Jezebel
In 2006, filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson went to the war-torn Congo on her own nickel to make a documentary about rape in the republic formerly known as Zaire. Her film, The Greatest Silence, which premieres tonight on HBO at 10pm, includes interviews with some of the estimated 250,000 women and girls who have been raped by soldiers over the past decade — as well as some of the rapists themselves — and the picture she paints is beyond grim. (Many women have been raped and injured to the point of lifelong incontinence, their vaginas rammed with sticks and other weapons until their uteri rupture). And though Jackson's personal history also plays a role in the film — she was raped by three men in 1976 — some reviewers find the inclusion of her own tragedy an intrustion. "She is motivated not simply by her reportorial instincts," notes NY Times reviewer Ginia Bellafante, "but also by her unfortunate wish to relate." More critical assessments of The Greatest Silence, after the jump.
New York Times:
There are certain kinds of art that obviously benefit from egocentricity. This kind of filmmaking almost never does. "The women of the Congo gave me a new definition of grace," Ms. Jackson says at the end of her film, as if that were the point.Washington Post:
The film shows the twisted layers of damage from war, twisted until the soldiers believe they must rape to win. Twisted until the viewer becomes engulfed in the twisted message of magic and enemy control and devastation. And you shout at the screen. Because the film shows you the pain of women raped in front of their husbands and children. Rammed with sticks until the uterus ruptures.San Francisco Chronicle:
[Rape in the Congo] is a holocaust in slow motion...In the past decade, an estimated 250,000 women and girls, some as young as 4 or 5, have been raped by soldiers. In some cases, their genitals are mutilated and they become incontinent. The shame of rape is so pervasive that their husbands, and often their families, reject them. The children of rape are also shunned.Los Angeles Times:
Harrowing and heart-rending and maddening and confounding...Jackson does a good job of capturing the paradoxical beauty of the setting, and she has structured her film so that even as it grows more horrible, hope glimmers.New York Sun:
Disappointingly, the film also shies away from larger questions. Why, for example, is rape more prevalent in the Congo's conflict than it is in Darfur's, or was in Rwanda's? And why has rape become a standard practice in these wars at all? Such questions are neither insensitive nor beyond the point. "The Greatest Silence," which won a special jury prize at Sundance, is in some ways a well-made documentary. But by treating one country's tragedy as another chapter in Africa's endless suffering, it risks selling its important subject matter short.
Congo's Horror, as Seen Through a Personal Filter [New York Times]
The Brutal Truth [Washington Post]
Film Captures Rapists And Their Victims In Congo [SF Chronicle]
Breaking The Silence In The Congo [LA Times]
Silence Deafens The Congo [NY Sun]
Earlier: "Here At The Hospital, We've Seen Women Who Have Stopped Living"
In Congo, They Rape Three-Year-Olds
Comments
One of my friends wrote her law review article about rape as a war crime in Darfur. Haunting and sickening. We've been looking forward to seeing this. I'm sure it will be powerful
Yes, there is nothing more unfortunate than a rape victim's desire to relate to other rape victims.
For shame, Lisa Jackson!!! The NYT has spoken!
until the soldiers believe they must rape to win.
Does anyone really believe this? It seems to me that they rape because they can.
I would really like to see that movie but... I don't think I can handle it.
Also in previews reviews I read that she brought up her own rape so that the women would feel more comfortable talking and stuff like that, which I thought was nice and not self-serving. Like "I do care about what happened to you because this happened to me as well sort of thing"
Yeah, how dare you let the misfortune of others touch your own life and in turn shape your actions.
Yes, I'm sure her story is completely intrusive and in no way related to the narrative...her story about...rape. In an documentary about...rape. Yeah, I'm sure it's not directly related, but damn, NYT. Let the woman tell her story in her own damn documentary.
"but also by her unfortunate wish to relate."
unfortunate wish to relate? wow, that sentence can be taken one of several ways and the way i took it wasn't exactly shedding a positive light on the person who said it.
"The women of the Congo gave me a new definition of grace," Ms. Jackson says at the end of her film, as if that were the point."
yes, because actually learning something about them and herself was just NOT the right thing to do by creating this documentary.
Jebus...does the NYT reviewer have a personal issue with Lisa Jackson?
How is a wish to relate to someone who has gone through something as traumatic as rape, which you have also gone through, unfortunate? What kind of thing is that to say?! Why do so many people continue to make me so stabby about this issue?!
I heard this lady interviewed on the radio. They played clips from the doc and listening to the horrific stories told by these incredibly brave women had tears pouring down my face. Reading an article by a medic with MSF who helped to treat some of these women had the same effect.
What happens to men to turn them into the non-human monsters who would brutalize another person this way?
@JessicaLovejoy: Boosh and/or Kakow!: It's an effective method of breaking up communities; it's definitely a strategy to win, along with something they do 'cause they're sadists.
i'm just sitting here with tears running down my face right now. i'm definitely watching this tonight, as hard as its going to be.
