Hotel Rwanda

The photographer Jack tells Paul, “They'll say Oh, my God, that's horrible. And then they'll go on eating their dinners.”

The film showed a very human side that we never see when mainstream media covers a story... any story, unless of course they're doing a story about some tragedy on American soil.

We tend to sympathize with Paul because he is not presented as a Hutu or Tutsi or African or even a “nigger” (even though we are told he is Hutu). We don't see a label. What we see is a man, a human being with a family that he loves, a man with hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties, just like the rest of us. So the character creates a dichotomy. We see the human and we feel enraged and even a little bit ashamed that the world did nothing while innocent families were slaughtered. We keep gnashing our teeth (towards both the UN, and the US), wondering…what the hell is wrong in the world when people stop caring!

Meanwhile, is it really our job to provide police protection for every human tragedy around the globe? Do we even have the resources for that? So when we look at the practicality of whether the West can, or should police the globe, the real question is *what* exactly are we policing when we favor one area over another? The movie feels like we are faced with the question of racism. We see black faces in contrast to a very white western complexion that goes about eating their dinner.

I don't think the film should have presented a racial sway, because I don't think race was what motivated global ambivalence. The real issue was economic. I say global ambivalence was the result of resourcism...which I think is *worse* than racism because it marginalizes all human life down to the value of regional resources. Somehow, I think if Rwanda had the oil resources of Saudi Arabia, nobody would have cared about skin color.

I feel it’s impossible to point to a single "justifiable reason" for genocide. I try to stay away from race issues, even though the storyline in Hotel Rwanda is compelling and feels very racial. I don't stay away from racism because of political incorrectness. I stay away from the issue because I think the color of money is more important than the color of skin. It's hard to divide the issue of wealth and race, however. After all, if the country has brown skin, they probably don't have money - which speaks to the point of racism when we think in terms of whether or not the West really did bring *civilization* or did they instead, bring "just enough" civilization to exploit the brown people. Maybe I'm making the mistake of trying to separate race from money.

Those girls dancing by the pool provide a little clue. The dichotomy I see is the schism between the market economy and the value we place on Community. The turmoil throughout much of the world is the result of colonialism where the resources which supported community survival were absorbed into the market economy while these Communities were themselves excluded and displaced by it. So, we see these girls dancing and their dance reconnects them to that Community, a soothing dance in the face of an uncertain (and likely frighteningly fatal) future.