I’m not quite sure what I’ve been looking for, scanning the headlines and tsunami articles over recent weeks. What I found was an understanding of what happened; an earthquake and ensuing tidal wave ravaged coastal India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries extending as far as western Africa, killing close to 300,000 people and displacing well over a million survivors. I read the statistics. I’m still digesting the enormity of the disaster. Halfway around the world, safe and sound in America, I certainly understand that this is a tragedy. I would say to my friend Jerry, “Jerry, this is a tragedy.” Jerry might say, “We should do something.” We should. Understanding that someone needs help and being the heartbreakingly altruistic guys that we are, Jerry and I might very well contribute to the relief effort. Still, something is missing from our response. Some parcel of humanism. Thousands of miles removed from the tsunami, amid the flotsam and jetsam of stoic or sensationalist news reports, I’m still searching for the artifact that makes it real to me.
The irony, then, is that movies I’ve consumed over the past month have affected me more profoundly than any report on CNN detailing how many thousands of people died in which country, just days ago. This is good, though. I’m not an emotionally repressed automaton after all. How can we understand the breadth of human emotion without experiencing it? Certainly I don’t need to stand in the trough of a fifty-foot wave to understand its impact.
In watching Terry George’s recent film, Hotel Rwanda, I found a perspective into what was missing from my understanding of the tsunami’s devastation. Hotel Rwanda chronicles the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. George vividly depicts the culmination of decades of ethnic strife and oppression: the Hutu militias’ slaughter of nearly one million Tutsi Rwandans and political moderates. Ten years ago and 9,000 miles away, I lived through this. Ten years later, I shed tears for it.
When I watched Hotel Rwanda, I saw through the eyes of Paul Rusesabagina and the Tutsi people he harbored from Hutu wrath. With machetes, Hutu militants hacked to death Tutsi men, women, and children. The images are undoubtedly shocking, but Terry George is careful not to dwell on them, or wield them like a baseball bat to our senses. He is telling a story through affected and human eyes, and he emphasizes the affected and human response – Paul and his people’s response – to such complete violence: fear, outrage, sadness. Emotions not unlike what many thousands of people must have felt in the face of last month’s tsunami.
These emotions, like any ideas, remain abstract until they’re transposed onto people and connected to their actions. If we don’t directly experience them, we need a story to bring them to life. Both Paul’s horrifying visions and their impact on him allow us to understand this story. We see Paul, and we see what Paul sees. Terry George does not want us to turn away or yield in shame, but rather to look and understand.
George in fact indicts the turning of blind eyes to human suffering as much as the cause of the suffering itself in Hotel Rwanda. On all levels, the powerful members and governments of the Western World turn their backs on the atrocity, as if their histories were disembroiled with the troubles of their former colonies – as if ethnic cleansing were some sort of growing pain for poor countries. The cognizant inaction of France, the United Nations, and the United States in the face of rampant tyranny earns our disgust as much as the sickening source of this tyranny. In contrast, Paul Rusesabagina spurns his own salvation many times over, unable to turn away from the people he believes he can help. George’s point is clear; there is a story to be told, and a reason to tell it. In looking and listening, we are moved: moved to speak out; moved to take action; moved to tears.
Ten years ago, I heard about the civil war in Rwanda. Hutus were killing; Tutsis were dying. It was on the news, and perhaps we mentioned it in social studies class. Informed but unaffected, not unlike my government at the time, I could perhaps excuse myself by living on another continent, and by being eleven years old. Perhaps these are justifications enough for my current detachment from the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
But why should I excuse myself? Where’s the moral imperative that says we must be deeply affected by every ounce of human suffering, or every dewdrop of joy for that matter? Our emotional responses to tragedy and suffering and celebration are our own. Morality enters in perhaps only when it comes to our outward responses – those that affect others. Again, we must decide how we engage in society. I must choose how I relate to my friends and my community just as I must choose my response to devastation in Southeast Asia. Compassion helps us to understand others. It fires the responsibility we feel toward them. Even at eleven, I felt compassion.