I don't think there's anything 'unfortunate' or egocentric about a woman wanting to relate to other women. I watched an interview with Jackson; she stated that while she absolutely did not think that her rape was anywhere near as traumatic as what these women went (and are still going) through, telling the other women about her rape helped them to trust her. Many of these rape victims simply could not believe that a white women could be raped.
@myrtlebeachbum: I think she objects more to the filmmaker's implication that her learning experience and emotional journey was the point of this documentary.
@ineffable.me: I'm with you. I generally cannot handle this sort of topic. Not that I am blind to it, I just find it to be too disturbing.
I haven't read the NYTimes Review yet, but how can finding light at the end of an extremely dark, bleak tunnel not be "the point" ????? Especially for a filmmaker?
That NYT review is infuriating:
"Comparing herself to the impoverished women she finds, women shunned and abandoned by a nation of men who condone the prevailing, systematic brutalities, Ms. Jackson tells us that when she was married, her husband referred to her as "damaged goods." While he may have meant that her emotional wounds left her unprepared for the trials of marriage, Ms. Jackson leaves the phrase dangling there to suggest that the anguishes of sexual violence are experienced universally and that all shame is essentially the same shame."
In other words, her rape is not as damaging as their rape, because, you know, hers were just emotional wounds, not national problems.
WTF?
Why, for example, is rape more prevalent in the Congo's conflict than it is in Darfur's, or was in Rwanda's?
Perhaps because the Rwanda genocide took all of three months and there was actually lots of rape in that period? I'm not up to speed about Darfur, but I think my friend who is in Rwanda doing research on the effects of rape during the genocide period on the population today would disagree with the the New York Sun.
Ugh. Someone tries to actually get this story out to the general public, and all the some papers can do is bitch and moan about trivial stuff. They should bitch and moan about the international communities silence on the subject.
@AlannaBanana: than the objector should fit the bill for her to make the documentary. seriously.
@ineffable.me: agreed. its a full disclosure thing too.
NY Sun: "And why has rape become a standard practice in these wars at all? "
Why act so surprised? I think that's part of the problem; we act like there is something uniquely bad about Africa, to make rape "become a standard practice." It's always been a part of war...everywhere! Stop spending so much time being condescendingly shocked (e.g. "oh, those animals") and DO something about it!
I don't know, I am going to have to reserve judgment until I actually see it, but I think I get what the NYT is saying - I think often there can be this sort of "ooh, it's just like ME" situation that arises, especially when Americans or Europeans do documentaries about terrible situations, third-world countries, that sort of thing.
It's like, instead of just shining a light on the atrocity that's going on, some lady with an amazing amount of privilege in comparison (and I want to make it perfectly clear that in no way do I not have compassion for what she went through), has to compare it to her experiences, make it relevant. There's something about that that can kind of strike me as imperialistic - the magic black people shedding light on one's own tragedy, as though they're totems and not real human beings.
Like I said, I haven't seen the film, but I think that can definitely happen in documentaries, and it's debatable as to whether that's an effective way to communicate in a nonfiction film, or if one has a higher obligation to impartiality and distance.
@hortense: "Ms. Jackson leaves the phrase dangling there to suggest that the anguishes of sexual violence are experienced universally and that all shame is essentially the same shame."
Isn't it, though? I mean, obviously, these women have suffered in a way that I cannot even imagine, and have suffered more than the filmmaker, but at its heart, motivations for rape and responses to rape are pretty much the same across cultures.
@Le Kangourou de Kataroo...TRY IT!: I don't know, I kind of agree with that NYT writer that it's gross to use African rape victims as like, your path to self-realization.
@Smackdown: EXACTLY what I was trying to say, thank you!
@Smackdown: I agree with you, actually, and I hope that she is careful. But I think that the NYT review was still shitty and dismissive of her experiences.
@SarahMC: It happens a LOT though in conflicts, and not just in Africa. In fact, one of the least-remembered aspects of the Second World War was the mass rape of German women by the Soviet soldiers; it was also very prevalent in the Balkans in the 1990s. As a phenomenon of war it's shamefully under-studied (I wonder why).
@hortense: Oh my GOD that's offensive.
Yeah, so Jackson is engaging in a bit of ethnographic research perspective. GOOD!
FFS, is the NYT really say that this is such a troubling and horrifying topic that a white women who was only raped by THREE men, has no business bringing personal perspective into this documentary?
Isn't this horrible situation festering in the Congo because people are feeling too overwhelmed or too removed from the atrocities? It's really okay to document this on film, but HOW DARE SHE try to relate on a personal level with her 'subjects'. Why that just flies in the face of the whole "us/them" dynamic!
Assholes.
@Smackdown: I understand your point of view but by god it always upsets me.
@rah29: Sorry it occurs to me that the 'not just in Africa' part of my comment might be read as flippant; I don't mean it in that way at all, it actually really annoys me when rape in war is treated as this thing specific to African conflict, it's totally ethnocentric and wrong.
@JessicaLovejoy: Boosh and/or Kakow!: Raping is a mentally power based act. What the soldiers cannot win by killing the men, they can do by breaking the women. They must not have any reapect or love for their mothers if they can do this.
