Violence, Cynicism and the Cinematic Spectacle of (Mis)Representing African Child Soldiers in Black Hawk Down and Blood Diamond

Abstract

SummaryThe aim of this article is to explain why and with what ideological effect Western film directors depict the African child soldier as victim, reluctant recruit and unwilling participant in Africa's violent wars in Black Hawk Down (Scott 2001) and Blood Diamond (Zwick 2007). Using Agamben's ideas of the “state of exception” (Agamben 2005) and the “paradox of sovereignty” (Agamben 1998), this article engages symbolical processes by which the formal rhetorical devices of the technology of audiovisual film texts “remediate an account vested in the perspective of only one party” (Potzsch 2011: 80-81). It will be demonstrated that within the narrative topoi of the films Black Hawk Down (Scott 2001) and Blood Diamond (Zwick 2007), African child soldiers are symbolically constituted as enemy, the other, and as existing on the margin of “bare life” (Agamben 1998: 4) and whose value is not worth mourning for – simply, “ungrievable” (Butler 2010). However, this article argues differently and stresses that violence is not sui generis to Africa and to the African child soldier.