The Transnational Historical Media Memory of the Rwandan Genocide
Between April and July 1994, 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda in what has been described as the fastest and most gruesome genocide in modern times. This took place with the Western powers and the UN as onlookers, unwilling to prevent the killings. In retrospect, much of the responsibility was put on the media, which was criticized for ignoring the genocide alternatively for reporting on it in misleading ways. However, this criticism is largely based on assumptions and not on actual research. Sweden never appear in the criticism; despite talk of globalization and the fact that we live in a mass media society where local news items quickly can become world news. This is the starting point for a project that investigate the Rwandan genocide as a three-level transnational media event. First, at a national level by analyzing Swedish television news during the 100 days that the genocide took place, with the intention to investigate what space the genocide was given, in what way it was reported and how it was explained. Second, the genocide is analyzed at a transnational level, focusing on the large international production of feature films and documentary films about the genocide, with the intention of examining how an audiovisual historical media memory is created on a global level. The third level returns to the national and here the focus is on how Rwanda, as a nation, creates its own images of the genocide and how these are incorporated into a new national identity.
Final report
The purpose of this project has been to examine the Rwandan genocide as a global media event, both at a national and a transnational level with the aims to study how the genocide originally was reported and constructed in television news, and how a transnational historical media memory subsequently was created audio-visually, mainly through feature films and documentaries. Another equally important goal has been to develop a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of how audiovisual historical media memories are created on a global scale in today’s modern mass media society. The objective for this RJ Sabbatical grant was to finish a nearly completed project and publish it internationally as a monograph.
The manuscript is accepted and will be publish as the monograph, Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide: Corpses by the Road, by renowned Edinburgh University Press, both in hardback and as Open Access, during 2023.
This monograph studies the transnational historical media memory of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. It includes three levels of interpretation that goes from the national to the global and then back to the national, analyzed chronologically with a focus on change and the repetitive use of emblematic images of the genocide, such as images of corpses in different positions and locations. The purpose is to analyze how the memory of the genocide against the Tutsis has been constructed, re-created, and used in accordance with altering aesthetical, political, spatial, and temporal circumstances on national as well as global levels. The three levels are: (1) Swedish and international television news as the genocide took place during 100 days in 1994, (2) the large international production of approximately 180 feature films, feature-length documentaries and short films on the genocide 1994–2021, making it into the second most audio-visually recreated genocide after the Holocaust, and (3) contemporary film and television production in Rwanda films about the genocide, with a focus on how Rwanda, as a nation, creates its own images of the genocide and how these are incorporated into a new national identity.
The project is interdisciplinary and internationally related and is linked to three field of research: (1) Film and History, (2) Film and Genocide, and (3) Media memory studies. The monograph’s most important results have effects for all these three fields. First, by posing research question that deviates from the norm of what-is-wrong-with-these-films-questions, and instead ask questions such as: what impact does cinematic history have in a modern mass media society; how can this impact be connected to other audiovisual media such as television; and how do transnationally relayed images and news items obtain its specific or local meanings as they move in between the national and the global? Consequently, these questions must be seen in the larger theoretical perspective of historical culture, albeit a global historical culture as both history and culture usually are perceived as national entities. The creation of a historical media memory on a global level should therefore be examined as an ongoing process—a struggle—where images, and the interpretation of those images, bounces between the national and the transnational, and between different audiovisual media such as films, television, and the Internet.
Second, by its empirical approach, with the study of 100 days of television reporting and approximately 180 film and television productions made in 37 countries between 1994 and 2021. This unique approach differs from most previous research in all three field as most studies only includes a selected number of productions (usually canonized in different ways), and usually nationally located, which limits the results, not least when looking at a transnational level. This have allowed me to analyze the creation and the re-creation of audiovisual memories as an ongoing struggle, introducing the term emblematic images. That is, images that were created during the television news reporting of the genocide in 1994, and then continually used and re-created in film and documentaries on different levels and with different purposes (national, transnational, political, aesthetic, and historically) in order to create a dominant media memory, and in the process a global consciousness, of the Rwandan genocide. But these emblematic images were also used to create other and sometimes conflicting media memories of the genocide, connected to phenomena such as reconciliation, women’s history, historical revisionism, and nationalism.
