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Silver Screen Power – Does entertainment value dampen the Big Picture message?

Written by Sam Lane
Thursday, 30 October 2008 00:00

Last weekend the top ten movies at the American box office grossed a total of $91.03 million. This after a week where the American House of Representatives had voted against, and then approved, the $700 billion dollar economic bail out. In hindsight perhaps free re-runs of James Dearden’s Rogue Trader would have been a better advised weekend screening. After all, the film industry can reach and influence more people than politicians could ever dream of. Couldn’t Tom Cruise have got those twelve extra votes needed first time around?

The film industry has its own battles to fight to stave off economic crisis. It has lived through a writers’ strike and a dramatic rise in on-line piracy and illegal downloads. The power of the Hollywood machine is such, however, that one wonders if a movie about how the current crisis was caused, and what the ramifications will be, would help find a joint resolution. The moving picture is one on the most powerful learning tools available; it teaches new subjects in accessible forms, it addresses issues in danger of fading out of the world press and it reaches an international audience. A well-crafted story can influence and change minds but does it last past the cinema doors?

The rather large issue standing in the way of this statement is that to influence, the Hollywood vehicle must first entertain. A film must buy the audiences commitment before it attempts anything else. Take, for example, Edward Zwick’s 2006 Blood Diamond, a film set in Africa to expose the illegal conflict diamond trade that funds rebel groups in locations such as Angola and Sierra Leone. Organisations such as the Rebel United Front (RUF) have been terrorising and torturing the people of Sierra Leone for more than a decade with little preventing action from the international community. Children are sent to war with an AK-47 and a blood system pumped full of cocaine. What buys that gun and that dose of drugs? Diamonds. Mined under the worst imaginable conditions, they are illegally dealt on the global market, polished and sold to the wealthy Western public. This is a horrific trade that needs to be on the world stage.

Blood Diamond first entertains with Leonardo DiCaprio – both his Zimbabwean accent, and his on screen chemistry with Jennifer Connolly. The more important story is that of Soloman Vandy, played by Djimon Hounsou, and his family. When Soloman’s village is attacked by the RUF, his family escape whilst Solomon is enslaved into the diamond trade. His son is kidnapped and through drugs and brainwashing, becomes a hardened killer in the RUF, slaughtering villages of innocent women and children without an ounce of emotion. This is not fiction; this is an accurate account of atrocities that have occurred in this part of Africa. DiCaprio’s character, Danny Archer, explains why this has been allowed to occur to Connolly’s western journalist, Maddy Bowe:, “T.I.A. This is Africa.” Not a city, not a country, but one of the world’s continents that has such a perimeter around its border that no one is aware of really what happens here. How can this be an acceptable explanation? We, the audience, are incensed, how did we not know this was occurring? Why have we done nothing until now? What can we do to help? The film succeeds in influencing its audience, making the wealthy Western public who would buy those diamonds think about where they really come from. Now, by the inevitable resulting action, it can claim to have stemmed the tide of conflict diamonds into the global market.

How have the people of Sierra Leone, Angola and other similar African nations benefited from this films release almost two years ago? The carnage and long suffering of the people of these nations have highlighted the International Community’s awareness of the need to cut sources of rebel funding. Diamonds are the ‘go-to’ response for what funds organisations such as the RUF. ‘Rough’, ‘Conflict’ or ‘Blood’ diamonds are used to finance rebel wars, but legitimate diamonds contribute to prosperity and development elsewhere is Africa. Consider Botswana, Namibia or South Africa who have all been able to invest in their own infrastructures due to the trading of their land’s natural resources.

The real issue is that this occurred to the United Nations six years before Blood Diamond was released. On 1st December 2000, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict. Three years later, the Global Diamond Industry, working closely with the UN, governments and non-governmental organisations, established the Kimberly Process Certification System, a system which guards against conflict diamonds entering the legitimate diamond supply chain.

By Blood Diamond’s release date, 74 governments had established the Kimberley process as law, and ninety nine per cent of the world’s diamonds have been certified as ‘conflict-free’. So Blood Diamond was too late. This story has already been told and solved. Perhaps not. One per cent buys more than enough bullets for the guns they already own. One per cent puts more than enough drugs into the veins of child soldiers already kidnapped from their families. One per cent pours enough petrol into the truck that drives to the next village, and they already have the bullets, guns and intent by that stage. Ninety nine per cent is not ‘job done’, and we need constant reminders that every percent counts.

If we search for a ratio between entertainment value and the ‘big picture’ message we are likely to get lost. Films must be entertaining; it is their primary objective. At the core of this entertainment must be a subject matter that the plot and characters can grow out of. Until success is measured by the number of debates sparked rather than tickets sold, Hollywood seems set to remain an occasional reminder of the issues too expensive to afford to forget.