BY BEN WINTERS
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When the Ridley Scott movie Black Hawk Down opened in Mogadishu, Somalia, it was a packed house, but there was room for at least two journalists. One was Donald G. McNeil, Jr. of the New York Times; the other was Osman Hassan, an Associated Press correspondent who frequently reports from Somalia. (In the last ArtsLine, we noted the Washington Post story on the D.C. opening of this film, in which star Josh Hartnett and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld agreed that it was super kick-ass.) Though covering a film premiere, these weren’t entertainment writers. But this wasn’t quite news, either–and what neither reporter seemed able to decide was whether this was a sad story or a funny one.
What McNeil and Hassan had discovered was a rich vein of irony: a couple hundred Somalis packed into a theatre in Mogadishu to watch a bootleg copy of an American movie, in which Americans and Somalis exchange deadly fire for 48 hours on the streets of Mogadishu. Indeed, the film’s Somalian premiere occurred "in the very neighborhood" where the fighting took place, according to McNeil’s January 22 New York Times report, which was picked up the next day (via the syndicated Times News Service) in numerous other papers, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the Chicago Tribune. McNeil wastes no time in pointing out the other element that makes the screening newsworthy: "Tensions between the United States and Somalia are once again raw," he notes, "[T]his time over the prospect that Somalia’s chaos provides a haven for Al Qaeda terrorists, and that American troops may once again arrive on a violent manhunt."
McNeil then introduces Osman Ali Otto, "a well-known warlord who had men in those battles." Otto was interested to see the film, McNeil quotes him as saying, because "he had heard from a friend in London that he was portrayed unflatteringly. 'When I have seen it, my colleagues and I may sue the producers,’ [Ali Otto] said." The idea of a Somali warlord taking Jerry Bruckheimer to court adds, intentionally or not, a wry element to McNeil’s story.
Hassan’s AP article hits many of the same themes. He also opens with semi-comic image of the movie theatre and the pirated copy, but wastes no time in raising the grimmer aspects of the event. "The images projected onto a wall were blurred and the sound wobbly, but there was no mistaking it was a bootleg version of the film Black Hawk Down," Hassan writes. "Especially when the young Somali men in the audience jumped up and cheered after an American helicopter was hit by Somali gunmen and crashed."
Hassan article, like McNeil, includes the U.S.’s renewed interest in Somalia, post September 11; quotes from Somalis both fascinated and infuriated by Scott’s work; and the macabre monument made of helicopter parts outside one Mogadishu homestead. There are discrepancies–the Times says audiences paid "the equivalent of 10 cents" to view the bootlegged copy, where AP says it was "the equivalent of five cents."
But both articles concur that the Somalis were not entirely pleased with how they were portrayed in the movie–or rather, how they weren’t portrayed. "The Weheliyas are upset that any film was made," McNeil writes of the family who keep the downed helicopter, wrapped in razor wire, in their front yard. "'Seven people in our family died,’ wailed Sahara Abdi Karim Weheliya, 35. 'Four grown ones and three children. Since then, no one has come and asked what happened to us.’"
Hassan offers the opinion of one Somali man from the theatre audience, Mohamed Ali Abdi: "The reality of the Somali character is captured in this movie…But there is not a single word of the Somali language, no Somali music, nothing of our culture. This is absurd, but still they reproduced our sandy streets and battered buildings and the crazy way Somalis just kept on fighting."
In both the Washington Post and salon.com, Hassan’s AP article was headlined "Somalis flock to Black Hawk Down. In the Jefferson City (Missouri.) News Tribune, it was headlined "Somalis Cheer American Casualties in Black Hawk Down."
Ridley Scott Vs. Michigan
The pair of stories on the Mogadishu opening both made passing mention of a Black Hawk boycott, organized by a community group in Minnesota, home to a large population of Somali-Americans. This angle was covered in much greater detail by Lourdes Medrano Leslie in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a story on January 18 headed "Somalis Fear 'Black Hawk Down’ will stir backlash."
"The movie 'sends a very bleak, dark message,’ said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul," wrote Lourdes. "'It depicts Somali society as a savage, pitiless beast.’"
Jamal’s concerns were not widely reported–his boycott was covered in detail only in the Star Tribune. "Locally, most of the TV stations, newspapers and radio covered this angle. I know there was some interest nationally because I got calls for contacts from Washington and LA, but I couldn’t tell you if anything was done at the national level," said Lourdes in an email to ArtsLine.
Any chance that wider reporting of the boycott would taken a bite out of Black Hawk Down’s stellar performance? Box office reports on January 27 had the film as a cake-walk number one; granted, numbers two and three were Cuba Gooding Jr. in Snow Dogs and the Mandy Moore vehicle A Walk to Remember.