Africa has suffered a double tragedy – that of colonization and having the colonizer dominate and shape the underlying narrative of the African story. However, telling other people’s stories is subject to personal biases and prejudices based on long-standing stereotypes. The representation of Africa in films has been characterized by Afropessimism, which is the systematically negative view of Africa as a continent unable to advance politically, socially, and economically. Africa is presented as the darkest place in the world; hence, the need for a white savior to bring civilization and redeem Africa from the chains of backwardness. Additionally, movies about Africa are mainly meant for consumption in the west, thus filmmakers focus on creating and promoting a certain preconceived image of the continent, which is consistent with existing stereotypes to justify the need for colonialism. Therefore, there is a need to understand how films are tailored to fit certain narratives by investigating the rudimentary motivations.
Drawing from British and French films depicting Africa in the periods of 1925-1945 and 1998-2010, this paper seeks to examine the ways in which movie directors utilize colonial white savior symbolism and colonial propaganda in their cinematic message between both periods. For this, the paper focuses on the cinematic configuration of King Solomon’s Mines (1937), Blood Diamond (2006), as British films, and The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Moi, Un Noir (1958) as French movies. This paper further explores how the film was used as a tool to reimagine Africa and Africans in popular colonial discourses of the 20th century. The aim is to illustrate the differences in the creation and content of film from the colonial period before the Second World War and the post-colonial period relating to the role of representation in power/knowledge. Lastly, the paper analyzes environmental landscapes, relationships, and socioeconomic issues shown in the movies and utilize them to dissect qualitative and quantitative work in tandem to create a context that links the representations given here to the comparison of different periods in French and British cinematography.
White Savior Mentality and Colonial Propaganda in Movies about Africa
A comprehensive understanding of the white savior mentality and colonial propaganda in movies about Africa requires a background investigation of the narratives about why Africa needed to be colonized in the first place. Colonialism was inhuman, and it violated every basic human right together with robing Africans of their culture and languages. However, the western public had to be fed with a certain narrative justifying the continued need for colonizing Africa. British and French were the major imperialists in Africa, and thus filmmakers from these countries had to advance a certain narrative about the continent, which is consistent with the formulaic conception of the continent. First, in movies, Africa is represented as a dark continent without a place in the civilized world (Tsikata 2014, 34). Therefore, in a quickly progressing world, a white savior, the default progeny of refinement, is needed to enter Africa and colonize its inhabitants by robbing them of their culture, values, beliefs, and languages and introduce a “better” way of life characterized with new languages, religion, and social formations. This assertion explains why in the majority of African movies, a white figure steps in to solve allegedly long-standing problems whether political, cultural, social, or economical.
Therefore, based on this misconstrued depiction of Africa, people in the west validate colonialism because it is unacceptable for a region as dark as Africa to appear in the story of civilization in its natural forms. To understand this concept in a better way, parallels are drawn to what happened in Canada’s education system. When the British arrived in Canada, they felt that Aboriginals were uncivilized, and thus they created the residential school system, where children would be forcefully held in boarding facilities, stripped of their culture and language, and inculcated with western ideologies. The same concept informs the representation of Africa in movies as a place in need of a savior, who has to be a white because according to Ambler (2001, 81), the audience has to be given a certain perspective of the story. This perception did not end with decolonization, and in the post-colonization era, the films made are designed to reimagine Africa as a place that can only rely on the west for governance and economic progress.
King Solomon’s Mines (1937)
King Solomon’s Mines is a great story of a group of whites on a journey to the interior parts of Africa in search of mythical diamond mines of King Solomon. The group is under the leadership of another white man, a hunter, Allan Quartermain. In this movie, Africa is presented as the custodian of lost treasures, an untamed void, and a nightmare. According to Dunn (1996, 162-163), “placing a lost treasure in the middle of Africa is not unreasonable because the entire continent is a void on which the artists (writers and directors) can construct alternate realities without fear of rejection or disbelief.” The symbol of Africa being a custodian of wealth and lost treasures has imperialistic connotations to advance the need for colonizing the place. One of the reasons why the British conquered the world was to expand its empire, politically and economically. Therefore, by presenting Africa as a place of untapped riches, this film validates the importance of colonizing the continent and exploit the resources for profiteering purposes.