@BadHairLife: Years of poverty, famine, and government corruption slowy warp men into thinking a "survive or die" mentality. Lack of good education by means of not being able to afford it has young boys going to other schools of "learning."
Stories like this made me always want the slap the shit out of the spoiled girls who complained their life sucks because they have a curfew, or a spending limit, or that so-and-so won't go out with them.
@JessicaLovejoy: Boosh and/or Kakow!: Raping to win seems pretty standard vis a vis war crimes and how they happen. Abu Ghraib is another example of this mindset -- "We may not be winning this war, but we can dominate people at the individual level by stripping them of their humanity." You know? Rape is entirely based on ideas of dominance/submission. That's why it's such a prevalent crime in violent conflicts.
I do not follow the logic of the NYT review. It seems to me that the implication is, "How dare this white western woman relate her own rape to the rape epidemic and traumas of women in the Congo". It's another attempt to divide related communities, as far as I see it. And it seems to deny the global presence of patriarchy and rape culture and how those two things feed off each other.
I watched a show about a doctor who does what he can to physically repair these women. The damage is horrific. Good luck to those of you who watch, I don't think I can.
Fuck you and your douchebag name, Ginia Bellafante.
Christ.
I believe that if the world was forced to confront issues such as this on a daily basis, a whole lot more would be done to ensure that these kinds of horrific actions cease. It is all to easy to get lost in anticipation of the SATC movie or old reruns of Friends, but if we were all forced with having to face images such as this on a daily basis.... just saying. Kudos to Jackson for making such a brutally honest documentary.
@rah29: Don't forget the increase of rape at American bases in other countries that are not even in a war.
@SarahMC: The entire review is a big ball of WTF?
Maybe that's the only way she CAN handle the situation. By relating it to what she went through. If I were in the Congo trying to make a documentary of this I think I'd last a day. I'm amazed she was able to make this, and as hard as it is going to be to watch, I know I need to watch it. I just don't understand why everyone is so upset about her relating it back to herself.
I started to read the review in the WaPo this morning and had to stop because I was crying.
I find the New York Sun review as infuriating and disgusting as the NYT.
So because she "shied" away from these subjects her film is flawed? Perhaps even rendered moot?
God forbid a women try to shed light on a subject, or not even shed light but let the VICTIMS TELL THEIR story. She must be smeared for not answering all questions on rape and humanity.
@OMG a Girl Gamer: They love and respect their mothers. This has nothing to do with their mothers. The other people aren't regarded as people, by raping the women they are destroying villages and another entire culture. Men dont want their raped wives because they are tainted, they get so fucked up from the rapes that they cant have any babies and when they get pregnant and have mixed babies its still wiping out an entire race.
Kudos to Ms. Jackson for sharing her story and actually caring. This Congolese woman is not offended in any way shape or form that she tried to relate her story and pain with the Congolese women.
@OMG a Girl Gamer: But that's what's particularly interesting about the Soviet case; at this point, they had already crossed onto German territory. They were winning. I've seen it put down basically to revenge for what the Nazis did--20m dead Soviets--but it's been ridiculously under-studied.
Good point about the increase of rape at bases. I wonder if it's a real increase in the number of incidents, or an increase in reporting/complaints--does anyone know?
@SarahMC: I'm reading a book right now called Mass Hate: the Global Rise of Genocide and Terror, and from what I've read so far is that very few of these men who commit mass atrocities are actually sadists. It is a really informative read and goes into depth about the mass rapes of Muslims in Bosnia, the Rwandan genocide, and of course the Holocaust, and the most mind blowing similarity between all three of these wars is that most of the people who committed these crimes were people who were quite loving to their families, and in general they were fairly well-adjusted members of society. It really just shows how animalistic humans really are in that they can be 'brainwashed' (for lack of a better for at the moment) into thinking that what they are doing is acceptable.
god representation of atrocity ethics are really tough. really couldn't say much until i see it. how much you want to bet the nytimes reviewer is also a survivor, though?
OK, read the SF Chron article, y'all. She does most of the talking herself from an interview, and she sounds like a strong, amazing, brave woman.
It's interesting that the reviewer infers that Ms. Jackson's husband is referring to emotional unpreparedness for marriage. Obviously US/Western males no longer view women as property 'cuz feminism has completely achieved its goals and it is all sunshine & lollipops now.
I don't know, maybe doing a documentary on this subject helped her to gain some perspective on her own experience while at the same time draw attention to a horrific situation that not that many people in this country may be aware of? I don't see the harm in that.
@JessicaLovejoy: Boosh and/or Kakow!:
I don't know, the original statement makes sense to me. Rape has always been a byproduct of war, one of the unspoken, countless additional atrocities that occur outside the "official" battlefield.
BUT, I think the point is that in the conflict in the Congo, it has become not a secret, underground "side effect" of the war itself, (of soldiers raping women as you say "because they can") but it is now a battle tactic, a specific weapon that is used in every minor skirmish. An sanctioned, official sort of act-as-weapon.