Blood Diamond (2006)
Directed by: Edward Zwick
Featuring: Jennifer Connelly, Leonardo DiCaprio, & Djimon Hounsou
Guilt, Sacrifice, and Redemption in Blood Diamond: Coming to Terms with the Role of America Concerning Conflicts in Africa
Guilt has pervaded Americans' perceptions of Africa since colonists first stepped foot its soil, leaving behind, in many cases, a legacy of instability, violence, and corruption. In current times, when symbols of Africa are overused and exploited in an effort to push Americans to act, Americans find it increasingly difficult to know how to respond to the overwhelming issues plaguing many nations in Africa, and their guilt concerning their role in these issues. Director Edward Zwick, well know for his political action films such as Glory, Courage Under Fire, and The Last Samurai, attempts to respond to America and Europe's role in conflicts in Africa, by both creating and absolving viewers of guilt in Blood Diamond (2006), which addresses the issues of conflict diamonds in relation to the tragically violent civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. The film has been hailed as courageous and informative in its effort to bring to light issues about which far too Americans are ignorant. However, using rhetorical critic Kenneth Burke's concept of re-individuation of forms and the tragic mechanism in relation to purpose and motive, I will show that Zwick retells the story of Sierra Leone from a predominately white, foreign perspective. Zwick uses original sin, guilt, sacrifice, and redemption to both satiate viewers' need to recognize their guilt and absolve them of that guilt through the simplification of symbols and solutions.
The film follows three central characters, Solomon Vande (Djimon Hounsou), a fisherman who is torn from his family by the war but discovers a diamond which changes his life, Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), a corrupt but socially aware diamond smuggler, and Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), and American journalist who is trying desperately to make a difference. The film utilizes what Burke terms the 're-individuation' of forms, the process in which the author translates a situation or text to fit a certain ideology or perception. Burke states that "the re-individuation process usually goes farthest in altering to fit different ideologies," which is exemplified in the way the film takes a historical even, civil war in Sierra Leone, and retells it from the point of view of Americans and Europeans. Though the film is meant to raise awareness about the plight of those living in conflict zones, the plot revolves around Archer and Maddy, using Sierra Leone and locals as a backdrop rather than the focal point. Even Solomon Vande, the main character, has few lines and remains one-dimensional throughout the film. Blood Diamond retells Sierra Leone's history from a predominately American perspective, and is thereby able to refocus the story to confront and alleviate guilt felt by Americans in relation to issues in Africa, and reaffirm American ideologies such as capitalism and the power of the individual. While some argue that it is only through this re-individuation of forms that American audiences can relate to the people and issues addressed in the film, essentially this is simply submitting to and perpetuating the trained incapacity which claims that American culture and society is superior and should be pushed upon developing nations. This re-individuation of forms and trained incapacity only further perpetuates issues in these nations by refusing to allow them room to represent themselves and develop autonomously from the U.S, as fits their own culture and history.
Blood Diamond is an attempt to respond to what Burke terms the 'original sin,' defined by Burke as 'inherited guilt.' Original sin, in the film, is the legacy Americans and Europeans left in Africa since the first colonists stepped foot on the continent. This guilt is therefore recognized immediately in the film, hangs heavy over the middle acts, and is necessarily followed by sacrifice and subsequent redemption in the final act of the film. Before the first ten minutes have passed the film has already encumbered viewers with a thick layer of guilt with the sequence at the G8 Conference on Diamonds in Antwerp, Belgium. Ambassador Walker, played by Stephen Collins (who, significantly, is best known for his role as a reverend on the television show Seventh Heaven), immediately acknowledges the legacy America and Europe left in Africa, and our responsibility to face that legacy, stating that "throughout the history of Africa, whenever a substance of value is found the locals die, in great number and in misery...We must act to prohibit the direct or indirect import of all rough diamonds from conflict zones." The character who best embodies this original sin is Archer, who's entire goal throughout the film is to get a hold of the diamond for his own profit, caring nothing for the horrors which surround him and which he perpetuates.
As Burke explains, the next step in inciting viewers to take action is to show how important the conflict in Sierra Leone is, that the end of the colonial legacy of corruption and violence is worth sacrificing for. Burke states that, "to show that a good is worth having, one shows that it is worth a sacrifice. Thus, even while the rationalist agitator seeks to commend his cause by picturing the advantages it would bring to its adherents, his poetic allies carry on the same propaganda tragically by the picture of heroic sufferings, sacrifice, and death." Archer's death is a direct response to the guilt which has been built up and layered upon audience members throughout the film. As Burke states, there is a "principle of absolute 'guilt,' matched by a principle that is designed for the corresponding absolute cancellation of such guilt. And this cancellation is contrived by victimage, by the choice of a sacrificial offering that is correspondingly absolute in the perfection of its fitness." For everything to work out in the film, a white man who is part of a long legacy of corruption and oppression in Africa has to not only die, but knowingly sacrifice himself. Since Archer begins the film as a corrupt, pessimistic character who would rather perpetuate issues in Sierra Leone for a profit than work towards improvement, his character arch sets him up as the perfect victim to sacrifice for the film and absolve not only his character of guilt, but audience members as well.
