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Under the sign of darkness: The Africa film in the 80s

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Under the sign of darkness: The Africa film in the 80s

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Content UNDER THE SIGN OF DARKNESS:
THE AFRICA FILM IN THE 80S
by
Jude G. Akudinobi
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Cinema— Critical Studies)
December 1988
U M I Number: DP22266
All rights reserved
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a note will indicate the deletion.
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UMI DP22266
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789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6
UNIVERSITY Oh SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CAUFORNIA 90089
This dissertation, written by
Jude G. Akudinobi
under the direction of h.Xs D issertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted b y The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements for the degree of
Pk.D.
Cin
0
st
A3 IS
D O C TO R OF PHILOSOPH Y
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date .? ejp t emb er.,2.2...1.9M
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
11
i Chapter
Preface
I.
i
II.
III.
IV.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
...................................................... v
Giving Africa a Bad Name........... 1
Patterns and Prevalence................ 11
Endnotes......... 19
A Framework for Analysis.................. 21
Limitations.............................. 28
Endnotes.......................... 31
Will the Real African Stand Up?.......... 32
Myth Conceptions............. 35
Colorful Shadows... ..... 44
Cultural Contagion...................... 47
Selling Africa: Trader Horn............ 50
Naked Pre(y)judice...................... 55
Conclusion: Counterfeit Africa........ 63
Endnotes......... 65
Of Change, Africa, and the Hollywood of
the 80s........................ 68
Cold Feet................................ 68
Misreading Progress..................... 71
Hollywood Shuffle (Not the Movie) 73
The Politics of Location Shooting 76
Other Things (Re)Considered...... 80
I l l
Chapter Page
IV. Summary................................... 83
Endnotes................................. 85
V. The Illusion of Sympathetic Representation 86
Indiscretions.............. 86
Cliche Verite ..................... 96
Conclusion........................ 105
Endnotes ........................ 106
VI. Through a Lens Darkly...................... 108
Fascination.............. 109
Goddess................................... 121
Anxieties........................... 130
Conclusion............................... 139
Endnotes................................. 141
VII. The Fiction of Ideological Neutrality.... 143
Esoterica ........................ 145
Inscriptions............................. 152
Conclusion............................... 163
Endnotes................................. 164
VIII. Toward an Afro-Centric Spectatorship 165
Divisions .......................... 166
Against the Grain....................... 175
Conclusion............................... 185
Endnotes................................. 187
IX. Conclusion................................... 188
Bibliography
Filmography
V
PREFACE
For a long time, the perjorative representation of
!
I Africa in dominant cinema has met with token scholarly
i
j inquiry. While such "charitable” exercises not only do
t
i not provide adequate knowledge for the understanding of
Africa’s ’ ’realities, ” they mask the complex interplay
between ideology and representation. The paucity of
scholarly work in this area is not surprising since most
of such works are journalistic, inclined to popular
readership, often more concerned with questions of
artistic or aesthetic merit and largely without
theoretical foundation. There exists a need, therefore,
for an earnest discussion of the nature and origins of
Africa’s "representational” predicament.
I have chosen to examine the Hollywood Africa of
the 80s for several reasons. It is practical and
expedient that the study be anchored within a specific
time. Such bracketing is thus for the case of convenience
and sanity, especially if we understand history not to be
neat chunks of time which, in a cog-and-wheel
relationship, advance events. History, for the purposes
of this study, will be regarded as a network of events,
realities constantly defining the past, present, and
future. A contemporaneous study would, therefore, situate
v i
these films in the recent past. More so, because of the
generally self-congratulatory belief that things have
changed— the "we've-come-a-long-way" syndrome. What
i merits critical interest arguably will be the nature of,
i
i .
; and not catalogue of changes.
i
Since this study focuses on the 80s, the key films
include Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981), Sheena (1983),
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984), King Solomon* s
I
Mines (1985), Out of Africa (1985), The Color Purple
(1986), Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987),
and White Mischief (1988). The films mentioned above are
not exhaustive of the 80s Africa films but are
representative of Hollywood’s fascination with Africa,
insofar as they present a varying range of tones, ;
l
i
artistic and stylistic merits— soft-core pornography in j
Tarzan, the Ape Man and elements of the European art film j
in White Mischief, for instance— which are ideal for this j
particular project. Other films about Africa such as Cry i
I
Freedom (1987) and A World Apart (1988), which address :
certain material conditions of existence under apartheid,
were excluded because the issues they raise require a
(somewhat) different set of orientations for adequate
treatment, even though the arguments raised here are
i
applicable to them. Other notable films include The j
I
Kitchen Toto (1988) and Gorillas in the Mist (1988)
which were released too late for inclusion in the present
study. It should also be noted that since the focus of
I
I the study was on feature films, television and the
I
j discourses on Africa it engenders— such as the
i "documentaries" by the National Geographic Society— were
not addressed. Also cited are Under Fire (1983), a film
about Third World politics which, even though largely set
in Latin America, opens with an African vignette, and
Jewel of the Nile (1985), a comedy which takes place in
Egypt (hence the "Arab World," for which Hollywood has a
different set of stereotypes— camel jockeys, treacherous
villains, etc.) but has a Nubian sequence typical of the
Sub-Saharan Africa of Hollywood. Rastus in Zululand
(1908), Trader Horn (19^9), and The Naked Prey (1965) are
also important to the present study because they reveal
the dominant ideological assumptions which through their
respective periods (and arguably to date) define
Hollywood’s Africa. Additional insight into race and
representation were provided by a CBS documentary
production, Misunderstanding China (1972) and the
critically acclaimed Ethnic Notions (1987) by Marlon
Riggs, an independent producer, and distributed by
California Newsreel Organization.
Except for the two documentaries, all the other
films mentioned depict Africa in a very limited and
v i i i
essentially negative manner. In view of the foregoing,
the present study tries to highlight the ways in which the
films mentioned are influenced and shaped by certain
! routinized expectations in the West about Africa. The
i
I trajectory of Africa's misrepresentations must also be
!
; seen in a larger historical context to indicate how
Africa's relationship with the West produced, with respect
to the continent, certain modes of thought and cognition.
The main concern of this project, therefore, is to examine
the textual and symbolic function of Africa in the
dominant cinema of the 80s. In other words, to analyze
the units of meaning constructed around the word/place
A-F-R-I-C-A.
Understandably, this study cannot claim to be
encyclopaedic. However, since the present study is of the
opinion that Africa's association with certain myths is
not accidental but the product of complex factors arising
from the "discovery," colonization, and translation of the
continent, it would be necessary to discern why certain
notions about the continent dominate over others and what
part the notion of (racial) "progress" plays in shaping
the 80s films (in other words, how the 80s films differ
from their predecessors). For instance, was their
adoption of the Africa myths wholesale? If so, why, and
if not, what was their point(s) of departure?
IX
It must be advised that in the present study,
while no list of "structures” per se will be provided to
i
' cover the body of films, certain patterns will emerge as
I
| the inquiry progresses. These general observations may,
I
j however, be illustrated with pertinent examples, which
must not be mistaken as "complete,” since the manifest
project of the study is to clarify some underlying
assumptions about Africa's misrepresentation. It is in
! this "incompleteness" that further studies need to be
undertaken. So, while what emerges may not be exhaustive,
it should provide adequate insight for (re)viewing the
films.
The first chapter of this study, in delineating
key features of the Africa myth, highlights how the rather
i
simplistic understanding about Africa is manifested in j
dominant cinematic representation. References are also j
I
made to two of Hollywood’s favorite "Others"— the
Orientals and the American Indians— as ancillary
"evidence" for the industry's racial perspectivism.
Chapter II outlines a heuristic framework for analysis of
the films. Its theoretical inspirations are more
enriching since they are derived from several sources and
without submission to either one theoretician or critical
clique. In Chapter III, the processes of certain fixed
i
meanings about Africa are laid out. Through its analysis
X
of certain representational conventions about Africa, in
and outside the cinema, it sets a rich background against
j which the 80s films will be studied. Benefiting from the
i
; foregoing, Chapter IV surveys how prospects for
j
"progressive” representation are constrained by social
context, especially the ideologies of race, Africa myths,
and some of Hollywood’s institutionalized business
i
practices. Particularly, it notes how the marginalization j
of Blacks in the industry is a hindrance to ’’progressive”
representation of Africa. In Chapter V, the ’’structures"
identified earlier are seen as still existent in the 80s
with two "progressive” films— The Color Purple and White
Mischief— serving as case studies. Here, the focus is on
how the facade of sympathetic representation conceals an
i
essential recidivism. Chapter VI covers the area of
cultural/racial difference and shows, for example, how the (
i
White Goddess myth is not only a logical outcome of j
"naturalized" racial hierarchism, but is still alive in j
the 80s. Chapter VII examines the discourse on Africa in
the films and its coordinates in institutionalized
instruction/knowledge and the news media, arguing how the
latter two set "grounds" for spectator expectations.
i
Following some of the issues raised in the preceding j
J chapters, Chapter VIII examines the spectator position the
I
j films construct and prospects for readings "against the
xi
grain.” The study concludes in Chapter IX that since the
circumstances which service the Africa myth exist
independent of cinema, it would be more productive to
direct critical attention to dynamics of cultural
perspectivism, rather than racism per se .
It is expected that on a project like this one
would incur many material and symbolic debts. Many of the
enriching perspectives in this project would not have been
possible without the tireless attention, enthusiasm, and
support of Professors Marsha Kinder, Michael Renov, and
Everett Rogers. My profound gratitude also is due to my
parents, Sylvanus and Anna Akudinobi, whose example j
continues to be a source of inspiration and guidance. In :
addition, I would like to acknowledge my debt to my "other j
family"— relatives, friends, well-wishers too numerous to
mention individually— who in their respective ways add to
my growth. You know yourselves and I know you— that counts
more, I think. Finally, acknowledgement is also due to
Nancy Mann from whose word-processing skills this project
profited immensely.
1
CHAPTER I
GIVING AFRICA A BAD NAME
This study argues that the relationship between
the Africa of Hollywood films and Western folk wisdom
about Africa is reciprocal, hence, will posit one in
relation to the other. In emphasizing cultural
perspectivism as the organizing principle of these films,
it would be maintained that the "Africa film" is a
confection of fantasy, imagination, and prejudice.
These Africa films--defined here as films which
are either set in or refer to Africa, but deny an African
point of view while exploiting Africa as a resource for
racist fantasies— speak to a spectator who is invariably
Western and serve as ventriloquism of a Eurocentric
desire to present Africa not as it "is" but as it "ought
to be." The word "ventriloquism" is used here because
these films encourage the illusion that certain meanings
about Africa are immanent. As such, there is an
obscurement of the essentially interpretive position of
these films’ texts. Attempts, therefore, will be made to
corrode the preposterous tenets these films rest upon. In
other words, denaturalize the "knowledge" these films
speak.
2
It should be noted that insofar as the Africa film
presupposes a deference to the needs of a Western self, it
constructs a "preferred" spectatbr--that is, one whose
expectations and cultural assumptions are consistent with
the films’ proposals. This preferred spectator could also
be understood as a construct, distinguishable from a
socio-historical Westerner, and implied not only by the
film’s discourse but also by how such discourses are
deployed. Thus, while the study will not present a
"formula" for Africa films, it will stress that these
films are possible essentially within the ideological
framework of racism since its discourses usually include
the dramaticized and/or implied inferiority of the
African. As such each film is seen as a factor in a
general racial equation especially since the actual roles
assigned to Africans in these films are fundamentally
congruent with racial attitudes in the culture from which
they emanate.
What makes the Africa films "unique" is that they
evolved out of specific historical circumstances, among
which are early accounts of Africa by travellers,
missionaries, and colonial administrators coupled with
"scientific" expeditions and writings by- assorted Western
"scholars." Africa as a complex society of numerous
customs, peoples, and tradition presented a peculiar
3
problem in these writings. It is this complexity, in
tandem with Eurocentric prejudice and laziness, that
produced the generalizations/simplifications which make up
an "instant” Africa, easily "recognized” in the West.
Thus, insofar as the above accounts for the films’
material sources, their (continued) existence as
pleasurable fare is fostered by (a) the mythicization of
Africa and the subsequent commodification of both the
myths and land through numerous writings, films, and the
colonialist praxis, i.e., colonialism itself, and (b) an
ideology of racial positionalities predicated on a Western
concept of civilization in which Africans are inferiorized;;
and (c) the commercialization of the need, in the West,
for constant self-(re)validation fueled especially in
these times by the insecurities arising from a post- ;
industrial milieu. To a marked degree, therefore, the
Africa in cinematic circulation in the West emanates not
necessarily from the categories of empirical reality but
from a Western desire to construct an Africa for itself, j
I
which exists to generate and sustain Western fantasies of j
self. !
i
In Hollywood's Africa films, for example: j
Countless safari films present Africa as the
"land of lions in the jungle" when in fact
only a tiny proportion of the African land mass
could be called "jungle" and when lions do not
live in jungles but in grasslands.
4
Africa, it should not be forgotten, is a geo-political
entity. That is, it is not a never-never land of
fairytales dr a distant planet of which little is known.
Even at that, creatures from other planets often function
j in films as enigmatic categories whose appearance is a
threat, often of invasion, which the good people of the
; earth must terminate. Historical specificity, thus, must
I -
be taken as a factor in analyzing films about Africa. The
Africa of Hollywood cinema, it seems, is a bizarre
bestiary--an enigma created for control and dominance.
Western representations of Africans are, therefore,
fundamentally narcissistic, because narcissism thrives on
a false sense of security, the inflation of self-worth,
and the validation of such perceptions of self. The
narcissistic self, therefore, derives/defines its worth on
the appearance and sustenance of a particular image,
subordinated to ontological reality. A "pseudo-reality"
is thus created, incorporated, and employed in the
reinforcement of images (notions) already held.
Enigmas often constitute the premise of cinematic
enunciation on which the pleasurable aspects of looking
(scopophilia) and knowing (epistemophilia) thrive. Africa
as enigma is therefore inscribed with a double function as
both object and process of pleasure because enigmas
constitute "problems" to be solved, mastered, or
conquered. These films characteristically imbue Africa
with a mythic/symbolic character--and it is through this
that the complex meanings associated with it are deployed
This point is crucial because enigmas invite active
participation from the spectator for their resolution—
more so, in this instance, where the structures of
identification are indexed within a specific range of
cultural meanings. The epistemophilic drive gets special
encouragement because Africa is a geographical fact. But
as is known, cinematic realism has little in common with
empirical reality, since it calls for a suspension of
disbelief. The ability of cinema to evoke identifiable
realities is usually an attitude of mind engendered, more
often than not, to the extent one identifies with the
characters, vis-a-vis the authenticist posturing of the
cinematic apparatus.
As mentioned earlier, narcissism demands
restorations, but the Africa film of the 80s is still
encased within specific structures which do not encourage
radical variations. For the sake of product
differentiation, superficial "progress'1 which nonetheless
is consistent with a set pattern of internal logic, may,
however, be allowed. In a sense therefore, these films
constitute a genre. Crucial here is not so much the
logic, but how these racist cliches, adorned with the
6
trimmings of certitude, evoke certain "existential”
qualities about Africa. For example:
In many classical Hollywood films, African
polyrhythms become aural signifiers of
encircling savagry, a kind of sinedochic,
acoustic short hand for the atmosphere of
menace.
These films, therefore, allude to or present a typical
Africa(n) whose typicality is defined/guaranteed by common
knowledge or the "obviousness" which they exploit as a
narrative strategy. Presenting the African as (no)thing,
evil, threatening, intrinsically involves repudiation or
questioning (at least) of that person's humanity:
Because the Other is the anti-thesis of the
Self, the definition of the Other must
incorporate the basic categories by which the
self is defined.^
If we understand the psychic foundations of
"otherness" as a repression projected for disavowal and
hatred, then at the base will be a threat, which must be
normalized, in this case, by turning the African into a
fetish, an exotic being alternately admired/hated and
Africa cast as a paradisal site of wish-fulfillment. The
exotic patina is therefore not true to Africa, but is a
value bestowed on it from without. It is in the
preservation of this value, exclusivity, and foreignness
(hence exoticness) that the preferred spectator (Western), j
having been positioned as one to be rewarded with •
I
1
I
7
knowledge, derives satisfaction. The African exotica
gives meaning to the viewer’s life insofar as the
represented (Africa) is distant, striking, or strange.
Pleasure, therefore, becomes the gift of knowledge and
self-validation bestowed on the viewing subject.
But the exotic must have a rarity or scarcity
value. It must not be commonplace or banal. Preferably,
it must wear a badge of privileged access which functions
as an enrichment of status for those familiar with its
mysteries/charms dr conferment of status for those not so
privileged, but are about to be. In essence, the
phantasmagorical Africa of Hollywood cinema masks the
question of Western cultural anxiety marked by curiosity
about the Other--,?Almost the same but not quite, almost
the same but not white1 * — and the desire to assert
superiority over that Other. The peculiarity of the
African thus becomes a point of narcisstic delight, a
fountain of pleasure from which the thirst of racial
anxiety is soothed.
It should be noted that the longevity of Africa
as a resource for racist fantasies is shrouded in
restrictive categories which keep it abstract and
captivating at the same time. Because the restrictive
categories are drawn from legitimated (i.e., naturalized)
’’realities" about Africa, they must be rehabilitated to
give the charm of innovation or otherwise involve some
structuring absences, narrative interstices which, more
often than not, include an aspect or all of Africa's
history. The umbrella of ideas under which Africa is
! known in Hollywood cinema parallels Edward Said's
observation on orientalism to the extent that they are
constituted "according to a detailed logic governed not
I
simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires,
repressions, investments, and projections."-3 If it is
agreed that repressions often find expressions for
themselves in contradictory terms, the palette from which
Hollywood paints Africa is a cornucopia of contradictory
t
hues insofar as the resultant Africa is simultaneously
idyllic (golden) and haunting (dark). The acknowledgement >
|
and disavowal of racial difference, it must be noted, is !
crucial here. The self-other dialectics, that
contradictory dynamics which evokes a set of binaries,
thus leads the preferred spectator (First World Westerner)
first to fetishize the "natives" and then him or herself
as an ideal form of civilization, hence creating an
illusion of power and majesty.
The fetish or stereotype gives access to an
"identity" which is predicated as much on
mastery and pleasure as it is on anxiety and
defense, for it is a form of multiple and
contradictory belief in its recognition of
difference and disavowal of it.
9
There is, therefore, often in these films a capitalization
on racial/cultural difference, with civility presented
essentially as a Western endowment on Africans. It should
be noted, however, that the discourse such a relationship
produces must invariably be of superlatives, exaggerated
and tainted with the vestiges of authority and closure.
In other words, served by cultural perspectivism and
functioning as a point of convergence or divergence of
meanings, realities, truths. The cinematic illusion,
however, is not hermetic. Its "pleasure quotient" derives
not just from satisfying ego (which it initially throws
into panic) but also from the other realities which it
alludes to, but cannot belong to: "There is always
something that lies beyond the picture on the screen: a
social and political reality."^ These other realities
(empirical, psychical) are, therefore, at play, at once,
in the spectator, constantly functioning in the
negotiation of pleasure of the narrative. Suspending the
African (image) in some kind of exotic limbo, defined in
opposition to a (first world Western) self, takes for
granted the innate inferiority of the former, since the
latter is both the originator and custodian of the image.
The African thus exists in these films as both a
biological specimen as well as an abstraction, but more
pointedly, a terminus for ritualized narcissism.
10
Since the representation of Africa in Hollywood
cinema derives from the accumulated prejudices of several
j hundred years, it would be preposterous to hold these
| films exclusively responsible for the exacerbation of
i
I
racial chauvinism. However, these Africa films are
accessories because they thrive on the orchestration of
cultural fears. Furthermore, their discourse on Africa
are presented essentially in naturalistic terms, and as
such wear the same pseudo-scientific veil which holds the
African in some kind of imaginary fixity. The African,
more often than not— through a perverted logic which
involves ambivalence on his humanity and rejection of his
culture— is objectified as the anti-thesis of Western
consciousness.
i
Typically, these Africa films posit the
African culture as barbaric and absurd and its Western
obverse, natural and right— ultimately translated to
"us/them” dialectics with Africa functioning as the
adversary culture. Having thus been inscribed within
the film as the "ideal,” the actual Westerner (the \
socio-historical being) to the extent that s(he)
identifies with the film is endowed with what I will
call a surplus privilege— the categories of valuation
through which the self draws and maintains an exaggerated
value.
Patterns and Prevalence
1 " ' ......... ................... ......................................................... ■III! -
We must be conscious of the institutionalized
expectations, the mental machinery that serves
as the subjective support to the film
industry, and which leads us to consume films
in a certain way.
To recapitulate, these Africa films sublimate the
continent and its peoples into units of knowledge, for the
preferred spectator inscribed within it, who is invariably
Western, but more importantly, a socio-historical being. j
Africa is thus defined in relation and contrast to the j
West. But it goes further than that because: MTo compare J
is to examine in order to note similarities more than
differences; to 'contrast is to set in opposition in order j
i
to show differences more than similarities."9 So, the
preferred spectator notices the similarities, but more
crucially, notices the differences. It is this exciting
moment of epistemophilia that these films exploit, and
through it, the represented are "othered." These "Others”
can be conceived as abstractions, that is, an instance of
one’s psychic configuration, defined in relation to self
or else as a specific social group to which one does not
belong.
Pivotal to my argument is the treatment of Indians
and Orientals in Hollywood cinema, which would serve as
synchronous illustrations of the complex interplay between
race and representation. The development and persistence
12
of the Indian stereotype, it has been theorized, is
entrapped within the context of American history:
One reason for its persistence, of course, is
that the Native American was inextricably
linked with the myth of the West which in many
ways forms the central myth of the American
experience .... As long as the collective
consciousness of the nation could identify
emotionally and historically with the myth,
there was no need to modify it or alter its
dimensions.'
A similar case could be made for the persistence of the
Africa of Hollywood imagination. Until racism is
eradicated in America— an improbable proposition--neither
Blacks (American) nor their African progenitors, it
i
seems, are likely to be treated any better. Both are !
intrinsically linked to the formulation of the American j
ideology. If the American Blacks cannot transcend certain
stereotypes, how then can Africa "from whence they came,"
and which most have been told is a continent of
Bacchanalian savagery be treated without contempt or
ambivalence? The situation is further compounded because
the African has been "othered" in the Black psyche which,
to some extent, has internalized the derogatory
propositions of ethnic chauvinism.
In explaining the limited appeal of Black singer
Joan Armatrading— vis-a-vis Sade, who is of Nigerian-
English heritage— Vernon Reid, a Black musician/journalist
has this to say:
13
If Joan Armatrading had the gorgeous "perfect”
features of a Sade, I think Black radio would
be more receptive to her music.
Armatrading is a talented artist, but
she is also more African-looking [emphasis
mine] in a way that is not acceptable to many
Black Americans. A light-skinned (African)
singer like Jonathan Butler is acceptable,
Lady Smith Black Mambazo— a group that is
clearly African and plays music that is more
traditionally African— is not. 2
An apologist excuse will reduce these complexities
of identification to musical preferences. While taste may
be a factor here, submerging the "absent" voices which
inform such choices is a trivialization of reality. If we
agree with Barthes that the "'I' which approaches the
text is already itself a plurality of other texts, of !
!
codes which are infinite or more precisely, lost (whose j
i
origin is lost),"^3 then more specific ideological \
I
colorations of knowledge come into sharp relief. I think !
i
"lost" here is symbolic of the complex phenomena of j
i
I
naturalization through which selections/interpretations j
i
wear a cloak of innocent obviousness. !
i
The analysis of racial/cultural difference must I
pay attention to the subtle layering of meaning through j
i
which the uncertainties or ambivalence intrinsic in such a j
difference are realigned into fixed truth categories. An j
attempt to delineate the interrelatedness of ideology, '
race and representation must, of necessity, include an
inquiry into the mechanics of "othering."
14
In discussing the relationship between ideology
and cultural difference, the CBS documentary
Misunderstanding China traces the anxieties and desires
embedded in the construction of an idealized image of
I
China— an imaginary Orient— in the American mind. The
crucial point, it notes, "was not just bur view of China,
| but how we saw ourselves. China served as a background
for bur humanity, our superiority; it was a theatre for
American idealism." Through the course of the
documentary, one learns that an early edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica qualified the Chinese as "cold,
cunning, and distrustful"; that Theodore Roosevelt
described the Orientals as "an immoral, degraded, and
worthless race"; that the penny press, pulp fiction
(notably the Wu-Fang mysteries) and later, films,
exploited and engendered prejudice against the Oriental
whose presence often "meant treachery, danger, and sudden
death." Constructing a dominant America in effect called
for discreditation of a civilization 4,000 years bid.
This orchestration of cultural fears, especially the
threat of miscegination expressed severally in the films,
neglected the fact, as the documentary points out, that
"the ordinary American has never met the ordinary
Chinese." Transposed to the African situation, the
ordinary American for whom these Africa films construct a
15
preferred spectator, has never met the ordinary African.
What ultimately is communicated in Africa films are exotic
reveries whose threat and potency are both enigmatic and
estranging.
Undertaking a contextual analysis of these Africa
films, that is, the numerous points of their interaction
with the economic, technological, and historical facets of
the Hollywood industry, would not only be extensive but
tangential to this study. It is very well-known that
specific cultural contexts influence not just the
artistic merit but also the content of a film. It is this
exchange between American social history and Hollywood's :
interest in Africa that I will sketch in broad outlines
below.
Contingent to my argument are the following
events: (1) the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which j
culminated in the Black Power Movement, blaxploitation J
<
I
films, and the recognition of Black buying power; (2) the
emergence of African nations from colonial rule and their
enthusiastic quest to assert their presence in the global !
equation; for most Africans this period was one of fierce
nationalist consciousness; (3) the conservative politics
of the 80’s, which substantially disarmed political
consciousness by extolling the virtues of democracy and
traditional American values. This era encouraged
16
unflinching patriotism, nostalgic idealization of the
past, and a narcissistic culture which expressed itself in
wanton materialism. The latter, coupled with a return to
classical forms (genres) in films, especially remakes (two
versions of Tarzan and a remake of King Solomon’s Mines in
{ the 80s) and the domination of youth-oriented escapist
j features activated interest in the exotic and the foreign.
By the 80s gone are the strident rhetoric of
Civil Rights, and the nationalist ethics of the African
nations whose energies have now been directed to balancing
budgets and playing catch-up with the league of "advanced”
nations. The bi-centennial celebration and the TV
documentary Roots (especially), it seems, presented a
cathartic release from the strictures of racism.
Similarly, while racial liberalization accounts for Jesse
Jackson’s success at the 1988 Democratic convention in
Atlanta, it could also be argued that the media had
undermined his potency by constantly asking: "What does
Jesse want?" This question precludes his presidential bid
from any serious consideration and reduces his efforts to
that of a symbolic gesture, designed to draw attention.
Earlier on, when Civil Rights was the stuff of
dreams, and African independence movements which
threatened the disruption of colonial presence were
effectively suppressed, Africa functioned mainly as an
17
enigma-structure, a topos of narcissistic and aesthetic
delectation. Evidently in the 1980’s, as will later be
argued, Hollywood’s Africa is still a hostage of
chimerical exotica,
j The function of Africa in Hollywood cinema, as
claimed previously, is ontogenetical to the status of Blacks
in America. It would be pertinent, therefore, to direct a
i
brief attention to the image of Black America in cultural
circulation— a subject captured succinctly by the
documentary Ethnic Notions. The crucial point about
Ethnic Notions is its acknowledgement of an indexical link
between lived social relations and their representation in j
i
popular culture. Here, the need for submission and j
i
dominance (hence discrimination) is related to the |
[
construction of a Blackness predicated bn ”an image that i
1A I
vacillates based bn fear and convenience.” These j
fossilized caricatures become the social and psychological
realities with which Blacks are identified and, more
importantly, through which the dominant culture reinforces ,
its self-esteem— achieved by (1) repressing any
ambiguities about itself; and (2) by displacing the j
resultant anxieties on an ignoble ’ ’Other,” in this
instance, the Black. Ultimately the documentary
concludes, ’’Images of the past are still with us, maybe
altered, nevertheless there . . .
18
Since ideological strictures will prohibit any
I
radical alteration, Hollywood's fig-leaf revisionism is a j
i
product of manichean machinations. To borrow from Bhabha:
"Parodoxically, such an image can neither be 'original'—
by virtue of the act of repetition that constructs it— nor
'identical'— by virtue of the difference that defines
it ."15
t
(
19
Endnotes
1
Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism,
and Representation," in Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and
Methods, II (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1985), p. 637.
2Ibid., p. 645.
^Sander L. Gilman, Differences and Pathology:
Stereotypes of Sexuality~ Race 7 and- Radness ITthaca:
Cornell University Press, 19&5; , p"I 23.
^Hami Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of
Colonial Discourse ," October 28 (1984):130.
^Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books,
1978), p. 8.
^Hami Bhabha, "The Other Question: Difference,
Discrimination, and the Discourse of Colonialism," in
Literature, Politics, and Theory (New York: Methuen,
1986), pT 162.
