Fri, 29 Aug 1997 11:30:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Njubi <fnn@oitunix.oit.umass.edu>
Sender: owner-african-cinema-conference
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: african-cinema-conference@xc.org
Recent posts on "travel writing" in East Africa are a
reminder of the venerable myth of "wild Africa." Nothing, it
seems, plucks the heartstrings like a baby elephant. For
over a century, the West has constructed a powerful myth of
the "dark continent" and their efforts to "tame" it. Thus we
have the deluge of books, magazine articles, television
series, and films, (remember Tarzan?)
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for the storytellers,
most people in the West are introduced to Africa through
these programmes sponsored by the National Geographic
Society and other conservationist organizations. "Nature"
and "Nova" for instance, are watched by millions of viewers
in Europe and North America and increasingly in parts of
Asia and Latin America.
This construction of Africa as the last great wilderness,
the untamed paradise, the virgin land, had no place for the
African who had co-existed with the environment for millions
of years. Thus the conservationists created "national parks"
all over Eastern and Southern Africa to "protect" the
animals from the "natives" who were then redefined as
"poachers." These parks have continued to receive million
of dollars from fund-rasing campaigns ... apparently there
is no "compassion fatigue" when it comes to baby elephants.
The explorers, big game hunters and settlers who populate
this genre constructed a myth of wild and primitive africa
that fueled the spread of racism across Europe and the
Americas. The narratives are constructed from locations that
reflect the prejudices and motives of the writers. like
Columbus, Cortez, Balboa, Pizzarro, explorers in Africa like
Speke, Grant, Livingston, Stanley were the vanguard of
imperialism. they colored their narratives to suit the
tastes of their audiences and sponsors. The same goes for
settler memoirs and "novels" (Margery Perham, Karen Blixen,
Robert Ruark, Elspeth Huxley et. al.) The so-called
anthropologists and scientists among them are the worst of
the lot because they gave an aura of leaning to the myth. of
course the journalists, like Stanley, of new york, did not
bother to mask their racism.
I could go on, but I suggest that the filmmaker take into
account the many critiques of the colonial imagination by
East Africans. In Ngugi wa Thiongo's _Detained: A Writers
Prison Diary_, for instance, he describes the settlers as
"parasites in paradise. Kenya, to them, was a huge winter
home for aristocrats, which of course meant big game hunting
and living it up on the backs of a million field and
domestic slaves."
In-Reply-To: 199709021554.IAA02319@abraham.xc.org