Textual Analysis: Hotel Rwanda

Textual Analysis:

Hotel Rwanda

(Terry George, 2004)

The horrible evidence of what Kant variously called the wickedness,corruption and perversity of the human heart is, unfortunately, not encountered onlyin memory, it is also met with among our current experiences. We are daily obliged towitness fresh atrocities as ethnic and racial hatreds seek to express themselves in theannihilation of their proponents’ enemies.

(Copjec, 1996;9)The above quote effectively demonstrates that debates on evil are not only stillsuitable for the issues emerging in a post-modern world, but are perhaps more suitablethan ever before. The film which I will be discussing,

Hotel Rwanda

(2004), relatesthe true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a man who sheltered over a thousand refugees inthe hotel he managed during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The film is useful as afocus point for the discussion of evil since the situation surrounding the events thattook place during those months are often referred to in terms of evil – not only on the part of the Hutu militia that perpetrated the atrocities, but also of the internationalcommunity and the UN in particular, which did not intervene to stop the massacre – and it would be useful to analyse a couple of key points in this film more closely.After World War II, it was believed that the genocide perpetrated by the Naziswould never be allowed to happen again, but events in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, toname but two examples, have proven that the potential for acts of evil of thismagnitude to occur are not specific to one culture or even to a place in time, but areexpressions of - to use the words of Immanuel Kant - ‘a natural propensity to evil’(1960;20) that is embedded in the human race. It might therefore prove useful to turn1

to psychoanalysis for a partial explanation with regards to how it is possible for people to change their behaviour in such radical ways, readily adopting new moralmaxims that often oppose their previously adopted ones.According to Freud, when in a group situation, ‘the individual gives up his egoideal and substitutes for it the group ideal as embodied in the leader’ The other members of the group are, according to this theory, ‘carried away with the rest by‘suggestion’, that is to say, by means of identification’ (1921;161-162). According tothis theory, the group – small or large – surrenders its free will to that of the leader,which makes them less likely to make their own moral judgements with regards totheir actions and more likely to blindly follow the leader as well as the other membersof their group.The issues of identity and legitimisation are also crucial to understanding howthe Hutus felt justified in brutally murdering their former friends and neighbours. Asis explained in the film, tensions between Tutsis and Hutus were virtually nonexistent prior to the arrival of the Belgian colonists. ‘The two ethnic

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