"^Maureen Blackwood, "Stereotypes: Beyond the
Mammies," in Charlotte Brunsdbn (ed.) , Film for Women
(London: BFI, 1986), p. 206.
®Stam & Spence, p. 647.
^Harry Shaw, Dictionary of Problem Words and
Expressions (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1975), p. 48.
^Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America (New York:
Harper & Row, 1984), p. 3.
^Gretchen M. Bataille and Charles L. P. Silet, The
Pretend Indians and Images of Native Americans in the
Movies (Ames: The Iowa State University Press, 1980) ,
p. 3.
^2Connie Johnson and Don Snowden, "Radio’s Blackout:
Why Are So Many Black Artists Ignored by Black Stations?"
Los Angeles Times (Nov. 22, 1987, Calendar Section), p. 8.
^Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Miller, S/Z
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1974), p. 10
"*^V. Phillip Manuel, "Ethnic Notions," Black
Collegian (Jan/Feb. 1988), p. 22.
^Homi Bhabha, "Signs Taken for Wonders," Race,
Writing, and Difference: Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn
1985):150.
21
CHAPTER II
A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS
As has been stated, earlier writings bn Africa's
representation have largely been simplistic. This study,
hwoever, adopts a theoretical approach which would
address the ideological dimensions of knowledge and as
such reveal the epistemolbgical gap between Africa and
its representation. From this point of view, Edward
Said’s work Orientalism bn Western representation of the
Orient provides a resourceful and exemplary theoretical
perspective. It is resourceful insofar as its application
i
will elicit a better understanding of the processes of J
construction of meaning in which the Africa films J
engage. In his arguments, for example, Said clearly
establishes the link between knowledge, power, and
realities. |
i
Said’s scholarly paradigm also notes that the ]
i
l
shared conceptions of ’’realities" on which a society j
j
generally predicates its world view mask an extremely j
complex grid. In Orientalism, therefore, he examines the j
i
stages, structures, and psychic investments through which
the West (Occident) has constructed its Oriental "Other"—
an imaginary Orient which exists in the fantasy of the
West as reason/cause/prbdf of the former’s ’’backwardness."
The asymmetrical power relations, with the West exalted,
provide the praxis through which the Orient is seen and
translated.
In formulating a theoretical framework, the study
applies some insights from feminist theory. The debt of
the present study to feminist criticism essentially lies j
with the latter's amplification of certain systems of
hierarchies as an ideological mechanism through which one
group is physically and/or symbolically differentiated
from the "Other." According to Helen Carr, the West's
"Other" occupies the same symbolic space as women because:
Both are seen as part of nature, not culture,
and with the same ambivalence: either they are
ripe for government, passive, child-like,
unsophisticated, needing leadership and
guidance, described always in terms of lack—
no initiative, no intellectual powers, no
perseverance; or, on the other hand, they are
outside society, dangerous, treacherous,
emotional, in constant, wild, threatening,
fickle, sexually aberrant, irrational, near
animal, lascivious, disruptive, evil, and
unpredictable.
It is in the sense above that Africa could be said to be
"feminized." It is also in this sense that feminist
criticism is useful to the present study.
Since a critique of Africa's representation in
dominant cinema would not be complete without reference to
Hollywood's favorite Others, this study finds "Colonialism,
Racism, and Representation: An Introduction" by Robert Stam
23
and Louise Spence helpful since it breaks methodological
I
j ground in examining the interrelationships between
cultural politics and the textual strategies of cinematic
representation. Their analysis, which covers the Third
I
j World, displays the web of affiliations implicit in the
inferiorization and construction of "Others."
As for the relationship between artist, society,
and representation, one of Africa's foremost writers,
Chinua Achebe, in his article, "An Image of Africa,"
provides very useful insights. Achebe argues that the
fear and fascination which enthrall the Western gaze bn
Africa have their mutations in the dehumanization of
Africans and their environment. Western insecurities as a
result are displaced on the African environment. His
observations on Conrad parallel current cinematic
representation of Africans and underscores the link
between colonial fiction and Africa films. On the same
note but using a cultural history approach, Alfred E.
Opubbr and Adebayo Ogunbi's article, "Oooga Bbbga: The
African Image in American Films," points but, in spite of
ephemeral changes, the interchangeability of both the
documentary and the fictional films about Africa. In
conclusion, they advocate the intervention of a "counter
voice" in the production process as the only way to stem
negative representation.
24
There is need, therefore, to understand the
narrative strategies, formal structures, and mechanisms
around which interpretations of Africa emanate or
condense, and anchor them in a particular social context.
Is there, then, any specific (right or wrong) way of
addressing Africa's misrepresentation? In their
contribution toward the resolution of this quandary,
Robert Stam and Louise Spence propose that: "A
comprehensive methodology must pay attention to the
mediations which intervene between 'reality' and
r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s. While their proposal maps out the
matrix of relationships through which "reality" is
constructed as the terrain for critical inquiry, critics i
l
may point out that implicit in the exercise are subjective j
i
values against what is conceived to be real, is read. j
What is the real Africa? Is one representation of Africa
more real than another? If so, why? Characteristically, j
t
these exoticist films profer a monolithic construction of j
i
the African identity through the imposition of cultural !
homogeneity. The standard-issue Hollywood African is, !
j
therefore, a one-savage-fits-all proposition. ;
!
It is not difficult within the context of the • !
I
!
preceding proposal to see the inadequacy of the
"reflection theory" as a methodology in this exercise. In i
a nutshell, the "reflection theory" sees any media fare as
25
reflective of its society’s values, culture, etc. In a
word— ideology. The "reflection theory," even though
plausible, is a very bare-bones simplification. While
ideology masks its presence as natural, its propositions
i
j more likely are refracted rather than reflected in a
I
cultural product. This is so because ideology itself, at
least in the Althusserean (Marxist) sense, is a network of
contradictions. Its "naturalness" is a mask which ab
initio contains the seminal seeds of contraiety. As Ali
Mazrui has observed: "The mirror is both a reflection of
reality and its distortion. The mirror is a paradox."3
Corollary to the reflection theory is the "images of"—
good/bad image, content analysis--school of criticism.
The value of the "images of" type analysis solely resides
in its watch-dog instincts; that is, a proficiency for
alerting us to the proliferation and undiluted usage of
stock characters. A radical argument posits that:
Positive and negatives [images] share one
thing: they transform minority characters into
metaphors, symbolic figures who slave away in
the White Anglo culture's ideological cotton
fields and sweatshops, banned from revealing a
fully human range of qualities and desires.
Dwelling on the study of images (types) imbues the images
with extraordinary powers, sometimes to the point of
fetishism. As has been warned: "Fixation on images
reduces critical acuity by privileging characterological
26
c o n c e r n s . Under the circumstances described above,
part of the problem (stereotypes) thus becomes mistaken or
! substituted for the whole— a reality, social relations
which these films deform/inform. There is a limit,
therefore, to the study of stereotypes, if they are
understood as repetitious papier-mache constructs.
Because stereotypes depend bn recyclement for existence,
harping on them in the "images of" tradition is a
circuitous experience. In proposing a novel approach to
the study of stereotypes and their function in racist
fantasy/ideology, Stephen Neale advocates the inclusion of
"the wider issues raised by racism, particularly insofar
as it involves the significance of anxieties that center
on bodily difference and hence castration and
fetishism.
The castration anxiety mentioned by Neale is a
well-worn feature of psychoanalytic criticism, which need
not be rehashed here. The basic premise equates/endows
the phallus with magical potency. In applying the concept
to racist fantasies, I am arguing that the possession of a
specific skin pigmentation has phallic privileges, insofar
as it is a mark of calibrated difference which champions
the superiority of a particular race. In this scenario,
the "superior" race thus favored, like the proverbial head
that wears the crown, is uneasy, due to the fear of losing
27
control, power, authority— hence, castration/impotence.
This fear is doubly inscribed with the threat of permanent
dispossession of attendent privileges or worse, their
I
relinquishment, however temporarily, to the hitherto |
I
disenfranchised "other.”
Ideally, a conceptual framework such as I am
I
proposing must include in its agenda the onerous task of
finding a voice, a novel approach in a field in which
certain voices are, to paraphrase George Orwell, more
equal than others. In voting for the secular
dissemination of critical insight, Edward Said has argued
that the "commandments" of a particular discipline
i
function to "protect the coherence, the territorial |
i
integrity, the social identity of the field, its !
adherents, and its institutional presence.in general, t
therefore, the dearth of scholarly production in the I
current area of inquiry— the various meanings and j
functions ascribed to Africa in dominant cinema--cannot be j
attributed to critical short-sightedness. It is !
symptomatic of specific social and political affiliations j
I
which construct such a topic as either marginal or
unattractive because (1) it "traditionally" does not enjoy
popular appeal, (2) it is "their" (Africans1) problem, and
(3) it is a Pandora^ box. i
28
Limitations
This study will not masquerade as a final ruling
on Africa’s misrepresentation in Hollywood cinema. It
does not seek closure. Instead, it is enthusiastic about
I
i
opening up areas of inquiry for the exploration and
understanding of certain structures of concealment native
! to Hollywood’s vocabulary on Africa. To uncover these
i
| structures inevitably will position me to read these films
| against the grain. To stand in opposition to the
preferred audience— further defined here as the aggregate
of the films’ marketing strategy, hence, First World
spectators. The issues treated in this project,
therefore, are those which intrigue me, first as an
African, then as a scholar of the cinema. Understandably,
the former is intrinsic, and the latter an attribute.
In pursuit of the above, certain assumptions are
inevitable. First, that the misrepresentation of Africa
is based bn its relationship to America through slavery.
The status of Africa in American eyes is, therefore,
irretrievably tied to the lots of Blacks in America.
While chattel slavery has been abolished, certain
institutional practices stand in the way of total
emancipiation. How can one erase a people's collective
memory? Secondly, Africa's underdeveloped status— a
t
j product of extended colonial exploitation and dominance—
29
makes it a sitting duck for racist pot-shots. Its
underdevelopment, therefore, paralyzes both the incentives
and the prospects of a counter-offensive, i.e.,
alternative views. African filmmaking is an example here
because it is still circumscribed within the neo-colonial
apparatus, as has been well noted by Roy Armes.^
Alternative views are therefore virtually impossible,
given the economics of financing, distribution, etc.
Thirdly, the colonial presence in Africa and the discourse
it engendered through colonial fiction especially was
pivotal to the myriad of distortions about Africa.
Designated fiction, these works nevertheless spoke with ;
forked tongues. They erased a part of Africa's history to i
I
justify intrusion, then cite the erasure as justification j
for continued presence and shroud the whole exercise in !
dubious rationalizations. Given the circumstances plus
the fact that these "images" are historically and
culturally specific, it is my submission, therefore, that
as long as Africa is defined in binarisms (good/evil) and
in opposition to the West, changes in its depiction, if
any, will be ephemeral.
This study has both a theoretical and practical
significance. On the theoretical level, I hope to
contribute to the existing corpus of knowledge, seeking to
understand the nature and dangers of misrepresentation.
30
On the practical level, it is hoped (1) that it will
ameliorate the divisions constructed in difference,
thereby erasing the schism between the West and their
perception of Others, (2) that dominant cinema, operating
either out of ignorance or malicious mischief, be made
conscious of the broader ramifications of its craft. For
the African theoretician/filmmaker, this would reveal
certain booby traps inherent in uncritical adoption of
refrains from "his master's voice." j
I
This study will be more critical than theoretical, j
While the analysis, in sum, will be theoretically |
informed, it would not make a fetish of theory. Also,
while not based on a mechanistic exclusion or inclusion of
what an Africa film is, the films chosen show a consistent
similarity, attractive to critical analysis. Further
considerations include the understanding that the Africa
of Hollywood cinema cannot be approached in abstraction or
isolation. An interdisciplinary latitude, afforded by
Stam and Spence's critical paradigm, for example, appears
more suitable since racism is a lived existence emanating
from concrete situations, not an abstract concept.
31
Endnotes
1
'Helen Carr, "Woman/Indian: 'The America' and his
Others," in Europe and Its Others, vol. 2 (Colchester,
England, 198^7:50.
^Robert Stam and Louise Spence, "Colonialism, Racism,
and Representation," in Bill Nichols (ed)., Movies and
Methods, II (Berkeley: University of California Press,
T 9F5T, p." 645.
3 John Powers, "Adventures in Racism," L.A. Weekly
(July 31-Aug. 6, 1987), p. 39.
^Ali Mazrui, The African Condition: A Political
Diagnosis (New YorlT: Cambirdge University Press, 19180) ,
p. 2.
^Stam and Spence, p. 640. j
r j
cSteven Neale, "The Same Old Story: Stereotypes of j
Difference," Screen Education (1979/80):34. j
"^Edward Said, "Oppenents, Audiences, Constituencies, !
and Community," in Hal Foster (ed.) , The Anti-Aesthetic
(Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1987), p. 141 .
®Roy Armes, Third World Filmmaking and the West
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
CHAPTER III
WILL THE REAL AFRICAN STAND UP?
!
; Central to the thesis of this project is the
i argument that Africa had been committed to a peculiar
|
j representational strait-jacket before the invention of
photography and later, the cinema. What the cinema did,
will be demonstrated, was to borrow, refine, and enhance
the diffusion of myriad "anonymbus truths” about Africa,
residual in Western cultural unconscious.
The pauperization of Africa in dominant cinema is
therefore, not a product of discrete categories, but of
intricately linked matrices. Investigating cine-racism
without recourse to its material sources, therefore, will
lead to superficial understanding of its true nature and
ramifications. What is fostered in dominant cinema as
(true) African identity, as we shall see, are fictional
constructs, peripheral to but largely in a dialectical
relationship with empirical reality. Account also has to
be taken of the specific historical relationships of
Africa with the West, which has its axes in slavery,
! colonialism, and its variant, neo-colonialism. These
i
; relationships, suffice it to say, have been based on an
i
i unequal exchange. The implication here, therefore, is
I 33
that if inequality relates to power, race, and social
production of knowledge, axiomatically, the junior
r
partner, inferiorized by its subordinate position, would
largely be defined with respect to its status, in
1 deprivative terms— lack— and in antagonistic terms. By 1
1
|
| this very logic, then, the structure of Africa films is ;
I
I incompatible with a non-primitive Africa. There would be
i
nothing of compelling interest to portray if Africa were j
just like the West. Africa’s difference is thus defined j
and dominated by primitivism— a property racial
chauvinists see as extrinsic to the West and cite history
to "prove."
As mentioned earlier, historical specificity must
be taken into account in the analysis of Africa's j
representation in dominant cinema. It would be helpful at
<
this juncture to sketch out not just a notion of history, |
, but also its corrupting strictures. All of the past is
I I
technically history; however, not everything of the past j
is emphasized in historical discourses. Is it common '
knowledge in the West, for instance, that Africa had
established universities some 300 and 650 years before
Oxford and Harvard?^ Or for that matter, that "The
I
ancient Greeks represented their favorite Goddess of j
P I
' Wisdom— Minerva— as an African Princess"? There is
L
34
arguably an implicit value judgment in the selection,
ordering, and (re)presentation of realities of the past—
history. History as past is, therefore, intrinsically
mediated, subject to partial retrieval and as such neither
wholesome nor objective.
With respect to the Africa film, it is arguable
that it takes certain "truths" or premises for granted
and, by doing so, merely recreates a version of the past,
of reality, then substitutes that part in a metonymic
displacement for a complex and infinitely expansive whole.
The empirical approach thus presupposes a governing
consciousness which is uncaused, objective, and distant.
The truth it speaks, therefore, seems natural. This
naturalization equates the seamlessness of Africa films—
itself a feature of classical cinema— in which "truths"
must be pared to a smooth, self-effacing, unwinding whole.
The crucial point here is that history is a social
construct, defined by some rules of inclusion/exclusion—
which emphasizes what is important, to be kept, cherished,
and, of course, what is unimportant and, as such,
marginal— and a product of specific social relations,
since whatever is institutionally sanctioned as history
invariably percolates in the cultural unconscious. It is
against this background that the project will sketch out
ways/means through which certain verminous "truths" about
35
Africa seeped into and festered in the Western cultural
unconscious .
Myth Conceptions
The most enduring sources of the implication of
racial difference is to be found in the Bible. In
scriptural anthropology,3 Ham, Noah’s son, had looked at
his father’s nakedness and visited the wrath of God on his
son, Chu, whose descendents, according to the Bible, would j
be Black— an indelible badge of shame/rejection/ j
inferiority. The innate inferiority of the African also
was the cardinal principle of monogenesis, whose roots are ;
in both the Bible and the 18th century concept of "the
great chain of being" which held that Adam and Eve were
common ancestors to all and that Blacks may still improve.
The polygenists, bn the other hand, "maintained that each
race had been created separately and that the consequent |
differences between races were permanent"11 — a view later
appropriated by the Social Darwinists in support of their
argument of natural selection. Each of the positions ;
I
above was not without its problems. Even though Darwin’s {
Theory of Evolution was antithetical to the Biblical
tenets, it introduced a "scientistic" dimension to the
whole argument. It is crucial to note that "one of the !
outstanding characteristics of most of the racist
theorists in England and on the Continent was their
36
eclecticism"^ which helped accord their ideas merit and
! respect. There is, however, a further complication. It
i
J
j should be noted that:
i
The devil was a construct in Western thought
before the Westerner encountered black people.
Eventually, black people themselves came to
represent this construct. The devil is black;
and so, Europeans noticed, were Africans— if ,
not absolutely black, at least mightily dark.
Dark and different, the African thus became the
object of speculations which did not abate when the first
slave arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The human j
traffickers settled on the West African Coast for several j
reasons--first, for easier operations, but more
importantly, because Africans wanted monopoly of supply J
I
and as such discouraged any direct contact with the
source. Consequently, speculations were rife about what
the interior looked like, and unfortunately these
I
I
speculations were passed off as "truths." Moreover, early ;
i
travellers to Africa and later settlers displaced health
problems onto the environment and tropical diseases were
cited as existential links to Africa’s natural barbarism.
Thus, empirical and circumstantial factors colored their
notions of Africa. Nonetheless, Africa soon attracted the
imagination of American writers and functioned as a muse:
The continent, some Americans felt, offered an
extraordinarily creative milieu. For the j
established literary figure, and for the j
aspiring writer as well, adventure and i
37
These writings stress action/adventure and were imbued
with psychological dimensions emphasizing the quest for
identity and the indominability of the human spirit. The
commercial imperatives for the explorers were barely
hidden and lurked beneath the surface of their accounts.
As McCarthy has observed of Henry Morton Stanley and Paul
Belloni du Chaillu:
As explorers their aim was to tell the world
of their discoveries, but as writers their
common goal was to sell books, a task
accomplished by devoting sufficient space to
sensational descriptions of the rain forests
of Central Africa.
The scintillating titles of these books locate
Africa in a field of dark, magnetic charm and mark it off
as a mysterious garden laden with pleasurable thrills. A
sample of the titles includes A. G. Feather’s Stanley’s
Story or Through the Wilds of Africa; A Thrilling
Narrative of his Remarkable Adventures, Terrible
Experiences, Wonderful Discoveries, and Amazing
Achievements in the Dark Continent and Paul Belloni du
Chaillu’s Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial
Africa, with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the
People, and the Chase of the Gorilla, the Crocodile,
Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and Other Animals, both
published in 1861, and Henry Morton Stanley's Through the
Dark Continent and In Darkest Africa, published in 1879
and 1890, respectively.
38
Some other titles— Thomas W. Knox’s The Boy
Travellers on the Congo: Adventures of Two Youths in a
Journey with Henry M. Stanley Through the Dark Continent j
i
(1888); William James Morrison’s Willie Wyld: Lost in the j
Jungles of Africa (1912); and Herbert Strang's Fighting on
the Congo: The Story of an American B6y Among the Rubber
Slaves (1906)— were written specifically for children and
especially boys for whom they provided an initiation into
the glories of m a s c u l i n i t y .^ The insidious unease such
stories evoke capitalize on the helplessness and innocence
of youth, trapped in a precarious world. Ultimately,
these books functioned as readers' guides to savage ;
Africa. I
I
The dates of their publication were noteworthy ;
because by this time photography had been invented and
I
i
cinema was burgeoning. Pictures of exotic animals j
which appeared in National Geographic and other travelogs !
i
as illustration around this period soon gave birth to the 1
1 o !
”big game” mania later re-enacted in films.The j
photographs, scientific expeditions, and documentaries—
especially the husband and wife documentary team, Mr. and
Mrs. Martin Johnson who made films about ’ ’the happiest J
little savages on earth”^ — were used as material evidence j
of the licentiousness, moral depravity, and innate j
!
!
savagism of the African. !
39
As products of the same ideology, these pseudo-
I
j scientific "dbcumentaries" and their fictional counterpart
j validated each other to the extent that there existed a
I blur, some kind of muddle through which one became easily
interchangeable with the other. Roosevelt’s African Game
Trails (1909), an account of his travels which was
eminently successful, is a case in point. Erik Barnouw
notes that:
William Selig, working in Chicago, found a
Roosevelt look-alike and photographed him
stalking through a studio jungle, followed by
black ’ ’native” porters, also from the Chicago
area. He encountered an aged lion who was
shot on camera. The film was a financial
success.
However, it should be noted that the events on Roosevelt’s
expedition were historically specific occurrences. Their
representation, therefore, at best would be an
approximation. Furthermore, as memory, recollections, or
whatever, Roosevelt’s experiences are innately subjective;
given that, therefore, the status of his recollections as
truth is paradoxical, since disproving their veracity
would be tantamount to proving a negative. In any case,
through the exploitation of codes of authenticity— like
shooting an aged lion on camera— these "ethnographic
j films” tried to camouflage the inevitable mediation
between the pro-filmic (reality) and its resultant
materialization as a documentation.
40
The hordes of scientists, anthropologists, and
j filmmakers who flocked to the Africa of the period,
j naturally, were attracted to cultural practices (manners
1 and customs) at odds with theirs— in other words, peoples
I
I and institutions they found "unusual," fascinating,
i
l
different. Their task, therefore, involved explaining the
"other's" culture. Even as honest scientific research,
their discourses were not value-free since research must
be predicated on certain assumptions and parameters which j
inevitably limit meanings. As expositions dr j
I
explanations, these ethnographic projects, couched in
I
quasi-scientific methodology, effaced dr denied the
ideological roots of their discourses. The unwary is thus j
coerced into seeing/knowing through the eyes of the
I
scientist who represents a privileged access to truth, as
both moderator and ring master in the jungle circus. |
i
The first Tarzan film, it should be noted, was !
|
made in 1912. Anthony Smith makes a crucial point about i
the naturalization of certain myths about Africa:
From the 1890's, it seemed that the more
distant parts of the globe were permanently
subject to violence and drama; the East was
constantly ablaze with revolt and carnage,
Central America was wracked with picturesque
revolution, while Africa was the province of
romantic jungle explorers. ^
In 1890, the struggle for news coverage and survival by |
the newly developed international news agencies also fed
41
the voracious appetite for fantasticated accounts of
Africa. It is worthy of note that Stanley was a
correspondent for the New York Herald and E. Alexander
Powell— author of The Last Frontier: The White Man's War
I “ ----------------------------------------- -
i for Civilization in Africa (1912)— also reported for
Everybody1s. Magazine. It did not take long, therefore,
i for fiction to mingle with news— euphemism for ideological
< i
I
j images of the world that determine political reality for a j
14 I
vast majority of the world's population'— and wear the !
guise of naturalized verities. This tradition of
sensationalist reportage, which continues today, provided
the public with a frame of mind, a schema through which
Africa is "read" and "known" in the West. If we
understand a schema to involve compartmentalization--
I
breakdown of complex wholes into easier units of ;
[
knowledge— an inevitable result will then be stereotyping, s
I
more so, when the accounts are not independently !
i
variable. Suffused with information, ironically, Africa !
became familiar to the Westerner and yet strange.
The "estrangement" effect, thus, is a product of
ideological strictures which not only set up certain
patterns of identification but, more importantly, supplies
the means with which to explain the difference of the
"Other."
42
Early Hollywood features on Africa, as one could
tell from their titles alone, exploited popular opinion of
Africa. Missionaries in Darkest Africa (1912) exploits
the travails of missionaries in their efforts to bring
light to "the poor benighted heathens."^ Missionary
accounts were used to justify previous reports, since the
missionaries could not lie! The Terrors of the Jungle
(1913), Voodoo Vengeance (1913), The Military Drill of the
Kikuyu Tribes and Other Native Ceremonies (1914), The
Loyalty of Jumbo (1914), Forbidden Adventure (1915), and A
Night in the Jungle (1915) evidently were structured in j
terms of mystery and danger which, until today, function
as selling points of Africa films. Ostensibly, the Africa
films of the 80fs bear the imprimatur of their prototypes,
in that often they center around missionaries,
adventurers, scientists, and assorted charlatans— the very
people whose production of social knowledge was central to
the vilification of Africa.
Taken collectively, these earlier writings, with
each successive output, further legitimized prevalent
myths and "quagmired" Africa in the nadir of civilization.
Their affected posture of ideological neutrality not only
ensured and exploited the readership, it also worked
effectively to conceal their status as constructs. If the
readership, for instance, entertained any doubts about the
* » 3
adventurers' fables, the missionaries' accounts
substantiated such stories. The missionaries' accounts
received a prima facie status as truth, because as the
apostles of God and bearers of the Light, they could not
lie. But given that the myth of the dark continent was
the raison d’etre of missionization (and later,
colonization), it served the purposes of the missionaries
to fantasticate their accounts and decry the depravity of
unfamiliar customs, in order to justify the crusade for
salvation of the benighted— an exercise which resonates
with masochism and even sadism since the motif of
sacrifice provides vindication from any excesses. The
same could be said of the colonialist venture and its
filmic variant, in which the empire builder assumes the
burden and responsibility of adding finish to God's
imperfect creatures.
Understandably distance intensified the mystery of
Africa since it made independent verification of the
''truth'' of the claims above impossible. Besides, even if
one found them to be false, the establishment of evidence
against such overwhelming consensus would be Herculean at
best. An "epistemological gap" was thus created, which
the emergent cinema industry of the 1890's filled and
exploited. Complementing the imaginations of the
explorers, missionaries, and adventurers, these early
44
films served to cement Africa in an unpropitibus cast.
Rastus in Zululand (1910) presents an excellent
j opportunity for commentary on and highlighting of the
j relevance of these early disquisitions on Africa in the
! analysis of current Africa films. Before we get to the
import of Rastus in Zululand, a few points need to be
noted.
Colorful Shadows
Bernth Lindors notes in her article, "Circus
Africans," the documented instances of:
Africans being displayed in Europe and the
United States as freaks, curiosities, or
biological sports--creatures whose humanity
was in question .... The most recent
scientific exhibition of a caged living African
occurred in September 1906 at the Bronx Zoo.
While the racist implications of the above exercises are
clear, my attention will turn to the analysis of the
African as "spectacle," as a "thing" objectified and
marginalized. The objective here is to buttress my
assertion that the Africa films of the 80’s are a product
of a long tradition etched in the Western cultural
unconscious.
The caged Africa, as in the films (of then and
now), is presented as an attraction. Not a star
attraction or a person whose life is glamorized, but an
iattraction based bn visible difference and which feeds a
45
perverse form of voyeurism. More importantly, an
attraction based on shock value. Not only is the (caged)
African an attraction, he is a show unto himself— a
masquerade, a thing to be looked at, whose value as
1
curio, a billing, freak of nature is predicated upon the
presence (visibility) and proof (features) of difference,
i Thus constituted as spectacle, the African becomes an
object of libidinal pleasure/narcissism. There, for the
pleasure of the crowd, the African’s value— as
entertainment, thing— is predicated upon his/her ability
to please/surprise the crowd. It is not far-fetched,
then, that the African on display could be prodded to
do unusual antics, to increase his/her entertainment j
value. |
i
The "thingification" of the African— described by I
Kovel as radical dehumanization^— enables his |
appropriation as a resource for racist fantasy. The
African is "thingified" to the extent that he cannot talk
I
(and that in the films his language more often than not is j
i
gibberish). According to Lacan, the subject is produced
as a conscious entity through the "mirror stage"— a stage
in development when an infant by seeing itself reflected
in a mirror is able to distinguish Self from Other. This
occurrence forms the subject who is then shaped by
language--that is, assigned a culturally determined
46
position. If we agree that one is assigned a position
through language, then denying the African (intelligible)
speech denies him in addition to power an aspect of his
humanity since he will be dependent on a master of his
i
I
i language for identity. The African is further thingified j
j I
insofar as his "performance" stresses aberrant behavior, !
which is then attributed as intrinsic to his own nature.
