Vanity Fair or Fair Vanity? Bono’s Africa Issue
I’m not sure whether this kind of thing is on the radar screen of most Darfur watchers; but as this blog’s only non-expert contributor, I thought I’d point out that Vanity Fair has just now published its “historic” Africa issue, guest-edited by U2 frontman Bono (see his Message 2U).
Among other things it features articles on Madonna’s work in Malawi and on Jeffrey Sachs’ Millennium Villages, an interview with Desmond Tutu by Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton’s Nelson Mandela stories, and a portfolio of 71 leading Africans. Various top photographers took the photos of the 71, and various well-known Westerners wrote the accompanying profiles (e.g., Nadine Gordimer wrote about Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, Damien Hirst about Congo artist Chéri Samba, Mark Malloch Brown about Sudanese mogul Mo Ibrahim, and Gayle Smith and John Prendergast about ???–doesn’t say whom).
Here’s my question to those of you who follow African issues closely: What impact (if any) do you see on Darfur when Africa becomes the celeb-cause de jour, of which this issue of V.F. is the latest example? Is it vanity fair or fair vanity? To put it another way: Would it be hopelessly naive to think that celebrities and politicians from the developed world are consciously taking greater initiative to solve the continent’s problems, or that for once, the mainstream media is being honest and responsive to the continent’s needs? Or are we just looking at another versions of Rudyard Kipling’s white man’s burden? I suspect the latter but would like to hear some honest discussion.
In Darfur in 1986 I coined the term "disaster tourists" to refer to the senior aid officials, dignitaries and celebrities who made fleeting visits to famine zones. I found the media circus surrounding those visits rather distasteful, and sometimes the careful posing of stick-thin children, grossly distressed but apathetically silent, frankly obscene. During the 1992 Somali famine my colleague Rakiya Omaar used the phrase "disaster pornography" to describe some of this imagery. (For a deeper look at this topic, see http://www.imaging-famine.org/)
Yet it was those plain-speaking, sometimes ignorant celebrities who put the 1984-5 African famines on the political map. It was Bob Geldof and Live Aid that not only unlocked unexpected depths of compassion in the public but also compelled the British and U.S. governments to respond with increased aid. It is the likes of George Clooney that have kept Darfur high on the U.S. political agenda.
One way of looking at the celebrity issue is a balance sheet. The plus side is more aid resources and political pressure. Some visitors can bring empathy and insight, acting as a sensitive interpreter of the suffering of faraway people. The minus is an oversimplified and sometimes degrading portrayal of the situation and a stress on outside silver bullets. In my view, the focus on bringing UN peacekeepers to Darfur has been a damaging distraction from the central issue of peace.
In the case of Live Aid, the politics behind the Ethiopian famine were ignored completely—that famine was the deliberate product of counterinsurgency, much as in Darfur twenty years later. Such nuance was lost in Geldof’s claims: give us the money now, and we will stop this famine—and if you don’t, millions will die. By the time of Live8 twenty years on, Geldof was much wiser: joining Bono (www.data.org), he acknowledged that hunger needed much more complex remedies.
George Clooney’s statement to the UN Security Council on September 15 last year is the contemporary equivalent of Geldof’s hyperbole. Clooney predicted that millions would die in the absence of peacekeepers and gave a specific date: October 1. It didn’t happen. The immediate reason was that four days earlier the Sudanese army had suffered a humiliating defeat by the SLA rebels. But even without that military reverse, and had the AU force withdrawn, Clooney’s prediction of complete collapse of the aid operation and two million dead was a wild exaggeration and simplification. In a few years time, we may well see Clooney advocating preventive diplomacy and more funds for post-conflict rehabilitation. In the meantime, is his messaging justified?
It’s hard to measure the plus and minus scores on the balance sheet. But we can look deeper, and ask the question, why do we think it is appropriate for celebrities to have such a high profile in our (western) dealings with African crises? Why do we (Americans and Europeans) think that singers and actors have something useful to say?
The key lies, I believe, in the narrative structure of media coverage of African disaster. As noted by Jonathan Benthall in his book Disasters, Relief and the Media (1994—now sadly out of print), this follows a folk tale pattern. We have an innocent and helpless victim, a villain (sometimes the weather, sometimes an embodiment of human evil, sometimes even a callous bureaucrat), and a hero—who is a foreign savior bringing a magical solution. We like to believe that a combination of our goodwill, technology and funds will solve their problems. Complicated histories are reduced to simplistic moral stereotypes. We identify with the western celebrity as the personification of our concern. It’s often a travesty.
