The Allegory of Clothes

(Please take this with a grain of salt…)

I slacked off this week because I have had some difficult movies to deal with: Hotel Rwanda, Ray, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Hitch, and Contantine, to be exact. How does one write about such powerful movies?

Through allegory, of course.

I will focus on Hotel Rwanda for right now and leave the other movies for later.

Kevin Dettmar has a great essay about Clueless and Wayne’s World that argues that these movies are allegories of music. How do we know whether a person is “good” or “bad?” By the music that is played when they enter. Good music, good person. Sorry music, sorry person. It makes sense.

And then there is the allegory of clothes. The title of Thomas Carlyle’s 1833 work Sartor Resartus means the “clothier reclothed” or “tailor retailored,” and it establishes the allegory of clothes. It tells the story of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, whose name translates to “god-born devil’s dung,” who describes how the world (especially Britain) is ready for a new set of clothes. Clothes represent revolution of the French kind, and Carlyle establishes that the same should go in Britain. He is tired of philosophy and wants people to act, almost inciting revolution himself: “Thou foolish Teufelsdröckh! […] Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand this much: The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?”

Hotel Rwanda, too, is an allegory or clothes, although not quite the same way. Here, the main character, Paul, is immaculately dressed. It does two things: it shows how much he has bought into the West’s business ideals, and it paints him as very different from everyone else. While the rest of the people are dressed very modestly, if not poorly, Paul always wears a suit. By the end of the movie, however, he is unshaven and barley able to put on a shirt. It’s a neat transformation, and the movie charts the progress of the country through Paul’s own clothing degeneration. It’s an allegory of clothes. By the end, he has no longer bought into the West’s ideals. He no longer has to look his best, because, well, he’s just trying to stay alive.

The most powerful moment, besides all of the killing, is when Paul has to change his clothes because they are bloody. He puts on a shirt and begins tying a tie, but he does it incorrectly. So he breaks down. It’s as if the clothes just don’t work anymore, just like the West. Or they just aren’t worth it, just like the West. Or they’re too difficult to maintain, just like the West.

Do the business models of the West translate to Africa? Not when the country’s in chaos, they don’t. Of course it’s much more than that, but Hotel Rwanda is also an allegory of clothes.

Rating for Hotel Rwanda: 8