At eleven, I understood enough to cry for Schindler’s List. A narrative of a 50-year-old holocaust in Europe affected me more than any news report detailing the concurrent holocaust in Rwanda. Oskar Schindler, the survivors, the victims; these characters provide a lens with which to see and understand one of the ultimate tragedies in human history. Steven Spielberg’s film is not a history book, however, and he is not an historian. He’s a director of film – a storyteller. Like a history book, he offers an account of what happened: the ghetto, death camps, 6 million. But storytellers go further, to understand the people, the impact on them. Spielberg attempts to say, “This is how it feels.” As an audience watching the people of a story – seeing them, seeing what they see – we attempt to understand how it feels, and we attempt to feel it. What we feel, we should feel unabashed.
Affected. Biased. Perhaps sanctimonious. Any could be claimed of Schindler’s List, regardless of its emotional impact. But we’re allowed to be skeptical. We should be skeptical of what we’re told, especially coming from anyone paid millions to tell it. But what history text would you ever accept at face value? What Fox News tidbit would you swallow without a side of salt? Spielberg’s is one story, one perspective. Read Elie Weisel’s Night, or Art Spiegelman’s Maus, or Ann Frank’s diary, but know that none offer the complete story. We won’t find a Holy Grail of human understanding. There is no one artifact to be found, to make it real to us. What we have are many stories, many ways of understanding what happened, and why. A chest of narratives that want to tell us what it felt like.
Today, Terry George’s rendering of Paul Rusesabagina’s story similarly offers us a perspective into a portion of history too important and too painful to ignore. It’s not the whole story, but it extends far beyond bare facts, into the realm of human emotion. When something happens, it’s the news. After it happens, it’s history. But so much is left unsaid, or unheard, in between the facts. 11,000,000 people. 900,000 people. 288,000 people. And the survivors. One million in Southeast Asia – the stories of their lives flowing down the streets in scrapbooks and coffins, into the ocean. Each one has a story, and few will be told. It’s these few stories that can help us understand not simply what happened, but what it felt like, what it meant.
Thousands of miles removed, or decades later, safe and sound in our lives, the burden of choice falls on us. Or, at least I feel it. I must decide whether being informed is enough, or if there’s more to understanding. I decide the importance of being affected. It’s a step. My friend Jerry wants to know if I will dive for the stories, if I will find them, if I will tell them. And if I do, will I let them wash over me like a wave.
Avi Nocella
Indian Ocean
By Avi Nocella
I’m not quite sure what I’ve been looking for, scanning the headlines and tsunami articles over recent weeks. What I found was an understanding of what happened; an earthquake and ensuing tidal wave ravaged coastal India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries extending as far as western Africa, killing close to 300,000 people and displacing well over a million survivors. I read the statistics. I’m still digesting the enormity of the disaster. Halfway around the world, safe and sound in America, I certainly understand that this is a tragedy. I would say to my friend Jerry, “Jerry, this is a tragedy.” Jerry might say, “We should do something.” We should. Understanding that someone needs help and being the heartbreakingly altruistic guys that we are, Jerry and I might very well contribute to the relief effort. Still, something is missing from our response. Some parcel of humanism. Thousands of miles removed from the tsunami, amid the flotsam and jetsam of stoic or sensationalist news reports, I’m still searching for the artifact that makes it real to me.
The irony, then, is that movies I’ve consumed over the past month have affected me more profoundly than any report on CNN detailing how many thousands of people died in which country, just days ago. This is good, though. I’m not an emotionally repressed automaton after all. How can we understand the breadth of human emotion without experiencing it? Certainly I don’t need to stand in the trough of a fifty-foot wave to understand its impact.
In watching Terry George’s recent film, Hotel Rwanda, I found a perspective into what was missing from my understanding of the tsunami’s devastation. Hotel Rwanda chronicles the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. George vividly depicts the culmination of decades of ethnic strife and oppression: the Hutu militias’ slaughter of nearly one million Tutsi Rwandans and political moderates. Ten years ago and 9,000 miles away, I lived through this. Ten years later, I shed tears for it.
When I watched Hotel Rwanda, I saw through the eyes of Paul Rusesabagina and the Tutsi people he harbored from Hutu wrath. With machetes, Hutu militants hacked to death Tutsi men, women, and children. The images are undoubtedly shocking, but Terry George is careful not to dwell on them, or wield them like a baseball bat to our senses. He is telling a story through affected and human eyes, and he emphasizes the affected and human response – Paul and his people’s response – to such complete violence: fear, outrage, sadness. Emotions not unlike what many thousands of people must have felt in the face of last month’s tsunami.
