Kenya Stockholm Blog

A Critical View of the Film ”Citizen Oketch”

 

No doubt David Herdies and Georg Götmark have done a fantastic job in documenting the life of Oketch (an HIV positive Kenyan slum dweller and his family) and bringing to the national white European audience (especially the Swedish public) a film recipe that provokes absolute sympathy while laying bare the ravages of poverty in a deformed capitalist country like Kenya.

Having watched the film and having participated in an after show discussion with inter-racial participants holding divergent points of views about the film, it would be opportune to render a critical review of the film as a way of addressing certain thorny issues that one might not be able to raise in contributions spewed against a back drop of serious time constraints.

Obviously, the film captures a rather repugnant and absurd reality of sub-human existence in the slums of Kibera. The viewer is confronted with the struggles for daily survival by a poor family living under filthy conditions under the guardianship of HIV positive parents whose struggle to live is in sharp competition with the much more serious struggle to bring up innocent toddlers undergoing untold human suffering which is not directly out of their own making.

With the family squeezed in a one roomed mud-walled shack, the film takes the viewer through the paces of doing open-air family laundry in Kibera, the difficult process of putting food on the table, the dilemma of an HIV positive father who has to watch his children grow in poverty, the daily life-styles of toddlers growing in a dirty toy-less environment, the strategy of group survival of HIV positive slum dwellers and the twists of an inter-ethnic marriage in a slum setting (Oketch, a Luo is married to a Kamba girl).

Against this background is Koch FM radio station transmitting from Kibera with brother Toto behind the mike preaching peace and non violence in an environment where crime is a way of life and survival is the motto. Introducing a new philosophy based on “Edutainment” (Educating in the process of entertaining) Koch FM emerges as a poor man’s media providing hope to the hopeless while, sometimes, dabbling in politics by attacking the opulent ruling class stealing tax payer’s money.

Served to a white and curious audience, materially endowed and thirsting for a sense of difference in a film conceived and weaved by their own white Swedish film makers, it is unfortunate that the film tends to re-enforce the negative and stereotypical perceptions of Africa that have found a permanent home in leading Western media outlets like CNN, BBC, Sky News, SVT et al.

A Swede who grew up with the images of abject poverty, malnourished children, squalid slum conditions and Aids pandemic in Africa only benefits from the film by learning about the extended extremities of poverty available in Africa with Kenya as reference point. Specifically, the new dimension that the film offers is that it packs the familiar negative reality within the context of a poor family while at the same time combining both the features of poverty and Aids in a single compilation whose script is well crafted to dramatize a kind of “hell on earth”.

Missing Link
In summary, the film is one sided and biased because while it rightfully portrays reality of poverty in contemporary Kibera, it fails to give the viewer the other side of the story which should have pitted the corrupt and thieving politicians whose capricious appetites for primitive accumulation of property has forced them into a cycle of theft of national resources and, in the process, creating the situation in which citizen Oketch is wallowing in.

When citizen Oketch eventually retires with his wife on a make-shift and dilapidated safari bed in the same room with his children, the viewer is left with no one to blame for the pathetic situation as sympathy for Okello is deepened even further.

The viewer is deliberately suspended in the awkward imagination of Oketch facing the prospect of making love to his wife in the company of his children after the tiny shack of a sitting room is suddenly converted into a bed room. The squeaky sofa set is converted into a bed for kids as another rag of a mattress is spread on the floor for the kids to sleep on. At this point, the film ends as the audience begins to clap in adoration.

What the critical mind could question is why the film makers failed to balance the story by bringing in the wealth grabbers in government and their lavish lifestyles to make the uninformed viewer understand and put into proper perspective the two sides of the economic divide. As it is, and having been shot in Kenya, a brainwashed white Swede could be forgiven for thinking that Kenya is one big slum area with citizen Oketch serving as an example of an ordinary citizen of the Republic.

This glaring weakness denies the film its potential to educate the sometimes ill informed Western audience whose perceptions are informed by heavily distorted news and information packages designed to sustain the image of Africa as a complete basket case. In fact, one may wonder what David and Georg have achieved with the film apart from repeating the familiar, albeit with extra detail that surpasses news scripts.

For a Kenyan watching the film, it carries nothing new and could leave an expectant Kenyan with a sense of spite when it comes to how the nation is being subjected to a biased and one-sided presentation in International film houses especially on the question of poverty. Since politicians responsible for the social tragedy portrayed in the film are left unscathed, it is like the viewer is left to conclude that the likes of citizen Oketch are responsible for their own personal calamities.

When the white audience suddenly bursts into “spontaneous clapping” at the end of the film, it is not clear whether they are clapping because the film has re-enforced their common perceptions or whether the loud claps are an appreciation of the film makers for having sent them deeper into the realities of poverty, this time in Nairobi’s Kibera slums.

Already, there is more than enough negative images of Africa in circulation internationally and the film is a wasted opportunity to connect these images to their real creators both in Africa and Western capitals.

While it has to be noted that there is extreme poverty among populations in Kenya (as the film shows), it has to been accepted that Kenya is not a poor country. This is a powerful link that is conspicuously missing in the film and this miss relegates the film to the realms of another ephemeral news clip that could pop up anytime as soon as you switch on your TV and begin to scan the channels. To elevate this film to a “great achievement” (as some commentators attempted to) could boarder on sycophancy or a distorted sense of analysis.

Okoth Osewe

September 10, 2009 Posted by makozewe | News & Analysis | 4 Comments