(Mis)Imagining Africa in the New Millennium: The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond
Abstract
Twentieth-century British and US films
about Africa have been predominantly racist productions that employ what
Kenneth Cameron
calls archetypes—the White Queen, the White Hunter,
the Good African, the Dangerous African, and so on. This article
explores
the mise-en-scène of Africa in two celebrated
twenty-first century films, The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond,
and questions whether problematic archetypes still hold in the new
millennium. By reading both films as noir thrillers with
humanitarian agendas, the article highlights their
subversive potential to “enlighten” Western audiences about oppression
on the “dark continent.” The article focuses on the
respective story lines, which indict Western corporations, and on the
directors' manipulation of lightness and darkness
as a means of literally rendering Western exploitation visible. Despite
this potential, however, neither of the films
manages to evade the racism that dominated cinematic portrayals of
Africa in
the previous century. Both films model their
central characters on archetypes and imagine an Africa in which
whiteness is
normative and in which white masculinity connotes
agency. Narrative and cinematography ultimately collude to portray
Africa
as universally chaotic and Africans as universally
oppressed. The filmmakers' good intentions notwithstanding, these two
commercially
successful films fall short and affirm Cameron's
conclusion that Britain and the United States are not ready for a new
cinematic
Africa, even in a new millennium.