Additionally, it is important to note that the treasure does not actually belong to Africa – it came from King Solomon, a white man. In the stereotypical narrative about the continent, it would be insulting to the European paternalism and imperialism to admit that a backward society would have the means to amass such wealth. It would be equally contemptuous to insinuate that Africans, in their alleged savagery, would possess the knowledge to manage such fortunes. Therefore, the western audience, it would only make sense if this treasure belonged to one of their own, and most importantly, it has to be discovered by whites. Africans, in their backwardness, can only perfect the art of hunting and gathering wild animals and fruits for survival.
The second representation of Africa as a void – an empty place awaiting occupation also plays into the colonialism politics. The white hunter notes that Africa is a great terra incognita where no one has ever set foot. This observation deliberately overlooks the existence of Africans, and if they are acknowledged, they are not seen as human beings. Otherwise, nothing explains the claim that no human being has ever set foot on an inhabited continent – the only plausible interpretation is that whatever dwells in that land is anything, but human. The white hunter’s claim that Africa is uninhabited is deliberate because he actually knows the names of the tribes living in the continent and he understands their language, culture, and beliefs. However, the claim of the unoccupied region means that the place is open for exploration and exploitation because it is empty (Steinbock-Pratt 2009) and the only person who can accomplish this noble mission is a white, as shown in the movie. From this perception, colonization becomes a white man’s moral obligation to occupy, modernize, and raise its status to befit the civilized western standards.
Finally, the film portrays Africa as a dream and a nightmare at the same place, which advances the colonialism debate. First, the region is expansive with lush landscapes, which would accommodate farming, trophy hunting, and settling by the whites; hence, the need to move fast and occupy the continent. On the other hand, the place is a nightmare filled with savage natives, who confront the group of whites looking for King Solomon’s treasure. These people are barbaric, and the only way to instill any sense of civilization is through imperialism. Additionally, the white man has to win over these savages because they are an existential threat to him and the modern world at large. According to Dunn (1996, 164), “the native Africans in this film are characterized by being savage, brutal, cruel, untrustworthy, heathen and degenerate.” As such, the only way to deal with such individuals is through imperialism, and most importantly, colonizing their minds. Therefore, this movie promotes colonialism propaganda, specifically why the Europeans were justified in advancing this inhuman venture in the 20th century.
Blood Diamond (2006)
An African movie shot in the 21st century would be expected to be different from its colonial-era counterparts and portray Africa positively without stereotypical perceptions. However, Blood Diamond advances the same colonial propaganda in what Bulhan (2015, 224) calls meta-colonialism – “a colonial system that goes beyond in scope or behind in depth what classical colonialism and neocolonialism had achieved.” One of the insidious problems with most movies about Africa and Africans is that even the protagonists are white people, and thus this presentation is bound to be stereotypical (Hall 1997). Blood Diamond takes place in Sierra Leone, a West African ravaged by a seemingly unending civil war. It promotes the widely-accepted theory of resource curse in African countries – that the very treasures that are supposed to help the continent rise socio-economically are holding it back from progress. This theory is amplified in the movie when “an elderly man in a ravaged village tells Vandy that he dreads what would happen if oil were discovered in Sierra Leone” (Evans and Glenn 2010, 24-25). In other words, post-colonial Africa is presented as a continent unable to govern its affairs in a civilized manner.