The spectators’ lack of comprehension of this innate
savagism will be abated by (1) the specialized knowledge
of the zoo guide dr, in films, the Western "hero," (2)
folk wisdom, (3) or any mixture thereof. The
security/confidence of the gawking spectators, who possess ;
the power of gaze (and, as such, knowledge) is guaranteed ,
by the distance between them and "it," who exists
specifically for their pleasure. Caged and distant, the
thrill of "lawless looking" experienced by the spectator
further accentuates the Africans’ distinctiveness which
excludes "it" from the Family of Man. There is an
interesting parallel here between John Berger’s assertion
that because animals are under constant surveillance,
their ability to return the look has been rendered
marginal:
They are the objects of our ever-extending
knowledge. What we know about them is an
index of our power, and thus an index of what
separates us from them,- The more we know, the
further away they are. °
47
They (Africans, here) are "Others" whose presence
initiates and sustains fantasies. There is little
difference between the African of zoos, fairs, and museums
and the Africans of cinematic representation. While one
is presented "live," the other has its "liveness"
simulated on the screen. If we understand fantasy to
involve the displacement/bracketing (however momentarily)
of empirical/immediate reality, it then necessarily
restricts the perception of "realities" because its
pleasure derives from and is nourished by self-absorption j
i
(narcissism) which is based on control or illusion of j
control. The "knowledge" about Africa as featured in
entertainments (cinema, zoos, et al.) fosters what is j
f
known in Marxist dictum as a false consciousness. It is J
f
false to the extent that it is based on fantasy which, in j
t
turn, draws its fuel from fears, wishes, and desires. j
t
These psychic investments inevitably restrict either the
perception of a given reality or abate the confusion of
that reality with fiction. The blur occasioned by this
I
confusion is the product or working of ideology, which in
the function of Africa as an entertainment has held it in
suspension.
Cultural Contagion
By the time of its release, the American audience •
<
was already familiar with the Rastus series about a black j
48
character who conformed to the racist imagination, had
watched D. W. Griffith’s The Zulu* s Heart (1908), and
ostensibly was aware of a Zulu people whose fight (in
1894) with European settlers was big news at the turn of
the century. The newsworthiness of the war invariably was
exploited, according to the sensationalist tradition of
the explorers, by the emergent international news
agencies. The prominence of the Zulus in Western
discourse, then, had underwritten their viability as a
resource for racist fantasies. There was also a
psychological need to mark the Zulu (African, hence
savage) as that which threatens existence, progress, "us."
In a word, "enemy.” Furthermore, Africans--as early as
1810 to as late as 1932— in fairs, circuses, and exhibits
were "presented as being culturally exotic— cannibals,
blood-thirsty warriors, stone-age savages, wild men. The
ethnographic tag that came to be attached to most of them
was the euphonius word ’ Z u l u . ’"^9
Rastus in Zululand is a prime example of the
mechanics of "othering" in spectatorship and also confirms
the analogous relationship between popular opinion about
Africa and its representations on the screen. According
to Leab, in the film:
The sleeping Rastus dreams that he has gone to
sea and has been shipwrecked in Zululand.
Captured by cannibals, he has been placed in
49
the community pot. The entreaties of the
Chief’s daughter save Rastus from being part
of the stew, but she is so obese and ugly that
he chooses to return to the pot. He awakens
just as the water has begun to boil. 0
If we agree with Freud that dreams are ambiguous and are
products of repressed desires, the film could be read as a
disguised fulfillment of a Black man’s repressed wish for
repatriation to Africa in the face of slavery in America.
According to Freud, when the unconscious impulses come
’ ’head-on" with opposition, restrictions, or social order,
they are repressed; but sleep relaxes the force of
repression, thus enabling the impulses to be transformed
into a series of images. My concern here is not with
psychoanalytic criticism, but to analyze the interactive
pattern of meaning the film constructs for the spectator
and its relationship with the extra-filmic discourses on
Africa. By presenting the civilization/savagery
dichotomy, and America as safe haven to which the
errant Rastus returns, the film furthers the plantation
ideology which told Blacks that they were privileged
to have been removed from Africa. The precariousness
of the Black existence (then, at least) thus finds a
convenient displacement in the assumed terrors of
Africa. J
I
Rastus' rejection of the chief's daughter (ostensibly !
On grounds of obesity and ugliness) is consonant with
50
racist construction of African femininity as "belle
sauvage." As such, she functions as a site of
cultural/sexual anxieties, because accepting her
"attractiveness" on its own terms is anathematic to the
i
j ideology ,of racial positionalities. The princess’
"unattractiveness" is thus an exaggeration designed to
make romantic identification with her problematic. Making
her look "funny" is a ploy to disarm/discount the threat
(of sexual anxieties) she poses by transforming it into
something laughable.
Selling Africa: Trader Horn
Trader Horn has been described as "an epoch-making
film in the annals of negative characterization of
Africa.The task here is not to analyze the film’s
racism— which we shall take for granted— but to
investigate the taken-fbr-granted notions abbut Africa on
which the film’s advertisement revolve. By so doing, I
hope to uncover the position of the consumers, to whom the
ads are addressed, and their relationship to the specific
ideologies to which the film speaks. Does the function of
Africa within these ads validate the myths, the culturally
shared sets of "realities" through which Africa is known
in the West? This is crucial because the spectator to
whom it is aimed would ultimately be convinced about the
51
film's "realisticness" to the extent that he/she makes a
connection between the film's proposals and the knowledge
of Africa in the public domain. All along, my argument
has been that Africa is trapped in a representational
choke-hold, relief of which will involve rewriting and
overhauling the calcified categories through which it is
defined. Having been made in a climate of racial
intolerance (the 1930’s), the extent to which the film’s
assumptions meet with or fall short of dominant
expectations about Africa films in the 80's— half a
century later--would provide a realistic mixture of
"progress" through the times.
Ostensibly advertisement functions to sell a
product, an idea of a lifestyle. The advertisements about
Trader Horn do not just seek to sell the film. They
create a specific context within which the film will be
consumed. They endow the film, as with other ads, with a
particular significance. As Judith Williamson has
observed:
Advertisements must take into account not only
the inherent qualities and attributes of the
products they are trying to sell, but also the
way in which they can make those properties
mean something to us. ^
We create meanings according to who we are, what we know,
and what we believe. The advertisement for Trader Horn
must of necessity derive its meaning in terms of the
people’s— Americans, since the ads in question were from
the New York Times— culture and values. Its proposals,
therefore, must be consonant with dominant expectations,
because Africa already has a meaning outside advertisement
outside the product (Trader Horn) for which it stands.
These meanings, then, must be referred back to the
subject of the ad, and within certain parameters. More
crucial to the task at hand is not so much what the ads
mean, but how they mean. An ad for Trader Horn thus
reads:
Here is romance for you, real romance . . . of
menacing jungles, roaring lions, rivers
swarming with crocodiles, and shrieking black
savages ruled by a white goddess with
beautiful golden hair. ^
The above ad imbues the product (Trader Horn) with a
promise (real romance) which constructs the film as
special, constructs the spectator as different (from the
black savages), and uses this axis of distinction to
deliver its meaning. It is crucial to the ad, and the
potential of the film as a money-making venture, to
differentiate Trader Horn from like projects, which
extract its resources from the same mine of myths. It is
also crucial that Trader Horn be seen as a part of a
tradition (genre, if you will) which is nonetheless
different. The ads, therefore, will seek to endow the
53
film with a status— its differentness, as exclusive
quality— which will be relayed back to the potential
spectator in attendance.
The wild, dangerous, and primitive Africa of
Trader Horn, therefore, flatters the subject of the
advertisement, constituted as special, different,
civilized. As a land of mystery and danger, Africa thus
functions within a closed system of referents. For the
Western spectator, the vicarious participation, the thrill
of being part of a (safe) transgression of Africa— so
close on the screen, yet so far off— correlates with the
specialness which the ad promises. What the film and ad
sell in the final analysis is a feeling interchangeable
with power, authority, and mastery. The "knowledge”
about Africa it proposes must be produced within already-
known parameters which in their obviousness guarantee the
knowledge as natural, timeless, intrinsic— the truth. But
as mentioned earlier, these "truths" about Africa are
products of unique, historical circumstances which not
only specified their classifications but crucially
repress/deny their historical origins. It is in the
interest of the dominant ideology that these appear
uncaused and immutable: a point succinctly illustrated
by promotional material for Trader Horn, put out by
MGM. Titled "Africa’s Tiniest People Shown in Trader
54
Horn,” the piece, making a liberal use of hyperboles,
notes that:
The Pygmy tribes consist of men and women not
over four feet in height. One of the oldest
races in the world, it is said that they
represent a stage of evolution between Man and
his Darwinian ancestors. !
The interesting thing about this piece is its mixture of !
fact (Pygmies are short people) with fiction/prejudice
(Pygmies are examples/victims of arrested development).
Furthermore, the opinion is attributed to an ”it,” that
is, nobody in particular, in effect denying responsibility
and positioning it in the domain of common knowledge,
fact, and scientific truth. It also draws the line
between us (collapsed in the sign ”Man”) and them—
primitives, whose role in the film has marked them as
objects of marvel. Spectacular, in a word. There is also
a corresponding mode of fetishistic knowledge— ”1 can1t
believe this, but it is true!”— which both the film and
the promotional material engender.
The work of advertising here is to create a myth
around the film, which is predicated on and exploits the
myths about Africa consonant with dominant expectation.
In Trader Horn, Africa is thus observed not through the
eyes of the civilized but by civilization. Once under the
gaze of civilization, Africa functions as a cultural
I
metaphor , a place whose ”darkness” is to be understood as i
55
something natural, as the images (evidence and proof)
uphold.
I Naked Pre(y)judice
!
| The relationship between cinema and specific
I
I political and sociocultural ideologies is crucial to any
| analysis of its position/function in articulating the
numerous discourses a film mobilizes. While the
mobilization of discourses through the production of an
enigma and its eventual resolution mark the beginning and
I
end of a film, so to speak, it is crucial to the narrative j
process that the spectator not only identifies the j
discourses marked as relevant but more importantly, 1
i
identifies with them. Filmic pleasure is, therefore, !
predicated on the extent to which the spectator sees him
or herself in the narrative. The spectator, I must hasten
to add, could also be constructed as an aggregate, a
consensus, a culture to which appeasement may not only be
necessary but crucial to the consumption of the film as
product, endowed with an exchange value. The point of
issue here is that radical departure from
institutionalized ways of seeing/knowing is at odds with
and circumscribed by the economic imperative--to get huge
box office returns--6n which dominant cinema thrives.
There is, therefore, with any proposed or actual
| transgression an underlying imperative to recuperate such
56
transgressions, defined here as departure from dominant
expectations, with the fear and fascination it embodies as
the source of pleasure. As I will argue, with The Naked
; Prey, (1966) the elation of "progress," heralded by the
t
films’ reviewers, is engendered by cultural narcissism in
which empirical reality is reconstituted, idealized, and
ultimately fetishized. The point here is to illustrate
the fixity of Africa as a site of fantasies, myths, wishes
i
vis-a-vis changes in the "real" world.
Ninety percent of the patrons in a sneak preview
of The Naked Prey rated it either "excellent" or "good"
with more than 65 percent marking it "excellent. The
film, which takes the spectator into virgin "portions of
the Dark Continent"^ also does "away with the stereotype
of Africa of past motion pictures,has "natives" who
show affection for themselves despite "their incredible
? f t
cruelty to outsiders" manifested by a penchant for
bloodspbrt/violence— "part of the savagery of an
undeveloped people in Africa during the last century"^
who are nonetheless "depicted in some dimension for a
change. Savage and primitive, they certainly are, but
they are also human."3° Furthermore, we learn that "the
O 1
hunted is a man and the stalking hunters are natives"-’
and the film’s moral ultimately is that "the difficulties
57
of civilized life remain far superior to the primitive
alternatives of insulated, elemental existence. I have
chosen the preceding reviews as indices of public opinion
because the critics represent a constituency, a readership
to which they are ultimately responsible in divining which
film is good or bad. The public perception of critics as
special, different, and equipped with unique insight,
endows their opinion with a special privilege--an
"expertness
The Naked Prey, as we have seen, was generally
praised for its "revisionist" attempt, that is, a better
depiction of Africa. What the film proposes, I will
argue, is no different from the knowledge and beliefs
about Africa in cultural circulation. For the critics,
given the context of the Civil Rights and Feminist
Movements, plus the threat of the counter-culture, the
film provided a narcissistic focal point through which
surrogate images of self (and even Western society) are
projected and received. An idealized reality--changes in
the depiction of Africa— not only distances the critics
from the "true state of things" but also intensifies their
fantasies of liberation from racial prejudice or sexism.
This film, which contains protracted scenes of nudity (of
African women) met with opposition from the National
Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, not because of its
58
lascivisious fixation since the preferred spectator may
accept such nudity as "typical” of primitive life, but due
to "overtones of violence" but was later released as
"morally unobjectionable for adults."^3 Having thus been
I
t "othered" in representation, the African wbmen are thus
i marginal and as such not worthy of any moral obligation or
protection on the part of the filmmaker and the Church. I
am raising this issue due to the wide-ranging and complex
implications it raises in constructing an Afro-centric
spectatorship. For instance, Margaret Hartford, in her
review— "Prey has Savagery with a Point"— observes that:
Two Negro women demanded their money back at
the theatre attended. I found nothing
racially objectionable. Maybe they just
couldn’t take the unrestrained slaughter which
is something to be forewarned about in The
Naked Prey.^
Hartford evidently is not Black. Here racial anxieties ;
j
and the threat they embody find convenient disposal in the |
I
universal (hence morally upright) condemnation of
violence. As initially noted, filmic (un)pleasure
emanates to the extent a film rewards or does not reward
our psychic investment in its narrative progression and
eventual resolution. It is not surprising, therefore,
that The Naked Prey was withdrawn from Harlem’s Apollo
Theatre after its first showing: "The main complaint is
that the African natives are depicted as ’blood-thirsty
59
savages giving the White man a hard time."35 What
specific mechanisms in the film elicited contradictory
reactions? The film defines Africa in terms familiar to,
and congruent with, the bias of Western spectators
textually marked as white, civilized, and different. The
film, after all, is about the travails of a white
Westerner, caught in the depths of Africa, but spared by
the "natives1 1 on the condition that he negotiate "the
chance of a lion" to freedom. His freedom is
circumscribed by the Africans in close pursuit. Somehow
"our" hero survives the ordeal, with enough time to foil a
slave raid, and is eventually rescued by the colonialist
forces. The preferred spectator is thus beset with
contradictory psychic processes, which attract him/her to
the film— the emotional investment for it to end, more
especially in "our herb’s" favor— and the repulsion to the
savagery of the "Others." By refusing to present the
Africans more "roundedly," identification with them is
short-circuited to the advantage of "bur" hero— for the
preferred spectator. For instance, we see the blood
thirsty "natives" barbecue human beings while "our herb"
eats snail steak and fillet of snake out of necessity but
still retains the hygienic propriety of picking his teeth
with a thorn. The solitary Cornel Wilde character who is
endowed with overpowering intelligence appears to be
60
always pitting his brains against "the horde of natives"
and--mbre importantly— winning. Ironically, such
structures of identification for the marginalized
spectator (non-Western and different) , forced to read
against the grain, are fraudulent and elicits a different
allegiance to the under-represented— the "Others."
Inevitably, "otherness" becomes predicated on the
deployment and function of the dominant culture’s
representative within the film’s discourse.
My analysis will focus mainly on the credit
sequence which opens with a throaty Arican song, drum
beats, and the title spelled with dark (African)
silhouettes. A voice-over, against shots of wildlife,
sets the scene:
A hundred years ago Africa was a vast dark
unknown. Only a few explorers and
missionaries, the ivory hunters, and the
infamous slave raiders risked their lives on
its blood-soaked trails. Gleaming tusk was
the prize and sweating slaves sold by their
own king and chiefs in the ceaseless tribal
wars or seized as slaves. The lion and the
leopard hunted savagely among the huge herds
of game and Man, lacking the will to
understand other men, became like the beast
and their way of life was his.
The African song, a cultural signifier, marked by its
unintelligibility (hence "alien-ness") is accentuated by
the voice-over and, at the same time, rendered marginal.
The choice and use of words in the voice-over plus the
61
matter-of-fact objective (mis)interpretation of history
makes sense to the extent that it is spoken in English and
to the extent that its propositions are consonant with
dominant opinion. The possibility of an African discourse
is thus deemphasized and ultimately denied because the
film is almost entirely without dialogue. More
importantly, the threat posed by the repressed memories of
slavery is disguised and displaced "unto the environment"
in the moralistic tone of the omniscient narrator through
i
l
whose discourse the "Other" is theorized, recognized, and I
rejected. The narration introduces the enigma which the j
film must work out and also locates it in a particular !
i
I
historical context. Having thus set the stage, the onus
is on the main body of the film to prove the veracity of
the narration and to guide Man safely outside of darkness.
The Cornel Wilde character in the film is known
only as Man— a generic term for humanity from which the
Africans are excluded by deed and, in part, by the
narrative's ambiguity— "Man, lacking the will to
understand other men, became like the beast and their way
of life was his." Furthermore, Wilde seems to be put in
the position of the "African savage" being hunted down by
fellow "savages" (as in the hunt for slaves), but because
of his "whiteness" proves victorious in eluding his
pursuers. His dilemma is solved by and his difference
62
validated by the colonialists to whom he finally runs.
The credibility of the film’s discourse is hinged on
the authoritative, non-fictidnal, naturalist introduction.
It is, therefore, through the logic of the omniscient
narrator that the discourse is mobilized and articulated.
The narration thus restricts polysemy— alternate
readings— while privileging a preferred reading. The
wild footage corroborates the truth of the voice-over,
while the voice-over in turn validates the veracity of
the image, its authenticity, and its usefulness as
illustration of animal savagery. Put together, they
construct a "naturalness" which is the domain of truth.
The law/disorder dichotomy implied by the
narration is further mutated to the law of the jungle—
animals preying on one another, the rule of might— and
light of civilization. It would not be enough that such
things are implied, it must be made visible, demonstrated,
but at the same time, obscure in its political discourse.
A common technique employed here is the mixing of
"actuality" footage with fiction, all to evoke "realism."
People do not actually die in films, but an elephant shot
and carved in front of the viewers is no longer "pretend."
The entire film ultimately functions to legitimate
colonial presence and authority, because it is with the
colonialists that Man (our hero) finds protection and
63
deliverance from the "natives." Furthermore, while the
"parting courtesies" exchanged by Man and his pursuer,
! near the colonial post, could be read as a sign of mutual
respect, they do nothing to redeem Africa's
(
j inferiorization since the colonialist guns are directed
at scaring off the African and welcoming Man back into
"civilization." Similarly, Man's "innocent" relationship
i
with the African girl is problematic to the extent that in j
her Africa is simultaneously idealized (as child) and j
I
feminized. Their "friendship" thus masks a paternalistic i
attitude which furthers racial hierarchism.
While it may be unfair to single out a particular
film, it is by the same token dishonest to prop up an
obvious fraud as "new and improved" as James Powers'
review, "Cornel Wilde Pic Good Box Office Bet," attempts:
There have been so many bad pictures about
Africa, stereotyped, vacant, inaccurate, that
it is doubly difficult to make a good one.
The Naked Prey is one of the best. Wilde
presents the savagery of a primitive people,
the spontaneous, unfeeling employment of |
torture, with accuracy and acumen. Wilde does ;
not criticize these primitive ways. He is
able to demonstrate beautifully the wild grief
of the native warriors when one of their
number is slain. The contrast between this
and the innocent glee in cruelty is unstated
but implicit. It is disturbing and real.-*
Conclusion: Counterfeit. Africa
As we have seen, Hollywood's Africa was not
entirely a celluloid invention. The cultural roots of
64
Africa films are embedded in the taken-for-granted
notions, that is, dominant expectations and
presuppositions about Africa which themselves are a social
construct determined by categories of "knowledge" spawned
by its relationship with the West. The charm of Africa, |
I
i
its bewitching appeal, its mystery, is premised bn the |
I
dialectics between that which is banal— Africa is the dark
continent— and that which is inchoate: What makes Africa
tick? The mystificatibn of Africa and its subsequent
objectification as a recalcitrant entity is a subterfuge
through which the observing self (Western civilization)
effaces its ideologically determined position of
superiority. Arguably, then, the Africa film is, to a
large extent, a facsimile of the lexicography through
which Africa has been constructed in the Western
unconscious. The fear and fascination which mark Africa’s
representation in these films stem from a desire in the
West not to know Africa as is, but to translate Africa in
its own (Western) terms, for if Africa holds such
i
primitive magnetism, why do African films (films made by j
Africans) get little or no distribution (even in the "Art" !
i
theatres)? If "the people" do not want to see African I
!
films (an apologist excuse), then what cultural, j
aesthetic, and ideological motors propel them to see films j
about Africa, made in the West? j
i
i
65
Endnotes
I Onigu Otite (ed.), Themes in African Social and
j Political Thought (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension
I Publishers, 1978) , p. 15. "There were ancient, indigenous
I African universities in Africa, for example, the Al-Azhar
| University in Cairo in 972 A.D., established about 300 and
600 years before Oxford and Harvard respectively, the
University of Kairouine, established in Fez, Morocco, in
859 A.D., and the University of Sankore in Timbuctu which
flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries until the
Moroccan invasion in 1590" (p. 15). These facts in part
negate the view that Africans had no history prior to
colonization or that civilization was a Western endowment
to Africans.
2Ibid, p. 15.
3joel Kovel, White Racism: A Psychohistbry (New York:
Pantheon Books), p~ 63•
^Steen Milbury, European and African Stereotypes in
Twentieth_Century Fiction (New York: New York University
Press, T981T, p7T~
^Ibid., p. 4.
8K6vel, p. 62.
^Michael McCarthy, The Dark Continent: Africa as Seen
by Americans (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
W 3 T 7 pT15.
8Ibid., p. 35.
9Ibid, p. 25.
10Ibid., p. 49.
11
Erik Barnouw, Documentary: A History of Non-Fiction
Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 27.
12Ibid, p. 27.
^Anthony Smith, The Geopolitics of World
Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) , p. 79.
66
- i ii
Edward Said, "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies,
and Community," in Hal Foster (ed.), The Anti-Aesthetic
(Port Townsend , Washington: Bay Press^ 1983) , p"* 157.
1 ^
^Smith, p. 75. Description of Africans by Stanley
to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
^Bernth Lindfors, "Circus Africans," Journal of
American Culture 6 (Summer 1983):10.
^Kovel, p.
1 P
°John Berger, About Looking (Pantheon Books, New
York, 1980), p. 14.
^Lindfors, p. 10.
Of)
Daniel Leab, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black
Experience in Motion Pictures (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1975), p7 T7 rn— thTs—bFief exercise, I will rely on
the account given by Daniel J. Leab, first because the
film is not readily available. Second, because no
challenges have been made, that I know of, to its
accuracy.
P1
'Alfred Opubor and Adebayo Ogunbi, "Ooga Booga: The
African Image in American Films," in Robin Winks (ed.),
Other Voices, Other Views: An International Collection of
Essays from the Bicentennial (Westport', Connecticut: j
Greenwood Press , i 978 ) , p~. 364 .
p p
Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements (New
York: Marion Boyars Publishers, Inc., 1983), p. 12. J
^Ad for Trader Horn quoted in Gabriel H. Teshome, !
Images of Black People in Cinema: A Historical Overview j
(a pamphlet published by the African Activists Association j
of UCLA, 1976), p. 139.
P4
Promotional Material for Trader Horn, quoted in
Richard Maynard, Africa bn Film: The Myth and the Fact
(Rochelle Park, New Jersey: Hayden Books, 1974), p. 54.
^ H o l l y w o o d Reporter (June 16, 1965), "Naked Prey
Preview Draws High Rating," p. 3.
2^Dale Munroe, "Action A-Plenty in African
Adventure," Citizen News (March 31, 1966).
^Glenn Hawkins, "The Naked Prey is a Different
Movie,” Los Angeles HeraldExaminer (March 31, 1966).
28B6x Office, "Review" (March 14, 1966), p. 47.
^Margaret Hartford, "Prey has Savagery with Point
Los Angeles Times, Part IV (April 1, 1966), p. 23.
3°Ibid, p. 23
3"*Mandel Herbstman, Film Daily (March 11, 1966),
p. 4.
32Paily Variety (March 11, 1966), p. 3.
33Paily Variety (April 19, 1966), p. 1.
^Hartford, p. 23.
35Weekly Variety (Feb. 22, 1967), p. 13.
38James Powers, "Cornel Wilde Pic Good Box Office
Bet," Hollywood Reporter (March 11, 1966), p. 3.
68
CHAPTER IV
OF CHANGE, AFRICA, AND THE HOLLYWOOD OF THE 80s
I
j Establishing the biased misrepresentation of
I
Africa in dominant cinema, of course, will not confer upon
such an exercise any special alchemy to right the alleged
wrongs. Attacks on cine-racism will, therefore, be more
i
! useful if certain culturally indexed meanings and practices
are challenged, since ideological bias is built into
the systems and instruments of representation. This
chapter hopes to expose not only the progressive facade
of 80s cultural politics but also the economic
restraints/ideological constraints which make actual
improvement difficult. The thesis here is that ideology j
and representation are complementary processes which j
I
maintain racial hierarchies. Thus, an overview of the :
l
nature of the Hollywood industry, the burgeoning Black
middle-class in America, the emergent Third World bloc
(especially independent African nations), and '’outside"
efforts like that exerted by UNESCO will be necessary at
this juncture.
Cold Feet
A useful starting point for the purposes above is
provided by the Hayes Code— a canon of do’s and don't's
69
for the early Hollywood cinema established in response to
the public’s concern about the corruptive potential of
Hollywood films, the scintillating scandals among the
industry’s community of the time, which had been
sensationalized by the press, and the producers* reaction
to imminent government censorship. The rules laid down by
Will Hayes, an ultraconservative appointee of the MPPDA,
l
evolved into the Production Code Administration in 1933
which held sway until 1969 when it became defunct,
following the installment of the MPPDA ratings system.
These ’ ’regulatory’ ’ measures, amongst other things,
had important implications for the Black image and Africa
films. The Hayes Code, for instance, specified that no
social dr economic equality between Blacks and Whites must j
|
be shown, that Black characters in addition to addressing ;
Whites as ’’Mister’’ or "M’am’’ should be subservient and
emotionally dependent upon a White figurehead; it also
forbade love scenes between the races with the stipulation
of a tragic death as penalty for such transgressions. The
MPPDA cooperated with these codes largely out of economic '
interest, since they did not want to offend/alienate the j
majority (Whites, especially Southern Whites) nor did they
want to start a social revolution by showing Blacks what
alternatives lay beyond the essentially racialized and
limited social scope allowed. If Blacks could not be
70
shown outside certain representational categories during
that period, the fate of Africa in films is better
imagined than stated.
If the scrapping of the Production Code hoped to
encourage artistic freedom, it certainly did not— for
Africa— ensure a release from Hollywood’s storehouse of
j myths. The ratings system adopted in its stead by the
| MPAA, if anything, was more concerned with instances of
I
! obscenity, violence, and sex as indices of public
receptivity. The break-up of the studio-system in the 70s
and the industry’s subsequent "cbnglomeratization"—
i
through which films became just one aspect of business for |
I
the multi-national corporations which bought up the ’’old”
studios— shifted control to the hands of financiers, whose :
sole interests were high turnovers. As business
investments, fewer films were made and more efforts
devoted to exploiting ’’whatever sells," that is, proven
formulae, "safe" films, and fantasies. This period also
witnessed the maturity of independent film companies,
organized around unit packages of producers such as Cannon
Group, New World, Island Alive, etc. to mini-majors--
that is, modestly funded but influential/successful
companies. Even though the mini-majbrs and independents
are more likely to be innovative, open, and daring than
their "cbnglomeratized” counterparts, for Africa the j
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1
71 |
independents, it seems, have not established their j
j”independence” from naturalized expectations about the
jcontinent. The Cannon Group, for instance, produced two of
jthe films under consideration--King Solomon’s Mines and
Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. !
| i
I
Misreading Progress ,
Africa films should not just be studied as racist
! 1
I representations. In addition, a productive approach should;
.analyze these films' relationship to the society they j
emanate from, and in this particular instance, the status ^
i
of Blacks in and outside of the film industry. Although |
the 1964 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in !
employment on the basis of race, one must not mistake the !
"we’ve-come-a-long-way" syndrome for genuine racial
liberalism. An overestimation of the relaxed racial j
i
atmosphere would not only lull further initiative, but also]
i
cause belief that liberation in one area would, through a
cause-effect equation, lead to liberation in other areas. '
The racial reconciliation appears to be still premised on
unequal terms in which the Black must occupy an 1
integrationist position which makes him/her more acceptable j
i ;
(less threatening) but profers no agenda to redress the |
conditions of such positionality. |
The current status of Blacks, it seems, is not a
consciously determined position tangential to the dominant
72
culture, but an alignment to the terms of that order.
Looking at it another way, the issue is not the abdication
of racial hierarchies per se, but the simulation of
conditions which foster the acceptance and absorption
I
1 of the dominant order. Token "good images," for
example, could provide a smokescreen and further
misrepresentations since they elicit a sense of "progress."
What matters more crucially is not "change" but the nature
of change.
The burgeoning of Africa films in the 80s could,
therefore, be attributed, to a fair extent, to the
recovery and recuperation of the 60s/70s social upheavals. ,
t
Furthermore, the core audience of Hollywood films, ranging
in age from 13 to 25, is a generation for whom the Civil
Rights Movement is history, that is, to the extent that
the generation was born after the Civil Rights Act was i
passed, know about the mbvment second-hand, and more ;
importantly, take some of its fruits forgranted. In !
addition, the complacency and individualism which mark the
80s ethos also make for easier "substitution" of several
centuries of ideologically premised knowledge about Africa
into universalist and essentialist terms.
