Voices From the Gaps - Fall 2007

Qamar Ali
VG3351-01
Long Journey
Prompt # III
Chakraborty
10/13/07

Women are the foundation of every society, and the women in the film, the Long Night’s Journey into Day, are the strongest women in this world. In this film some of the South African women in the period of apartheid time were powerless inside of their society. They could not have a freedom to live, and South African woman, especially, Black women could not have an equal racial equity. Therefore, they were invisible in the eyes of their government. Also, they witnessed violence more than four decades. For that reason, the South African community had been segregated from different class and over all races. Fanon stated that in his article that “Apartheid is simply one form of division into compartments of colonial world.� (41). This led for this community to live under the attack all the time. In that manner, both Blacks and whites in South Africa were in scope of hates; Therefore, South African mothers and their loved ones’ were not safe at all .Women in general, are against prejudice through race, especially, South African women in the apartheid period were distinguished survivors.
Film shows that the women are very important to be visible in their society because All South Africans, and one American family, with different levels, are faced a painful lost. The movie presented that the story of Amy Biehl had been told in order to become as a symbolic hope of South African community and internationally as well. A beautiful young American student died inside of South African village while she was against of unjust through innocent South African people. One day, she met with a mob group who were chanting anti-whites slogans and Mr. Mongezi Manqina was among a convicted killer. He stated in front of Amnesty Hearing that “I stabbed Amy Biehl because I saw her as a target… � (film). He killed her as a target because his view in the film was this world had turned back from us as a South African Black community, and thousands of our people died every single day. On the other seen he said that “I chased after her and I tripped her and she fell down… I asked one of the persons in the crowd for a knife…� (Film LNJID). Those unhealthy words came from his mouth while he was telling the story of how he killed her. After he spent a three years in jail, he applied for Amnesty from the truth reconciliation Commission in order to heal and asks for forgiveness from her family. Amy’ family forgave him and that was very kind action. Father-Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in the Long Night’s Journey into Day that, “This act is promotion of national unity and reconciliation; it does not say the achievement.� (Film).
In order to promote a peaceful living, this film sees that women in general, especially, South African women and American mother are very important to set down together and solve the racial inequality. Film care about women because the producer knew that they will make change through their house holds. Also, women can go back into their sons, husbands, and their fathers, and preach them not to kill each other instead solve every problem by listening and caring for each others! This film is a reminder for all of us that without women present we can not promote peace, justice, and racial equality. Therefore, we should ask their forgiveness’ and their advice because the foundation of issues of peaceful living comes from them.
I strongly agree with film many ways, however, I want to see that the producer who is a native South African designing the movie like this in order to see many angels of the South African community.

By enclosing the structure of the movie with the story of Amy Biehl’s murder, I feel the film aims to capture the attention of the stereotypical white audience. Once taken by the story of one person they can relate to racially, that tragedy can then be used to relate other tragic events of similar or greater altitude. Certainly the stories of the Cradock Four, the ANC fighters and the Gugulu Seven are just as terrible as Amy Biehl’s death, but attention is not raised to these stories by white people until Amy Biehl’s story pops up. It is useful in the sense that it brings attention to these stories to a Caucasian audience but harmful because it is patronizing I believe towards the victims of South Africa.
The film ultimately has a lot to do with sin and redemption in one form or another. It reflects on the nature of truth and forgiveness by exhibiting these people’s emotions on both sides of the story. What bothered me was that by showing first how Amy Biehl’s parents forgive her killers, we are hit with the They are so gracious notion, and come to be puzzled why it was so easy for them to forgive and the other South African mothers to not forgive. The black women seemed to go through a lot more then the Biehl’s before they could let their sons’ killers pass through their exoneration. Then we are hit with Well, if the white folks can do it so easily, why can’t they? Well, the white folks did not have to go through all the hardships and heartaches of South Africa.
I cannot obviously speak for ALL Caucasians, but from what we were shown in the film, many white people were clueless about the beating heart of South Africa. For instance, the white lady who lost her sister to a bombing was furious more so by the fact that her sister was killed for something that she knew nothing about. Anyone would naturally be devastated at the loss of a loved one and enraged at those who were responsible; I myself have known that rage. However, the fact that she readily said she had no idea what they were upset for and what they were fighting for simply showed the even white people living in South Africa were completely ignorant of their surroundings—they lived in a secluded suburb in a fake part of the country. It was disheartening, to say the least, that wealthier middle class whites would move to a country without having the slightest idea what the social and political situation was.
Therefore, the fact that Amy Biehl’s story and her parents glide the film along does more damage to the image of the film simply because the frame is more like an enveloping halo of fake white light coming from a burning-out bulb. If one is going to do a piece on the tragedies of South Africa, keep it to the South African citizens, whether they be white, black or electric blue and do not use a white foreigner to tie it all together.