Third, by using both a national and a transnational level I have been able to analyze change over time in a unique way, related to how a global media memory is created and established on a global level – in this case as is often the case, in a western media hemisphere – and how this memory and these emblematical images then are employed for different purposes depending on its producers’ intensions and its intended audiences. One of the most interesting results is how this global memory, based as it is on a guilty conscience of the west, is used by Rwanda as a nation, which differ from how the genocide is portrayed and used in Rwandan film and televisions productions, where the absence of violent images is conspicuous and replaced by the creation of their own images of the genocide and how these, in turn, are incorporated into a new national identity as Rwandans.
Fourth, pertaining to Film and Genocide, this field have been dominated by the Holocaust, the most audio-visually recreated genocide, while other genocides have been neglected. This study changes that in two major ways: (1) previous studies have analyzed a relatively small sample of films and documentaries on the Rwandan genocide, usually “canonized” films such as Hotel Rwanda (2004) and Ghosts of Rwanda (2004), from a critical post-colonial perspective (that is, what-is-wrong-with-these-films”). This study, however, can base its outcomes on a larger empirical material, thus coming to other results and conclusions, including the unique effort to follow the creation of a memory from its origin until today. (2) The strong focus on the Holocaust have created the notion of this as the crime of all crimes, which unavoidable is juxtaposed to other genocides and which by proxy makes these other genocides “lesser” important in comparison. An all-encompassing study of the media memory of the Rwandan genocide, such as this, therefore have the ability to balance these two memories without weighing them against each other. And of course, the Rwandan genocide, and the media memories that surround this historical event, are depended on rather different mechanisms that are not comparable, but that nevertheless are used in these film and television productions and in the discussion about the Rwandan genocide. For example, a common notion is that the Rwandan genocide was more “gruesome” (and thus more barbaric) than the Holocaust due to the extensive use clubs and machetes instead of the more detached (and thus “civilized”) use of gas chambers. Comparisons such as this is depended on the media image and historical memory of Africa and other parts of the “Third world” as uncivilized in comparison to the west, but it is also a result of the unbalanced relationship between the Holocaust and all other genocides.
We are living in a digital age where information is abundant and where multitudes of audiovisual material transcend national borders in a way that was unheard of prior to the mid-1990s. This changed media landscape have implications on political, historical, economic, ecological, cultural, and social issues, which no longer constitute plain national matters, but instead should be understood as global issues. Accordingly, the audiovisual mass media industry has taken on a new significant role in today’s increasingly globalized society. This project on the Rwandan genocide have generated several new research questions concerning new digital audiovisual media. Audiovisual mediation of the past often includes national notions of “us” and “them” which to a large extent affects the distribution of common knowledge and, also, decision-making among political leadership. The media imagery of the “third world” is not simply created by current news items. This imagery is built on conventions for the presentation of television news, earlier historical depictions and, not least, on the creation of global audiovisual historical memories that increasingly tends to be transnational in character. A new outlook on the concept of globalization is therefore of vital importance in the digital age. How is historical knowledge distributed in the digital age? How is the media imagery of the “third world”, of the Holocaust or other genocides, or of environmental disasters and climate change transformed from current news items, over earlier (mainly written) historical depictions, to audiovisual historical memories on a transnational level? These are questions that are of decisive importance for understanding today's and the future's global media world.
The manuscript is accepted and will be publish as the monograph, Historical Media Memories of the Rwandan Genocide: Corpses by the Road, by renowned Edinburgh University Press, both in hardback and as Open Access, during 2023.
This monograph studies the transnational historical media memory of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. It includes three levels of interpretation that goes from the national to the global and then back to the national, analyzed chronologically with a focus on change and the repetitive use of emblematic images of the genocide, such as images of corpses in different positions and locations. The purpose is to analyze how the memory of the genocide against the Tutsis has been constructed, re-created, and used in accordance with altering aesthetical, political, spatial, and temporal circumstances on national as well as global levels. The three levels are: (1) Swedish and international television news as the genocide took place during 100 days in 1994, (2) the large international production of approximately 180 feature films, feature-length documentaries and short films on the genocide 1994–2021, making it into the second most audio-visually recreated genocide after the Holocaust, and (3) contemporary film and television production in Rwanda films about the genocide, with a focus on how Rwanda, as a nation, creates its own images of the genocide and how these are incorporated into a new national identity.
The project is interdisciplinary and internationally related and is linked to three field of research: (1) Film and History, (2) Film and Genocide, and (3) Media memory studies. The monograph’s most important results have effects for all these three fields. First, by posing research question that deviates from the norm of what-is-wrong-with-these-films-questions, and instead ask questions such as: what impact does cinematic history have in a modern mass media society; how can this impact be connected to other audiovisual media such as television; and how do transnationally relayed images and news items obtain its specific or local meanings as they move in between the national and the global? Consequently, these questions must be seen in the larger theoretical perspective of historical culture, albeit a global historical culture as both history and culture usually are perceived as national entities. The creation of a historical media memory on a global level should therefore be examined as an ongoing process—a struggle—where images, and the interpretation of those images, bounces between the national and the transnational, and between different audiovisual media such as films, television, and the Internet.
