’s to a promise land or be the liberator, but the African’s liberating themselves through tragedy.

“The rhythm of this film evolves with trepidation and trepidation and tension with many special effects:"
trepidation: A feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen

Daddy Doesn't Love Me

Issues like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda seem, more often than not, a way to point fingers at those who “failed” to act accordingly. Does playing the blame game ever actually make any progress in solving a problem?

In regards to the 2004 film, Hotel Rwanda (George), Anthere Nzabatsinda states that there is an underlying theme of “worldwide indifference, especially from the white, western world.” From this, I can only deduce that there seems to be a pattern of race and gender becoming the scapegoat for any unjustified act on humanity. How is making a racial divide any different than making an ethnic divide between the Hutu and Tutsi? When nonsensical separations start being pulled in to political affairs, one can only expect irrationality to follow.

Let us take a closer look at the actual cause of the genocide. As convoluted as it may be, there are blatant historical facts that may offer some sort of explanation. The European colonization in the mid-ninteenth century administrated identity cards to make a distinction between three ethnic groups inhabiting Rwanda: the Twas, the Hutus, and the Tutsis. Why this was done seems to be a vague detail that has been blurred into the background. However, purportedly, colonial favoritism shown between the ethnic groups stirred up a lot of bad blood and, before you know it, we have an out-of-control genocide.

In a way, one could compare it to parents favoring one child over the other. The jilted child acts out at home or at school because they cannot find justification for why they are receiving unequal treatment. Similarly, the Tutsi's could not come to terms with Belgium's sudden favoritism toward the Hutus.

It is all a vicious cycle that eventually boils down a genocide where “the racism of whites do not consider the lives of blacks equal to their own and are, therefore, not worth saving,” as Anthony Daniels so delicately put it in his article, “Never Again, that Time.”

Be that as it may, some Rwandan victims still managed to flee abroad to Europe and America--the very places that were accused of not offering any aid. If these nations felt the Rwandans were not worth saving, why on earth would they allow them into their country? It's like saying, “Daddy doesn't love me, but he bought me a car.”

Why the west was reluctant to offer aid is a political debate. However, I don't believe “the lives of blacks being unequal to the lives of whites” is a viable explanation. It is too narrow of an accusation.

Words of interest:

Fastidious- very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail
Beleaguered- lay siege to, beset with difficulties
Atrocity- an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury
Pundit - an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public

Fishers of men (and other things)...

The question was asked by Lina Lofaro and Amy Lennard Goehner, "Can a fillm change the world?". So what exactly is the answer? Whether its between Darwin's nightmare, or one of Michael Moores latest blockbusters, the question still seems to be unanswered.

Can one single film alter the ideas or opinions of one single person... Or thousands of people? What about hundresds of thousands. In Darwins Nightmare, a film by Hubert Sauper, the director and writer of the film, he shows that the nile perch brought in to Tanzania turn into what is termed as a "Cash crop" by wikipedia. Meaning that the perch are only to produce and raised for income, not to feed the already existing Tanzanians. They leave behind waste that are hardly edible for the natives of the country.

Aside from that, the President of Tanzania has even spoken against the film, saying that it goves a negative connotation to the country. Is that true? Is what Sauper has set as guidelines for the story, really what is going on?

All across the country, filmmakers retelling stories to the nation hoping to impact and affect. Films like Rent, Blood Diamond, Gia, etc... all stood up for a cause that they believed in, but who are they affecting.. Who is seeing these films, and even more, who is reacting to them. As a reader or viewer, are you affected on a daily basis by what you see or hear? Hghly doubtful in every circumstance, but surely there is some film, some article or web post that has affected you. That is why every artists keeps on grinding. While some might do it for the money, some still do it to be heard. Those artists, are as honorable and noble as the Tanzanians who struggle every day, to live... And that my friends... wrong or right... is my opinion.

Missed Opportunity?