While the Africa films of the 80s flaunt their j
cosmeticized exterior, the subtext, in most instances, I
betrays their ideologically determined origins. Like j
73
their antecedents, these 80s Africa films never question
the West’s purpose in Africa, present a decontextualized
| discourse on Africa (that is, without reference to the
!
I process of its construction), and as such encourage the
i
i metamorphosis of racial and cultural differences into
I hierarchical binarisms.
i
Hollywood Shuffle (Not the Movie)
It is not surprising that Hollywood’s Others and
their sympathizers have advOcated intervention in the
prOductiOn prOcess and the amplification of a ’ ’cOunter
voice’1 to stem the tide of (mis) representation. A host Of
factOrs, however, still stand in their way. First is the
insufficiency of capital since film is an expensive
medium. The existence Of a burgeoning Black middle-class,
while commendable, should be celebrated with caution
because it carries with it a potential fOr class
discrimination and alienation which will further sequester
the Black population. Besides, the existence of a Black
middle-class cannot translate mechanistically to more
sympathetic representation, since the structure Of the
film industry is antithetical tO creativity and ’ ’radical’ ’
innovation. Notwithstanding, the break-up of the major
studios, the rise of the mini-majors, independents, and
reorganization of the distribution system— where rights
74
could be sold off to cable TV, video rental cassettes,
etc. before a film is even made— the Hollywood industry is
still governed by a commercial orthodoxy which impairs the
march of progress. Commercial orthodoxy should be
1 understood here as a deference to the institutionalized
!
racism of Hollywood, as manifested by the exclusion of
i
Blacks in key industry positions and the "unconsious bias"
influencing choice of projects, distribution, and the
players.
Symptomatic of the institutionalized racism in the
film industry is the label "Black film"— an anathema,
I
since Hollywood conventional wisdom holds that such a film
will not enjoy a "wide audience" appeal--but tolerable
only when it vulgarizes the Others’ life, like the
blaxploitation films of the early 70s. Here, the wider
audience is treated to a peep-show which temporarily
assauges a voyeuristic desire to see how the Other lives.
However, a film is not necessarily "Black" because of a
monochromatic cast, but due to the viewpoint it expresses.
Thus, The Color Purple with its essentially Black cast
escaped the label "Black" film. While the "rise" of Robert
Townsend and Spike Lee may be heralded as a new era for
Black directors, a lot more needs to be done. It is common
knowledge that Townsend’s "cross-over hit," Hollywood
Shuffle— a satire on Hollywood’s racism— was financed by
75
charges to his credit card. To cite another instance,
Spike Lee’s unapologetically Afro-centric School Daze was
denied television promotion. Mark Urman, Columbia’s vice-
president of East Coast publicity justified the
concentration of the film’s ads on print and radio ’ ’because
Lee was getting a tremendous amount of free television
exposure on Black Entertainment Television and programs
such as The Today Show.”' * A few things need to be noted
here. Black Entertainment Television is a subscription
channel out of reach for most people, especially
economically disadvantaged Blacks. Second, Lee's
appearance on The Today Show, if anything, does not relieve
the studios of any responsibilities for further promotion,
more so when such an exposure could be well-served
(augmented) by television ads.
Would a distributor pick up a film set in Africa
which by de-emphasizing the Westerner as the pivot of the
film’s narrative, eschews a consciously African
perspective? Not likely. An African filmmaker lamenting
such a predicament with specific reference to the 1987
London Film Festival noted that: ’’African films, while
they are readily received and acclaimed during the
festival, are just as readily neglected by the
distributors after the occasion.”2 By relegating the
exhibition of African films to festivals and "art-hduses"
I 76
j (for the adventurous distributor) the prospects for change
j through a cross-pollination of ideas is denied the "wider
public"— thereby ensuring their addiction to the "popular" j
I
; version of Africa. Since an alternative distribution j
! !
I network cannot be established— for the same reasons there |
i i
I is a paucity of African production money— prospects for a 1
! I
j "counter-voice" and change are stifled. Furthermore, if j
! we understand that the Hollywood industry avoids i
| !
controversy, that is, a negation dr bare-knuckle challenge
of dominant expectations/opinions, the prospects for an
I
Afro-centric perspective is nullified. It should be j
noted, however, that Hollywood does not shun controversy ;
i
i
! at all costs. What the industry wants is a controversy j
| !
j that can be managed and exploited as a resource for profit 1
I
maximization. ;
I
i
|
The Politics of Location Shooting !
All of the 80s films under inquiry were shot |
entirely or partly on location in Africa. Greystoke was !
shot in the Cameroons; Jewel of the Nile in Senegal and
Egypt, Tarzan, the Ape Man in the Seychelles; King
Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of
Gold in Zimbabwe; while Out of Africa, Sheena,
White Mischief, and The Color Purple featured Kenya. What j
circumstances, then, would put independent states in a .
77
"collaborative" position with products that largely
belittle them? The word ’’collaborative" is used here to
the extent that the respective governments issued the
permits to shoot and that dn-location shooting, here at
least, serves or is hoped to serve to authenticate dr give
legitimacy to the films’ "realisticness." It is also
essential to note that the ideology of the Africa film is
a critical feature of the disparity of pdwer between
African states, peoples, and the West— a situation which
facilitates or sustains the mechanism for the exploitation
of Africa as a resource for racist fantasies. While dn-
location shooting does not guarantee accuracy in a
I
pervasive way, it guarantees the Other’s fdreignness, |
exoticness, and position as visual fodder by exploiting J
easily identifiable terrain, wildlife, or peoples in a I
metonymic displacement for the whole of which they are j
i
part. Thus the "jungles" of the Camerodns stand for j
i
(typical) Africa in Greystoke with the title sequence
("Shot dn location in the Camerodns") as its
distinguishing mark or sign of "authoritative"
representation.
In shooting the Africa film on location, the
display of the terrain becomes just as important— nobody
lights a candle to hide it— because the picturesque vistas j
i
serve as aesthetic selling points which in their hypnotic
78
charm distract from the general artifice of the film; that
is, the film’s status as representation. But that is not
all. It is also cheaper to shoot in Third World countries.
The producers of King Solomon * s Mines, for instance , paid
i
I
j ’ ’native" extras $6 a day against the $100 Hollywood
! ?
standard, arguing that "the locals are non-unionized."0
Furthermore, the desire of the impoverished African states
to earn additional revenue through shooting licenses
compromises their position since intervention— "censoring"
a script, for instance— could scare away the much-needed
foreign-exchange. Besides, even if a government
successfully "tampered" with a script before granting
approval for its shooting, much difference might not be
made, since the finished product (film) could be different
from the script. The shooting of King Solomon's Mines in
i
Zimbabwe is illustrative of Africa's predicament— the
country cooperated with its sworn enemies in the fight
against apartheid— Israel and South Africa--ndt only to
bring the production to its territories, thereby getting
some revenues, but also to dislodge Kenya as an dn-location!
haven, while using the (hoped-for) opportunities of |
frequent production to train local crew.11 While the idea {
of "technological" transfer is good in principle, it is
also restricted by several practical factors. First, since,
shooting-time is often constrained by the production j
79
budget, the Ideal crews' learning (if any) will be
incidental because the foreign team would neither stall
j production nor lend its expensive equipment to novices just
j j
I to be nice. Technology transfer may be hindered given that
future productions may be sporadic, and the sophisticated \
I
I
cameras would be unaffordable for the host location, even j
i
if the crew learned the craft. Notwithstanding the
foregoing, there is something peculiar, given that
education is not ideologically neutral, to learn filmmaking!
from the same people whose images hold the continent
hostage; it may perpetuate a particular way of "seeing."
Shooting on location in Africa, in the final
analysis, boils down to economics. For Hollywood, it cuts
down not only the money which otherwise would be wasted in
constructing an inauthentic African set, but also the
potentials for representational blunders. Furthermore, it
creates a "dependency syndrome" on the part of the African
nations which, given their poor resources, would like to
keep this "windfall" opportunity for foreign exchange
alive, thereby nullifying to some extent the imperative for
"change." Given the opportunistic inclinations of the
Hollywood industry and the financial needs of the African
governments, further on-location shooting will inevitably
serve as a pervasive and validative mechanism for fostering
racist myths on the continent. At least, to the extent
I 80
1
J that it exacerbates the spurious and persistent confusion
| about the "true" nature of Africa.
I
i
' Other Things (Re)Considered
The 1960s witnessed a wave of newly independent
states who became members of the United Nations. Most of
these nations, which prior to independence were under the
sphere of one Western power dr another, reacted sharply to
the vaguest threat which would compromise their newly-won
freedom. Poor and technologically less sophisticated, the
; emergent Third World states were in stark contrast to their
i more "advanced” counterparts in the West. The United
j Nations’ Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
! (UNESCO) thus became an ideal platform for these newly
| independent states to discuss their positions dr roles in
! the emergent World Order. Protests and controversies soon
became a common feature at UNESCO with the most notable
being the call in 1974 for a New World Economic Order with
■ a view to attaining more equitable distribution of world
! income and the subsequent call for a New World Information
I Order.
! Proponents of the New World Information Order
directed their attack at the "Big Four” news agencies
which dominate global information services— Reuters,
Agence France-Presse (AFP), Associated Press (AP), and
the United Press International (UPI). The Soviet
news agency TASS, which generally has low credibility
and distributes its materials free (with very few
subscribers), has somehow remained on the periphery of the
debate.
These news agencies apparently defined their
spheres of operation in Africa along colonial lines.
Thus, the AFP is strong in the Franco-African nations,
while Reuters has virtual monopoly of former British
colonies. Noteworthy among the fears of the Third World
is the opinion that these agencies are extensions of
trans-national companies which, it is believed, hold
ransom their economic independence. Paris, London, and
New York, all centers of commerce for the industrial
world, are also centers for news and information.
Furthermore, Western cultural perspectivism, the African
states argue, often sensationalize incidents of military
coups, natural disasters, and corruption in neglect of
positive aspects of their contemporary history. The
Western media’s penchant for the sensational, the unusual,
and the bizarre, the agencies argue in turn, are governed
by the laws of supply and demand, sustained by their
subscribers’ attempts to capture high(er) ratings/markets.
This tyrrany of the marketplace has obvious parallels in
defining Africa’s representation in dominant cinema, since
the agencies are in business for profit and understandably j
would not forsake the profit-incentive. It should be
pointed out that while AP and Reuters are non-profit
i
cooperatives, money is still required to keep them afloat. 1
I
Another key issue among the proponents of the New Order is j
i
not just a question of image, but more pertinently, the
unbalanced flow of information (just like the system of j
distribution which effectively shuts out African films from
[
mainstream Western distribution) which determines certain
realities about the Others. i
Surprisingly, controversy at UNESCO did not just
begin with the entry of the Third World nations as
members. Earlier in its history, Britain had protested a
U.S. suggestion to invest $250 million in a global
communication project as a pretext "to blitz the world
with American ideas.These sentiments were countered
recently. According to Edmund P. Hennelly: "UNESCO is an
’African* organization in that Mr. M ’Bow, from Senegal, is
the highest-ranking African in the U.N. system and the
African states comprise a substantial portion of
membership in UNESCO."^ This statement brings into sharp
relief the ideological grid of information dissemination.
Eager to contain the growing restlessness among member
nations, UNESCO appointed a commission in 1978 headed by
former Irish Foreign Minister, Sean McBride, a Nobel and
JLeninist Peace Prize holder, to study the issue. The
!findings and recommendations of the McBride Commission
i
■provided no unanimous solutions. On January 1, 1985, the
f
;U.S. withdrew from UNESCO, taking along its contribution
I of 25 percent of the UNESCO budget and paving the way for
its allies to follow. Mr. M’Bow’s resignation from the
organization last year undercut prospects for a counter
voice .
Evidently, between the news event, its coverage,
:and subsequent transmission, several variables mitigate
;against its wholeness. Sifting through a plethora of
| information under time, economic, and environmental
|constraints, the news media essentially make choices that
i "reflect" the values of their audience and the ideologies
i
'of the dominant social power. The import of this is that
it fosters a situation through which a fabricated reality
; (the news) is employed as an "interpretive aid" by the
: preferred spectator of Africa films.
I
I
Summary
The preceding passages have one thing in common.
In one way or another they articulate the socio-political
! grid inherent in cultural production. They also
, demonstrate that (seeming) liberalization of social
j strictures based on race is not synonymous with a
mechanistic adjustment of racial positionalities. If
anything, the euphoric cries of "progress” with respec
artistic and cultural practice serve to maintain the
status quo since they essentially act to gratify the
dominant order.
85
Endnotes
^Dawn Nash, "School Daze Didn't Have It: Studio
Support Spiked,'1 Black Enterprise (May 1988), p. 39.
^Saddik Balewa, "Out of Africa," West Africa Magazine
(Dec. 7, 1987), p. 2376.
^Alan Cowell, "In Zimbabwe: A Remake of Solomon's
Mines," New York Times (April 29, 1985).
^Kaarle Nordenstrang, "UNESCO and the U.S. Actions
and Reaction," Journal of Communications (Autumn 1981):159-
^Edmund P. Henelley, "General Conference of UNESCO,"
Journal of Communications (Spring 197*0:178.
CHAPTER V
THE ILLUSION OF SYMPATHETIC REPRESENTATION
i
; In examining the progressive posturings of White
I
' Mischief and The Color Purple, an attempt will be made to
i
, examine how their ’’visions" of Africa are shaped and
mediated by their naturalized expectations. The argument
here is that the 80s version of the dark continent, as
ever, is a pretend Africa. The notion of progress negates
the ideology of dominant cinema which thrives on formulaic
repetitions. The transition inherent in the concept of
change presupposes a beginning and an end, with the
imiddle as proof of the transformation process. It is this
middle that the 80s films, hinged between a past and a
tentative future, exploit in their ambivalence. Thus,
jwhile current Africa films present a facade of change,
|they are nonetheless re-issues of anachronistic cliches--
still marked by the same ideological and economic
.imperatives.
i Indiscretions
! If White Mischief appears to be a critique of
i
i
'colonialism, it is perhaps due to its refusal to present
;an image of the moral superiority of the colonials—
usually the case in Africa films. Although the colonials
! 87
1 are depicted as morally bankrupt, the film’s emphasis on
; this bankruptcy inevitably makes it no more than a scrap
book of colonial philistinism. There is a difference
between criticizing colonialism itself— as a set of
i material relations based bn asymmetry of pdwer--and the
i colonialists as people bored, self-indulgent, and
f
i
j hopelessly licentious. By concentrating on the lives of
i the colonial jet-set, to the neglect of social relations
which support such existence, the film (albeit
unintentionally) subverts its project— bstenstibly to
query assumed Western moral superiority as justification
for colonialism. The issue at stake here is not whether
3
I or not the colonials are decadent. The film makes that
I
j abundantly clear. What would be more fruitful would be
I . . . . .
to see how the decadence was inscribed into colonial
i
I history.
j The plot of White Mischief is predicated bn a
i
I real-life crime bn January 24, 1941, in which "Josslyn
Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, high constable of Scotland and a
; prominent figure of the Kenyan social landscape, was found
| on the floor of his Buiek car on a lonely road shot dead.”^
i
j While the murder was never officially solved, fingers
pointed at Sir "Jock” Delves Broughton, husband of Diana
with whom the deceased had carried on an affair with
reckless abandon. Sir Jock was tried and acquitted, but
88
; later "took his own life, penniless and disgraced, in
| Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, in 19^2."2 Notwithstanding the
above, an article— stemming from the investigative
( journalism of James Fox (who wrote the screenplay) and
j Cyril Connolly, a Sunday Times literary critic, who was a
| classmate of the principal characters at Eton— published
in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1969, "theorized that
| Broughton had, in fact, been guilty,just as the film
i
does. There was also a BBC film in 1987, The Happy Valley,
titled after the colonial enclave in Kenya where the
incident took place, which casts shadows on Broughton*s
innocence since it was "based bn the memoirs of Juanita
| Carberry who still lives in Kenya and to whom Broughton
j allegedly confessed the following day."2* The foregoing is
i
! crucial because its narrativization in White Mischief
I — ■ ■ — ■ ■ , —
: elicits some questions about the filmmakers’ purpose.
According to one critic, ’'There is nothing more
gratifying to popular British sensibility than the
i spectacle of aristocracy disgracing itself."-* In the
i director’s opinion, the film "could only have been made in
, the 1980s because it is a very acid view. It is a kind of
anti-thesis of Out of Africa."^ The narrative structure
it seems, therefore, is based on both a voyeuristic urge
and a disavowal of it— insofar as the film purports to
abandon the ornamental sentimentalism of Out of Africa in
89
favor of a social statement. To a considerable extent,
the structure is in tandem with the views above since it
abandons the criminal investigation organization of
thrillers in favor of a satire. In doing so, morality is
not to be guaranteed by the detective bringing the
criminal (Broughton?) to justice but by the values which
"ordinary,” decent British folks hold. What the film does
not do, however, is to extend those condemnations of
immorality to the nature and practice of colonialism. Its
attack on colonial philistinism is, therefore, predicated
on a populist notion of morality and the assumed moral
superiority which the settlers represent as light bearers
of British sovereignty and the nurturant culture on the
dark continent. As such, the attack no longer derives
from shared values or the cause which colonialists stand
for but, rather, from debased libertine pursuits. To this
extent the film’s questioning of colonialism is more
veiled than profound.
The opening sequence reminds us that Britain was
at war, with the implications, following the hedonistic
frolicking of Happy Valley, that the settlers were
essentially Nero fiddling while Rome (home) was burning.
The "sources" of (financial) contributions by the British
settlers towards the war effort, based on the exploitation
of the African peoples and land, barely gets queried. The
90
film's sexual excesses, it could be argued, are therefore
a displacement of its essentially patriotic leaning into
issues which the audience can identify#with as
reprehensible with the chastening effect incorporated as a
; (re)confirmation of populist virtues— that is, the
I abstraction in which patriotism, identity, and community
i
coalesce; if this is so, the film's appeal would,
i therefore, be dependent on massaging the collective ego of
| its preferred audience— the British public and, by
: extension, other Western societies.
i
Speaking about White Mischief, Director Michael
Radford notes that: "This is a British movie, but because
I
, there's no market for British movies in Britain, we're in
the curious situation of having to find other audiences
for our products.""^ But finding a wider market also means
submission to the tyrany of the marketplace--a condition
■ which makes deviation from dominant expectations
difficult. Thus, while the wide public can accommodate
sexual licentiousness of perverted nobility--more so when
it is linked with criminality (murder)— as a means of
i
self-assurance, this attitude by the same token excludes
accommodation of what could be perceived (even vaguely) as
a threat to the perceiving self. The exclusion of an
Afro-centric voice, despite the film's radical posturings,
is a case in point.
It has been observed that the Africans in White
Mischief are not only "abstract and null"® but "until the
final frame, are dramatically invisible.Consigning the
Africans to insignificance except when they are servants
putting out pineapples for the colonialists’ target
practice, doing odd jobs, etc. severely constrains its
"progressive facade." To "demystify" the romanticism of
colonial life by exploiting abstract notions about
morality, propriety and patriotism without recourse to the
social relations it engenders must not be mistunderstood
as solidarity with Africans. My point here is not to
re-write the script, which would create a pseudo-narrative
out of one’s prejudices or bias, but to expose the
filmmakers’ "hooray for radicalism!" as a self-
congratulatory nod. My contention is that even though
Africans were essentially servants under colonialism and
the film did not "lie" by depicting them as such, it
failed to utilize the latitude offered by its disclaimer
that it "does not purport to be an accurate representation
of the events" to shatter the parameters established by
the colonialist praxis. Thus, while the film seeks to
"attack" colonialism, it does so in a context which
reduces Africa and its peoples to exotic props, thereby
sustaining the very sets of social relations its manifest
claim wishes to undermine. According to Stanley Kaufman:
: 92 ;
The closest the film comes tb a theme is in 1
its very last shot. A cocktail party is being '
held in a cemetary at a new grave, by the
request of the deceased. The camera closes in \
on a white-jacketed native [sic] boy bearing ,
a cocktail tray. He looks at the perverse ;
| revelers impassively. But especially because !
it _is the last shot, it carries portents. 0
Elsewhere, the last shot was credited with bringing to the
surface "the underlying theme of the end of the Empire."^
A few things need to be noted about this shot. First,
while it may be the last shot in the film, it certainly is
not its last word. The epilogue following it tells us that
Gilbert, the rich and somewhat eccentric farmer, later
!married Diana— despite an earlier rejection— undercutting
i
iwhatever "message" the shot of the African might suggest.
1 Second, the shot seems to arise out of the film’s need to
I
lend on a more didactic dramatic note. Thus, while the shot
I
l
could be read as an objectification of an emergent Africa,
such prospects are essentially "still-born" given the boy’s
|aphonicity, docility, and the negligible screen time such a
j"prospect" attracted. Also, while that last shot may
!suggest other films with similar endings like Lucia,
i
Rome, Open City, or The Four Hundred Blows, it lacks their
dramatic hypnotism. In The Four Hundred Blows, for
instance, the audience’s emotional identification with the
i
,boy (Antoine) has been guaranteed in part by his status as
•the centrifugal force of the narrative. Also, Lucia * s
j 93
i
ending on a little girl makes logical sense given the 1
film’s politicization of gender poles and the roles being
|
carved out for women in the emergent Cuba. With '
White Mischief the last shot seems more like a half-hearted
!mea culpa, at least to the extent that no earlier
i
' identificatory threads exist to suture the audience firmly ■
into sympathy with the boy, more so, when his actions— no
rebellious twitch, look dr so on--virtually guarantee his !
indenture to colonial servitude. He is, for instance,
assigned no different role from that of his adult
compatriots.
i
| The essential distinction of White Mischief, from
I
! other Africa films, it should be acknowledged, lies in the
;characterization of its colonial ruling class. Thus,
i while the fate of the Westerner in Africa, as in other
i
;Africa films, remains pivotal to its narrative logic, it
i
i nevertheless forays into areas previously suppressed dr
I
repressed in the typical Africa film. Thus, we are able to
see a cross-dressing scene in which the colonialists frolic
I at a dinner party, thereby testing the limits of social
'acceptability and gender/race classifications (since one of
i
the "costumes” includes African attire). Furthermore one
character, Alice de Janze, visits the morgue to pay last
respects to her deceased lover Errol; in full view of his
' other mistresses, and to the consternation of the African
guard, she masturbates, then draws her hand across the
■ deceased’s face with a perverted glee and the words, "Now
you’re mine forever." There is also a bathroom soiree
< showing a naked woman, surrounded by guests, while her
: husband casually debates about with whom she should sleep.
: This last scene has a distancing effect in that their
i
, mindless nonchalance sets the characters apart from the
| j
l "conventional" social order. As such, our relationship as 1
I
i spectators to them in this scene, and largely throughout
i
! the film given their excesses, is marked by alienation. I n ' ,
i
| a way, it seems the film is structured to "exude" the
boredom in which the inhabitants of Happy Valley are
enveloped and the emptiness of colonial life which must be
, filled with drugs, sex, and actions seemingly motivated by
' a desire to push the limits of social acceptability.
I
Of all the colonial characters, only the taciturn
|
I rancher Gilbert who thinks the Masais are "the best people
I
1 on earth" and whom the colonialists believe has "gone
: native" appears to be "real"— a feeling elicited in part
by his earthiness, in contrast to the superficiality of
his compatriots. If we agree that maintaining a distance
i
from the "natives" is necessary for distinctions based on
i racial hierarchisms, "going native" is therefore a
i
j verbalization of the cultural anxieties on which such
distinctions are anchored. The issue of identity, fed by
j fears of being like them (the native Other), thus
I
; necessitates distancing from and oppression of that Other,
i By "going native," Gilbert seems to have fallen from the
grace of Western civilization/superiority to the plane of
"primitive existence." While Gilbert appears to be the
. only sympathetic character among the settlers, his
character is not unproblematic insofar as he does not seem
j to have transcended the restrictions set by racial
■ hierarchism. For instance, he drives around with two
1 Masais armed with spears whose double functions as
i
| entourage and exotic props essentially maintain an
ideology of racial postionalities. While his "bodyguards"
could be "explained" in part by his eccentricity, he is
I nonetheless the richest of the settlers and knows that the
I cattle belong to him and not God, as his Masai herdsmen
i
think. His riches, therefore, seem to derive in part from
' exploiting the Masai. Also Gilbert’s attraction and
marriage to Diana detract from his "different-ness" since
he accepts the same object of desire as the decadent
colonialists.
; Summarily, even if we concede the "progressive"
i
intentions of White Mischief given its inscription of
moral bankruptcy into the colonial praxis, ironically
1 emphasis on that decadence silhouettes the ideological
grid through which colonialism, as a set of material
relations, operates. Furthermore, if we take into
consideration Stanley Kaufman’s suggestion that White
Mischief is essentially a ’’tale of adultery and murder
distinguished from ten thousand others only by its
setting,"^ and another opinion that "as it is, Africa
itself may prove to be the film’s most potent draw
card, ""*3 it seems like any other Africa film. Africa,
here, functions as a snare, a moral trap for hitherto
’’normal" Westerners, and as bait to exploit the preferred
spectators’ lbve-hate relationship with that continent.
Cliche Verite
The newspaper advertisement for The Color Purple
reads in part, "It is about life. It is about love. It
is about us," thus stressing a sense of communality.
Certainly the furor— especially in the Black community--
which greeted the film's release showed that the "us" of
the advertisement, in fact, is a house divided. More so,
if we note that "us" implies a "them" to which "we" cannot
belong by virtue of collective distinction. What then
could one find wrong about The Color Purple, a film by
Hollywood’s wunderkind, Steven Spielberg, who gave the
world its "best-selling" film, E.T., and based on the
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by a Black
feminist, Alice Walker? More so, when:
97
! written into the contract— a rare provision in
I Hollywood dealings— was the stipulation that half
j of the people involved in the production, apart
from the predominantly Black cast, would be Blacks,
i women, and/or people of the Third World. 4
According to Leroy Clark, a law professor at
Catholic University in Washington, D.C., "It is a
, dangerous film and a lie to history."^ From another
perspective, LeGrand Clegg notes that in the film, "Black
t
j women are servile and ignorant, with Oprah Winfrey playing
1 the clasic Aunt Jemima. White audiences love the fat,
I
| loud Black female. That is why producers produce [that
| 4 £
, caricature] with such frequency."10 Condemned by one
i
: review as "a great big cotton-pickin' vaudeville show,"^
ultimately it is Michelle Wallace’s view that delves
: deeply at the core of the contentions. According to
j Wallace:
| What is infuriating in a film like The Color
i Purple is that the shine of the coon and the
; humorlessness of the buck are given full time,
while the material conditions that produced
these responses are not depicted at all. °
Thus, while the film is a product of choices involving
; what to show and how to show it, from the novel, part of
i
| our project— which is to analyze its Africa vignette vis-
a-vis dominant expectations about the continent--would
entail examining actual passages from the book in
comparison with their cinematic manifestations, in other
words, to highlight a process or relationship not readily
"discernible" if only one or the other were treated
exclusively. It must be acknowledged that turning a
series of letters into a coherent story poses a difficult
problem— in this instance, that of codifying those words,
(especially) Celie's patois, into visual images, coherent
and intelligible to a wide audience. David Ansen puts the
"problem" this way:
How would a Dutch screenwriter, Menno Meyjes,
solve the problems of a vernacular novel
written as a series of letters--from Celie,
who addresses herself to God, and from her
sister, Nettie, who writes Celie from Africa,
where she is a missionary? '°
My argument here essentially is that in translating the
Africa of The Color Purple to the screen, the film
subverts its pretentions of progressiveness by offering a
painted-by-the-numbers Africa which panders to routinized
expectations about the continent. The issue becomes more
focused if we note that translation is neither a passive
mechanical process--since it involves choices— nor just a
matter of finding equivalents, but fundamentally that of
casting the subject of translation (Africa) in a position
in which its essential attributes are manifested as
natural, rather than as bestowals upon it. J. Hoberman
has observed, for instance, that Spielberg’s "idea of
Africa seems based on a TV commercial for Great
on
Adventure— visualized as amber waves of giraffes."
While one would prefer giraffes to savages as a point of
99
! reference for Africa, the issue is that since Nettie's
! missionary journey takes place in Olinka, an imaginary
! spot in West Africa, Spielberg's "safari pictorialism" is
I
a hoax, because giraffes and zebras are found only in East
■ Africa— a fact buttressed in part by the credit sequence
;which acknowleges a "Kenya unit." In a way, the
; acknowledgement is also potentially misleading since the
i
r
j film's "African" village was actually in Newhall,
California.^
All told, Nettie wrote her sister Celie 22 letters
I from Africa which covered nearly half of the novel. In
j these letters Alice Walker neither romanticizes nor
jdebases Africa. For instance, she talks about the
complexities of culture with honesty, questions the
missionary zeal and purpose in Africa, and even negates
| institutionalized verities about the continent. In one
|letter which reflects on her education, Nettie challenges
;her teacher, Miss Beasely's, knowledge of Africa as "a
p p
place overrun with savages who did not wear clothes.
