Picture it Black

Hollywood is doing all it can to focus on Africa8217;s suffering but its films on the dark continent serve to entertain us, not arouse our conscience

American children used to connect with their deprived African counterparts mostly by cleaning their plates. Today, those same children have a dizzying variety of ways of reaching out to the continent and its inhabitants: They can shop at the Gap, mind Bono, listen to Kanye West, read Dave Eggers and watch an Oscar-nominated film or two, like Blood Diamond or The Last King of Scotland, and, while flipping through their favourite magazine, contemplate the AIDS awareness ad campaign in which celebrities like Richard Gere and Gwyneth Paltrow, faces daubed with paint, declare 8220;I am African.8221;

Well, really, aren8217;t we all? The new African awareness isn8217;t just deeply, appreciably earnest; it8217;s personal, too. Angelina Jolie, the head of the new class of celebrity missionaries, not only adopted an Ethiopian girl, but has also poured money into Namibian maternity wards. The same goes for Oprah Winfrey, who founded a girls8217; school in South Africa.

The humanitarian crises in Africa are overwhelming, but they8217;re also now such a familiar fixture in our 24/7 news-and-entertainment spin cycle that it can be hard to keep up. Yet if the bad news out of Africa never seems to end, neither do the pop-cultural responses.

And why not? As George Clooney explained after embarking on a high-profile effort to bring attention to the Darfur region of Sudan, 8220;If you8217;re going to be famous and have cameras follow you around, you might as well go where the cameras will do some good.8221; Last April, Clooney and his father, Nick, visited refugee camps in the Sudan, and the son subsequently joined Sens. Sam Brownback and Barack Obama at a news conference where he passionately urged that greater international attention be paid to the crisis. It was a tough sell, even for the Sexiest Man Alive, who at one point also admitted that it was hard to capture people8217;s attention because, as he put it, 8220;We have tragedy fatigue on television.8221;

In the old Tarzan days, Johnny Weissmuller yodelled across a back-lot jungle while black extras ran amok in feathered headdress borrowed from the cowboys-and-Indians department. In that Hollywood, Africa was an extension of the studio lot often it was the studio lot, the setting for thrilling adventures, big-game safaris and the occasional bloody conflict with native peoples. Mostly, though, Africa was the exotic backdrop for white characters, who paid about as much attention to its black populace as they did to the black populace back home.

Most new American films about Africa mean well, at least those without Bruce Willis, and even openly commercial studio fare like Blood Diamond wears its bleeding, thudding heart on its sleeve. But what, exactly, are we meant to do with all their images, I wonder? Like The Constant Gardener and Catch a Fire, two other thrillers set in Africa, Blood Diamond was designed to make money, not instigate change. Watching Leonardo DiCaprio share the screen with genuine handless black Africans or Ralph Fiennes8217; gardener learn a lesson in postcolonial realpolitik while I munch my popcorn doesn8217;t rouse me to action; it stirs horror, pity, sometimes repulsion, sentiments that linger uneasily until the action starts up again to sweep away that empathy with another explosion, gunfight or rousing chase.

It is naive to think that these films, including a fair share of the documentaries, are being made on behalf of Africa and its people; they are made for us. For the duration specified.

8212;The New York Times / MANOHLA DARGIS