Second, by its empirical approach, with the study of 100 days of television reporting and approximately 180 film and television productions made in 37 countries between 1994 and 2021. This unique approach differs from most previous research in all three field as most studies only includes a selected number of productions (usually canonized in different ways), and usually nationally located, which limits the results, not least when looking at a transnational level. This have allowed me to analyze the creation and the re-creation of audiovisual memories as an ongoing struggle, introducing the term emblematic images. That is, images that were created during the television news reporting of the genocide in 1994, and then continually used and re-created in film and documentaries on different levels and with different purposes (national, transnational, political, aesthetic, and historically) in order to create a dominant media memory, and in the process a global consciousness, of the Rwandan genocide. But these emblematic images were also used to create other and sometimes conflicting media memories of the genocide, connected to phenomena such as reconciliation, women’s history, historical revisionism, and nationalism.
Third, by using both a national and a transnational level I have been able to analyze change over time in a unique way, related to how a global media memory is created and established on a global level – in this case as is often the case, in a western media hemisphere – and how this memory and these emblematical images then are employed for different purposes depending on its producers’ intensions and its intended audiences. One of the most interesting results is how this global memory, based as it is on a guilty conscience of the west, is used by Rwanda as a nation, which differ from how the genocide is portrayed and used in Rwandan film and televisions productions, where the absence of violent images is conspicuous and replaced by the creation of their own images of the genocide and how these, in turn, are incorporated into a new national identity as Rwandans.
Fourth, pertaining to Film and Genocide, this field have been dominated by the Holocaust, the most audio-visually recreated genocide, while other genocides have been neglected. This study changes that in two major ways: (1) previous studies have analyzed a relatively small sample of films and documentaries on the Rwandan genocide, usually “canonized” films such as Hotel Rwanda (2004) and Ghosts of Rwanda (2004), from a critical post-colonial perspective (that is, what-is-wrong-with-these-films”). This study, however, can base its outcomes on a larger empirical material, thus coming to other results and conclusions, including the unique effort to follow the creation of a memory from its origin until today. (2) The strong focus on the Holocaust have created the notion of this as the crime of all crimes, which unavoidable is juxtaposed to other genocides and which by proxy makes these other genocides “lesser” important in comparison. An all-encompassing study of the media memory of the Rwandan genocide, such as this, therefore have the ability to balance these two memories without weighing them against each other. And of course, the Rwandan genocide, and the media memories that surround this historical event, are depended on rather different mechanisms that are not comparable, but that nevertheless are used in these film and television productions and in the discussion about the Rwandan genocide. For example, a common notion is that the Rwandan genocide was more “gruesome” (and thus more barbaric) than the Holocaust due to the extensive use clubs and machetes instead of the more detached (and thus “civilized”) use of gas chambers. Comparisons such as this is depended on the media image and historical memory of Africa and other parts of the “Third world” as uncivilized in comparison to the west, but it is also a result of the unbalanced relationship between the Holocaust and all other genocides.
We are living in a digital age where information is abundant and where multitudes of audiovisual material transcend national borders in a way that was unheard of prior to the mid-1990s. This changed media landscape have implications on political, historical, economic, ecological, cultural, and social issues, which no longer constitute plain national matters, but instead should be understood as global issues. Accordingly, the audiovisual mass media industry has taken on a new significant role in today’s increasingly globalized society. This project on the Rwandan genocide have generated several new research questions concerning new digital audiovisual media. Audiovisual mediation of the past often includes national notions of “us” and “them” which to a large extent affects the distribution of common knowledge and, also, decision-making among political leadership. The media imagery of the “third world” is not simply created by current news items. This imagery is built on conventions for the presentation of television news, earlier historical depictions and, not least, on the creation of global audiovisual historical memories that increasingly tends to be transnational in character. A new outlook on the concept of globalization is therefore of vital importance in the digital age. How is historical knowledge distributed in the digital age? How is the media imagery of the “third world”, of the Holocaust or other genocides, or of environmental disasters and climate change transformed from current news items, over earlier (mainly written) historical depictions, to audiovisual historical memories on a transnational level? These are questions that are of decisive importance for understanding today's and the future's global media world.