<
jThat this particular perspective (letter) never made it to
| the screen could be (charitably) dismissed as one of the
"hazards of choices" informed by cultural perspectivism
since word-for-word translation of the novel is
: impossible. However, such charity might not be extended
I
to the observation that "Wisely Spielberg and Meyjes
100
| abbreviate Nettie’s African sojourn which accounts for the
weakest and most didactic passages in the n o v e l ."^3
The film’s Africa sequence opens with Celie
;discovering the letters by her sister Nettie, now a
j
}
imissionary in Olinka— which had been hidden by the abusive
i
i
•Mister. The voice-over (of Nettie’s letter) reads over
i
i
the filmmaker’s conjectured images of Africa, replete with
i golden—hued sunsets, giraffes, etc. It begins thus:
i
Dear Celie . . . On my first sight of the
African coast something struck in me and my
soul seemed like a large bell and I just
vibrated .... Olinka is four days march
through the bush from the harbor. Do you know
what a jungle is? Trees and trees, and then
; more trees on top of that? And big ....
; They are so big, they look like they were
! built, and vines, and animals, and noises that
make you wonder what is lurking there behind
the shadows of every bush ....
At this point an elephant crashes through the bush,
filling the screen, followed by a cut to Nettie and
some ’ ’native” children gazing delightedly at Africa’s
i
"exotic zoo" in their natural habitat. The crashing
<
!elephant is confirmatory of the dominant expectations
I
j about Africa. Its status as "evidence" of dangers
;"lurking behind the shadows of every bush" consigns the
I
shot to the realm of institutionalized expectations about
the continent. As such, the film cannot be deemed
"progressive" given that its images about Africa derive
essentially from the specific sets of expectations
I 101
i
i through which Africa as an "Other" place is objectified.
Alice Walker's Afro-centric sympathies are banished from
I
■ the screen as a quote from the book shows. It reads
i •
; m part:
I Did I mention my first sight of the African
; coast? Something struck in me, in my soul,
i Celie, like a large bell and I just vibrated.
Corinne and Samuel felt the same. And we
kneeled down right on the deck and gave thanks
to God for letting us see the land for which
j bur mothes and fathers cried--and lived and
I died— to see again. 4
From the foregoing it seems evident that the defining
I
j characteristic of the film’s Africa is very much at par
! with dominant expectations.
I
In the novel, Alice Walker mentions an Olinka rite
de passage, but what is implied in its filmic
j manifestation is very different. In this scene a young
boy and girl undergo a "strange" ritual in which the
i
native priest makes incisions on the youths' faces, in
I
full view of the townsfolk and missionaries. Culturally
jdecontextualized, since the prospect for explanation is
i
lost in the musical sound track, the scene is denied any
positive meaning or rationality. More so, when it was
i
j intercut with Celie shaving Mister in America. While
Celie*s fantasy about slashing Mister's throat as she
: shaves him may indeed be "justified" given the harsh
; oppression she endures, the youths' mutilation seems
| unprovoked. As such, the scene functions as an opaque
appendix to the narrative logic, insofar as its importance
; is "unexplained." By perverting the significance of the
ritual in the Olinka culture, the film makes it
"intelligible" chiefly in terms of the preferred
| audience’s expectation. That is, it is assigned a meaning
| in relation to that audience’s culture which, in this
! instance, will relegate it to the barbarism of a primitive
culture. Reading of the scene is aided in part by the
reaction shot of the missionary who winces in awe and
restrained horror. Thus, his reaction becomes a symbolic
jcue, a point of identification through which the scene is
!read. The net effect of the scene, therefore, undermines
I
| the value of African culture.
I
Part of Alice Walker’s project in the novel,
i albeit, is to reconcile her American self with her African
i
I
jidentity. If this is so, it must then be acknowledged
I
'that the marginalization of Ms. Walker’s Afro-centric
inclinations is not just a product of dominant
'expectations. Fundamentally it exposes the ambivalence--
jmarked by a desire to transcend the myths but regulated by
i
|the need not to "lose" the "wider audience"— which
characterize the progressiveness of 80s Africa films.
Who, for instance, does the image of the crashing elephant
belong to? My contention is that it is neither Celie’s
103'
visual realization of the letters nor Nettie’s authentic
recreation of certain incidents. Instead, it is the voice
of the enunciating agency through whose eyes we have been
somewhat "cohered" into identification. Thus, the
choice of images, for essentially an illustrative purpose,
derive not just from the idiosyncratic whims of the
translator/filmmaker, but is in deference to naturalized
myths about Africa. More so, if we understand the
accompanying images as privileged interpretation or
illustration of Nettie’s sojourn.
While the filmmaker’s problem here is intrinsic to
the translation of "Others" (Black/Africa), it is also
compounded by the need to provide easily "digestible" bits
of "Africana" for the preferred spectator. It is this
need which prompts the "repression" of the novel's
discourse on cultural identity. But since repression is
hardly total or binding, the theme pops up through the
music, editing (the cross-cutting between the puberty
ritual and Celie), and action insofar as Nettie returns
with Olivia and Sam plus the African girl, even after the
immigration authorities did not know whether they "are
American, African, or missionary." These "repressions"
are symptomatic of the cultural anxieties of the preferred
spectators whom the film appeals to and deems crucial to
its (the film's) success.
The preceding observations are not based on
, whether the filmmaker has good or bad intentions per se.
i Given the scope of the novel, such a ruling may be
[preposterous. However, "withholding" some of the more
! "troublesome" aspects of the novel undermines the film’s j
"progressive" posturings. While there is no one "true"
Africa, the film's "quandary" is the presentation of its
■ version of Africa as "realistic" as opposed to Alice
! Walker’s didactic sensibilities. Since the images appear '
I "authorless"--even though by inference we link them to the i
| "truthfulness" of specific circumstances insofar as we
know that Nettie is in Africa and that Celie is "reading"
one of those letters— their "realisticness," therefore, is
j ;
anchored by extension in the domain of causal logic. By
welding the letters to specific images about Africa, there
I is an ipso facto restriction as to the type and units of
I
knowledge those images can give. Not surprising, if we
, remember that the film has to be given points of
!
. access/identification for the benefit of the preferred
spectator whose patronage is not only essential to the
film's success, but whose opinions about the continent
need to be (re)confirmed, in part as a means of self-
j assurance/gratification.
i
In sum, there are certain presumptions in the film
i
about not only what the preferred audience knows about the
j continent, but also how crucial that knowledge is to the
! film’s pleasurable consumption. The Africa vignette of
The Color Purple, therefore, is essentially a "reflection”
of the dominant myths about the continent through which
: Africa's different customs, peoples, cultures, and
! geography are homogenized into an instantly recognizable
i whole.
r
i
r
Conclusion
As has been argued, White Mischief and The Color
Purple offer nothing new, that is, progressive, in their
: representation of Africa. It was not (co)incidental that
i
j giraffes were used to denote Olinka in The Color Purple.
; The indices of Africa myths— golden sunsets, exotic
i
wildlife, etc.— which both films exploit emanate the
"anonymous" truths about the continent for which the
l filmmakers may not be held responsible. In both instances,
| as well, taking on issues— sexism in The Color Purple and
i colonial decadence in White Mischief— presents an outer
I
shell which conceals both the essentially recidivist
viewpoints and their hypocritical fascination with
, "progressive" representation.
106
! Endnotes
Mick Brown, "Mischief in the Making," The Sunday
, Times of London (Feb. 7, 1988), sec. A, p. 9.
2Ibid., p. 9.
: 3Ibid., p. 9.
I
| ^lain Johnstone, "An Unbalanced Triangle Mars the
Colonial Circle," The Sunday Times (Feb. 7, 1988), sec. C,
p. 7.
-’Brown, p. 9.
I ^Los Angeles Herald Examiner (Feb. 16, 1988).
I 7
'Marybeth Kerrigan, "Making of White Mischief," W
i (May 4-1 1 , 1988), p. 19.
i O
°Stanley Kauffman, "Acts and Passions," The New
Republic (April 11, 1988), pp. 26-27.
j ^Johnstone, p. 7.
^Kauffman, p. 27.
11
Johnstone, p. 7.
i
^2Kauffman, p. 27.
! ^Screen International, "White Mischief" (Jan. 23,
,1988), p. 22.
! n
| Elena Featherston, "The Making of The Color
Purple," San Francisco Focus (Dec. 1985), p. 94 .
i ^ People Magazine, "People: Seeing Red Over Purple,"
(March 10, 1986)7 p. 104.
| l6Ibid, p. 104.
j 1^Brad Darrach, review in Publisher's Weekly (Jan.
'13, 1986), p. 40.
■ 1 R
| Michelle Wallace, "Blues for Mr. Spielberg,"
:Village Voice (March 18, 1986), p. 26.
^David Ansen, "We Shall Overcome," Newsweek (Dec.
30, 1985), p. 59.
Hoberman, "Color Me Purple," Village Voice (De
24, 1985), p. 76.
^George Turner, "Spielberg Makes 'All Too Human’
Story," American Cinematographer (Feb. 1986), p. 59.
^Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Pocket
Books, 1985), p. 137.
^Ansen, p. 60.
^Walker, p. 149.
CHAPTER VI
THROUGH A LENS DARKLY
It is not coincidental that in Africa films the
subjects of the White Goddess are "natives” (read,
children) over whom the goddess's maternal and divine
position is not only ideologically appropriate— given the
racial hierarchism it is predicated on--but fundamentally
natural, to the extent that it is based on a somewhat
maternal instinct, which as it were affirms her
femininity. It is thus appropriate that her sphere of
influence is distant, away from home, and does not
engender competition with "patriarchal” authority.
Ironically, affirming her femininity justifies the
intrusion of a white male "hero" to save her and, in the
process, re-establish the masculine authority her "reign"
threatens to usurp, because under the protective
supervision of the hero she is excluded from certain
characteristics, since granting her equal status would
create a conflict of authority.
But there is more. The dynamics of her
sovereignty will not only entail the displacement of the
African woman— as a nurturant being— but also involve the
projection of "impurities" which will stand as her
I 109
insignia of inferiority. Furthermore, the African male,
[ because he cannot come to the rescue of his womenfolk—
I
i that is, restore their dignity— also suffers a
’’feminization," insofar as he is "forced" to occupy the
' same position of powerlessness and inferiorization
i
I
; ascribed to women generally.
I
i While the White Goddess myth has long been
identified in films, attempts to deal with it have
generally neglected the ideological ramifications of
racial hierarchism and its cultural anxieties, but
I more crucially, such studies in the past have excluded
i
a parallel study of African femininity. The task at
i hand, therefore, is an examination of how racial/cultural
difference informs the representation of the White
! Goddess vis-a-vis her African "Other." To this end,
examples will be drawn from Greystoke, Sheena, Out of
j Africa, Tarzan of the Apes, King Solomon’s Mines,
! Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, and
i
' Jewel of the Nile. It was also necessary to cite
Trader Horn and an early film, The Loyalty of Jumbo
i
| (1914).
Fascination
A racist discourse in patriarchal society
i necessarily always includes a discourse on the
; sexuality— or rather the non-sexuality--6f
' that society’s representative woman.
| The above statement could not be more relevant to :
I understanding the representation of African feminity in
i
dominant cinema. Typically, she is assigned the status of '
i ;
: whore/witch. Her enigma, mystery, is further compounded 1
i i
by her problematic status as (1) woman and (2) a member of
i
an ideologically inferiorized race. This becomes
manifest, when we understand the Africa of dominant
cinema as the objectified site of Western cultural fears.
If that is so, the presence within this construct of a
I female similar to, but different from, the West’s
I
[representative woman (graceful, pretty, civilized, etc.),
i
, acts as a catalyst to detonate cultural anxieties--more
problematic because of the cultural taboos which impose
and define the parameters, for example, within which
i
I romance is possible. Typically in the films, the Western
j male can consort with ’’natives" but not vice versa— that
j is, "native" male/Western female.
! The construction of African femininity in dominant
cinema is, therefore, not only circumscribed, but more
I
! crucially, dependent upon her retaining a particular
I
[status: primitive woman who represents the possibility of
i
j transgressing a taboo. Concomitant with this is the
promotion— wittingly or not— of the white woman as the
apotheosis of womanhood. The inevitable effect for the
JAfrican woman would, therefore, be unconscious insertion
j of the ’’tabooed" desire, through repression and
• displacement, into the discourse on her femininity. As
, object of desire, she also poses a threat. The
! possibility of her functioning within cinematic
representation outside set parameters must, of necessity,
therefore, or at best, be marked by ambivalence.
1 According to Sandor L. Gilman,^ the African
' woman, apart from being an object of speculation and
; experimentation in the late nineteenth century, had been
j linked with disease and corruption— attributes reserved
for the Victorian prostitute. The stigmata of the
prostitute’s sexuality, believed at that time to be
| physically marked, was then projected on the Black female.
i
1 The African woman thus became a sexual object, castrating
I and possessed by atavism. Above all, she is morally
j inferior and a savage counterpart to the refined Western
i woman.3 The distancing effect of the witch/whore
J stereotype serves to deny sympathetic identification but
i also works paradoxically, because distancing intensifies
the fantasy of the narcissistic self— here, the Western
I
spectator. Thus, the African woman simultaneously
attracts and repels identification,
j A brief scene in Greystoke shows an African
| prostitute literally crawling over an oblivious White
trading-post patron. The scene in question is so brief
112
(but nevertheless there) that an editorial decision could
have excised it, without loss or harm to the narrative.
In Sheena, Zanda, an updated version of African
femininity— to the extent that she is strikingly
beautiful, Westernized— is nevertheless a whore. She
kills one husband and, instantly, pledges her sexual
allegiance to her brother-in-law. She is sadistic--wants
to throw Sheena (our heroine) off an airplane over a
waterfall— cold, conniving and lustful: a character no one ,
would normally identify with, without an implicit
compromise of the codes of decorum. In Out of Africa, we
learn that Karen’s husband kept a Black mistress. She is,
however, distanced. We do not hear her; what we know i
about her is through the voices of others. As the "other
woman" she is in a dialectical relationship to Karen for
whom the film constructs sympathetic identification. As
the "other woman," her relationship with Baron Blixen is
outside societal sanction and excluded from the categories
of legitimacy. But it should be noted that she (the
mistress) kept Blixen’s house while Karen needed a battery
of servants. So loyal to the end was she that her
attendance at the funeral, as a silent and distant
observer, if anything, reasserts the threat of sympathetic
identification. In portraying this relationship, just as
in Greystoke, we should note that the threat, embodied in
the fulfillment of desire, arises from constructing the
African woman as a problematic object of desire. In other
, words, she functions textually to allude to the
possibility of miscegenation, a transgression underlined
by the threat it poses, and as a problem to be neutralized
through her constitution as the "other” which jeopardizes
| control and social order. The status of such
1
i relationships signifies not only a form of repression but,
! ultimately, an ambivalent victory of the dark (forbidden)
i
[desire. An obvious effect of the African woman as a
I
! festishized sexual object would then be a transmutation of
i
I her "humanness" to a thingification— a dark, lusty animal.
, The affective benefits, to the racist imagination of such
(mis)representations have been succinctly articulated by
i
Maureen Blackwood:
Black female characters generally either
service the desirability of White women or
themselves function as the ultimate- but
illegitimate site of sexual desire.
If we agree with Blackwood, the need to reaffirm racial
differences produces a dubious complicity in the non-
, Western spectator to the extent that s/he is distanced
1
i from the African woman since the text invites moral
l
! adjudication and to the extent that such a spectator has
)
been arrogated to the Olympian heights created by the
racist imagination, since s/he is seeing through the eyes
of the civilized "Other.”
I 114
i Tarzan of the Apes provides wider implications for
the treatment of African femininity. Ironically, Jane’s
aggression in initiating intimacy with Tarzan is
symptomatic of the hyper-sexuality hitherto attributed to
I
, Africans. Jane’s sexual ’ ’liberation” is displayed through
the exploitation of the actress Bo Derek’s physique—
, through erotic camerawork, clothing, etc.— and borders on
I
| soft pornography. On another level, African and Tarzan
i
I are also exploited as vehicles to display Bo Derek’s
i
; sexuality. In the film, we learn that James Parker
t
!
! abandoned his wife and daughter Jane. We also learn that
! he calls his Black mistress ’’Africa,” and nearly goes
| beserk when she is missing— ostensibly captured (or could
| we say reclaimed?) by the menacing "natives” and not by
; Tarzan as he (Parker) thinks. While Parker sees nothing
. wrong with consorting with his mistress, he is
i
disconcertingly anxious about his daughter whose white,
virginal purity Tarzan threatens to violate.
It may not be incidental that Parker's mistress is
i
named Africa, if we take into consideration the tendency
‘ of colonialists to "feminize” their subjects, that is, to
! model the relationship such an exercise engenders on the
!
1 man/woman structure with the latter inferiorized and
i
1 generating the vocabulary from which the
colonizer/colonized difference is articulated. The
115
i
| projection of this difference onto Africa also carries
with it the compulsion to dominate. More so, if we
consider the hypersexuality usually attributed to
Africans. A striking instance of Africa's personification
; in Marguerite Steen's "The Sun Is my Undoing," in which
Africa is described thus: "Africa is a woman, a dark
t
devastating witch of a woman, coiling herself around you
j like a snake, making you forget everything but her burning
1 R
breasts.Africa is thus reduced essentially to sensual
primitivity. This becomes more glaring if we agree with
Hammond and Jablow's view of the African woman in colonial
i discourse: "whether drudge or sex-object, the literature
; reduces her to physical organs."^ For James Parker,
!
1 therefore, there is a perverse pleasure in designating his
I
1 mistress as metonymic representation of African
femininity. As Africa, she is the dark continent, which
he traverses at will, possesses, and controls. His
distress is thus inscribed with multiple functions: (1) as
j proof of his masculine virility, defined by aggression and
jsubjugation, (2) as a moral snare, given that Parker
I
i abdicates his parental responsibility and that Africa in
I
|dominant imagination is a hotbed of moral turpitude, and
(3) importantly, as an idealization of the continent
itself. Given the foregoing, one can theorize that
Parker's vow to catch Tarzan (whom he suspects of her
116 !
abduction) is not only to regain Africa, hence his
potency, but also to eliminate competition.
Ultimately, whether as undistinguished mass of
bare breasts— a common feature of these films— or whore,
the African woman as forbidden fruit imprisons the racist
imagination in a libidinal quicksand, from which attempts
to escape enact the exact opposite, sinking deeper into a
captive desire. Social censorship upholds both the taming i
of and stressing of such desires with the former as a
repression/containment/recuperation of the threat of
cultural alterity and the latter as its identification--a
reminder of the illegality of such relationships. Because
repression, as we know, is never total since it constantly
intrudes into the consciousness, the African woman
inevitably is desired— she incorporates both the
fascinating and the threatening capabilities hitherto ;
denied the representative Western woman. Prohibitive
social sanctions thus erect imaginary "off limits/no go"
blocks to suppress the cultural anxieties. The
internalization of the restrictive categories of race,
color, culture, etc. thus heighten the pleasures of
crossing the imaginary Rubicon of ideologically indexed
social dictates.
As whore, then, the African woman engenders a
relationship for which total identification is
; 117
i
j problematic. Such a relationship is marked by
marginality, because her status as a playmate/plaything
i
] defines the improbability of the ultimate man/woman
relationship: husband and wife. The point at issue here
, essentially is the status of African femininity as a
j construct in service of cultural chauvinism. As a whore,
! she is deprived of self-worth and imbued with an exchange
i
I value which is predicated on her ability to entertain
virulent fantasies. If as a whore she is both attractive
j and repellent, as a witch she is a testimony to the
(
] improbable identification with her.
I
i If we agree that the witch is ’’representative of
I forbidden sexuality and dark powers, it is not difficult
to see the double bind in which the African (woman) witch
j is held. The witch, like the prostitute, is generally
j considered a social deviant, an enigma whose relationship
j to most is predicated on speculations and the maintenance
! of social distance. A witch, therefore, carries along
, with her mention a disenfranchisement nurtured in part by
J her status as deviant and more by her position as that
which threatens our comprehension of her real and imagined
powers— her ’’true nature.” She is typically, then, evil
and destructive, epitomizing ’’darkness." She is thus a
i threat to our identity as human beings, since popular
I
1 knowledge about her is predicated on contradictory
i beliefs: she is both human and supernatural. It should be
j
j noted that "the witch" in feminist criticism is theorized
as an object of mysogynist representation. If we agree
that Africa is usually associated with "dark forces," that
; is, the mystical, the African witch would then be an
I objectification of all the darkness of witchcraft, plus
! the eclipsing effect often associated with her race.
In Sheena, the "witch," Shaman, has mystical
dimensions. She reads the winds by placing her thumb on
j her forehead. She is benevolent, proclaims Sheena the
j awaited Goddess, journeys to town to warn about the
impending assassination attempt, etc. Still more
j important, she is human and dies early in the film. Her
«
death short-circuits our identification with her as the
mother/teacher figure for Sheena, leaving only the
calculating Zanda, for whom identification has already
been problematized, as a foil for Sheena. As far as the
film goes, Sheena is the center of attraction. While the
|
! textual functions assigned the three leading female
| characters (i.e., Shaman, Zanda, and Sheena) emanate from
j the need in classical cinema to divide characters into
good or bad, cultural difference provides such divisions
with enough leverage for manichean machinations. Thus it
! is not enough to distinguish one from the other; they must
, function within units of meaning which are culturally
i indexed. Their status as characters which invite our
I
judgment and interpretation— an exercise created in
i response to scopic and epistemophilic stimuli— to some
I
I
1 extent both reveal and conceal their true nature as
i constructs produced in relation to a specific set of
I values. The realistic or the affective needs the
i
characters engender are essentially not attributable to
I
I truth or accuracy of the representation but more to the
; specific needs of the society (in this case, the West) to
! which the spectator belongs. Thus, for a society which
J distinguishes between black magic and white magic, credits
I sorcery and witchcraft as natural products of Africa's
!
| darkness, Shaman’s nurturant attitude toward Sheena is a
! slippage, insofar as it is an expression of the
i
"womanness" repressed in her "witchiness," particularly if
I
j we understand the ideological construction of witches as
i
j aberrations of femininity.
: King Solomon's Mines provides us with the
i
quintessential African witch. In contrast to Shaman (who
: helps "our heroine,” Sheena), Gagoola in King Solomon's
^ Mines constitutes not just a physical threat but also a
j
: metaphysical problem for "our heroes"— Allan Quatermain
!
and Jessie Huston. Gagoola*s hideous ugliness not only
functions as a distancing strategy/effect, her deformed
features, often understood as external signs of depravity,
; 120
j are in concert with popular consensus about witches, which
■
j takes such features as some kind of existential truism
about the witch. If it sounds like I am holding brief for
witches (or African witches, for that matter), I am not.
I Far from it. Belief in magic, sorcery, or whatever is an
i
I
I integral part of traditional African society. The bone of
contention with the screen version, however, is that such
beliefs have been taken out of their social/philosophical
context and fantasticated. Particularly, if we believe
i
l
1 magic to be essentially that which defies or challenges
natural/rational explanation, then it lends itself as a
i natural ally of the African mystique in the Western mind,
j Another point needs to be made here: that America, a
Christian nation, observes Halloween, an ostensibly Pagan
i
: ritual replete with witches, ghouls, ghosts, etc., says a
i
! little more about the place of witches in its system of
beliefs, of which further evidence could be found in
children's stories. But the distinguishing point about
! children's stories is that they are fairytales— which
I nobody believes for too long. So, if we consider that
! Hollywood cinema strives for representational realism,
i
Gagoola could be mistaken for a "typical" African witch by
j some spectators.
i
| In any case, our concern would be more productive
if it addressed how Gagoola and Jessie Huston are
differentiated. Gagoola1s odious feather and hide attire
are vestimentary signs which tell us about her essentially
repugnant nature. Thus, the more we know about her, the
more we are repulsed. She is, for instance, a pretender
to the throne of which Umbopo, Quatermain’s faithful
African servant, is to be restored at the end of the film.
She is as such a tyrant, whose reign is unnatural by
virtue of her usurpation of the throne and the
undemocratic practices concomitant with it. Gagoola is
blood-thirsty savagism unrestrained. Invariably, a
sadist, she even wants to feed Quatermain (our hero) to
crocodiles. If we take into account what Maureen
Blackwood has said about the role of Black women vis-a-vis
whites, it then would not be a far-fetched conclusion to
believe that Gagoola exists essentially to enhance our
identification with Jessie Huston— a natural queen, as I
will argue in the next segment and which the film
substantiates. Let us turn now to a brief examination of
the white goddess myth in Africa films.
Goddess
Trader Horn was described in the Film Incorporated
Catalogue as:
The first film to bring jungle savagery,
undiluted realism to the screen. It focuses
first on the bloody battles of the big game in
their fights for survival and second on the
j 122
attempts of Trader Alfred Horn and his two
j champions to rescue a white goddess from the
i most savage of African tribes.
I
A variant of the scenario above could be found in the
"1914 Selig Production, The Loyalty of Jumbo, in which a
number of hostile African natives are held off by a hard-
' fighting white mother, while her daughter’s pet elephant
' goes for help . . . ."9 This potentially life-threatening
{ situation understandably evokes a natural instinct--the
i
; instinct of self-preservation— which manifests itself
either through a flight or fight response. In this
instance, the courageous mother has chosen to fight back,
probably because she cannot escape. What is important
! here, however, is the danger which she is faced with and
the resolve with which she faces it'. In classical cinema,
| we tend to identify with characters who have psychological
i
depth, that is, those who have strength of character. But
in classical cinema, also, women are often fickle-minded,
| weak, and in need of a man to add meaning to their
| existence. Part of the man’s function, therefore, is to
fulfill a lack— -often providing guidance and protection.
I
i
j The known and hidden dangers attributed to Africa thus
i
l
provide a natural ally to the cavalier mentality of the
: Western male hero.
i
j With reference to The Loyalty of Jumbo, it would
i be logical enough to say that as a product of a specific
| 123
culture (Hollywood cinema), sympathetic identification
: with the mother is not only expedient, but natural. But
i
along with it, this sympathetic identification carries a
freight of cultural fears premised on the knowledge that
I
1(1) "natives" are hideous savages, and as such could kill
without compunction, and (2) the White mother is not a
"native" and as such is one of "us." If the second point
J
!sounds axiomatic, it probably is; however, the point at
|issue here is that the cultural difference authenticated
by the mother’s appearance and predicament is essentially
]at odds with the innate "essence" of the savage, whose
essence is an abstract attribute not subject to empirical
iproof but nonetheless there. Given the circumstances,
then, it could be theorized that not only womanhood,
i
mother, and all the affective attributes are under threat,
but specifically— white womanhood. The spectator’s
I
emotional ballot, while cast in sympathy with the
endangered woman, also invariably supports a system
j
'of representation in which race has ideological
i
i
| significance.
If we believe Robert Graves's thesis that the
white goddess is "at the heart of all Western myth,
i
ipoetry, and literature,"^® her function in Africa films
:cannot be said to be circumstantial. The goddess gains
the status of deity in contrast with darker "Others" who
symbolize not only impurity but the corrupting influence
of sin, evil, etc. Anxieties, then, sprout from both the
immediate and remote possibility of her besmirchment. As
Stephen Neale has observed:
Within any one text or within any one corpus
of texts, a character or character type
always assumes its identity and its meaning
insofar as it is distinguishable from other
characters and character types. It assumes
its identity and meaning insofar as it is
different, and insofar as the differences are
marked— textually— as pertinent ones. '
In King Solomon's Mines, Jessie Huston and Allan
Quatermain (our heroes) come across a ’’tribe" of Africans
who live upside down in trees. Oblivious to the racial
implications, Huston is crowned by the simians amidst
inane chatter with Quatermain speculating that, "Maybe
they've never seen a white woman before.” We have no way
of knowing whether the simians have seen a white woman or
not. In any case, what is more relevant here is the
assumption that the only one they see ex tempore deserves
to be crowned queen. More so, this beauty pageant is one
in which the repulsive Gagoola is the only contender. As
pointed out initially, several racist myths seem to be
predicated on the assumed simian attributes of Africans.
According to Quatermain, her crowning probably makes her
"a queen, priestess, or most beautiful woman they ever
saw." Quatermain's speculations— purely ideological— are
a ploy to suppress the unwieldy issues the coronation
raises. The coronation, in any event, assumes the innate
superiority of white womanhood. The mystery of the simian
Blacks has an ambiguous status, either a purely fictional
construct or an elaboration of the old Negro question:
"Are they humans or monkeys?" It is not surprising,
therefore, that the film’s callous indifference provoked
many racial sensitivities. A press statement issued by
the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch of the NAACP reads
thus:
The NAACP feels that gross misrepresentations
like the ones evoked in this movie cause
racial misunderstanding to persist throughout
the United States and the world .... It
[sic] is no more than a cheap fantasy which
exploits Black people and Black culture by
using the rich African mystique as a prop for
sterile romanticism and slapstick
adventurism.'2
I cannot agree more with the NAACP position. If the
search for her father— a motive which induces sympathetic
identification--provided the narrative jump-start for the
film, why did it not end when he was found? Given also
that they were bound for King Solomon's mines, a place of
untold fortune, why did Huston and Quatermain not give up
the perilous quest when Jessie’s tiara could have assauged
any acquisitive greed?
