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Chinua Achebe shocked Western sensibilities in 1977 when he criticized Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness for reducing Africa to a mere 'setting and backdrop' for white consciousness to act out its 'metaphysical battlefield.' Hollywood's Africa after 1994 exposes major Western filmmakers and their celebrity casts who still don't get the message. They continue to focus on themselves with their cameras and projectors and not on Africa, yet thinking they come close to it, they shed crocodile tears. -- Charles Cantalupo, Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature and African Studies at Penn State University, and author of Joining Africa: From Anthills to Asmara Scholars and advanced students in African studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, and international studies will find a lot to learn from (Hollywood's Africa) and to like about it... Most valuable...is how it illustrates an underlying tension in human rights films set in Africa: the way they seem to take on, even challenge, the messy politics of the day, yet almost always fall back to the standard tropes about Africa and our engagement with it. -- H-Net (H-Diplo)

Chinua Achebe shocked Western sensibilities in 1977 when he criticized Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness for reducing Africa to a mere 'setting and backdrop' for white consciousness to act out its 'metaphysical battlefield.' Hollywood's Africa after 1994 exposes major Western filmmakers and their celebrity casts who still don't get the message. They continue to focus on themselves with their cameras and projectors and not on Africa, yet thinking they come close to it, they shed crocodile tears. - Charles Cantalupo, Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature and African Studies at Penn State University, and author of Joining Africa: From Anthills to Asmara Scholars and advanced students in African studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, and international studies will find a lot to learn from (Hollywood's Africa) and to like about it... Most valuable...is how it illustrates an underlying tension in human rights films set in Africa: the way they seem to take on, even challenge, the messy politics of the day, yet almost always fall back to the standard tropes about Africa and our engagement with it. - H-Net (H-Diplo)

Scholars and advanced students in African studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, and international studies will find a lot to learn from (Hollywood's Africa) and to like about it.... Most valuable...is how it illustrates an underlying tension in human rights films set in Africa: the way they seem to take on, even challenge, the messy politics of the day, yet almost always fall back to the standard tropes about Africa and our engagement with it. -- H-Net (H-Diplo)

“Chinua Achebe shocked Western sensibilities in 1977 when he criticized Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness for reducing Africa to a mere ‘setting and backdrop’ for white consciousness to act out its ‘metaphysical battlefield.’ Hollywood’s Africa after 1994 exposes major Western filmmakers and their celebrity casts who still don’t get the message. They continue to focus on themselves with their cameras and projectors and not on Africa, yet thinking they come close to it, they shed crocodile tears.” “Scholars and advanced students in African studies, media studies, postcolonial studies, and international studies will find a lot to learn from (Hollywood’s Africa) and to like about it…. Most valuable…is how it illustrates an underlying tension in human rights films set in Africa: the way they seem to take on, even challenge, the messy politics of the day, yet almost always fall back to the standard tropes about Africa and our engagement with it.” * H-Net (H-Diplo) *

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MaryEllen Higgins is an associate professor of English at the Greater Allegheny Campus of Pennsylvania State University. She is the coauthor of The Historical Dictionary of French Cinema. Her publications include articles and book chapters in Research in African Literatures, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, African Literature Today, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Perspectives on African Literatures at the Millennium, and Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko.

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