Hotel Rwanda is based on the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan hotel manager who succeeds in helping close to one thousand Rwandans during the 1994 genocide. The film begins pretty positively. We see men in suits talking and we are introduced to one of them, Paul. He comes across as a nice, hardworking family man and the viewer can recognize him and relate to him. Though my dad is not a businessman and almost never wears a suit, I thought of him when I was seeing Paul at the beginning of the movie. As the film progresses we learn that bad things are happening, but we aren’t completely sure what or how bad they are. The impact really hits when brutal killings start to take place in lovely suburban settings with toys in the front yard. The setting looks eerily like our own neighborhoods and the reality of the slaughter starts to take hold. The way in which this story is told really drives home the horror of the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. The viewer is sad, shocked, deeply disturbed.

However, emotional impact does not necessarily mean a change will occur. In his article about the film Anthony Daniels wonders what someone with no knowledge of the genocide will learn from the film: “no one would be unmoved by it, of course: but would he know anything, rather than have felt something new?” Daniels is most concerned about the presentation of facts in the film. He understands that the only way complete context could be offered would be way too long and boring, so he uses his place as a writer to inform us of the deeper issues going on in Rwanda before the genocide. He closes the article by encouraging us to see the film, but gives a good piece of advice for viewers of any film: “we should be careful not to mistake catharsis for understanding.”

I share some of the concerns of Daniels. While Hotel Rwanda is an incredibly powerful film, it seems that the average viewer would probably leave feeling a lot, but not intending to do a lot. Part of the film’s problem is that it shows an historic event in which the Western World (home of most of the film’s audience) did nothing. As viewers we feel bad that our powers stood by while this atrocity happened, but we don’t really know what to do about it. It was almost two decades ago and the younger generation of viewers was too young to be aware of the problem (I was only four). I assume that most viewers are aware that this is not the only case of genocide that has happened (or probably will happen) in our lifetime. For them, there is no real solution offered. We leave the film not knowing what we could do to help in the future. The people who retreat when things get bad are UN officials, not everyday people like us. If we leave the theater thinking about future genocides, we feel helpless. After seeing the helplessness of the people being attacked, we don’t see how we could be of any help.

The Cineaste article points out that the film “supplies an expectation of violence in a context that encourages us to watch, but do little else.” The article also notes that the film makes the viewer see genocide as a force of destruction that is impossible to escape once it has started. The article by Manohla Dargis raises a similar point. Dargis says that the film, “doesn’t rouse me to action; it stirs horror, pity, sometimes repulsion that lingers uneasily until the action starts up again.” I can understand this point based on the scene in which Paul and Gregoire are driving in a dense fog only to find the bumps they have been encountering are not bumps in the road, but a seemingly endless stretch of bodies. This scene is certainly one of the most memorable and horrific, but the shock certainly wears off when they get back to the hotel and more action ensues.

The last thing I think could have hurt the film’s potential for change is the subject itself. Personally, I have not seen E.T., Bambi, or Terms of Endearment because I was told they were so sad and would probably make me cry. When I hear that before I see a film I tend to not want to see it. The death of a cartoon deer is nothing compared to the unnecessary slaughter of a million Rwandans, but Hotel Rwanda becomes watchable because of its personal story elements and moderate use of horrifically brutal scenes. The Dargis article says that this film and others, “evade unpleasant truths about history, power, and ideology in favor of heroic stories.” Paul Rusesabagina’s heroism is certainly what makes this film about genocide bearable. At the same time, this element that makes the film watchable makes its social impact less powerful. The Cineaste article says that this kind of story, “risks transforming the story of genocide, a story where hundreds of thousands died, into a story of those who survived.” I believe this is true of Hotel Rwanda. In the end we understand that everything is not okay, the family lost some members and went through horrific hardship, but in the last minutes of the film the Rusesabagina family learns that their friend from the Red Cross is alive and are reunited with their nieces. Then they all walk off with the buses taking people to safety and the film ends with a beaten, but triumphant freeze frame. Though text on the screen after the film tells the last horrible details of the genocide, the final impact has been made. They made it through and things are going to be okay for them. It almost makes you forget some of the tragedy.

Exculpatory: “…and the world looked away and sat on its hands, not even bothering to wring them in the usual self-exculpatory fashion.”

adj: tending to clear from a charge or guilt