The sequel to King Solomon’s Mines— Allan
Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold— shows a kingdom,
j 126
i
j the Lost City of Gold, under the tutelage of a white
j goddess. Her kingdom— which has both black and white
subjects in the middle of Africa— is both a specimen of
I
"advanced" civilization and its refutation insofar as it
utilizes slave labor despite the high-tech features. The
goddess’s right and ability to rule, it appears, never
; raises any epistemological problems with the filmmakers,
| since it is taken for granted as a natural attribute, even
an ordainment. In this kingdom, she is the law. It is
J this proposition that the film reaffirms by stressing her
as the object of the spectator’s gaze. The threat such
!
; representation poses to patriarchy, since she is
; ostensibly usurping a male role, is contained by the fact
I
ithat her kingdom is far-off in a jungle, and that her
I
jsubjects essentially are natives— who are held to be no
i
better than children. Her status, as such, could be read
as a legitimation of racial hierarchism.
In any event, whether the white goddess figure is
|myth or fantasy is peripheral. As an idealized version of
ja reality, that is, the existence of women who fall within
i
ia racially exalted category, it must be said, then, that
the inevitable consequence of its continued perpetuation
is the exacerbation of cultural chauvinism.
, Sheena provides a representation of the white
!
goddess par excellence. But before we turn our attention
1 127 |
i
to the film, a few things need to be noted about its i
| origins: "Sheena was originally published in 1939 by Real
: Adventure Publishers and maintained its popularity through !
' the 1940's and 50’s.’’13 As a TV series, it had 32 |
episodes,^ the last of which was seen in 1955.^
j According to Richard Crestner:
i Sheena was born in the 1930’s in the minds of
comic strip creators S. M. Eiger and Will
| Eisner as a kind of female Tarzan: a white
orphan child raised by a tribe of natives in
Darkest Africa who becomes so thoroughly at
home with all the animals in the jungle, she
can lead them in a successful attack on
villains who want to exploit her human
friends. '6
j In her recent incarnation, Sheena is "the foxy blonde
| leader of a large tribe of spear-carrying African
! warriors. The movie’s obliviousness to the sexual and
1 7
racial implications of the story is absolute."1' Having
, established the film’s retrograde ideology, it is also
|
! worthy of note that most of the film uses Africa as a
i
i mythical backdrop for romance between Sheena and Vic
I Casey— an American television journalist who falls for
: her. My concern here is not so much with her symbolic
function, as a white goddess/queen of the jungle, but with
| how such a role was presented to the public. 1
I 1
! According to the producer, Paul Aratow, a former
Professor of Literature: "The original Sheena was a racist
and a killer of endangered species. Our character is
1 P
contemporary with the action taking place in A f r i c a . " :
First and foremost, we should recall that the dark
continent tag attached to Africa is an ideological label.
f
Second, that a real or false Africa exists according to j
the needs of the perceiving self. Third, that if we '
i
consider "reality" to be a product of culturally indexed
tenets and historical processes, Aratow’s Africa is no
more real than the ideological mouthpiece from which he
speaks. At a glance, the implications of the statement
above, attributed to the producer, is that Sheena’s Africa
is isomorphic with the cartographical entity known as
Africa and that the present Sheena is not only "new and
i
improved"— since it ostensibly is above the racist
condescension of the original--but also hip to the
politics of ecology/wildlife.
We shall now trace the brazen ploy through which
the present Sheena maintains the alleged racist tenets of
its progenitor. In an ad which appeared in BAM, under the !
title "S*H#E*E*N*A," in fine print reads this proclamation:
"She alone has the power to save Paradise."^ Well, then,
isn’t it condescending to still talk of a paradisal
Africa; more so, when its source of protection comes
exclusively from a blonde goddess? The image of the ad,
in which Sheena is foregrounded and Africa a cloudy blur
behind her, undermines any claims to "freshness" of
129 '
perspective. However, it is in the statement below that
we find more clues to the film's opportunistic
i
exploitation of contemporary social history. According to !
i
an article in U.S. Magazine: '
The real symbol of Women's Lib isn't Jane Fonda,
Betty Friedan, dr Gloria Steinem. According
to Avco Embassy Pictures, it's none other than
the legendary Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
"She was the first liberated lady," says
Avco publicity chief Ed Crane. "We feel she's
a true representation of female equality. I
mean, what other woman could swing from the
trees, beat her breasts, and chuck a spear as
well as any man?"20
Notwithstanding the sexist premise of the claims above,
they confirm the logic of the mythical white goddess who,
in all her majesty, awe, and benevolence, protects her
idyllic kindgom. It has been more than thirty years
(1955) since the last screen appearance of Sheena, yet the
Africa of its remake is couched in prescriptive and i
generic terms. A note on the rental (video) cassette
extends the following invitation: "Journey to deepest,
darkest Africa for thrills, romance, and high adventure."
In the final analysis, what we see in Sheena,
specifically with regards to relations of power, is the
reinvocation and reworking of the white goddess myth,
particularly to the extent that it reproduces, under the
aegis of paternalism, an ideologically naturalized
positionality— that of the benighted Africans in need of
(white) light to take them out of darkness.
130
. i
Anxieties i
» l
In Tarzan of the Apes, James Parker tells his
, daughter Jane that: "Any expedition on this continent is
! no place for a woman.1 1 The fate of a Westerner is often !
1 at the core of Africa films. As such, the hapless
I j
| Westerner functions as an identificatory nodal point, even j
I :
: an ideological suture, since his/her presence constitutes ;
< I
! a point of entry and avenue for stronger psychical 1
: investment in the filrr^s narrative. I used the word
i
"hapless" above because underlying the narrative of most
Africa films is a threat of harm, injury, or even
; extinction for the Westerner. More often, it is in the
irepetitious posing and resolution of these dangers that
t
i
'the film gains status as an adventure. That is, to the
|
! extent that it deals with the hidden and known dangers of
the Dark Continent--Africa.
The Westerner, insofar as s/he is a representative
1
jof a particular culture, carries with his/her presence in
iAfrica certain assumptions about his/herself (and
!
culture), coupled with inevitable conjectures about the
"Other" culture. Certain notions about the Western self
I
are then brought to bear on the "Other" culture.
Accordingly, Africa as a theatrical resource is organized
’and interpreted constantly according to the needs of the
,film and the Western ego. Thus, as an object of scrutiny
: translated from a decidedly Western vantage point,
i
, Africa’s status as a sign/symbol depends on the textual
i cum ideological functions assigned it in the film. If we
i
1 keep this in mind, we may be able to identify the points
■ at which cultural differences with all the political
i
i affiliation they engender turn into ineradicable schisms.
Regrettably, Africa films have a penchant for,
| even an insistence on, the use of outdated myths about the
' continent. In (dis)covering Africa, the process of
1 explorations/intrusions produce a blanket of free-floating
cliches which cover the continent with the idealized
j images of the inquisitor. The darkness often attributed
! to the continent, in fact, is an eclipse occasioned by
! Western cultural chauvinism. The net result is that
perceptions of the African "other,” hence cultural
alterity, leave in their wake a tide of anxieties since
j that perceived "Other" (Africa) poses a threat to the
j imagined wholeness, purity, and "specialness" of the
Westerner. A corollary effect on the Westerner would be
aggression, part defensive mechanism, part (re)assertion
i
1 of control perceived to be under threat. I have gone
1 through this at length to set up the premise of the
i
: argument below.
In fine, my argument has been that anxieties are
i
| inevitable consequences of the West's inability to deal
132
: with cultural/racial alterity. We should recall that
Hollywood cinema, in the portrayal of Indians and
I
Orientals, often skirts around the issue of miscegenation.
j
! As a recurrent theme, the threat these "others” pose to
i
, the virtues of white women serves to reaffirm the needs of
'racist imagination. The Searchers, for instance, is a
prime example of the obsessive need to keep the assumed
; purity of white femininity intact. In fact, the film
could be read as a reclamation, even search-and-destroy
mission, of tainted white femininity. With the African,
the threat is double. There is nominally the threat of
contamination (i.e., miscegenation) plus that of
jbestiality since he (the African) is often, in racist
I
fantasies, linked with simians. An example is the
j King Kong films which generally are believed to be
i racially allegorical. In any event, if we agree that
|
|racism is partly a product of perceptible epidermal
differences, then:
i
The source of the film’s racism would emerge
i as acute anxiety in the face of the
possibility of miscegenation, since
miscegenation is characterized simultaneously
' as a threat to the integrity of the family and
| as a threat to the sign of its purity— its
j white, virginal daughter.2 '
!To illustrate: escaping from the blood-thirsty Omar
:Khalifa in Jewel of the Nile, our heroes come across a
fierce desert tribe whom we are told are Nubians— a
geographical logicality, since the Nubians occupy the
Northeast portion of Africa near the Nile. However, the
! film's final credits reveal that those Nubians are in fact
I
1 the National Dance Company of Senegal--a crucial point if
we consider that Senegal is several thousand miles away
(in West Africa) and the Senegalese have different
i
' physiological features than Nubians, even though they are
j both African and Black. Two things could be theorized--
' either the filmmakers thought all savages are the same, or
| did not care, or felt that the Nubians may not be "fierce"
I
j enough. Anyway, these pseudo-Nubians of Jewel of the Nile
|
I look fierce enough to threaten the virtue of Joan Wilder
(our heroine), Jack Colton’s blonde companion.
Having been captured by these hideous natives,
I
; Joan, Jack, and their Arab companion are taken to the
village chief. Thinking they are married, the chief wants
to bless their (Joan and Jack’s) marriage. He, however,
! learns that they are unmarried and in a Solomon-like
, judgment, decides that since there is more than one suitor
i (the other being his son), that the outcome of a wrestling
i
j match between the contending parties will decide the
I
j rightful husband. Thinking the contender to be the puny
I
| "native" in front of him, Jack quickly agrees. But to our
. surprise (and anxiety), the chief’s son who later emerges
is a mountain of a human being— no more an easy match for
j 134
i
I Jack and the favored winner for Joan’s hand. In this
| scenario, the position constructed for the spectator
oscillates between identifying with the underdog (Jack)
and the poor heroine (Joan) who is to be married off to a
"native.” The savages watch with unrestrained glee, but
nonetheless are good sports, because they rejoice with
Jack who, through Joey the Arab guide’s magical
incantations, wins.
Typically in Africa films, Africa serves as a
| snare to either engender a budding romance or to threaten
1 its disintegration. The victory over these dangers, in
, effect, constitutes a libidinal payoff for the ideal
spectator, whom I have argued is invariably Western.
There is something peculiar about the Nubian scene that I
S will address. In my understanding, it serves no purpose,
i
I other than to be one of the perils "our heroes" must
i
j overcome. More so, when Joey’s knowledge (which may be
I invented by the film) is taken into account: for the
!
benefit of Jack and Joan ostensibly, and the spectator
; particularly, Joey declares that: "In this culture, the
women choose the men, and they are together for the rest
I
i
; of their life." If that is so, I am wondering whether the
i
i
denial of such rights to Joan (which could have stopped
the silly contest, anyway) is discrimination based on the
chief’s discretion or a narrative strategy to whip up
135
sympathetic identification with "our heroes." And there
is something peculiar about putting up a woman as a "spoil
of war." The same could be said for a scene in Allan
Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold in which an
exceptionally monstrous African chief asks for Jessie
Huston in exchange for Quatermain’s right to use his (the
chief’s) river.
The anxieties these situations provoke inescapably
are based on the need in the Western ego to protect "our"
women— mother and sister. Also, the need to assure the
ego that such protection is indeed feasible. A perverse
merry-go-round of sorts, then, revolves, dr rather has its
pivot, on the establishment and disarming of such threats
in a narcissistic cycle. Given the situation, then, it
would not do to assume that such protection— based on
exaggerated masculinity— is automatic; it must be
constantly threatened and reassurringly proven to be
effective. At the base of this need is an underlying,
however minimal or vague, threat of failure, the result of
which would be guilt, entropy. But since this fear is
repressed, and that repression is never absolute, it
manifests itself in obsession to control and dominate.
If the racial equation in the preceding films and
the configuration of anxieties seem clearcut, Tarzan
provides a somewhat problematic case. He is decidedly
136 ;
white but also wild, and as such an objectification of I
cultural alterity, as even he admits in Greystoke: i
: "Half of me is the Earl of Greystoke. The other half is
i |
wild . . . ." The threat posed by Tarzan, it seems to me,
I
is more from his nurture than his nature. In a way,
! Tarzan is "African" insofar as he grew up in the cultural
milieu associated with Africa in dominant Western
imagination. Given the above, substantial idealization,
therefore, becomes part of Tarzan’s "enoblement." Defined
I
1 chiefly in terms of the corporeal and the specular, he
i ‘
; functions not only as a point of Western narcissism but
I also as a site of erotic spectacle whose presence
I threatens to arrest the narrative flow. It must also be
noted here that the Western projective dynamic is not
entirely negative, since it oscillates between
vilification and idealization.
I The trading post proprietor in Greystoke frowns at
| Tarzan’s jungle vestments with the advice that: "You've
jgot to keep a sense of decorum, otherwise we will end up
:like savages." Back at the manor in Scotland, he is
!dressed in suits— much to his discomfort— and groomed.
His grooming, it seems, is a convenient displacement of
the notion of wild nobility and a purification rite for
his betrothal to Jane. Thus, while efforts are being made
to reclaim a tainted specimen of Anglo culture as "our
1 137 I
i own," Jane’s other suitor— in dress, manners, and speech—
, serves constantly to remind us (the spectators) about
I
I Tarzan’s African— ostensibly ignoble— background. While
i
1 it could be dismissed as the jealous machinations of a
I
rival suitor, the simultaneous identification and
I alienation aroused in the spectator— ultimately
1
, formularized in the civilization vs. primitivism and
j savagery vs. culture dichotomies— cannot be discounted.
1 The situation above provokes more anxieties in
! Tarzan of the Apes, which are subsumed in sex. Termed a
' "two-hour centerfold in the guise of a m o v i e " 2 3 by a
| Newsweek review, the film even drew Soviet ire. According
to the Sovetskaya Kultura, the national newspaper of the
arts, "The film delivered less than it promised, even in
i p h
j terms of hard-core pornography. Whatever the critics
thought did not stop the film from grossing $14,584,576 in 1
j ten d a y s . 25 to recapitulate: Jane, in this version of
l
| Tarzan, goes to Africa to find her father and meets with a :
| photographer, Holt, a member of her father’s expedition
I
■ party in search of a famed elephant burial ground,
believed to be worth an untold fortune in ivory. It is
particularly important to note that Tarzan does not appear
' until halfway through the film. Even at that, constant
i references to him alert us to his presence but further
i
! mystify him. There are speculations, for instance,
138
whether he is "a white ape ten foot tall" or "a white man
one hundred feet tall." Tarzan is thus introduced as a
mystery through his off-screen, blood-curdling howlings
and the speculations about his nature.
Once he is on the scene, the film becomes a
romantic escapade between Tarzan and Jane. The threat is
reinforced by a brazen willingness to be defiled and her
constant assurance: "James Parker, you are wrong. I am
still a virgin . . ." addressed to her father and, by
relay, to the spectator. At one point, Holt, having asked
Jane if she knew what Tarzan really wanted, stresses:
"This ape son-of-a-bitch wants you." It seemed, though,
that Jane wanted Tarzan more than he wanted her. Holt’s
point is an alarm to remind us about the imminent
violation of a social taboo— that of miscegenation.
Tarzan does not have negroid features, but he is darkly
tanned. Although this is obviously due to the tropical
sun, we know that in the Hollywood light and shadow
equation, the villain is invariably darker and rougher
in appearance, with the foregoing as external sign (proof)
of his villainy/moral inferiority, together with all
of the ideological dewdrops which condense around
darkness/difference. While it may be preposterous to
claim Tarzan as an African it should be noted that in
Tarzan of the Apes he does not utter a word and as such
occupies the same symbolic space as Africans. His
aphonicity not only signifies a "lack" but also withdlds
him from coming into full subjectivity— that is, if we
agree that it is through language that human beings gain
identity. As such his status as a spectacle of
masculinity poses a problem insofar as he exudes strength,
power, and authority.
In Greystoke, a band of "natives” attack an
expedition party of which Phillipe D'Argnot is— through
Tarzan’s help— the only survivor. Because the "natives”
do not communicate— out of the filmmaker’s choice since
subtitles could have been used, even if the soundtrack
were gibberish— their reason for attacking is displaced as
their innate savagism. If nothing else, the aphonicity of
Africa/Africans in these films is indicative of a
social/power structure in which Africa is inferiorized,
because it asserts the discursive authority of the Western
characters and imbues those characters with a unique
priv ilege.
Conclusion
In keeping with the ideology of positionalities,
the African woman in African films suffers an
inferiorization which posits a physical and moral
inadequacy. Her inferiorization demands a set of
j 140
relations not just capable of safeguarding the "reign" of
I
the White Goddess but also of meeting with the (dominant)
. need of the film to champion the goddess as the supreme
i
I specimen of femininity. The predicament for the African
I woman, therefore, does not just involve her status as a
i site of cultural anxieties but, given the dynamics of
, racial positionalities, a refusal by dominant cinema to
i
| establish her identity independent of its apotheosis of
j womanhood— as was seen from eight of the 80s Africa films.
Endnotes
1
Helga Greyer-Ryan, "Prefigurative Racism in Goethe's
'Iphigene Auf Tauris,' Europe and its Others, vol. 2
(Colchester, England, 1985), p. 115.
^Sandor L. Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies:
j Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in the Late
j Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature,"
: Critical Inquiry 12 (Autumn, 1985):205.
| ^Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa," Massachusetts
j Review (Winter 1978):786.
I ^Maureen Blackwood, "Stereotypes: Beyond the
! Mammies," in Charlotte Brunsdon (ed.), Film for Women
j (London: BFI Publishing, 1986).
I
1 ^Marguerite Steen, "The Sun is My Undoing" (New York,
1 1941), p. 319.
^Dorothy Hammond and Atta Jablow, The Africa that
Never Was (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc 1970) .
; ^Paul Hoch, White Hero. Black Beast (Pluto Press,
| London, 1979), p. 130.
' f t
; °Alfred Opubor and Adebayo Ogulobi, "Ooga Booga: The
| African Image in American Films," in Robin W. Winks (ed.) ,
f Other Voices, Other Views: An International
; Collection of Essays from the Bicentennial (Westport,
! Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 350.
I
^Daniel Leab, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black
Experience in Motion Pictures (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1975), p. 3.
I ^Robert Graves, "The White Goddess Myth," quoted in
i Paul Hoch, White Hero, Black Beast (London: Pluto Press,
: 1979), p . 41.
^Stephen Neale, "The Same Old Story: Stereotypes and
Difference," Screen Education (Winter 1979/80):36.
^"NAACP Chides 'Mines’; Plans Film Boycott," Daily
; Variety (Dec. 9, 1985), p. 30.
^"Columbia Pics to do Sheena of Jungle," Hollywood
Reporter (Apr. 14, 1983), p. 6.
^Martin Kent, "Aratow's Sheena to Swing onto the
Screen for Columbia," Hollywood Reporter (May 30,
1980), p. 32.
^John Wilson, "A Swarm of Superheroes Due Back in
Strength," Los Angeles Times (May 7, 1978), Calendar
Section, p. 47.
^Richard Gestner, "Sheena" (review), Motion Picture
Digest (Aug. 29, 1984), p. 18.
^Janet Maslin, "Sheena: Jungle Romance," New York
Times (August 17, 1984Tj sec. C, p. 8.
^Sidney Day, "Sheena" (review), Marquee (Aug./Sept.
1984).
19BAM (Aug. 10, 1984), p. 40 (a full page
advertisement).
2®"Sheena's Back," U.S. Magazine (Jan. 8, 1980).
21Neale, p. 34.
22"Lost in the Jungle," Newsweek (Aug. 3, 1981),
p. 51.
23"Soviets Give ’Tarzan’ a ’Nyet’ Rating," New York
Times (Sept. 19, 1981).
2^Hollywood Reporter (Aug. 6, 1981), p. 4.
143
CHAPTER VII
: THE FICTION OF IDEOLOGICAL NEUTRALITY
In tackling the discourse on Africa, this chapter
i
i contains a two-tier approach organized according to the
subtitles, Esoterica and Inscriptions. In Esoterica, the
trend of thought is premised on the belief that in Africa
[
films, Africa essentially functions to (1) define
civilization and (2) assert the superiority of Western
civilization. Notwithstanding, the 80s films contain
doubts about the supremacy of the privileged civilization
as we see in the paradisal Africa of Out of Africa,
; in Sheena’s lines of ecological protest, and Tarzan's
i
!
j return to the jungle (rejection of Scotland) in
J Greystoke. The Western post-industrial milieux thus
I provokes a fascination with the "primitive" and simple
i
i "folkways."
Another strand of argument in Esoterica derives
from Africa’s depiction as a treasure trove, open to the
i acquisitive greed of Western free-bdoters: Tarzan, the Ape
i
j Man is structured around the search for a legendary
! elephant burial ground famed, of course, for the ivory it
J contains; ivory also appears as a priceless commodity in
J Out of Africa and Greystoke; the lure of minerals spurs
| the action in Sheena, diamonds in Allan Quatermain and
I
[ treasure in Jewel of the Nile. But it is in encasing
' these treasures with danger that the films guarantee
adventure while navigating through the "savagery" of the
continent.
I
The second argument, Inscriptions, contends that
j Africa films are validative of the myths and their
j coordinates in the extra-filmic knowledge about the
I
; continent offered by the educational system and the
dominant news media from which the preferred spectator
borrows "auxiliary knowledge" about the continent to use
! in meaning construction. But since this extra-filmic
i knowledge is already contaminated by cultural
| perspectivism, its prospects for transcending the myths
i
. are impaired. Phillipe D’Argnot’s railings against
imperial science in Greystoke chip away at the
j "scientifistic" ideological mask of knowledge as value-
I
! free, because the expedition party in the film is involved
i
: in the social production of knowledge. The news media is
also implicated in their capacity for extra-filmic
! knowledge: the National Geographic is mentioned in Jewel
of the Nile, a reporter-photographer is the hero of Under
J Fire, and the herb is part of a documentary team in
^ Sheena. While the temptation may exist to call these
"intrusions" of the media self-reflexive, this would be
145
; misleading to the extent that they do not query their
j status as representations and as such underscore the
I outcries by the Third World in UNESCO about the
. international news media.
! Esoterica
I
Out of Africa’s Africa is a proscenium in which
i
I the continent is incorporated as a moral and aesthetic
i
outline through which certain discourses will be
articulated. Africa’s evocative powers--expressed in
| picturesque vistas, rich flora, and abundant wildlife—
| presented as "true" and extraordinary, for instance,
i enthrall the spectator and mask the relations of power on
! which colonialism is structured. Here the colonialist
ethos displaces its anxieties through the constitution of
j Africa as a backdrop, even an abstraction, which allows
i
f for the creation of a distance between the colonial self
I
1 and the (native) "Other." It is through this distance
that the "Other" will be controlled and dominated. The
j pleasure and anxiety involved in such an exercise is thus
' invested with alchemic powers which transmute the
i environment into an Eden. As a place of idyllic beauty--
golden sunsets, exotic wildlife, etc.— the Africa of
Out of Africa implies a spectator to whom this concept of
the continent is attractive and "interesting." It is
I 146
"interesting" insofar as the superfluous beauty of the
continent exists solely for the aesthetic delectation of
i
i the perceiving (ostensibly Western) self.
i
We see Africa through the eyes of Karen Blixen,
i and also (quite crucially) through her memories. But as
I
| memory, her Africa must be subject to some sort of loss--
f
; either through displacement or repression. More so, since
I
j she may not wish to, even cannot recall, everything with
E
| vivid or equal clarity. In the film, therefore, Karen is
! haloed with an aura of perverse majesty. Despite the
i
| turbulence of her personal life, for example, she devotes
j time to the upliftment of the "natives." In a way too,
the Africa she presents is a purgatory— a universe of
; psychological and moral tribulations, in which the
Africans are no more than exotic props with their history
hidden in the narrative cracks of the film. According to
| Vincent Canby:
I
i
Africa exists only as she perceives it— an
exotic landscape designed to test her soul.
. . . . The Africa she describes is created by
her language and we accept her vision of things--
especially of faithful, childlike Blacks who
look on her as a great white goddess.
The real Africa, photographed so
picturesquely in the movie, is more
problematical. It is haunted by all of the
, tumultuous political events that we know were
I to come in the following decades. This adds a
; certain irony that does not enrich the film as
, often as it trivializes the peculiar
! narrative.
] 147
I Invariably, the film is tainted with a hue of nostalgia.
| Dredged from the storehouse of memory, Out of Africa is an
. idealization of a turbulent past, adorned with enchanting
frills in which the "safarization" of Africa tingles the
voyeuristic urge of the Western spectator. Here, Africa
' is synonymous with "difference" and serves as a subterfuge
. which allows for the separation of the natives from their
i
i colonial history— a measure adopted, albeit to disarm the
[
; problematic intrusion of the colonialist presence.
! The colonialist presence is problematic because of
, the guilt generated in light of its nefarious activitites.
, It is problematic in another way, since its sole
| motivation derived from greed and exploitation. The trove
i
i
; of ivory we see in Out of Africa, for instance, is not
I
! only symbolic of the wealth of the land, but in a perverse
way signifies the cult of masculinity upon which the Great
^ White Hunter ethos is built. Hunting, in the colonialist
j ethos, according to Jablow and Hammond, is:
related to two major sets of values, that of
personal character and of social status.
Hunting not only demonstrated character, it
also helped to inculcate the virtues of
courage and action.
Typically in Africa films (and in colonialist
' discourse), Africa is presented as a treasure trove.
Sheena contains oblique reference to rich mineral deposits
which, when mined, will not only disturb the ecological
; 148
balance but harm the "natives" on whose property the
, deposits are found. Typically in these films, the
"natives" and the natural environment of Africa seem to be
i
1 in some kind of collusion against "innocent" Westerners.
F
i Repressed also in these films are the rights of ownership
to such wealth; simply it is there to be taken, but for
those hideous savages. Beyond the romantic cliches,
Sheena does not— for all its pretensidns--provide a
conscientious agenda to redress Africa’s exploitation.
Here the romanticism of wildlife preservation masks the
| complex relationship that exists between Africa and its
j exploiters to the extent that it abstracts the context,
i
! thereby propping up Sheena as a do-gooder heroine, poised
with little but her army of natives against the
exploiters. The danger, excitment, and adventure on which
I
the film revolves displace ultimately the promise of an
African discourse. This climate of adventure, besides
i
being a way of jeopardizing the romantic subtext between
Sheena and Casey, constitutes a structuring device
through which the spectator is drawn into the mythic
j precincts of Africa. In a way, the romance between Sheena
j and Casey and the preservation of the land are juxtaposed
t
I
| and ultimately assigned complementary status. The
i
I
; combination of romance and danger is thus passed off as a
"natural," even inevitable, part of the narrative process.
12(9 j
Thus, what the spectator identifies as pleasurable is
actually a compensation for the aborted discourse which
the exploitation of Africa has somewhat rendered
problematic.
King Solomon’s Hines makes such pretensions too.
Even though Jessie Huston sets out to meet with her
father, the film actually is transformed into a dangerous
treasure hunt. Enticed by greed, Jessie and Quartermain
set out for the mines. But their quest constructs a
position which pretends to give the spectator a privileged
access, not only to the world of adventure, but the
mysteries/dangers of Africa. If the adventure can
actually involve a series of events across which the
promise of narrative closure is written, it is imperative
then that the myths about Africa are mobilized in such a
way that they lubricate the narrative process. In King
Solomon’s Mines, the savagery of both the land and the
people present an "already-there-ness"— an innate essence,
which the quest will pry loose. There is thus an illusory
access to Africa's mysteries. Here fantasy and
anticipation appropriate the images into "realities" whose
causes are absent and whose courses seem natural. A
crucial outcome of this is the perpetuation of certain
culturally indexed "realities" about Africa. In the
meticulous detailing of their adventure, the
j 150
\
I
l ’’transparency” which such representation implies replaces
.the governing consciousness, the consistent ideology, the
i
; mythological structuring through which otherwise disparate
!
sequences constitute entertainment and achieve a ’’natural”
,look. Typically in Africa films we find mingled traces
I of:
i
exotic and fanciful accounts of physical
conditions in Africa; for the celebration of
those details would not only glorify the
achievement of the pioneers in conquest but
also, as it were, recapture some of the
mysterious charm which provoked and justified
j the adventure in the first place.3
i
; Unquestionably, the most frequent ’ ’image” of Africa
!associated with dominant discourse is that of a dark
continent fraught with danger, mystery, and immeasurable
wealth. In its filmic variant, the tendency for ’’excess”
1
I
arises, it seems, in tandem with audience expectations.