The problem of poor governance in Africa is exemplified in this film with the portrayal of the country’s politics as a naked and vicious struggle for power and control over mineral resources. Therefore, under such circumstances, Africa needs a liberator to help it organize its home affairs. As Evans and Glenn (2010, 26) argue, the movie deliberately obscures historical truths about Sierra Leone and Africa in general. First, in its concluding credits, it notes that there are over 200,000 child soldiers in Africa, which does not reflect the current situation of a peaceful Sierra Leone where the issue of child soldiers has been resolved conclusively. The Africa presented in this film is a place of hopelessness with dark clouds always hovering over the head of the continent’s future. The protagonist, Danny Archer, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, paints a picture of Africa that resonates with the expectation of the western audience concerning the continent. A conversation that goes on in the movie, as highlighted by Evans and Glenn (2010, 27) captures the white man’s view of Africa:
Danny Archer: Peace Corps types only stay around long enough to realize they’re not helping anyone. The government only wants to stay in power until they’ve stolen enough to go into exile somewhere else. And the rebels…they’re not sure they want to take over, otherwise they’d have to govern this mess, but TIA, right M’ed?
M’ed: TIA.
Maddy Bowen: What’s TIA?
Danny Archer: This is Africa
The TIA mantra, an Afropessimist slogan, is a snarky response to African indifference and brutality, which resonates well with western audiences that are expected to consume these movies.
While the issues highlighted in the movie are a true reflection of what happened in the continent, the problems are not presented as challenges with particular causes. The Liberian Civil War happened, and it was brutal, with children being at the frontline of the battle as soldiers. The problem with this film is that it takes all the screen time to express the “how” with little mention of the “why”. This obsessive interest in showing how things happened without explaining the “why” seeks to eternalize Africa’s problems, which gives the audiences little room to think about possible solutions. The only way out of the conflict then is for the white man to step in and offer answers through neocolonialism.
Moi, Un Noir (1958)
Set in the transitional period where most African countries were in the process of gaining independence, Moi, Un Noir, or “I, a Negro” took a different path from the many films that had been shot at the time by letting Africans tell their story. The movie’s director, Jean Rouch, adopted ethno-fiction to document the lives of Nigerian immigrants in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, as they go about their daily lives. Rouch lets the characters in this film tell their own story as they see it, which should be applauded because, for the first time, Africans have a platform to address the world from their perspective.
However, the problem with this movie, like many others by whites, is that it gravitates towards the colonialism propaganda. Rouch edited the film to fit into a certain narrative and highlight the role of France in West Africa. The story was supposed to be about the lives of immigrants as they struggle to make a living in a foreign country. However, Rouch somehow manages to insert the French victories in Indochina during the war. The protagonist, Ganda-Robinson, recounts how he would kill Vietnamese soldiers by slitting their throats with a knife. The French army participation and victories in Indochina add no value to a story about struggling young men in a foreign country.
Rouch is writing for a French audience, which might not resonate well with a purely African story narrated by Africans. This assertion underscores why the French Army, and its victories, has to feature somewhere in the film. In addition, Rouch has the white man mentality that Africans cannot achieve some feats on their own. In the scene where Ganda boasts about seducing and sleeping with white women in Europe, Rouch does extensive editing to portray the narrator as untruthful, which fits into the conventional stereotype of Africans being inferior to whites. Rouch cannot imagine Ganda, a black, convincing a white woman to have sex with him.
The Battle of Algiers (1966)
The Battle of Algiers is a chef-d’oeuvre film shot in the post-colonial Algeria detailing one of the combats of the Algerian War as the country fought for independence. This movie departs from the traditional depiction of Africa as a helpless continent to a place where people can fight for their rights and sovereignty. While the French won the battle, they lost the war, and Algeria gained independence in 1962. This movie is a great example of how the view about Africa transformed after independence. In a classical film, Africans engaging whites in a war would be presented as miniatures groping in the dark trying to use enchantment to win against the mighty guns wielded by their enemy.