These emotions, like any ideas, remain abstract until they’re transposed onto people and connected to their actions. If we don’t directly experience them, we need a story to bring them to life. Both Paul’s horrifying visions and their impact on him allow us to understand this story. We see Paul, and we see what Paul sees. Terry George does not want us to turn away or yield in shame, but rather to look and understand.
George in fact indicts the turning of blind eyes to human suffering as much as the cause of the suffering itself in Hotel Rwanda. On all levels, the powerful members and governments of the Western World turn their backs on the atrocity, as if their histories were disembroiled with the troubles of their former colonies – as if ethnic cleansing were some sort of growing pain for poor countries. The cognizant inaction of France, the United Nations, and the United States in the face of rampant tyranny earns our disgust as much as the sickening source of this tyranny. In contrast, Paul Rusesabagina spurns his own salvation many times over, unable to turn away from the people he believes he can help. George’s point is clear; there is a story to be told, and a reason to tell it. In looking and listening, we are moved: moved to speak out; moved to take action; moved to tears.
Ten years ago, I heard about the civil war in Rwanda. Hutus were killing; Tutsis were dying. It was on the news, and perhaps we mentioned it in social studies class. Informed but unaffected, not unlike my government at the time, I could perhaps excuse myself by living on another continent, and by being eleven years old. Perhaps these are justifications enough for my current detachment from the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
But why should I excuse myself? Where’s the moral imperative that says we must be deeply affected by every ounce of human suffering, or every dewdrop of joy for that matter? Our emotional responses to tragedy and suffering and celebration are our own. Morality enters in perhaps only when it comes to our outward responses – those that affect others. Again, we must decide how we engage in society. I must choose how I relate to my friends and my community just as I must choose my response to devastation in Southeast Asia. Compassion helps us to understand others. It fires the responsibility we feel toward them. Even at eleven, I felt compassion.
At eleven, I understood enough to cry for Schindler’s List. A narrative of a 50-year-old holocaust in Europe affected me more than any news report detailing the concurrent holocaust in Rwanda. Oskar Schindler, the survivors, the victims; these characters provide a lens with which to see and understand one of the ultimate tragedies in human history. Steven Spielberg’s film is not a history book, however, and he is not an historian. He’s a director of film – a storyteller. Like a history book, he offers an account of what happened: the ghetto, death camps, 6 million. But storytellers go further, to understand the people, the impact on them. Spielberg attempts to say, “This is how it feels.” As an audience watching the people of a story – seeing them, seeing what they see – we attempt to understand how it feels, and we attempt to feel it. What we feel, we should feel unabashed.
Affected. Biased. Perhaps sanctimonious. Any could be claimed of Schindler’s List, regardless of its emotional impact. But we’re allowed to be skeptical. We should be skeptical of what we’re told, especially coming from anyone paid millions to tell it. But what history text would you ever accept at face value? What Fox News tidbit would you swallow without a side of salt? Spielberg’s is one story, one perspective. Read Elie Weisel’s Night, or Art Spiegelman’s Maus, or Ann Frank’s diary, but know that none offer the complete story. We won’t find a Holy Grail of human understanding. There is no one artifact to be found, to make it real to us. What we have are many stories, many ways of understanding what happened, and why. A chest of narratives that want to tell us what it felt like.
Today, Terry George’s rendering of Paul Rusesabagina’s story similarly offers us a perspective into a portion of history too important and too painful to ignore. It’s not the whole story, but it extends far beyond bare facts, into the realm of human emotion. When something happens, it’s the news. After it happens, it’s history. But so much is left unsaid, or unheard, in between the facts. 11,000,000 people. 900,000 people. 288,000 people. And the survivors. One million in Southeast Asia – the stories of their lives flowing down the streets in scrapbooks and coffins, into the ocean. Each one has a story, and few will be told. It’s these few stories that can help us understand not simply what happened, but what it felt like, what it meant.
Thousands of miles removed, or decades later, safe and sound in our lives, the burden of choice falls on us. Or, at least I feel it. I must decide whether being informed is enough, or if there’s more to understanding. I decide the importance of being affected. It’s a step. My friend Jerry wants to know if I will dive for the stories, if I will find them, if I will tell them. And if I do, will I let them wash over me like a wave.