It is not uncommon that directors use isolated incidents to inform, change, and ultimately draw the world into what is going on and how we can change it. And even though these motives are sincere, it causes great damage to the people the suffering and injustice is happening to directly. In the film, “Long Night’s Journey into Day� the directors took the focus away from the people who are truly suffering the ongoing violence and injustice. By framing the documentary with the story of Amy Biehl, it allows the incidents in South Africa to become an international issue. However, in framing the documentary in this way, it appealed to an American audience instead of trying to spread the whole truth about the TRC, the constant violence in South Africa that happens directly to South Africans, and ultimately makes Americans look more sincere than South Africans.
One must realize that some problems are not international. That they are isolated in a certain place and we must help knowing that these people are suffering, not because one of “our own� was involved in one case out of 7,000. The world must realize that the world is cut into two; as Fanon said in “Concerning Violence� “This world is divided into two compartments, this world cut in two is inhabited by two different species.� (32) Fanon outlines how the world is divided into two parts: the colonizers and the colonized. That there are people in the world who suffer in ways the others do not. Once people realize this truth then we can help tackle the problems of violence. We must confront the issue as it stands to the people in the world. Not frame a story that is not about Americans in the first place, with a white American girl who was murdered in South Africa by blacks who thought she was the enemy. This is unrealistic. If one keeps trying to include the people who are not suffering directly above the stories and in the lives of sufferers, we get no where.
Fanon illustrates just how the world is divided and how it will continue to be divided because the natives and the settlers will always live in different worlds. Framing the film with the story of Amy Biehl turned a South African problem into one of the world, predominately America. And even though this is a global issue, one cannot frame a story of a struggle without fairly representing the strugglers. Amy Biehl’s case was the only one out of 7,000 amnesty cases that involved an American. This is not spreading the truth about the TRC. According to the film the majority of the cases involved black South Africans and also included social injustices, not just murder.
Amy Biehl’s family diverted attention from the South African story and turned it into an American, an international one that causes no harm to anyone except the South Africans themselves. They are the ones going through the violence and the TRC. How the movie was framed it seemed as if the American family is a prime example of forgiveness and how the TRC is supposed to work. For example, Biehl’s family speaks directly to the TRC in support of amnesty for their daughter’s murders. The way the parents of Amy are so content and did not show any signs of hate towards the boys who murdered there daughter made them look like pure saints. The South African mothers on the other hand, opposed amnesty for their sons’ murder. In fact, when they are interviewed, they say that they did not want to forgive them, that it is not their responsibility to ease his pain. As a result it made the South African mothers look as if they could not forgive, thus allowing the American family look more forgiving and better in the eyes of the viewer (the American).
The film made the Biehl’s look like an angelic family who forgave the blacks and at the same time made the blacks look like they could not forgive. For example, when one of the murders of the 7 men was able to speak with the mothers, the mothers basically told him that he betrayed their people and all but one did not forgive him for the murder of their sons. Also the wife of Fort in the Cradock 4 case did not want to forgive her husband’s murder as well. The fact that the directors framed the story of an American family who forgave their daughter’s murders and within the film showed the stories of South Africans who did not or could not forgive the murders made the South Africans look like they are not as forgiving as Americans. Thus the film appeals to a white audience by making them look better in the sense of forgiveness. The film fails to represent the true struggles of the South Africans by framing the film with the Amy Biehl story and not allowing the film to touch on the true struggles of the South African.

Centering “Long Night’s Journey into Day� on the story of Amy Biehl Americanized the South African documentary. Biehl’s case was the sole of over 7,000 cases involving an American. Although the film does not accurately represent the inequality amongst blacks’ and whites’ roles in apartheid, it does correctly show the ethnocentrism that many Americans possess.