!Without an accurate index (that is, concrete evidence) of
I
| what the audience ’’wants,” intuition and the lure of
[profit relegate any concerns for a conscientious
representation to the background. The various aspects of
[the Africa myth in the public domain thus become both the
defining quality and the limiting context which determine
the narrative strategies of the Africa films. The
icomplexity of this interplay provides superficial support
i
|to the various African myths, insofar as they derive from
a common ideological origin. The ambiguity of knowledge
151
engendered in both instances inclines more to the absolute
and as such does not encourage any attempt to transcend
their mythic core. In a circuitous relay, each serves as
a referent to the other.
Ultimately, the referent is a paradisal Africa, on
the brink of civilization, which nonetheless is threatened
by the effects of civilization, as it is known in the
West. Clearly a paradox— since the film fetishizes the
Western civilization— there is a marked need for the
narrative equation to be rearranged with the
nature/civilization dichotomy tempered in such a way that
the preferred (Western) spectator can still be reassured
of the values and durability of his/her civilization but
still wave a token finger of protest at both the
exploitation and debauching of "innocent” natives. We
should note here that such emphemeral sympathies must be
constructed in such a way as not to present direct
confrontation or threaten the values of the Western
civilization. Thus Sheena, Greystoke, and Out of Africa
were able to throw in, without compromise to the West's
anteriority, a few lines of ecological protest. What is
lost on the spectator is the ulterior motive behind such
"protests"— that these pet "protests" are temporal markers
which simulate an "up-to-dateness" only as a disguise for
its essentially recidivist material.
; 152
j Thus, subject to numerous disguises,
j
jdisplacements, and refinements, the Africa myths--
inextricable from dominant ideologies— remain and manifest
themselves in the essentially perverse voyeurism of the
Western mind. According to Chinua Achebe: "The West seems
j to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of
. civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance
t
by comparing it with Africa."1* It is not so much that
i such comparison is implicit, even audacious. Regrettably,
"the various myths of Africa provide the terms of argument
: and demonstration."^
I
' Inscriptions
I
Representations of Africa, as expected, must have as
their corollary a representation of what Africa is not—
j that is, categories of expectations, truths, or knowledge
| to which Africa cannot belong. For example, the West.
! But as Chinweizu et al. have pointed out: "The mere fact
of difference does not imply superiority or even ranking
; at all.Thus, if Africa is construed to be inferior
i 7
| because it is different (from the observing culture), it
is axiomatic, then, that the categories of valuation—
based on difference— from which its assumed secondariness
springs, is extrinsic to the actual difference itself:
that is, difference as simply a mark of distinction; no
I more, no less. In other words, reasons, proofs, theories
] about Africa’s (assumed) inferiority cannot be intrinsic
to its different-ness, because as explanations, they
constitute an imposition from without. This becomes
f
I clearer if we put into account Homi Bhahba’s observation
I
; that the question of representation of difference is
inextricably linked with the problem of authority.^
Africa as an ’ ’Other" culture— inferiorized by the
assumed superiority of its Western counterpart— given the
i
| preceding premises, must then be coded in representation
| with "convenient" signs of negativity which provide points
for simultaneous identification and alienation in the
■ preferred Western spectator. It would not be enough,
| therefore, to expose these "negatives" about Africa. They
must be dramatized. What we see in Africa films, then,
are essentially dramatizations of these negativities and
, idealization of the continent.
i
i Our concern with Africa films, of course, are with
! their spurious annexation to the domain of truths/facts,
etc. By now also it must be clear that Africa films adopt
i an implicit dr even explicit "ethnographic" posture to be
I
I more realistic. Well aware of the quilt of myths through
I
| which Africa is "known" by the public at large, it seems
: to me, then, that Hollywood's intransigence is nourished
j by the milking of these myths and the assumption that the
154
i
J spectator shares its, or similar, ideological values since
r
| it is on the grounds of these similarities that s/he is
mobilized against the "Others'" barbaric excesses.
If Africa films feed off myths in the public
! domain, one may argue that the investigation of Africa
which they construct must then tell the public nothing
that they already did not know. What these Africa films
do, then, is to (re)confirm the myths. How else could
one, for example, understand the endorsement of
Trader Horn for its educational (!) value by assorted
’ groups like the California Congress of Parents and
Teachers, Daughters of the American Revolution, and
1 International Federation of Catholic Alumnae, amongst
| others. ®
How then can one understand a continent subsumed
in myths? A good part of my argument has been that the
representation of Africa, with its coordinates in extra-
filmic knowledge about the continent, has stamped that
! cartographical entity with a specific image— always one of
discomfort, surprise, awe— of which any attempt to go
; beyond would constitute a transgression. In other words,
i
i Africa could not easily be represented in dominant cinema
. outside a framework not engendered by cultural
perspectivism. To give an example, Under Fire (1983), a
film which deals with political upheaval in Latin America,
155 1
opens with a sequence in Africa, specifically designated
(by titles) as the Chad Republic. Since the film is
centered around Russell, an American photojournalist with *
a romantic attraction to war and danger, an apologist I
reading, for which we will give the benefit of the doubt,
could argue that the sequence (1) establishes Russell's
profession, (2) sets the scene for more dangers ahead, and :
(3) makes a statement; that is, makes a link between the
liberation struggle in Africa and its counterpart in Latin
America. Fine. But what is the Chadian army doing
fighting on elephant back, yet dressed in contemporary
combat fatigues?
This contradiction in representation is the
product of an ideology which sees Africa essentially in
deprivative terms. Since common sense and good military
strategy would negate the use of elephants for transport
in contemporary warfare, we must think that either the
Chadians are stupid military strategists or simply that
the elephants were included to appease dominant
expectations. Having said that, let us examine briefly
Russell's function in this brief sequence. As a
journalist, his neutrality would generally be taken for
granted. But the crucial point is that we are seeing the
Chadian conflict through his eyes. Through his Western
eyes. Through his photographs. As a photojournalist, we
156
also know that he is not shooting for a family album but
for a news agency invariably permeated with the same
ideological principles as his. Being in the "business,"
i
' he has a trained eye for what to shoot; what to shoot is
■ synonymous with arresting images, dramatic ensembles, and
1
1 sellable versions of a larger picture--that is, the war in
I
its pervasive context— bracketed by and ultimately limited
' by the camera’s technology (i.e., its finite capacities),
!
the photographer’s instinct, plus the expediencies of the
! moment. Furthermore, the photographs will be anchored
within a specific ideological context by headlines,
captions, and the report itself, which altogether
j construct a position for the reader and pretty much
| tell/suggest how to read the pictures. Significantly,
| Russell’s picture of the Chadian conflict makes it to the
t
i cover of Time magazine, thus privileging, even
i
legitimatizing, his pictorial encapsulation of the war as
, the true picture of things. In other words, how "things"
stand.
i
: The points above are especially relevant to my
| contention that extra-filmic "evidence" are points of
I reference from which the preferred (Western) spectator
' constructs the "realisticness" of Africa films. An
' example or two of this extra-filmic evidence could be
i found in the educational system and in the news media.
Consider this report from the Los Angeles Times: "In
January [1987] a survey of 5,000 high school seniors was
conducted in eight major cities. The results could not be
more depressing .... In Hartford, 48% could not name
three countries in A f r i c a . "9 The point here is not
whether they know the "right" or "wrong" things about
Africa but that, given their astounding ignorance, it
would be easier for them to mix-match fact and fancy from
Africa films. If the kids could not be blamed for what
they did not know, then an example in which what they were
taught legitimates dominant expectations about Africa
would be in order. In Dark Continent, Michael McCarthy
notes that:
Harper's School Geography attempted to survey
and classify all the nations of the world by
assigning each country to one of five
categories: savage, barbarous, half-civilized,
civilized, and enlightened .... Africa was
designated "barbarous" because it surpassed
"all the rest of the world together" in the
number of its inhabitants who deserved the
title "barbarian."
The only difference between the college
texts and the elementary works was that Africa
was presented more exhaustively for the
university audience. Social scientific
methods were introduced for the first time and
impressionistic thoughts were supported by
graphs and statistics. 0
While it's doubtful whether such teachings are paramount
today, and I am willing to concede that such elaborate
prejudice as detailed above may not be commonplace, my
i 158
i
concession is qualified. That is, the difference between
jteachings of now and then, given the ideological arteries
I they draw sustenance from, will be of degree, not of kind.
I
1 Some chance encounters from personal experience confirm
this stance.
Responding to observations about the insouciance
i with which King Solomon’s Mines depicted Africans as
; cannibals, Richard Chamberlain argued that the filmmakers
! A A
were, "definitely doing all this with tongue in cheek."1
Maybe so. But not quite. Parody exposes itself as
construct by challenging naturalized expectations. It
uses its object as a referent to establish certain tenets
which are soon "dismantled" in full view of the spectator.
It thus undercuts classic structures of identification,
thereby making the spectator more aware, even critical, of
i
! its status as representation. The point at issue is the
I
I difference between parody and adventure because
I
|King Solomon *s Mines was promoted without reservation as
I
jadventure. As adventure, it bids for closer
!identification with the characters through the generation
|
! of rising anticipations, suspense, and tension. What the
i
!film did, essentially, was to exploit suspicions (even
| beliefs) about cannibalism in Africa— the roots of which
I
igo back a long way in the West. As Jablow and Hammond
i
have noted:
159
i Cannibal stories are titillating enough to
insure increased sales of books, and few
j writers were averse to exploiting the
theme .... It is an integral part of
! fairytales and nursery rhymes and adults still
| respond with avid interest to tales of
: cannibalism, especially when presented as one
of the ’’realities” of African life. 2
i There is the rub. In adventure films, tension is not
i
j simply introduced haphazardly into the narrative; it is
j drawn out, dramatized. Inevitably, anxieties arise which
| the spectator seeks to resolve by "biting” more into the
< story. The suspense thus elicited threatens the
I
j spectator’s (assumed) position of mastery but,
| paradoxically, encourages more identification with the
: characters which the narrative process rewards with
pleasure. Thus, if we recall that extra-filmic knowledge
; is incorporated in spectatorship, the function of such
knowledge in Africa films— whether from hearsay or
Harper’s Geography— for the unsuspecting or prejudiced is
to further misunderstanding of ’’others.” By contrast an
' Afro-centric spectator, to the extent that s/he notices a
i
: marked disparity between his/her extra-filmic knowledge
1 about Africa and its representation on the screen, will
I
! undergo an identificatory dislocation, will experience
j filmic unpleasure, and ultimately cry, ’ ’Foul!”
! If we understand that, ’’Hollywood has always been
run by numbers, expecially the demographic numbers,
■ voices from the margin more often than not are considered
160
minor irritants which really do not count. But it is not
just Hollywood. The same attitude permeates the world
information order which Third World countries under the
auspices of UNESCO have, so far unsuccessfully, tried to
redress. To recapitulate, the Third World nations argue
that their "images" in the current information order are
synchronous with Western bias. Thus, the Third World
argues that sensationalist accounts— coups, famines,
natural disasters, threats to Western interests, etc.— are
more likely to get them into global headlines than
exemplary and conscientious struggles for self-
determination. This point becomes crucial because it
rhymes with Africa films, for instance, to the extent that
one civilization (the West) is employed to scrutinize
(an)other civilization--Africa. If we understand the news
as a social construct, it would not be difficult to agree
with Anthony Smith’s observation about reporting the
"Other" in which the implicit journalistic task is: "To
transpose some distant reality into the preconceptions of
his own audience/society . . . an image of reality shaped
1 H
according to their mutual needs and aspirations."'
Vic Casey and his buddy Fletcher in Sheena are
prime examples of the above. Their motivations are, in
this order (and arguably so), (1) to get an Emmy award,
(2) to get a "scoop"; the latter, in a symbiotic
relationship, guarantees the former. In The Jewel of the
Nile, Jack Colton advises his party— when "captured” by
the Nubians— to "keep smiling and they will think we are
from the National Geographic." The statement implies an
existence of trust between Nubians and the National
Geographic team. But we should not forget that
documentaries— especially of the National Geographic and
Vic Casey type— are shown on television as news. If we
agree that news is often equated with "facts," the Western
spectator, to the extent that s/he employs the extra-
filmic "evidence" constituted by such documentaries (news)
to understand Africa films, is entrapped in a swirl of
(mis)representations.
Typically, Africa films constitute their African
subjects into a group. That is, they are shown in group
and crowd scenes. They are stripped of individual
identities or character-depths which are, by contrast, the
identificatory mechanisms through which Western characters
become "heroes." Constituting Africans as a monolithic
group automatically excludes the preferred (Western)
spectator from that group, insofar as s/he does not see
him/herself as one of "them." The West is separated from
them. The separateness, then, acquires a significance
because we gain our identity in relation to others. Thus
differentiated, the films address the preferred spectator
as unique, special, different, with the us/them dialectics
symbolizing the uniqueness which is already held to be
innate— in the preferred spectator— and which more
importantly will unfold as the film unfolds. It
complements the West’s differentness— specified to some
extent by common assumptions which the spectator
translates in relation to his or herself. Crucially, too,
it flatters the Western self, since the structures of
identification are so set up that the film pretty much
becomes a reflection of one's own (preferred spectator's)
feelings.
But the preferred (Western) position constructed
downplays the processes of psychic investment, obscures
the formal structures through which what is represented
(Africa) has come to mean something for "us,” thus giving
the illusion of control. The thorny issue, however, is
that the Africans up on the screen are ”real"--as far as
flesh-and-blood living beings go— but the snag is that
these Africans, by virtue of their presence on the screen,
are represented; that is, assigned an ideologically
determined position through which they "mean” something to
"us." What prospects are there, then, for an Afro-centric
spectatorship? It is this issue that I will subsequently
address in the next chapter. But before that a
recapitulation would be in order.
j 163
i
I
i
Conclusion
One must not be misled by the "critiques" of
Western civilization in Sheena, Greystoke, and Out of
Africa since they are largely ineffectual and inevitably
serve to reconfirm, for the preferred spectator, the
values of his/her civilization. More so, since the love-
| hate relationship or fascination with Africa is predicated
i
on Western cultural anxieties. Of crucial import too is
| the fact that in the discourses on Africa, Africa does not
j speak for itself; it is spoken for (by the West). In this
i
i respect, Western viewership essentially involves a
| comparison of these (Africa) films against dominant
expectations and knowledge in the public domain about
Africa. But because the dominant expectations and the
films* proposals are more often congruent, the
possibilities of transcending such proposals are limited.
164
Endnotes
Vincent Canby, "Out of Africa, Starring Meryl
Streep,” Mew York Times (Dec. 18, 1985).
Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow, The Africa that
Never Was: Four Centuries of British Writing About Africa
(New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1970T, pi 46.
^Michael J. C. Echeruo, Joyce Cary and the Novel of
Africa (New York African Publishing Co . , 1973) , pi l " ! - !
^Chinua Achebe, "An Image of Africa,” Massachusetts
Review (Winter 1977):783.
^Echeruo, p. 5.
fi
Chinweizu, Toward the Decolonization of African
Literature, vol. 1 (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension
Publishers, 1980), p. 302.
^Homi Bhaba, "Of Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of
Colonial Discourse," October 28 (1984):130.
®Richard Maynard, Africa on Film: Myth and Reality
(Rochelle Park, New Jersey-: Hayden Books, 1974)7 p. 5~PT
^"Geographic Illiteracy Hits Close to Home," Los
Angeles Times (Mon., Nov. 30, 1987), part V, p. 6.
^McCarthy, pp. 127-128.
^ ^ Daily Variety (Feb. 22, 1985).
1 P
Hammond and Jablow, p. 95.
13Forbes (Oct. 19, 1987), p. 187.
1 2 1
Anthony Smith, The Geopolitics of Information: How
Western Culture Dominates the iJorId (New York-: Oxford
University Press-, 1980 ) , pi 24-.
CHAPTER VIII
i
| TOWARD AN AFRO-CENTRIC SPECTATORSHIP
j
The way we "see” things is not just premised on
, the ocular activity (of sighting) but more importantly it
is informed by perception which is an understanding
between empirical reality and the perceiving self. How we
i
. "see" (that is, our points-of-view) are, therefore,
predicated on certain ideas and/or beliefs. The socio-
i
, historical premise of the view(er) should not be
'discounted in spectator analysis, since the spectator--to
: the extent that s/he draws from a pool of social realities
outside and beyond the screen— is enmeshed in a web of
cultural values, bias, or prejudice. It is not
surprising, therefore, that some African nations (e.g.,
Nigeria) ban films that are considered derogatory to
;African cultures and peoples. But it is also ironic that
i some other African nations allow their territories to be
| used as big outdoor jungle sets. The specific causes for
these contradictions would involve an examination of
leach government’s policy— an exercise beyond the task at
! hand.
[
I This chapter, therefore, extends the study of
I
Africa films into an analysis of prospects for readings
i from outside the circle of preferred spectatorship. The
i
; present chapter is directed more toward raising issues,
I
I rather than making divinations. It should be advised,
I
i however, that for the ensuing inquiry, some
i
i
; generalizations may indeed be necessary, even inevitable,
! since a more exhaustive treatment through empirical
, studies (in tandem with the perspectives here) can address
the topic in the minutest details. The chapter uses
Tarzan, the Ape Man, King Solomons Mines, Out of Africa,
Sheena, and Greystoke to examine and illustrate prospects
of "reading against the grain."
Divisions
I have contended that the 80*s Africa films are
; retrograde because they are constrained by certain
| ideological principles. I have also argued that these
| films privilege a spectator position that is decidedly
^Western. In this respect, Western viewership essentially
i
I involves a comparison of these (Africa) films against
i dominant expectations about Africa. Because the dominant
I
f
i expectations and the films* proposals are more often
l
congruent, the possibilities of transcending such
proposals are limited.
Our concerns here will be the prospects of an
Afro-centric spectatorship. As an interim definition, we
167
may consider Afro-centric spectatorship as a spectatorship
position consistent with a strand of contemporary African
socio-political thought (whose sole aim is to revise the
ideological position assigned Africa or implicit in the
inferiorization and pauperization of the continent). In
other words, a viewership which seeks to denude the
imperial mythology of Africa films. The Afro-centric
spectator, therefore, would not "see" Africa films as
innocuous entertainment. Instead, the films become to
such a spectator objects of contemplation, which arouse
the need for self-affirmation. This spectatorship is not
governed, however, by a mechanistic determinism since it
could be occupied by Non-Africans. Furthermore, it is
crucial that the non-African occupy such a spectator
position not through sympathy (which is ephemeral,
condescending, and smirks of "bourgeois humanism") but by
empathy. This distinction is important because empathy is
"stronger" insofar as it involves an identification with
the African cause forged through placing one’s (non-
African) self in the shoes of the African "Other." It is
not just seeing through the light of Africa’s current
political agenda, but through a role-reversal in which the
non-African comes to fuller realization of the "Other’s"
predicament.
Central to this exchange (above) is my view that
identification and rejection are simultaneous and often
competing impulses in the African spectator of Africa
films. Thus while the ideological messages of the Africa
films could be— in some spectators--effectively disarmed,
the cumulative result is often entropic, particularly to
the extent that it generates a crisis of consciousness in
the (generic) African viewer and problematizes the
prospects of a pleasurable Afro-centric viewership.
Coming to the Africa film, then, the prospects of
a pleasurable Afro-centric spectatorship is very much
marginalized. First, Afro-centric discourse is absent dr
repressed in the film. Second, the controlling discourse
is clearly Western, thereby positioning the Afro-centric
spectator ideologically in a peculiar relationship to the
narrative. Finally, the possibility of a consciously
Afro-centric viewpoint in the film is problematicized,
even negated, since it could be perceived by the larger
audience as a "message movie"; from which, of course, they
will stay away. The Afro-centric spectator is thus in a
double jeopardy of sorts— marginalized not only in the
narrative due to the hierarchies its discourses engender
but also in the process (argument) of the narrative as a
consequence of the former.
169
In theorizing the function of racial difference in
icolonial literature, Abdul R. Jan Mohammed has made some
i
I
I interesting observations directly applicable to the Africa
I
1 films (which, I have argued, owe huge artistic debts to
colonial literature). According to Jan Mohammed, the
colonialist texts:
pit civilized societies against the barbaric
aberrations of an Other, and always end with
the elimination of the threat posed by the
Other and the legitimation of the values of
the good, civilized society.
Needless to say, the gradation or the distinction between
( the civilized and the uncivilized is ideologically
specific. If we agree that the scenario described above
has a parallel in the construction of spectator positions
i in Africa films, the inevitable effect will be the
j marginalization of a consciously Afro-centric
; spectatorship.
i For African spectators and their sympathizers, the
; positions are further problematized, just like in
colonialist fiction, because:
The relation between imperial ideology and
fiction is not unidirectional: the ideology
does not simply determine the fiction.
Rather through a process of symbiosis, the
fiction forms the ideology by articulating and
justifying the position and aims of the
colonialist.2
I Substitute "West" for "Colonialist" and nothing will be
| lost. In Africa films, therefore, the idea of an
enchanted garden, functioning within its own cultural
parameters, is anathema, since it negates the
institutionalized expectations or "realities" about the
continent. As we have previously noted, character is an
identificatory mechanism and the presence of Westerners on
whose fate the narrative configuration hinges
problematizes the prospects of an Afro-centric
spectatorship. It follows, then, that since Africa films
repress the possibility of an Afro-centric spectatorship--
by virtue of its discourse, for example--attempts at such
spectatorship must be met with resistance (within the
filmic text itself) and (dis)stress— due to unrewarded
emotional investment. Let us take the example of Tarzan,
the Ape Man which opens by extolling the beauty of Jane
Parker.
Over a dark screen we hear an extra-diegetic voice
ask, "What does she look like?" To which a reply
glorifies her caucasoid features: "Such beautiful long
blonde hair, soft pale skin like cream, and deep blue
eyes." A couple of observations on this introduction are
pertinent. My contention is that beauty, apart from being
subjective, is also culturally specific. And as such,
"deep blue eyes" as indices of beauty proposes a
problematic identification for the African spectator
insofar as it is a racialized attribute. By the same
171
i
token, it would be ridiculous to press that Jane be
i
described with "Negroid" features to meet with the African
spectator’s appeasement, since she is not African. The ;
net effect is that the point of entry is problematized for i
the African spectator. In this specific instance, the j
extra-diegetic voice, speaking from an omniscient
position— since it knows something the spectators and the
curious inquirer whose question prompted the reply do not
know— unwittingly, albeit, acts simultaneously as a point
of identification and alienation. Identification, since
it is a suturing device; alienation, since the description ;
it gives problematizes identification for some viewing
subjects. The point about the opening sequence of Tarzan,
the Ape Man is that it raises racial anxieties, at least
by accentuating the beauty that Tarzan will threaten to
defile. It will be a fallacy of generalization to argue
that every African takes umbrage at Africa films.
Resentment is likely to occur to the extent that such a
spectator is cognizant of the ideological scaffold around
which the film is constructed. The situation is further
compounded because the African spectator sees his "screen
double" as Others--since they are typically bastardized
versions of Africanness, that is, cliched generalizations
that the African spectator can recognize as likely but not
like him/her. Thus, spurious identification "relieves"
j " ’ ...... """ " 172
j such a spectator of any real-live implications or
responsibilities. Besides, the thrill of vicarious
i
• participation provides an outlet to pour out self-doubt. !
j i
| Generally, the manipulative mechanisms of films either !
i '
\ make fight difficult or debilitating. I am using
■ i
; "manipulative” first to qualify the ornamental "revisions" :
i of current Africa films and, second, the narrative
j dynamics on which films are generally premised,
j The Afro-centric spectatorship is thus pulled
simultaneously in different directions. Typically,
i
| classical film narratives— a feature of Africa films--
!
j begin with a disruption which the narrative, following a
cause/effect logic, seeks to work out. The "violence"
required to wrench emotional investment from the spectator ,
i
and establish narrative, I am arguing, constitutes a
double assault on the African spectator because (1) in
l
| addition to bearing the disruptive shock necessary for the
j establishment of the narrative, like everyone else, the
!
i film itself constitutes also a cultural assault insofar as
i s/he is ipso facto marginally positioned. (2) The process
I
of meaning production— shot selections, characters, and
* discourses--is intrinsically linked to the dominant scheme
1 of things in which his/her position is further
marginalized. Avoiding such films or leaving when
provoked is a simplistic solution— much like the ostrich
I that buries its head in the sand.
i
; The Africa film thus offers the Afro-centric
, viewer a dual mandate: (1) to act as a satellite of Euro-
; centric desire. The illusion of free-will in the
cinematic situation over the alien-ating and potentially
subversive foundation of the film's propositions. Or
(2) to adopt a laissez-faire attitude and put one's
emotional investments under the management of the
! governing consciousness which defines meanings or the
!
j invisible strings which guide the pleasure bearing
i
! mechanism. Either way, this leads to a crippling of
■ consciousness. Corrupted into acquiescence and
j pacification, what the spectator believes s/he is getting
i
i
(pleasure) is actually a Trojan horse since the film
extracts an alienation from the spectator’s culture as
payment for pleasurable experience.
Thus alienated, the (generic) African spectator is
bequeathed with a shallow worthiness predicated
! precariously on a contradictory knowledge of self: I am
f
| them/yet not like them. Drawing from this erroneous
[
I premise, the (generic) spectatorship through a spurious
identification ceases to see the film as a construct— much
like his/her western counterpart--and mistakes its
proposals for ’ ’truth”; the internalization of which will
i 174
i inhibit critical reflexes. But since the perception of
j self— as different from the screen savages--is at variance
i with the film’s propositions, internal contradictions are
: intensified because of the obsessive drive to measure up,
I
i
1 to dissociate oneself from the cauldron of darkness—
I Africa. The thrill of vicarious potency— through
i identification with the dominating ideology--and the
j incessant need to revalidate oneself, leaves the hapless
(African) viewer suspended and dangling between his newly
acquired potency/different-ness and the realities of his
i existence, repression which inevitably exacerbates
i the situation since repression is never complete or
binding.
The psychological conflict is thus predicated
between the film's proposal ("Africans are savages") and
personal knowledge ("I am African"). The acquiescent
(African) spectator typically will meet the threat of
■ disintegration with evasion/denial-~that is, stop thinking
! of self as African. The Afro-centric spectator, adopting
(
| an oppositional viewership, will be "forced" to idealize
i
: the African realities--as a defensive mechanism and means
i
I
‘ of self-assurance in the face of a cultural assault.
i
I Essentially, then, an Afro-centric spectatorship
I is a frenzied endeavor since the threat of ideological
: annexation which necessitates a simultaneous supervision
I 175
of one’s emotions also calls for the softening of defense
i
I
i to get into the film’s main arguments.
t
J Against the Grain
Typically, the dominant cinema strives for a
iclosed unified reading— that is, it strives for a
itransparency in balancing the narrative economy, so that
;ambiguities are either repressed or as much as possible
[eschewed. Since dominant cinema also denies a controlling
(consciousness, it is imperative that the narrative appears
!uncaused (self-sustaining) and that requisite elements
ipertinent to its closure are intrinsic in the film. In
other words, it discourages— through a self-effacing
balancing act— a plurality of readings. But if we
consider that the spectator is not totally under the
manipulative mechanism of the cinema apparatus, that is,
insofar as the dream machine is not a hermetic bubble,
!inevitably other realities will be employed in the
jdeciphering process. Given, therefore, that ambiguities
are routinely repressed, papered over in the narrative
process, a reading against-the-grain must take as its
I
k
I point of departure the fissures, cracks, gaps, and
i
I
(silences in the narrative.
i
A reading against the grain is possible to the
I
| extent that the spectator ’ ’smells a rat” in the narrative,
I
I
I
and also to the extent that the film's proposals are at
variance with what the spectator believes to be logical
and plausible. According to Maureen Blackwood:
Looking is never a neutral activity. When we
look at something we all have the power to
decide the nature/existence of the object of
our look. We have the power to define, to
limit the meaning of objects. As we look, we
make value judgements. Value judgements based
on our "personal" and cultural histories.^
Even though the scopic drive provokes an identificatory
process, such a proposal is neither binding nor total. It
is small wonder, therefore, that Kenyans, in whose country
Karen Blixen lived and where Out of Africa was filmed,
largely protested the film.2* In condemning the film,
Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi contended that: "The days
when Africa was regarded as a Dark Continent inhabited by
savages are long gone."^ Arguably so. Since it is taxing
and unnecessary to amplify every "silence" or ambiguity,
our concern should be centered around those whose threat
of disruption is remarkably repressed. In Out of Africa,
this would center around Karen Blixen*s love life. But
before we get to that, it may be worthy to note what a
reviewer said of the film in The Kenyan Times. According
to the reviewer:
There is not a single Kenyan who comes out
strong. They are the romanticized "houseboys,"
servants whose existence seems to be owed to
the presence of the "memsahib" and their
various masters.
j 177
j It should be recalled that Out of Africa essentially
jdetailed Karen Blixen’s romantic (mis)adventures, and as
■ such used the "exotic-ness" of Africa as a backdrop. We
I
; should also note that sexual indiscretion/licentiousness,
I hitherto an exclusive attribute of "natives" in such
movies, was a crucial part of the film. We learn, for
I
instance, that Karen was at some point infected with
i
1 syphilis.
It is also interesting that Farah, her manservant,
I
remained a "friend" to the end, as the voice-over at the
end of the film testifies. The safe "innocent"
relationship between Blixen and her majbrdomo, Farah, is
arguably a product of repressions. Throughout the film,
oblique references to the possibility of a romantic
i involvement with Farah exist. Could she have had an
I affair with him? We may not waste time debating whether
| she did or not; what is essential, however, is that such
t
> dalliance represents a threat which must be recuperated.
