Blogcritics.org (satire)
May 20 2005

Hotel Rwanda

Posted by Richard Williams on May 20, 2005 12:35 PM (See all posts by
Richard Williams)

Hotel Rwanda
DVD from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date: 12 April, 2005

Movies like this leave my mind reeling with questions. Not just
the usual ones brought on by the horror of mankind’s actions, those
questions made pointedly by bodies on the road as far as he can see,
speedbumps on a ‘cleared road’ (cleared of the living). How could
anyone do this, to be so consumed by hatred or anger that the normal
restraints are completely absent.

Or the big questions like what makes people so different in their
response to horror that some risk their lives repeatedly to help while
others give in to what looks like mass hysteria and hack up their
neighbors? And of course the personalization of that question in:
given the same situation how would i react?

We have seen the main pieces over and over again since the British
concentration camps for the Boer women and children in 1899, the
Armenia genocide with its thousands perishing in the desert or lost in
harem sexual exploitation for a lifetime. The destruction of Yugoslavia
in an orgasm of violence, rape hotels and the eventual partitioning of
history and geography back 50 years. It has happened so many times,
in so many places that we get emotional callouses over our hearts to
protect us from the immediate horror of it all. But the survivors,
they will never heal, will never have the luxury of developing a
hard heart to the evils of mankind. They will never close their eyes
without reliving the nightmare.

But after all these questions have settled down to a dull aching roar,
i am left with the idea that to honor, to remember these dead is to
strive to keep it from happening again. To understand how such things
erupt in our midst, to think about the warning signs and to struggle
to push the powers that rule to build strike forces or international
police forces or what ever it takes so that this evil leaves our midst
forever. The radio in the background, urging violence, dehumanizing
“The Other” into cockroaches, making great divisions where there were
little to none before (nose width???) certainly is significant. Mob
violence, herd mentality explains part, but what about that man on the
radio, or more importantly the few leaders behind the masks of evil,
who are they and how did society create them. And more importantly,
how do we keep trash thought from rising to the surface of society
and causing this? I see the same kind of racism, the same kind of
demonization of others, of the cockroachizition in the decline of
dialogue into nothing more than utter polarization and namecalling
around me.

As a Christian i worry that the Church which is to be the warning
voice against hidden evil, to be that prophetic voice that is
heard over the screams of victims and the shouted commands of the
evildoers does not seem to be awake and watching over the walls
of our civilization as it ought to be. I am glad to see churches
looked upon as places of refuge and doubly horrified when that refuge
turns into a cemetary when no one cares from outside, and God Himself
doesn’t seem to intervene to protect the innocent within the walls of
His house of worship. The glib answer that they are in heaven today
waiting their confrontation with their killers seems little comfort,
i wonder how the survivors handle what looks like betrayal not just
by their countrymen but from their God to whom they prayed in their
last hours of absolute madness. Can we who only have read books or
seen movies understand this? No, their stories of faith after the
storm are hidden, at least from my view. The stories of faith need
to be heard and motivate other Christians to help. but it seems that
the rich American church is not just silent but deaf and blind as well.

That brings up the complicity of the West, not just in the remnants
of a colonization that drew national boundaries that divided tribal
loyalities, that created Hutu and Tutsi, that left an economy based
more on exploitation of natural resources for the use of the west and
the personal wealth of a few indigenous military and/or political
rulers in control, then any democratic sharing for the use of all
citizens. More than a failure of nerve, of a long lasting deeply
embedded racism that divides black from white nuns and saves only the
european from the horror. But of a legacy of mentality, or a worldview
of exploitation, of the use of others for your own personal gain. For
this is the great intellectual evil leftover from colonization, now
the colonizers are black and speak the same language and act just
like the British or Belgium or French or ? that left, for when the
West left Africa it left behind ideas and a nucleus of people that
pursued policies that created the conditions ripe for exploitation
by demogues intent on becoming the next wave of internal colonizers,
the wolves feeding upon the fatten calf for themselves.

i am sorry. but even if i were to speak out for the unnumbered dead,
there appears to be no one listening to their cries at the moment
of their deaths, why should my voice matter, when compared to their
sacrifice? besides it appears that only God hears their cries.

Rev 5:9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the
book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue,
and people, and nation;