I am ashamed.
I just watched Hotel Rwanda.
My eyes full of sorrow and I feel ashamed.
I am ashamed that I am part of a country that stands for freedom and equality, and yet we sat there and let thousands of innocent mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, babies, get murdered in the name of hate. No matter how strong a feeling within ones self, that gives him no right to release that on another human being. One man should not choose when another innocent man’s life should end. And in such brutality!
I guess now I know how people, who have not been exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust feel when they watch Schindler’s List or The Pianist. I know that even though I have been learning about the holocaust in depth my entire life, watching the Pianist alone, at night, on an airplane is one of the clearest moments I could depict in my life. This is what it must feel like for someone who has always been in the shadows to finally see light;
Excruciatingly blindly.
I was only a few years old when the Genocide in Rwanda occurred. Yet, I believe that gives me no reason not to be educated about it. Reading Ruined, sparked this need within myself to learn more; to be aware of more than just the primitive world that the media flashes before my eyes. That’s why art is so important. Information is given to us through the news media, but it is always going to be biased and portrayed in different ways.
Yet, there are many truths out there.
Art is a way for people to see a different side to things. This idea goes back to the post topics about the Artist as a social/political critic. Once again, I feel this aspect of artistry is very important and so necessary. Our world does not have one objective truth. People need art to help them understand a situation in ways that the media can never supply. Yet, just because art is a different view on things does not mean it is the truth either.
In art history we discussed imperialism of France and England in the world, particularly the Middle East. How these powers felt it was their right to colonize these countries. Citizens of the western world saw these colonies as exotic, far off places, worlds much different than their own. Yet, once colonization began, there was a real foreign influence on European art. It was a bleeding of cultures. In Jean- Leon Gerome’s 1870 painting, The Snake Charmer, he depicts an “exotic” Middle Eastern scene of a naked boy with a snake and some men sitting around watching. The technique Gerome used is extremely realistic. The painting almost looks photographic. This characteristic makes people believe that this painting is exactly what certain Middle Eastern cultures are like. The painting could have easily been a combination of scenes Gerome had seen in photographs. People will reduce a culture down to what they see in a picture. This is an example about how our view, of certain places that are so far away from us, can, even today, be shifted from reality. This painting made me realize that I must understand a situation before I automatically believe it to be true.
As we discussed in class, the play Ruined, displays the many tensions there are in war and in life. How war twists what we believe to be true and make us shift the way we were programmed to think. What is really good? What is really bad? What is moral? What is unjust?
All of these questions are too complex to answer in times of war. Sometimes, something we would normally see as bad is actually something that will save someone’s life. Like the brothel that Mama has created in Ruined. Whorehouses are not something Western culture would see as objectively good or moral. Yet, while reading this play about the terrible genocide and conflict in the Congo, the reader is forced to re adjust their lens. We must remember our human sensitivities. “What would you have done?” is the classic question to ask. It really does the trick. Putting yourself into a difficult situation will always make you feel a stronger empathy towards it. That is also why art can portray sensitive topics in a really beneficial way. When I watch a movie, or read a play, I get to know the characters and their lives. I feel their pain, and experience their joy. When they watch people get viciously murdered, and their entire world crumbles before their eyes, my eyes are there, I am watching and feeling what they are feeling. After watching Hotel Rwanda and reading Ruined I feel like I have felt one hundredth of the pain and desperation that these people have felt. That is enough.
Enough for me to cry.
Enough for me to be outraged.
Enough to be ashamed.
