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Beyond Borders |
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Beyond Borders |
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Bammer's Beyond Borders review
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Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003
A few years ago, I was aimlessly flipping through a local newspaper, and saw something that brought me to a full stop: a picture of a hollow-eyed, emaciated little African boy, not unlike the first child in Beyond Borders, staring back at me. I was shook; I literally couldn't move for awhile. I found myself sobbing inconsolably - again, not unlike my Borders experience. And I just could not turn away from that page. Lord knows I wanted to; I tried, but couldn't turn the page, not like those times I quickly leapt for the TV's remote control when Sally Struthers plead for us to Save The Children. No, this time, my eyes were filled with whatever pain that little boy could convey in a 5-inch square black and white newsprint picture.
Since I couldn't just walk away, I took the only action I could think of at the time: I decided to make it my mission to find, and rescue, that little boy. I had The Power Of The Internet on my side, I reasoned with myself; surely, I could drum up support by creating a webpage, scanning the picture, and soliciting help from friends on different email lists. I imagined that in no time, someone would recognize the boy, or the reporter, or the village they were in, and I'd rescue the boy, and we'd all live happily ever after. Needless to say, it didn't quite work out that way. After a series of missteps over the next few months, I was almost able to get in touch with the reporter...but before I was able to reach him, I received a message that the little boy whose eyes held mine that fateful day, had died. I was crushed.
As it has a habit of doing, time, and life, went on. If I couldn't save that one little boy, I convinced myself that I had done my part in my lifetime to help a couple people keep from becoming just another statistic. "Hell, you can't save the world, so why try?" I reasoned to myself. And after awhile, that boy's eyes stopped haunting me. I would be reminded of him from time to time, but it's amazing how quickly you can change channels with today's remotes.
And then, Beyond Borders brought him right back to my eyes. And my nightmares.
We Black folk can rail against the injustices we suffer to this day here in America, and we would be right. But somehow, the slings and arrows we suffer here, pale against the kinds of brutal, tortuous, life-ending atrocities that occur every single day in countries and places that far too many Americans wish would go away with a quick click of the remote. So as hard as it is for me to think of that little boy's haunting eyes, and to watch even a patronizing, poorly fictionalized version of the same thing, somehow, I just cannot turn my head away again.
But to tell you the truth, after reading again about that child I could not save, in a way, I wish I hadn't found it at all. At least that original image wasn't archived. I don't think I could bear seeing it again.
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