Documentary Post 2: Darfur Now

Sorry it's very long!

The film’s purpose and argument is vague at times.  However, one of the claims that it does make in the introduction is that “Indifference is complicity.”  This essentially states that if we are bystanders to a massive crime, we are basically committing that crime by letting it continue.  While the documentary did a horribly vague job at explaining this argument, I will attempt to outline it as I believe the film intended.  

The argument is that in particular situations such as Darfur, the Jewish Holocaust, or Global Warming, staying neutral is no longer actually staying neutral.  Neutrality serves the purpose of the persecutor, and therefore is the same as persecution.  This stems back to the base idea that we are connected through a Social Contract: the idea that we owe the people in our community certain things so that we can enjoy protection.  It states that there is a moral obligation to help those in our community.

It is arguable that Darfur is a part of our community.  After all, as technology continues to expand its influence and our sense of connection, the global community has started to increase in importance. In olden days, take for example the Medieval Age, the people were not expected to help native Americans all the way over in the Americas or people in Africa.  The reason is that they did not have sufficient knowledge of these peoples.  Plus, they did not directly affect each other’s lives.  Therefore, they had no responsibility for each other.  However, nowadays, everyone has the capability to affect everyone else.  This is obvious through the international trade (oil), the influences of government, media coverage, etc.  Everyone knows what goes on in different parts of the world.  Therefore, there arises a new sense of responsibility.  Because we know, we must act on what we know.  This is the moral obligation that Darfur poses on Americans today.

Since the world is being viewed as this new global community, to not help Darfur means to sabotage a supposedly group effort.  It brings the rest of the community down due to one’s own self-interests, symbolically and perhaps indirectly.  That is what makes aiding Darfur an obligation, because in this case of the Social Contract, “not helping” becomes synonymous with “hurting.”  If one ignores his responsibilities as an individual within a community, he is hurting the community, and in turn hurting the people within the community.  His actions are therefore unjust and he, immoral.  

The counter-argument against this, however, can also be quite convincing.  It is also much easier to synthesize.  Whereas the Social Contract applies large, broad laws, to an increasingly complicated society, the counter-argument simply dismisses the Social Contract.  The entire idea of morality, when viewed honestly, can sometimes be  questionable.  The Social Contract implies that people are naturally individual and they do not work together.  Therefore, by agreeing to work together, the idea of morality means much more and is magnified.  However, there is virtually no way to say what people are naturally like.  We all make theories about humans being inherently good or inherently bad but the fact of the matter is these are merely assumptions.  In truth, this is not a simple question to answer at all.

With this said, the counter-argument would be that since the base state of human existence is impossible to know, we cannot infer that morality is even a valid concept.  Who says we owe anyone anything?  Who says that offering protection for one another is such a big favor?  Who says that justice is such a number one priority?  Without morality or justice, there is little link between America and Darfur.  And therefore, there is no obligation to stop the genocide.

NOW, this leads me to my personal belief.  Personally, I sometimes have little faith in morality.  Therefore, the first argument is somewhat of a stretch for me, despite its vastly good intentions.  BUT, I do not fully contend with the counter-argument either (being that I have gone out of my way to help Darfur since the 8^th grade).  While there may be some uncertainty in morality, one concept that cannot be died is practicality.  I believe helping Darfur, for me, is a practical decision, meaning that it simplifies my life and avoids possible bad karma.  The idea is that if I were to hurt someone in my school, that person would probably find some way to hurt me back.  Even if I get away with hurting him, I forever attain this reputation of being mean, causing the people around me to avoid me.  Either way, something bad happens in return.  That is a simple example.  In the same way, I believe I should not hurt Darfur.  It is a practical decision, because I do not see the difference between hurting a person in America and a person in Darfur.  The only thing that separates me from Darfur is distance.  To me, distance does not erase the practical laws of nature.

Documentary Post 1: Darfur Now

Darfur Now. Dir. Theodore Braun. By Theodore Braun. Prod. Cathy Schulman, Don Cheadle, and Mark Jonathan Harris. Warner Independent Pictures, 2007.

The documentary I watched was Darfur Now.  It was filmed in 2007 and is meant to raise awareness about the Darfur Genocide.  The conflict started in the early 1980s when drought hit the country of Sudan.  At the same time, overpopulation was also becoming an issue.  Resources and fertile land became a serious source of conflict as different groups of people started to compete over these resources.  While the conflict started as something one can only accept as natural, the fight quickly became rigged when the Sudanese government started to favor one side over the other.  The “Arab” dominated government supplied “Arab” groups to wipe out the “African” population.  Soldiers riding on horseback, known as Janjaweed, began to carry out a mass execution of Darfurian villages.  Today, up to 3 million Darfurians have become displaced and hundreds of thousands more killed.  Roughly 8 years have passed since the official initiation of the holocaust.

The filmmaker’s purpose was to draw attention to the genocide and urge people to take action.  The filmmaker included lots of footage of travels in Darfur.  There is a constant use of testimonials throughout the video, both from victims and outside activists.  Refugees can be seen carrying weapons and machine guns, marching through the dirt in their sandals.  This is meant to bring the conflict to the viewer’s eyes, where he can see it up close and personal.  The documentary has several parts.  One of the parts is following activists such as Don Cheadle and Ahmed Mahammed Abaka as they attempt to bring light to the issue given their own unique positions.  Abaka tries to establish credibility for himself by speaking on a similar issue in his homeland Colombia.

Although the filmmaker tries to draw empathy from its viewers and attempts to appeal to pathos, honestly I thought he did an extremely poor job.  First of all, he overused his testimonials.  One can only stand so much “touchy-feely” emotion in one sitting.  Emotion is powerful in contrast with other elements of argument, such as logic and reality.  But the filmmaker’s use of it was especially poor.  Not only that, but the testimonials that the filmmaker chose to use were inadequate in portraying what truly goes on in Darfur.  So not only was I hearing the same things over and over again, but I could sense no real seriousness, no real pain, no real intensity.   The documentary’s presentation of Darfur seemed “fake,” and that was the sad part because it deserved to be presented in a more honest light.

There were also many disrespectful, foolish, and ineffective rhetorical decisions in the video.  The filmmaker used absolutely no logic in his argument.   I expected some type of real moral context, some philosophical push to aid Darfur but I received none.  I merely received the same naïve, childish excuse of “Oh genocide is bad and it is important to help people.”  If the video’s purpose is to get people to realize, and to make them take action, then that explanation is simply not enough.  Having been around this issue for so long, I just did not feel like the video did Darfur justice.  To me, it was the work of an outsider not fully committed to his proposed mission, but rather someone who was more concerned with giving off the impression that he cared.  This goes the same for many of the activists in the documentary.  Their efforts were honestly very naïve in some ways and disrespectful to Darfurian victims in that they did not understand the full seriousness of the issue.

One last aspect of the documentary that was extremely annoying to me was the music and the dialogue.  The music playing whenever Darfur victims were interviewed was jumpy African music.  I understand that this may be a part of their culture, but to make this loud distinction really hurts the cause.  The video makes all Africans look like they are tribal and “early humans,” like they are not fully developed.  This really upsets me because this is a group of activists that claim they respect and care for these victims, and yet they fail to view them as equal beings.  Also, at the end of the documentary, there was joyful hopeful music playing the background.  This was very disrespectful in my eyes because it gave off the impression that the genocide was over when in reality, it is still taking place today.  It was irresponsible in that the filmmaker did not put in enough thought to realize what a dangerous toll this mistake has.  Because of this “hopeful” sensation, audience members will entirely dismiss the situation as if it has already passed, or that it is too late to help now.