Africa through the Viewfinder

In my Asian American Literature class, Prof Walter Lim used the idea of camera resolutions to talk about Amy Tan’s problematic portrayal of the Chinese in The Joy Luck Club. In brief, Tan easily depicted America in “high-res”, providing details, whereas China was in “low-res”. She could only give rough sketches and generic descriptions.

I am aware the issues are not the same as in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but I believe the same concept applies. Conrad seems to have only one type of description for the natives: they are “brutes”, “savages” and black figures walking around. His depiction of the landscape of the Congo is also generic, and it seems the only valuable thing he has to say about it is its “darkness” or its ominous and mysterious air, always shrouded in yellow fog. Very “low-res” indeed. I must disclaim that I am not here to attack Conrad’s racism, only to point out that his depiction of the natives is so one-dimensional and generic, while full details are provided for White characters, such as Mr. Kurtz.

I feel that this “high-res”-“low-res” way of viewing things is still prevalent in our world today. My church had a Christmas musical one year based on a song by Scott Wesley Brown, called “Please Don’t Send Me to Africa”. I remember feeling disappointed to see that this modern day musical still had Africans dancing around in nothing but sticks and banana leaves. In this sense, Achebe is very right to say that the media today still gives us pictures of Africa as exotic, tribal, primitive, other-than-West. Despite travel documentaries that depict a wider, more humanised sense of African nations today, the ones looking through the viewfinder are ultimately still the collective West, no?

(290 words)