If celebrity engagement with Africa becomes the occasion for a more intelligent engagement with the problem at hand, it is a fabulous opportunity. If it makes Africa into a giant screen onto which we (westerners) can project our salvation fairy tales, it’s part of the problem. In the American imagination, Darfur is stuck as a simplistic morality tale. It needs to graduate: Darfur needs its Bono.
I’m curious about your last statement: “Darfur needs its Bono.” So you’re not against celebrities getting involved in Africa issues–just that they have to be thoughtful ones like Bono?
But aren’t there also occasions when celebrities who aren’t well versed in all the subtleties of African politics nevertheless manage to make a positive contribution? I note that in the same issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Tina Brown talks about Princess Diana’s efforts to ban the use of land mines in Angola. Various MPs and government ministers reacted by saying she was “ill advised” and a “loose cannon.” For instance, one Tory MP said she was very “ill-informed….This is an important sophisticated argument. It doesn’t help to point at the amputees and say how terrible it is.”
But, as Tina Brown observes, it did help. The sight of Diana walking thru a half-cleared minefield made a big impact around the world and ultimately created support for the adoption of the Mine Ban Treaty later that same year.
I have another question, too, on Bono. I wonder what you make of Bono’s all-encompassing approach to the issues of poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It seems that he is truly nonpartisan — works with Bush and Condi (that’s why they appear on several of VF‘s historic 20 Africa covers) as well as big corporations, several of which participate in his (Product) Red campaign. He addresses the issue of his corporate connections in his editor’s note, saying that in order to communicate to Americans both the scale of the problem and the sense that it could be solved, he needed access to the kinds of marketing budgets that Nike and Gap have at their disposal.
I know that politics makes strange bedfellows, but isn’t this a little too strange? As always, I’m eager to hear your thoughts…
This dialogue inspired me to watch the two-hour Anderson Cooper interview with Angelina Jolie on June 20. The full transcript is available on the CNN Web site.
This interview left me further conflicted on the topic of celebrities and Africa (or any humanitarian work outside their own country). On one hand, those of us who have studied Africa or humanitarian interventions for years grimace at some of the generalizations made. On the other hand, I can identify with the passion of these celebrities. In the interview, Jolie spoke passionately about being a mother and wanting to help Africa (and refugees in general), but it was clear that she was mainly using facts and figures from the main UNHCR Web site.
I think this quote represents the two sides of celebrity involvement well. Asked why she decided to give birth in Namibia, Jolie replied:
JOLIE: A few reasons. I love Africa. I love — I wanted to just be in a part of the world that would be wonderful for my other children. I didn’t want to spend just months holed up in a house here. And I wanted to have a beautiful time with my family. And my other daughter’s African and I wanted to take her back.
I grimaced at the implication that Africa is homogeneous, but smiled at how she is really trying to connect to cultures and people of the continent.
I think that the type of work that Angelina Jolie is doing with refugees positively impacts the situation. Although she oversimplifies, she is not misinforming. She also admits that she doesn’t know the intricate details of UN policy making. However, as someone who a lot of young people admire, she makes a strong argument that something needs to be done and that we can all do something to help.
I could not agree more with either point.
I think the name that Bono gave to his organization — DATA — is rather excellent. What we need is evidence-based celebrity advocacy. Bono took a good tough choice to focus on the less sexy issues such as trade and debt, not just on the photogenic ones. And that’s one reason why he engages with the big corporations. It’s not just because they have money and profile, but it’s important for them to recognize that they are social actors as well, and there’s a moral dimension to what they do.
Princess Diana is an interesting case. I was deeply involved in the landmines campaign at the time and she was no fool — she took the time to get well-informed about the issues and took a carefully calculated step, that enraged the then-Conservative government, when she moved beyond simply empathising with victims and began to advocate for a ban on mines, which was against British government policy. She was attacked for naivete. But she won the day — in large part because she had prepared the ground well.
There’s a lot more to be said and I will return to the topic of perceptions in another posting soon.