Into the Heart of Darkness
Michael McGregor, American Renaissance, March 20, 2013
Vice Magazine ventures into Liberia.
Joseph Conrad’s classic novella Heart of Darkness depicts Africa as a continent of primordial darkness where savage impulses reign. Heart of Darkness was published in 1899, but The Vice Guide to Liberiapresents a similarly brutal image of the Dark Continent, except that the darkness has crept out of the jungle into the dilapidated cities. This is not a really a travel guide, however; it is a deliberate search for degeneracy.
Degeneracy is easy to find in Liberia, which is a particularly wretched place, even for Africa. It is a country where underage hookers sell their bodies for less than a dollar to feed their drug addictions, and where cannibal warlords transform themselves into evangelical preachers overnight. The film is reminiscent of a documentary made in the 1960s, Africa Addio. Both show aspects of Africa the West refuses to see, and suggest how difficult it is for Africans to manage a Western-style state. ...
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