"Captain Phillips" and Crazy Africans with Guns

I watched the film "Captain Phillips" with a certain amount of hope.  The trailer suggested that the film would feature some empathy between the white American (played by Mr. All-American Tom Hanks) and the Somali pirate who took him captive for several days.  Alas, it was not to be.

"Captain Phillips" is merely the latest in a long installment of recent Hollywood Films depicting young African men as unhinged maniacs waving around semi-automatic weapons.  In fact in some respects "Captain Phillips" represents a step back from "Blood Diamond," which featured a noble if crudely rendered black African protagonist among blood-crazed Africans.  Of course the deeper problem with these films is that they aren't about African men at all; the black men are just props for the journeys of white men (Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Hanks).

Kaiser Matsumunyane is a film maker interested in redressing this imbalance.  He is proposing to do a documentary of the surviving Somali pirate who held Phillips captive: Abduwale Abdukhad Muse.  Matsumunyane's film would explore aspects of the episode and of piracy more generally that western media seldom addresses: that Muse may have only been sixteen when captured; that the pirates were shot and killed while trying to surrender; footage of his mother addressing his determination to help his younger siblings; the role of the West in devastating the Somali fishing industry.

None of this will necessarily exculpate Muse.  But it is essential that white Americans, especially, begin looking at Africa through new lenses, that we learn fuller and more complex stories than those featuring crazy Africans with guns.

But we may wait a long time to see the "Smiling Pirate."  The fund-raising website stalled with the total raised to support the film at $886.

The Smiling Pirate Trailer.