! Farah is endowed with a quaint dignity— which
t
j distinguishes him from the mass of Africans--but also
! inoculates the transgression of social order. His
! "castration," thus, is not so much because we cannot
! identify with him, but because his status as "Other" is
culturally coded to preclude certain possibilities. Karen
as "our heroine"--object of our identification and
i 178
I sympathy— is a study in perseverence. The ideal spectator
. is thus positioned to watch the Farah/Karen scenes with
anxiety— to the extent that Farah's quaintness is
i
'endearing and as such represents the possibility, however
i
I remote, of a discretional lapse by Karen. But since the
j film cannot keep such spectatorship in protracted
;suspense— even anxiety will turn to frustration,
I unpleasure, etc.— it also provides a pleasurable release,
^insofar as the fears were denied. The film's provenance,
I therefore , ensnares the ideal spectator insofar as anxiety
jand relief premise the viewing of the Karen/Farah scenes.
| We should also recall that as "heroine,” Karen is
.endowed with as few "damnable" qualities as possible. We
"know"— as far as the film goes--that she contracted
|
syphilis from her husband. We also know that her husand
was a philanderer. But what the film does not say is from
whom he contracted the disease to start with, since
typically a cure for venereal disease would involve
tracing and treating the (possible) chain of infection.
I
:To this there is silence. Even ominous silence. Ominous,
i
I if we consider that Baron Blixen had a Black mistress
(whose position in the social/narrative order short-
jcircuits any identification with her. By implication,
since there is insufficient evidence in the film to the
contrary and since "natives" in racist fantasies are
associated with depravity (and such things as venereal j
I
disease), the Black mistress is apparently the origin of
I
the disease. The outrage caused by these circumstances in I
the Afro-centric spectator, for instance, is predicated |
not so much on the logic the film constructs but on the
I
repudiation of African femininity which the film affirms. !
i
i
The silence the film maintains is inscribed with some
functions: (1) to conceal the "actual" circumstances of :
j
Baron Blixen’s infection which may or may not involve his ,
mistress, and (2) through this concealment to bequeath the ^
i
logic— implicit in the circumstances— the status of an
open secret. That is, common knowledge which nonetheless
is unspoken.
Elsewhere, I have argued that Afro-centric
discourse, through lack or insufficiency of tenor in the
Africa film, is often rendered inconsequential to the
i
narrative. Other times, too, the possibility of ;
i
alternative voices, mute in the narrative, constitute a 1
1
silent symphony to the ideological orchestrations of the ‘
I
films' narratives. i
I
The representation of colonial education in Out i
of Africa and in Sheena also merits attention. According j
to Walter Rodney, "Colonial schooling was education for
subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental
confusion, and the development of underdevelopment."^
I 180 !
i i
! Whether one disagrees wholly or partially with Rodney, it !
I
I could be said with sufficient strength that such education j
was ambivalent to the extent that the Eurocentric
i
' identification it promoted represented an erosion of
' African culture/institutions. In Out of Africa, we
| witness a village chief’s opposition to colonial :
i
: education. But such an opposition was trivialized and
'ultimately consigned to the status of awkwardness.
' Initially, the chief opposed Western education because it |
i
. is— by his own understanding or culture— not good for kids ;
i i
< I
| to know more than elders and later relents with the words: !
I "The British can read and what good has it done them?” '
i j
:While his resistance marks a challenge to colonial
|arrogance, its presentation robs it of any (really) I
1
significant status in the film’s narrative, since the
hierarchy of identification established by the film—
explicitly not in his favor— devalues such insight. He is
deployed in the text as an irritant to Karen’s noblesse
oblige. His objections, arguably, guarantee the
establishment of the school, since given the hierarchy of ,
identification, Karen cannot be seen to lose, much less to ;
a wizened "native” chief dressed in goatskins. More so,
we should recall that the desire governing the colonialist
enterprise was predicated on the "reformation" of the
"natives" (through the assertion of control) and the
libidinal pleasure which is nourished by fantasies of ,
i
potency. All in all, if Out of Africa presented an ]
, (
ineffectual critique of colonial education, Sheena’s j
j
taciturnity on the subject is a product of repression and j
I
displacement. j
Prince Otwani in Sheena is a compendium, even an ;
j
objectification of Walter Rodney’s worst fears. Educated l
I
in America, he is a distinguished footballer--which was j
why the American documentary team came to Tigora in the
first place--wears a baseball jacket, and in manner and
speech is virtually indistinguishable from his Western
mentors. Prince Otwani's collusion with outside forces to ;
exploit the mineral riches of the kingdom, to the j
exclusion and disenfranchisement of the "native"
inhabitants, is a reflection of his alienation, not
only from his subjects--since he is a prince— but
crucially, from his culture. Textually, he functions
to reproduce the difference and culturally coded
aberrations of the "Other," in spite of his
westernization. !
i
j
Largely African governments, in Western secular ;
i
myths, are paedocracies— a feeling emanating from the j
chaotic and brittle political structures they inherit on ;
i
independence coupled with Eurocentric prejudice which sees ■
natives as children. Sheena makes it more "apparent" to j
i 182 i
i |
j the extent that the politics of emergent Africa is I
I
j displaced in its fictional scheme as sibling rivalry. The :
I ;
. film’s suppression of the root causes of Prince Otwani’s j
| I
1 schizophrenia presents only the symptoms which are j
I ;
| i
I different from the causes, insofar as one precedes the !
i other. As a culturally coded and recognizable ’ ’other," it J
! i
< is also no accident that Prince Otwani betrays the
I
i
j "ideals" of his "civilized” mentors. These "betrayals," |
lapses if you will, reassert the difference— from his j
t j
, Western mentors— which his education and newly acquired 1
i
culture threaten to abrogate. More so, if we consider
| i
I Bhahba’s observation that: "Colonial mimicry is the desire :
! ;
t
for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a |
difference that is almost the same, but not quite.’’® This
observation accounts in large part for Prince Otwani’s
foibles. However, prospects for narcissistic j
identification by the ideal (Western) spectator--insofar
as such spectatorship sees some aspects of its
civilization in the Prince— is problematized because the
recognition effect carries with it the shock of the
peculiar, to the extent that Prince Otwani is familiar, j
I
yet (by his actions and incongruities) different. For the j
Afro-centric spectator, Prince Otwani is disruptive of
current efforts to establish an authentic African j
i
modernity— j
183
It may even be said that both the African i
elite and non-elite have now joined hands in a j
crusade against the loss Of their Africanness. \
They do not want to be regarded as counterfeit
whites or indeed counterfeit Africans.°
If anything, his newly acquired culture is incongruous ;
with the realities of his Africanness. Africanness here,
it should be noted, is not only confined to skin
pigmentation or racial traits— since Africa, including
White nationals, has several ethnic groups--but such an '
identity as signifier— a bearer of cultural meanings. j
The problem with Prince Otwanifs position is that even j
though it casts an ambivalence toward the values of i
i
Westernization, it is nevertheless a naive simplification :
of Africa's contemporary predicaments. His consignment to (
the side of the "bad guys,” for instance, assures the 1
abortion of a contemporary Afro-centric discourse, since j
i
the film is driven by the need to establish Sheena as the
centrifugal force of the narrative.
I
In a way, Sheena can be read as a wistful attempt i
i
by the West to "document" an emergent Africa. It is I
futile to the extent that Prince Otwani, as the j
documentary team's (and by proxy, the West's) object of j
t
knowledge, is a phantom African, and to the extent that ;
the team— Vic Casey and Fletcher--were preoccupied with |
i
such inanities as getting a good shot of Zanda's cleavage, ;
amassing "live action" footage, and scheming for an Emmy
184 j
Award. All told, the Africa they sought to present was an ■
Africa of military coups and political turbulence; which 1
i
I
is tantamount to reinforcing secularized expectations of
1
contemporary Africa in the West— in effect, "documenting" j
(interpreting) Africa in the terms with which the West is J
familiar. In the final analysis, Prince Otwani*s textual j
I
function is predicated on his status as an idealized image j
of modern Africa. A status marked by the contradictory j
rhythms of progression and regression, but which should
come as no surprise if we put into consideration that,
"The discourse of mimicry is constructed around an
ambivalence: in order to be effective, mimicry must
}
continually produce its slippage, its excess, its j
difference.*'^ j
Overall, the psychic burden of reading against the
i
grain, for the Afro-centric spectator, involves the |
continuous assertion of self, where that particular self
position has either been marginalized or excluded from the
pleasure of the narrative. The disorienting embroidered
facade of current Africa films— insofar as the ideological i
i
face is reconstructed, even masked--does not make things :
easier, since it essentially provides cover for the ;
disarmament of criticism. Susan Dworkin, writing on
i
Greystoke, observes that: "This Tarzan film manages not to ;
be racist in its view of the human inhabitants of the
| 185
I . 11
j jungle.” 11 This viewpoint is instructive of the
I
I
j revisionist pretensions of the current Africa films. It i
I i
; I
j should be noted that racism in its raw, unrefined j
■ 1 i
j manifestation is unlikely— given the ’’progress” of the
years--to be expressed baldly. What the films do, then, isi
to generate a link between its discourses and naturalized
I
j expectations about Africa, and nudge the ideal spectator
towards the employment of expectations in an advisory
I
l
status to fill in the blank spaces— its silences. j
i
Conclusion
The preceding chapter was concerned with the ;
|
j preferred spectatorship position and its relationship to j
j an Afro-centric spectatorship. The chapter also noted |
that an Afro-centric viewership is neither restricted nor I
t
intrinsic to Africans since it could be occupied by ]
anybody; and also that readings ’’against the grain” are |
i
possible with Africa films given that Afro-centrism is not
deterministic. ;
A finer distinction needs also to be made between j
the erstwhile viewership and the generic African |
jspectator— defined here as one with inert consciousness . |
: The inert African is so because of certain economic and j
i socio-political factors under which critical reflection or j
awareness is inhibited by ’ ’ignorance.” Ignorance, it must :
be stated here, has nothing to do with quantifying
knowledge. Instead, it is a function of one’s ability
master and transform the ’ ’realities” of the Africa
myths/films. The ’ ’inertness" mentioned above is not a
i
j fixed, deterministic position since people can be
”sensitized.”
187 i
i
Endnotes
Abdul R. Jan-Mohamed, Manichean Aesthetics; The
Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa TAmherst: The
University of Massachusetts Press, 1983), p. 72.
2Ibid, p. 83.
^Maureen Blackwood, "Stereotypes: Beyond the
’Mammies,’" in Charlotte Brunsdon (ed.), Film for Women
(London: BFI Publishing, 1986).
^Los Angeles Herald Examiner, "Kenyans Keep Away from
Film" (“Feb. 21, 1986V. "
^African Concord, "Film Condemned" (Apr. 17, 1986),
p. 30.
6Ibid, p. 30.
"^Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
; (London: Bogle-L ’ Ouverture Publications, 1976)", p. 2T>4.
®Hami Bhahba, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of
Colonial Discourse," October, p. 126.
^Onigu Otite, "Introduction: The Study of Social
Thought in Africa," in Onigu Otite (ed.), Themes in
African Social and Political Thought (Enugu, Nigeria:
Fourth Dimension Publishers, 197$), p. 12.
^^Bhahba, p. 126.
^Susan Dworkin, "Of Mice, and Men, and Mermaids," Ms.
(July 1984), p. 45.
I CONCLUSION
j The concern of this project has been to
: investigate the sbmewhat mutually reinforcing relationship
i
I between Africa films and certain Western myths about the
i continent, in view of the commonly held notions about
"changes" toward racial liberalization. Even though
change is a complicated process— and as such difficult to
measure with pinpoint accuracy— the study found that
Africa is still constructed by the films in ways pervious,
soothing, and consonant with the West’s notion of self.
While the ideological orientations of the films have not
changed, the study finds a shift in emphasis from outright
villification of the continent— as was the case in earlier
films--to a romantic flirtation with the continent
resulting in idealization.
While the films cannot be dismissed as blatant
racist tracts, they nevertheless further the promotion of
racial hierarchies. By giving its preferred spectators
views about Africa consonant with dominant expectations,
the discursive strategies of Africa films permit such
spectatorship to make certain inferences about the African
culture which may even outstrip the films’ manifest
,racism— since for the film to have meaning for the
|preferred spectator, such viewership must be able to
189
identify the cultural significances of the films’
discourses. The various ’ ’meanings" ascribed to Africa in !
jthese films are, therefore, somewhat defined by what is
'"public knowledge" about the continent and the
*
'combinatorial liberty exercised by the respective films to ,
I
I
(borrow from such a corpus of "knowledge" in defining the
i
continent from a narrative standpoint.
I . . . I
] Furthermore, even though progressive notions have j
■made people more aware of racism, the political and
jeconomic variables which shape Western social history
detract from the possibility of any radical |
representational perspective— for instance, giving !
Africans active roles in the films’ discourses. Also, !
I
given the "realistic" representational conventions of j
i
Hollywood cinema and the Africa films' refusal tb give j
tenor to Afro-centric discourses, opportunities for !
j
questioning several issues through an examination of
Western cultural practices are forfeited. Silencing |
Africa, so to speak, guarantees (1) its continued !
inferiorization, insofar as the discourses around it are |
controlled by the Western others, and (2) mystification of '
the continent, insofar as certain things about it which *
i
could be expressed following the extension of discursive j
authority to Africans are restrained, thus gratifying the j
i
affective needs of the preferred spectatorship.
190
Racial liberalization and Africa’s efforts toward j
i
development, it seems, have not been enough in deterring |
I
Africa’s inferiorization, in part because as Africans j
I
strive toward "civilization,” it becomes necessary to '
i
establish new standards not just for the distinction !
w (
i
"us/them,” but to preserve or assure the superiority of I
i
the Western (observant) civilization. Thus, when the
Africa film distinguishes between ”us” and "them,” it
becomes incumbent bn it to incorporate in< its narrative
dynamics the essential principles through which the
cultures are to be differentiated. Furthermore, since
"progress" under the prevailing circumstances entails
acquiescence to the dominant order, substantial
idealization of the African is inevitable because such
"progress" presupposes a hierarchy through which one is
differentiated from another and from which "civilization"
would be conferred upon another. The idealization of
Africa thus involves endowing it with a charming
quaintness which functions solely to gratify the
narcissistic obsessions of the observant (Western) ,
i
cultures. j
To the extent that these Africa films originated j
from and are defined by Western myths about the continent j
in the public domain, prospects for profound revisions are j
minimal insofar as they would involve re-educating the |
public and repudiating certain "naturalized" truths
j about Africa. A change in the depiction of Africa in
I dominant cinema, therefore, would be said to have occurred
when there is a marked disjunction between dominant
I
! expectations about the continent and its cinematic
t
I representations. The changes likely to occur in
I
i representation of Africa may involve (1) more
sophisticated strategies to conceal essentially recidivist
materials, and (2) the "creation" of other modes of
differentiation necessary for the us/them dichotomy. More
than anything, it would involve the symbolic denotation of
Africa’s inferiority through the use of cues and cultural
indices which signal the difference between the preferred
(Western) spectator and the marginalized African "Other."
It should be noted that such "changes" would necessarily
be reflections of differences in the supply and demand
conditions affecting the success of the films and not the
result of altruistic intentions,
i Finally, this study counts historical specificity-
which spurned certain "realities" about Africa--as a big
i factor in the mythicization and inferiorization of the
|
| continent. Other defining principles of the Africa
j films include narcissism, which serves to aggrandize
| Western notions of self, and economic imperatives (profit
, maximization) as well as the representational realism of
Hollywood cinema. The implications of the preceding I
i
1
observations for future research are that while the
distinctions (us/them) are based largely on race, it would
be unproductive to harp on racism, since it deviates
|
attention from the dynamics of cultural perspectivism j
t
crucial to the understanding of skin (color) as a means of j
differentation/hierarchization. 1
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I
194
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Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, f976. 1
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books,
1978.
I
! Shaheen, G. "The Media's Image of Arabs." Newsweek.
Feb. 29, 1988, p. 10. ;
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Shaw, Harry. Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book, Co., 1975. |
i
Smith, Anthony. The Geopolitics of Information: How
Western Culture Dominates the World. New York: Oxford
University Press, 19~8cT.
jStam, Robert, and Spence, Louise. ’’Colonialism, Racism
and Representation." In Bill Nichols (ed.) , Movies
and Methods, II, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1985.
Temu, Arnold, and Sunai Bonaventure. Historians and i
Africanist History: A Critique. London: Zed Press, i
Twrr~ ~
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. New York:
Harper & Row, 198*1.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Pocket Books,
1985.
White, Hayden. "The Noble Savage Theme as Fetish." In
Tropics of Discourse: Essays in. Cultural Criticism. !
Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins University Press,
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i
Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology
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i m --------------
i
Woll, Allen L. The Latin Image in American Film. Los (
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i
L__
FILMOGRAPHY
j TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1981) j
i
i !
| James Parker — Richard Harris
i Harry Holt — John Phillip Law
I
Tarzan — Miles O’Keefe !
Jane Parker — Bo Derek
| Director — John Derek
; Screenwriter — Tom Rowe and Gary Goddard
Producer -- Bo Derek j
I
A United Artists Release [
i
The film opens as Jane joins her father, James j
i
Parker, in an expedition to Africa. She is fascinated by ;
tales about the legendary apeman, whose cries she !
supposedly hears. Later, when she is in danger of being '
I
mauled by a lion, Tarzan comes to her rescue, only to j
I
retreat again into the jungle. Once Tarzan appears on the i
screen, the film becomes more of a romantic tussle between
him and Jane.
Meanwhile, the expedition is attacked by natives
t
I who kidnap Parker’s mistress, Africa. Not knowing
I !
! this, Parker holds Tarzan responsible for the abduction |
| and vows revenge. As the expedition gets closer to j
I the famous Elephant Burial Ground— noted for its ivory— ^
! ;
| it is captured by a menacing cult. Tarzan and his ;
i
elephant friends come to the rescue. In the fight that
ensues Parker dies but Tarzan and his group emerge
victorious.
202
SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1983) j
i
i |
| Sheena — Tanya Roberts j
I
' Vic Casey -- Ted Wass
i
Fletcher — Donovan Scott
i
Shaman — Elizabeth of Toro ;
Price Otwani - — Trevor Thomas j
Director — John Guillermin j
i
Screenwriters — David Newman and |
i
Lorenzo Semple, Jr. i
Producer — Paul Aratow
! Executive Producer — Yorom Ben-Ami
i
1
! A Columbia Pictures release from Columbia-Delphi
I
| Productions
| t
I :
j A white couple die accidentally in Africa, leaving ,
i
behind their little daughter. The little orphan is ,
I
mistaken by the "natives" as a princess and saviour in j
fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. Named Sheena by the i
i
village Shaman who provides nurturant care, the orphan j
I
grows up adapting very well to her surroundings, also !
i
developing mystical powers. Meanwhile in the Kingdom
I (Tigora), fratricidal politics brew when Prince Otwani, an ;
}
NFL player, plans to overthrow his brother King Jabulan -
I
over rights to a sacred land rich in titanium. There is |
I
. _J
203
also some romance as Vic Casey, a member of an American
i
television crew in town for a documentary on Prince j
I '
| Otwani, falls for Sheena. As the political climate in the I
1 kingdom heats up, Sheena emerges as defender of the
i Africans. With her help, the evil are vanquished and
I
: peace is restored. Despite the exhortations of Casey to
i |
j come with him to America, she refuses and stays in Tigora, j
j her adoptive homeland. I
UNDER FIRE (1983)
I
i Russell Price — Nick Nolte
Oates -- Ed Harris
Alex Grazier — Gene Hackman
|
; Claire — Joanna Cassidy
Director -- Roger Spottiswoode
Screenwriters — Ron Shelton and Clayton Frdhman
i
j Producers -- Edward Teets and Jonathan Taplin
! An Orion Pictures release
i
The film is set in 1979 with the on-going Chadian
war as the opening. After taking snapshots of a battle,
free-lance photo-journalist Russell meets an American
mercenery, Oates, who tips Nicaragua as the next "hot
spot." Russell hooks up with radio-correspondent Claire
and fellow journalist Alex Grazier, and all three leave
jfor Nicaragua to cover the last days of the Somoza regime.
j The film combines romance and thrills to "see" the roles
of journalists in reporting events.
1 GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN (1984)
t
! Jane — Andi McDowell
l
; Tarzan — Christopher Lambert
i
Captaine Phillipe D'Arnot — Ian Holm
Tarzan's Grandfather -- Ralph Richardson
| Director — Hugh Hudson
Screenwriters — P. H. Vazak and Michael Austin
Producers — Hugh Hudson and Stanley S. Canter
A Warner Brothers release
Baby Tarzan is the lone survivor of a shipwreck in
I
jAfrica which killed his parents, Alice and Lord Clayton.
!
! Adopted by an ape, he is later crowned king of the apes.
; Meanwhile, his "ape mother" is killed by African (native)
'hunters and Tarzan later rescues Phillipe D’Arnot, the
Belgian leader of a British scientific expedition, from a
treacherous ambush by the "natives." D'Arnot teaches him
language and later takes Tarzan to his ancestral home in
Scotland to claim his (Tarzan's) place as the seventh Earl
of Greystoke. Rejecting both Jane, his grandfather's
ward, and stifling Edwardian England, Tarzan returns to
the jungle.
206
KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1985)
Allan Quatermain — Richard Chamberlain
Jessie Huston — Sharon Stone
Umbdpd — Ken Grampu
Gragoola — June Buthelezi
Colonel Bockner -- Herbert Lom
Dogati — John Rhys-Davies
i Director — J. Lee Thompson |
< f
, i
] Producers — Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus '
, i
j Screenwriters -- Gene Quintana and James R. Silke
' A Cannon Group release ;
i
I i
At the behest of Jessie Huston, Allan Quatermain
leads an expedition consisting of Jessie, himself and a
native, Umbopo, in search of Jessie's archaeologist t
father, Professor Huston, who is lost somewhere in Africa. ,
!
They soon discover that Professor Huston is a captive of j
Colonel Bockner and Dogati who are exhorting him to !
decipher the cryptic directions to the legendary King j
Solomon’s Mines. After rescuing Professor Huston, |
Quatermain's party race toward the mines in a bid to j
| foil Bockner and Dogati's evil quest. Along the way J
j i
| they meet with cannibals, lions, and even survive a j
! I
showdown with a hideous queen, Gragoola, who usurped j
207
Umbopo as the rightful ruler of the tribe of the Kukuands
Gragoola and Bockner— who killed off his party so he
could have exclusive ownership of the mines--later die in
their respective attempts to get the treasure. Our
!
"heroes," Jessie, Quatermain, and Umbopo, survive with
the latter eventually restored as the chief of his
l
i people.
i
JEWEL OF THE NILE (1985)
Jack Colton — Michael Douglas
Joan Wilder — Kathleen Turner
Ralph — Danny DeVito
Omar — Spiros Focas
Holy Man — Avner Eisenberg
Director — Lewis Teague
Screenwriters -- Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner
Producer — Michael Douglas
A 20th Century Fox release
This sequel to Romancing the Stone opens in the
French Riviera where Jack Colton and Joan Wilder are
holidaying. Joan falls prey to a scheming Omar who
invites her to write his biography. Snooping around
Omar’s palace, Joan uncovers his sinister plot to cheat
in an impending election. She is caught and thrown into
jail with the Holy Man who (unbeknownst to her) is the
real "Jewel of the Nile" and the rightful ruler of
the country. Jack frees her with the help of Ralph,
and their escape leads through adventures in the desert
where they encounter a band of natives (whose chief's
son wants Joan's hand in marrigae). Finally, recaptured
by Omar, Jack and Joan come within inches of death but
209
are saved by Ralph. They lead the crusade for the
i restoration of the Holy Man to his rightful place
i
, as ruler.
210
I OUT OF AFRICA (1986)
I
j Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) — Meryl Streep
; Denys -- Robert Redford
Baron Blixen — Klaus Maria Brandauer
Farah — Malick Bowens
Director — Sydney Pollack
I Screenwriter — Kurt Luedtke
Producer — Sydney Pollack
A Universal Pictures release
Based on the life of Karen Blixen (who wrote under
the pen name, Isak Dinesen), the story opens with Karen
marrying Baron Blixen, trading her wealth for his title.
They move to Africa where the Baron buys a coffee
plantation rather than a dairy, thus causing a rift
between them. He then infects Karn with syphillis, which
makes her infertile, meanwhile carrying on an affair with
i
i a native mistress. Unable to have children, Karen devotes
her attention to the Kikuyu peoples. She meets Denys who
becomes her lover. Denys is later killed in a plane
crash, and Karen loses her coffee plantation in a fire.
Having lost her farm, fertility, marriage, and lover, she
i
returns to Europe to write her memoirs.
THE COLOR PURPLE (1986)
Celie — Whoopi Goldberg
Albert (Mister) — Danny Glover
Nettie — Akosua Busia
Shug Avery — Margaret Avery
Director — Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter — Menno Meyjes
Producers — Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy,
Frank Marshall, and Quincy Jones for Guber-Peters
Company
A Warner Brothers release
j
The story revolves around two sisters, Celie and
i
j Nettie, and their family in the rural south from 1909
| to 19^7. Celie is first raped by Pa who, against Celie's
i
i will, gives away the illegitimate children who are born
j from the rape. Pa then offers Celie to Mister in
j marriage. Nettie leaves the household to avoid her
sister’s fate. Celie’s life with Mister holds no pleasure
until she develops a Lesbian affair with Mister's lover,
Shug Avery.
Now a missionary in Africa, Nettie communicates her
thoughts about and experiences in the continent to her
sister Celie in a series of letters. Mister hides these
letters away, but Celie discovers them and reads them many
years later. When Pa dies and Celie inherits his farm,
she finally finds the courage to leave Mister and live on
her own. Meanwhile, Nettie discovers that the Black
missionary couple’s children, Olivia and Adam, are
actually Celie's children. In a touching reunion, Celie
meets her children whom Nettie has brought back on her
return to America.
ALLAN QUATERMAIN AND THE LOST CITY OF GOLD (1987)
Allan Quatermain — Richard Chamberlain
; Jessie Huston — Sharon Stone
i
i Umslopogaas -- James Earl Jones
i
i Agon — Henry Silva
! Swarma — Robert Donner
i
| Nyleptha — Aileen Marson
Sorais — Cassandra Peterson
!
Director — Gary Nelson
Screenwriter — Gene Quintano
Producers — Menahem Golan and Yoram Globuc
Executive Producer — Avi Lerner
A Cannon Films release
This sequel to King Solomon’s Mines (1985) sends
Quatermain to the rescue of his brother lost somewhere in
Africa in his search for a legendary White race.
Quatermain’s search party includes his archaeologist
girlfriend, Jessie, a dubious priest, Swarma, and
Umslopogaas, the son of a ’’native" chief. The advancing
t
jsearch party survives the terrors of the jungle and the
i
j treachery of the terrain to arrive at the City of Gold
where they find Quatermain’s brother living in a peaceful,
multi-racial commune. All is idyllic except for the High
214
Priest Agon whose greed for gold has led to his molding of
statues out of humans. A war soon erupts between the
forces of good (led by Quatermain) and the forces of evil
(led by Agon) with good, at last, vanquishing evil.
i
I
i
i
215 i
i
WHITE MISCHIEF (1988) !
I
, I
Alice — Sarah Miles
i
Broughton — Joss Ackland
i
! Gilbert — John Hurt
t
! Diana — Greta Scacchi
I
I
Errol — Charles Dance '
i
i
Director — Michael Radford ;
Screenwriters — Michael Radford and Jonathan Gems
Producer — Simon Perry
Executive Producer — Michael White
A Columbia release of Nelson Entertainment and |
Goldcrest Presentation of a Michael White/Umbrella J
I
Films Production in Association with Power Tower
Investments (Kenya) and the BBC
Based on a book about an actual incident in Happy
i
I
Valley, Kenya, in 19^0, the plot hinges on a May-December |
i
marriage between Charles "Jock" Broughton, a 57-year-old i
aristocrat/colonialist, and 27-year-old Diana. Colonial i
life in Kenya is portrayed in the film as unwaveringly j
decadent, with drugs, sex, and reckless living as its I
1 7 i
i
• pivot. Soon, Diana is seduced by the local dandy, Josslyn !
! i
Hay, 22nd Earl of Errol, with whom she carries on an open
| affair. As events develop, Errol is killed--found dead
inside his car on a lonely road with a bullet in his head.
j The prime suspect, Sir Jock, is tried and acquitted, but
later takes his own life. In the end Diana marries
Gilbert, a taciturn farmer reputed to be very rich and
I
i whom the colonial ’ ’cognoscenti1' fear has ’ ’gone native.’’

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Asset Metadata

Creator Akudinobi, Jude G (author)

Core Title Under the sign of darkness: The Africa film in the 80s

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Cinema - Critical Studies

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-679633

Unique identifier UC11343527

Identifier DP22266.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-679633 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22266.pdf

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Document Type Dissertation

Rights Akudinobi, Jude G.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA