Hotel Rwanda again

Jonathan Freedland, in a Guardian column today, has confirmed my fears (see "Hotel Rwanda," March 23rd, below) that a movie - not a documentary film, but a movie - has become a central element of the historical record of the genocide in Rwanda. Rather than referring to any of the enormous English-language literature that has amassed over the last decade (I'm sure there's a great deal in other languages too, but I have not had the occasion to seek it out) Freedland describes scenes from "Hotel Rwanda" to emphasise the urgency of the "international community" (whatever that is) launching a "humanitarian intervention" (whatever that is) in Darfur. (If you think my uncertainty about those two phrases is flippant, take a look at some of the scholarly literature on humanitarian intervention and international society, and you'll quickly realise how different the various definitions - implicit and explicit - are. Nicholas Wheeler's "Saving Strangers" wouldn't be a bad start, if compared with the sources cited.)
I won't dwell on what seems to me a not-very-apt comparison, because I don't know enough about either conflict (I can only repeat my recommendation of Alex de Waal's August 2004 LRB piece on Darfur). Nor will I take issue Freedland's lamentation that Iraq "tainted" the notion of humanitarian intervention in the UK, so that "the public" will never "accept the moral case" to "wage a Kosovo-style war ever again." In the narrow sense that he has a point (that the public are a little more sceptical now than 6 years ago about Britain's overseas adventures) I cannot accept that this can be a bad thing. When a politician asks the public to trust them, there can be only one correct response.
I simply want to point out that History as a discipline and as a crucial element of our culture, is under threat. The notion that everyone knows what happened in Rwanda now because they have seen - or heard accounts of - "Hotel Rwanda" is horrifying. If that film shames people in to investigating a matter they ignored 11 years ago, or leads them to find out more about the DRC, Sudan, or other areas of current crisis, it will have been a triumph. If it becomes the defining cultural representation of the Rwandan genocide - even temporarily - it will not be the film's fault (it's actually a very good film that has no definitive pretensions) but it will be an extremely worrying sign.
Imagine discussions about violence in society centering around "A Clockwork Orange." Imagine "The Shawshank Redemption" being invoked by advocates of prison reform.
We should not expect Hollywood to give us anything more than what it delivers - entertainment. If entertainment makes us think, it can only be a positive thing. If we expect it to do our thinking for us, we are in very grave trouble indeed.