Presenting real issues and its consequences

The movie Blood Diamond, set during the Sierra Leone Civil War, takes on serious issues of child soldiers and conflict diamonds. To more fully understand this issue, the term conflict diamonds needs to be better explained. Conflict diamonds are diamonds that come from war zones in Africa usually in civil war areas. They often include smuggled or illegal diamonds. In the case of the Sierra Leone Civil War, the diamond companies were driving and benefiting on the continuation of the war while reaping massive profits on both diamonds and gun sales. 

The ramifications for the viewer for taking on these emotional and controversial subject are wide ranging. The film's audience becomes limitedly informed about a very concerning issue, the death and destruction of people for diamonds. Very likely few of the films viewers have a broad base of knowledge of the Sierra Leone Civil War. The movie then plays a pivotal role in shaping the opinions of people about this conflict. The gives the film much power in a historical sense as it offers knowledge and gives people an event to think about and react to even though the movie is a not a documentary and is a hollywood narrative. It brings awareness to a problematic situation.

Picture of diamonds from the movie

Another consequence of using the African diamond trade in a blockbuster film is that is an easy vehicle for making money in the United States. Diamonds are a commodity in the United States, however, I know that before watching this film I knew little to nothing on the origin of diamonds. Knowing the origin and controversy of some diamonds would definitely intrigue me and possibly draw me to go to the movie. This also creates somewhat of a moral dilemma because by presenting and promoting the consumption of this movie for American audiences, the Sierra Leone incident is almost glorified as it was forever preserved as a piece of Hollywood even though also thousands of people died.