IS198 SSII 2000

June 21. Yesterday we saw a powerful documentary called Consuming Hunger: Shaping the Image, which had to do with media manipulation of Western audiences in their portrayal of Africa. Focusing on the Live Aid concert in the mid-Eighties, as well as other charitable efforts on behalf of the famine-struck people of Ethiopia, it pointed out how the media positions us (this was Dembrow's phrase) into being passive consumers of a message and an image of Africans that gives us a simple solution to a terribly complex problem. We are asked to salve our guilty consciences by making donations, feeling good about ourselves and about the rock groups and corporations such as AT&T who are joining us in being generous.

What I found really interesting about all this, particularly in connection with this course, is how this kind of manipulation reinforces stereotypes and attitudes that we have about Africa and Africans. The point was made that the Ethiopian victims are nameless, undifferentiated--they're generic VICTIMS. Whereas names and faces are given to us, the Westerners, who come to save them. (The cynical expectation is that we Americans could never really identify with an African--we can only identify with people who look, dress, act, speak, spend like us.) This reinforces an image of Africans as secondary, as subservient, as existing only in relation to us. Not only is this an erroneous and limiting view, it's a dangerous one. And embarrassing for me as an American.

One thing that I wish we'd talked more about was the relationship between this view of Africans and the way that the media has traditionally portrayed African Americans here at home. I remember reading--or maybe I saw it on TV???--about how Hollywood has traditionally stereotyped Black American males as either passive, cowardly Uncle Toms or brutal, animalistic murderers. And the women would usually be fat, matronly Aunt Jemima types, who are totally devoted to the white people they work for. Anyway, I wonder if there's a connection there? Off the top of my head there seems to be a parallel between chauvinism abroad and institutional racism here.

June 22. Just read about Ousmane Sembene, whose movie we see tonight.. VERY nteresting guy. Apparently, he likes to use non-professional actors in his movies. I'll be curious to see how that works. Will they seem forced, or more realistic? He says he tries to make his movies political, but not didactic or propagandistic. I'll be curious to see how he walks that line.

June 22. Read the article "Africa Through African Eyes," by Cornelius Moore. Contrasts the way that Hollywood has portrayed Africans, sees it as an extension of colonialism. (Meaning as a justification for colonialism??? I'll have to think about that.)

Contrast with African film by Africans, who are trying to create new images for themselves that are positive or at least more real. Talks about three kinds of films--those that have to do with colonialism, those that are set in pre-colonial time, and those that are post-colonial. All of them trying to create new models for how Africans should live today. He makes the same point that MD made the other night--even though these countries are independent, the West still dominates what people see in the theaters in those countries. I'm still trying to imagine what it must be like for an African to watch a TV show like Baywatch or Dynasty, or even a movie like The Nutty Professor. What do they get out of it? What do they feel? Do they get angry at all?

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