Documenting the murder and reconciliation of a young American was useful in provoking interest to a mainly US audience. It showed that the events of the TRC in South Africa were relatable to life and people in the United States. However, it is unnecessary and undermining to assume that Americans need to incorporate their own people in order to understand and sympathize with unfamiliar cultures. South Africa endured 48 years of struggle. It is selfish for the writers of “Long Night’s Journey into Day� and for many Americans to take these struggles and to try equal our pain with that of the South Africans.

Having Biehl’s parents as the first and the most willing to forgive their daughter’s murderers portrays Americans in a biased way. It was extremely inspiring and powerful that parents could forgive the killers of their innocent daughter. Their forgiveness, however, makes the Americans appear as saints compared to the wives of the Cradock Four and mothers of the Gugulu Seven, who are slow, with good reason, to forgive. Also, the other three cases described in the documentary involve more than one death. Amy Biehl, however, was a lone victim in her case, once again making her death more noteworthy compared to the other victims, who share the stories of their murders with their peers. These comparatives combined with the focus of both the beginning and ending on Amy Biehl, not only give her tragedy more significance but also, they Americanize South Africa’s 48 year struggle, dimming light on them, and shining it, once again, on the United States.

Amy Biehl was the only American killed in South Africa during the civil wars of the Apartheid era out of the tens of thousands of South Africans who perished in the struggle. A Long Night’s Journey into Day, a documentary about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and its attempts to publicly bring out the atrocities committed during apartheid and being to process of forgiveness and healing, beings and end with the story of Amy Biehl. The directors, Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman, claim that this was done because th audience they were primarily creating the film for were American and thought her story would help Americans relate to struggle. Though that may have been a justified reason in some regards for setting the film up in that way, it ultimately does an injustice to the population of South Africa by diminishing their loss and hold up the loss of one white American Woman.
We are shown the forgiving nature of Amy Biehl’s parents who did not oppose amnesty for her killers and who even supported their family in their release from prison in the end. Their compassion and forgiveness is held up as an ideal, a forgiveness that can be quickly compared to the ability/inability of other families to forgive. For example, there is one mother of the Guguletu 7 who blatantly expresses her inability to forgive, but hugs him after another one of the mothers expresses forgiveness on behalf of all of them. This embrace seems like the epitome of forgiveness, but the look on that woman’s face shows that her heart has not forgiven him. We later end on the note of the families of Amy Biehl and her killer where a genuine embrace is shared. This embrace between a white woman and a black woman then shines as the ultimate forgiveness and integration of races in a recently segregated nation.
Holding up the death of Amy Biehl and the forgiving nature of her parents unnecessarily heroicizes America’s participation in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid. Instead of drawing the attention of an American audience it glorifies the loss of one white American woman and harms the Black South African population by making her story more important that the thousands of other stories that could have been told.

The role women play in any society becomes doubly important when a situation that requires confrontation, judgment and possibly forgiveness is at hand. With an instituted process like the TRC, the role of women becomes invaluable. The film “A Long Night’s Journey into Day� features women, mothers most prominently, as the voice of judgment and sometimes forgiveness in the post-apartheid era of South Africa. As viewers, we have to question the reason for this representation and what role women play in South Africa today.

There is a dynamic present in each of the four stories in the film where women are ultimately judging men (who have applied for amnesty). In the story about the American girl who is killed in South Africa, we are amazed at the mother’s ability to face and forgive Amy’s killers; in the Cradock 4 trial it is the wives of the men that have the courage to face Eric Taylor. Robert McBride is shown in opposition to the angry sister of a woman he killed, and those accused of the Guguletu 7 murders are faced by mothers still grieving. Were there no men who also had the duty to forgive someone who had wronged them? Were all the men guilty and thus in no position to judge? While Amy Biehl’s father plays a very active role, the other trials seem to revolve around the search for peace for mothers, wives and sisters, which suggests that all the men of South Africa who were involved in the conflict are in some way guilty and it is up to the women of the nation to decide whether to forgive them.

What then, does this say about women’s role in society? If violence is necessary in revolution, like Fanon says, what happens when the violence ceases? Clearly, those directly involved in the violence must be judged by those who did not directly commit the acts. When violence for the sake of change is largely the job of men, then it falls to the women to set down judgments that are not legally based, but morally based.