The most significant aspect of his death is that he is self-sacrificing, choosing to be left behind even though both Solomon and Maddy insist they can bring him to safety. Archer chooses to stay behind and one of the final shots is of his blood mixing in with the red earth, a symbol of Americans and Europeans shedding their own blood for people in Africa, rather than taking their traditionally passive or oppressive role. According to Burke's conception of redemption from original sin, as well as the tragic method, Archer had to die for the purpose of the film to be fulfilled. Without his death viewers would not be symbolically absolved of their guilt for their inherited role and current passivity in relation to nations in Africa. Burke explains that, "insofar as the religious pattern (of 'original sin' and sacrificial redeemer) is adequate to the 'cathartic' needs of human hierarchy (with modes of mystery appropriate to such a hierarchy) it would follow that the promoting of social cohesion through victimage is 'normal' and 'natural.'" Archer's sacrifice is the ultimate catharsis for viewers because, at least in the narrative of the film, his sacrifice saves Solomon and his family, and informs the entire world of the corruption in the diamond industry. Through his death, Archer both redeems himself and viewers of his conscious funding of civil war, and reaffirms the American sentiment that the individual can make a difference.
The conclusion of the film speaks again to the re-individuation of forms at a conference in South Africa, with the reappearance of Ambassador Walker, who asserts to his audience that "the third world is not a world apart, and the witness you will hear today speaks on its behalf. Let us hear the voice of that world. Let us learn from that voice. And let us ignore it no more." Ironically, the camera cuts away before Solomon begins to speak. Even when the film acknowledges the importance of people in African nations representing themselves, when Solomon is finally asked to share his experiences and interpretation of the events which the audience has witnessed largely from the perspective of Maddy and Archer, viewers never hear his version. Though Zwick's message is well-intentioned, it does not follow through in the film. Instead, this conclusion to the film reflects a consistent problem throughout the film in which Africa is used as a backdrop for western audiences to reconcile their guilt and conflict. The film spends so much time mired in its own guilt over the plight of people in countries such as Sierra Leone, it fails to examine or depict their plight with any depth, except in using it as a backdrop for the action and political confessions of Maddy and Archer.
At the end of the film, the filmmakers provide a concrete mode of action for viewers with a title card which reads, "But illegal diamonds are still finding their way into the market. It is up to the consumer to insist that a diamond is conflict-free." The film ends with a title card reading "Sierra Leone is at peace," a condition which the film, by default, fictionally attributes to the actions of Solomon, Maddy, and most importantly, the sacrifice of Danny Archer. The film is a response to and reflection of current attitudes towards global issues in which people feel powerless to really make a change. In the end, the message which viewers take from the film is to change their consumption habits and leave the real work to the heroes on the front lines. The easiest way from Americans to respond to issues is to alter their habits as consumers. It is a way for them to feel they are able to make a change through the beauty of capitalism. While the importance of refusing to purchase conflict diamonds is an invaluable message to convey to society, it is also a deceptively simple solution to a very complex set of issues. It reaffirms capitalism even as it critiques it, and makes viewers feel proactive in their passivity, relieving them of their guilt.
In providing Western designs of democracy, individualism, and capitalism as solutions, the filmmakers are operating out of trained incapacity which teaches Americans that our form of government and economy is the correct and most appropriate one, regardless of a society's culture and history. Though the film is attempting to aid Americans and Europeans in coming to terms with their relationship to conflicts in Africa, it makes a tragic mistake in attempting to represent the experiences of those in Sierra Leone and in telling the story from a western perspective. If true progress towards peace is to be made, people must be able to represent themselves. Rhetoric and symbolic representation is the first step towards social change, and until people in countries in Africa are able to retell their own history and create their own symbols, interpretations, and responses to the conflicts in their respective countries, no progress can be expected. The tragic mistake of the filmmakers lies in their attempt to reconcile issues in Africa for white audiences, rather than recognizing that the only way that anything can change for those living in nations in Africa is if they are given the stage to take control of their own representation and symbol making.
Burke, Kenneth:
Counter Statement (1931)
Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (1954)
