Ethical Movie Review: Blood Diamond Essay

Words: 3515
Pages: 15

Ethical movie review
Title: Blood Diamond
Year: 2006
Studio: Virtual Studios
Producer: Warner Bros.
Director: Edward Zwick
Country: United States of America

0.1 Introduction
The following essay will examine ethical issues addressed through the movie “Blood Diamond”. The two main issues identified and discussed are; child soldiers and conflict diamonds. My main lens of ethical theories will consist of the four western theories, this includes, egoism, utilitarianism, ethics of duties and ethics of rights. Even though these theories are based on ethical absolutism, I will still try to apply a pluralistic view. Additionally, some of these theories will be expanded and other theories that do not tend so much towards ethical absolutism
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Pluralism is based on the notion that morality is a social phenomenon according to Kaler (Crane and Matten 2010). If one would argue that morality is a social phenomenon, the morality of taking use of rebel groups as RUF and their extreme methods of operations can in no way be justified. Aiding criminal and horrifying actions like these should never be done. The scary part is that this is nothing new, corporations do think of people as means only which is opposite of what the second maxim of ethical duties suggest (Crane and Matten 2010). A quote from the movie which describes this situation, and implies that the companies fool consumers into believing that every diamond comes without blood is said by Danny Archer when talking to an American journalist, “In America it’s bling bling, but out here it’s bling bang.” (Imdb.com 2011), What Mr. Archer here says is very on the spot on how unethical the operations of diamond companies deceive the world. And they do so knowingly, after all the intro of the movie shows a G8 conference where diamond CEO’s are precent and applauded for attending the fight against blood diamonds. When they at the end then still buy blood diamonds, their actions can be nothing else than both immoral and unethical. For every ethical theory that include morality, honour, or even