However, The Battle of Algiers present organized Africans willing to use new-age war tactics to match their white counterparts and stage a decisive battle sending a strong warning that they are prepared to win their freedom. This approach given to this film goes against comments by Slavin (1997, 23) that the “French colonial lobby took an early interest in film and grasped its efficacy as a means of stimulating popular support for the Empire.” The Battle of Algiers, in essence, shows the waning influence of the Empire in Algeria and Africa at large.
Reimagining Africa in Colonial Discourses in 20th Century
The scramble for Africa ended in 1900 with almost all countries colonized by various European countries with French and British claiming the largest share of the continent. Back home in the west, Europeans were sold many lies and given convincing reasons why Africa needed to be colonized so that they could support the process. The conventional narrative was that Africans were feebleminded, uncivilized savages, who needed colonization. However, after World War I, Africans started agitating for independence, and thus the west needed to justify their continued stay in the continent. This assertion explains why King Solomon’s Mines of 1937 had to portray Africa as a jungle of unoccupied land awaiting exploration and exploitation by the whites. In addition, the movie shows Africans as a threat to the whites and civilization, hence the justified need for continued colonization. Even in the 21st century, the narrative has been the same – Africans are incapable of self-rule, and when left on their own, they can only breed bloody conflicts. This line of thought stands out clearly in Blood Diamond.
However, French moviemakers transformed this narrative by giving Africans the voice of their own. In Moi, Un Noir, the director allows Africans to tell their story, and even though he is accused of gravitating towards the colonialism propaganda by unnecessarily inserting French army victories in a story about struggling Africans, the movie set the stage for a different narrative concerning the continent. Similarly, in The Battle of Algiers, the story of Africans is transformed from that of despair and hopelessness to one of empowerment and willingness to fight for freedom. Therefore, French moviemakers pioneered the movement to reimagine Africa as a place occupied by people with values, cultures, and rights that should be respected and promoted in the global arena.
The shift from the conventional portrayal of Africa as a dark continent to a civilized place is clear in these movies. In King Solomon’s Mines, the movie is set in the jungles of Africa – even the white hunter has the audacity to sardonically describe the continent an unknown place where no man has ever set foot on despite knowing the native tribes by their names. However, in Moi, Un Noir and The Battle of Algiers, the action unfolds in modernized African cities, which is redeeming given the long-standing stereotypes associated with the continent as untamed, wild, and uncivilized. Ukadike (1990, 38) states that finally, “some steps toward the courageous portrayal of African reality were made, especially of the colonial reality.” This shift is part of reimagining movement about Africa started by Jean Rouch in his piece, Moi, Un Noir.
Conclusion
The work of narrating the story of Africa has been left to outsiders, specifically whites, who, in most cases, are subject to personal biases and historical prejudices about the Continent. Consequently, in movies, Africa is presented as the darkest continent without inhabitants, thus awaiting occupation by white people. Films, such as King Solomon’s Mines and Blood Diamond advance the theory that Africa is a jungle of uncivilized savages that should be colonized lest they become a threat to the modern world. Even after decolonization, Africans are presented as incompetent people incapable of governing themselves. They suffer from the curse of resources, as rightly captured in Blood Diamond. However, the French revolutionized this narrative and gave Africans a voice to tell their stories. Jean Rouch played a significant role in this process by letting young African immigrants in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, tell their stories without following a certain script. The reimagining of Africa was further promoted in The Battle of Algiers where Africans stage a spirited war against French imperialism.
Reference List
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- Blood Diamond. Directed by Edward Zwick. 2006. Burbank: Warner Bros. DVD.
- Bulhan, Hussein. 2015. “Stages of Colonialism in Africa: From Occupation of Land to Occupation of Being.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 3 (1), pp. 239-256.
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- King Solomon’s Mines. Directed by Robert Stevenson and Geoffrey Barkas. 1937. London: Gaumont British Picture Corporation. DVD.
- Moi, Un Noir. Directed by Jean Rouch. 1957. Paris: Les Films de la Pléiade. DVD.
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