Everything but ‘ordinary’: Representations of Africa in film

This article examines four war-themed mainstream films about Africa – I Dreamed of Africa (Hugh Hudson, 2000), The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, 2005), Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001) and Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006). The films were chosen because they present seemingly different representations of the African characters through their narrative strategies. The discussion will examine the representation of Western and African characters and how they function and interact with each other within a particular narrative context. The films remain centred on events that have occurred in Africa yet display typical features and characteristics of Hollywood film: the central characters are predominantly colonizers from the West who have entered Africa and interact from a hierarchical point of view with the land, the animals and the people. Drawing on Ndebele’s discussion on whether states in Africa can ever be represented as ‘ordinary’, this article will interrogate how the representation of both characters from Africa and the African setting contribute to the perceived notion that Africa can never be ‘ordinary’ and it will always be represented in extreme terms.