Watching the movie “Blood Diamond” was a cinematic adventure, especially after doing hour after hour of monotonous research. The research pays off when each element of the movie is understood. “Blood Diamond” does an excellent job at depicting events and situations accurately. In our research, we found that the characters in the movie have no ties to actual people. They were all imaginary people, but in a real setting. We can conclude that, given circumstances in Sierra Leone at that time, there is reason to believe that these exact situations may have happened to actual people.
Some of the best ways that the movie depicted actual events was during the RUF invasion of Freetown, the cutting off of limbs, and the brainwashing of child soldiers. It is a fact that some of the child soldiers were forced to help in the killing of their families to desensitize them. One scene where it accurately shows how desensitized these kids were, was when Solomon’s son nearly shoots him towards the end of the movie. This scene also instills a sense of hope for the future of these child soldiers as the boy recognizes his father and lowers his weapon. That they are not lost causes and that they can come back.
There aren’t any real characters depicted in the movie, but a man named Sorious Samura helped everything come together. He is a reporter from Sierra Leone who believed it to be his duty to risk his life and document the tragic events that took place during the civil war. The footage is very disturbing. Samura at one point had to lie to the rebels, saying that he was filming for them and was in support of the rebels. If it was not for Samura, there might not be any footage of the horrible crimes that took place. Samura provided proof, and helped bring understanding and tolerance to the rest of the world.
Smuggling Conclusion
After researching a great deal on the topic of smuggling and hearing about all of the many problems with the system and how people are able to smuggle so easily, it was really refreshing to come across the different things that are happening to try to reduce the amount of smuggling. Into the 21st century many things were taking place to try and curb the amount of smuggling that was going on. After the Kimberly process, smuggling was made a little bit more tough and then after the media started spotlighting the horrendous things that were going on people began to take action. They started to demand that their diamonds were conflict free and the percentage of blood diamonds sold every year started to decrease. No matter how many organizations were put into place things didn’t start to change until the people of the world took control. That is the power that we, as a society, hold in our hands.
Smuggling Conclusion
After researching a great deal on the topic of smuggling and hearing about all of the many problems with the system and how people are able to smuggle so easily, it was really refreshing to come across the different things that are happening to try to reduce the amount of smuggling. Into the 21st century many things were taking place to try and curb the amount of smuggling that was going on. After the Kimberly process, smuggling was made a little bit more tough and then after the media started spotlighting the horrendous things that were going on people began to take action. They started to demand that their diamonds were conflict free and the percentage of blood diamonds sold every year started to decrease. No matter how many organizations were put into place things didn’t start to change until the people of the world took control. That is the power that we, as a society, hold in our hands.
Media Theories and Concepts
1. Selective Perception—The result of these differences is that people perceive and interpret the world differently. Rumors of what was going on in Sierra Leone had reached places that could have helped. But because of their selective perception, many people decided it was not their problem and did not intervene until after the conflict was out of hand.
2. Gatekeeping—There are gatekeeping elements that make constant decisions about what information is or isn’t important enough to pass along—what information gets through the “gate” from the sender of a message to a receiver of that message. Capitalism played a large role in what was kept out of mainstream media in the United States. We didn’t want to change the diamond market and gatekeepers did not want us to stop buying diamonds. The length of time it took for Americans to find out what exactly was going on in Sierra Leone is disturbing.
3. Agenda-Setting—This theory holds that although the mass media can’t tell us what to think, the media are stunningly successful at telling us what to think about. The main people that would be trying to set an agenda in this case, are the people that make a lot of money off of the diamond market. It is good to see that people are starting to care where their diamonds come from.
4. Framing—This subset of agenda-setting concerns how news and information are “framed” or presented once through the news “gate” and on the public agenda. A media “frame” is the central organizing idea for a news story that supplies a context and emphasizes certain aspects of a story while minimizing or ignoring others. The major frames in the movie “Blood Diamond” mostly have to do with the government struggle. The RUF is depicted to be evil, manipulative and completely lacking respect for human life. The movie framed the government troops and being ineffective against the rebels invading Free Town. Sierra Leone is framed as an unstable place that still need help and support.
5. Cultivation—The images and impressions and topics (and how they are framed) that appear in the mass media serve to “cultivate” in all of us certain impressions of the world. These messages and the way they are framed—if they are a stable set of images consistent over time—may serve to change our own individual perceptual frame of the world around us. The goal of the movie “Blood Diamond” was to cultivate in everyone that watched a sense of awareness when it comes to diamonds. If more people care about where their diamonds are coming from, countries in Africa will have better control over the diamond trade. A conflict diamond needs to be viewed as worthless.
Capitalism: Economic system of private and corporate ownership; distribution of wealth and goods determined by free market enterprise and competition. Capitalism is a major factor of why the Sierra Leone Civil War was kept out of most mainstream media. Capitalism by definition does not care how they got diamonds, only that they are as inexpensive as possible. This exploits African workers and adds incentive to sell diamonds on their own in a black market.
Democracy: Government of the citizens of a country, determined by majority rule, based on elected representatives. Democracy nearly failed in Sierra Leone. If other people hadn’t intervened, this may have been the first case where democracy failed. Meaning that, although we know our system is not perfect, it would have been viewed as being less effective as today.
Ethnocentrism: “Our people are better than your people.” In other words, belief that one’s own culture, nation, or ethnicity is superior to all others. The RUF did not believe that they were superior to others by race, but by political party. They believed themselves to be above others, which is how they justified mass killings and mutilation of innocent people.
