mmmm, sparkly

[just in time for Valentine’s Day…ah, I’m laughing now…]

Last week while in South Africa, I saw the movie “Blood Diamond.” This decision was, in some ways, against what remains of my better judgment, because I know it would make me angry. But I couldn’t quite NOT see it either, so, there I was. The movie is about how alluvial diamonds in Sierra Leone fueled a rebellion that turned kidnapped children into drug-addicted murderers who chopped off the hands of the less cooperative, and made a few gun runners and smugglers wealthy. It is also yet another movie about Africa through the eyes of white people – a South African smuggler and an American journalist. And imagine! They somehow find love and screw in a landscape swarming with mostly crazed, heavily armed Africans killing each other, but for one good black man (who just happened to find a big fat rock) trying to save his family. A surprising approach, no. But still infuriating, definitely.

A bit of background. Last year in my African Politics class, I gave a lecture on diamonds. I started with the whole idea of a wedding ring – a prehistoric reminder of ownership and property. Some historians say that it comes from women being bound hand and foot when married off. Once she learned to behave and promised not to run away, her feet were untied. Eventually her hands would also be released, with the exception of a single strand left around her finger as a reminder. Romantic, no?

Then, there are stories about gemstones and royalty in Europe going back hundreds of years. Eventually we work our way up to DeBeers, the largest diamond company on the planet. DeBeers is South African and controls the vast majority of the world diamond market by hoarding diamonds and heavily restricting sales to artificially inflate their value. DeBeers built prisons for the apartheid government in exchange for the labor of black prisoners who had done unconscionable things like walk through a white neighborhood on the way home without a government-issued pass. DeBeers is largely responsible for a marketing campaign in the 1930s and 40s that created the idea of the engagement ring and the two-month salary rule. They actually sent sales reps from jeweler to jeweler to talk about their stones, weddings, and how much men should be advised to spend. So much for cultural tradition (for another iteration, see the more recent ‘right-hand ring’ campaign – though you have to go to this site to connect DeBeers with ‘a diamond is forever’…).

As I am sure most of you know I could rant on about this for a while. I must have had my angry juice this morning. But let’s get back to the movie. Nothing about its setup surprised me in any way. It’s simple, it sells. And Leo DiCaprio has come a long way since The Blue Lagoon, baby. We are, however, talking about a cadre of actors and filmmakers who did not even go on a ‘fact-finding’ trip about diamonds in Africa until after the film was already in the can. AFTER. And did I mention that the trip they did take was organized by none other than DeBeers?

But here’s the kicker. Jennifer Connelly’s character, the well-meaning journalist, says tearfully towards the end (as Leo’s mocking her for thinking writing makes any difference…wait…), “But if those girls KNEW someone died for that stone, they wouldn’t BUY them!!” Or something like that.

Now that, as my brother would say, is one metric shit ton of crap. Stories about blood diamonds have been in the American media for years. Granted, they are not exactly first on the evening news, but they are out there. This is not new information. Even here we have a few models who cried when they found out that the Botswanan government moved the San out of an area in which they wanted to sell mining concessions. And at the same time, DeBeers was recently allowed to begin opening stores in New York and Beverly Hills. Sounds like their market is really shrinking. And I am foolish, but not so foolish as to think that the sorority girl in the back row of my African Politics class is going to forego that diamond engagement ring she’s been taught to fantasize about since she was in a frilly pink dress because of her crazy professor’s stories.

What exactly would it take, do you think?