Questions of Adaptation (original) (raw)
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2018
As a South African author, Bessie Head has chosen to write in the tradition of social realism. Drawing her artistic inspiration from the social circumstances surrounding her own life, she addresses the central issue which prevails in South Africa—the question of power and oppression. The thrust of this essay is to demonstrate that power and its mismanagement is a fundamental concept in Head’s works. Using the sociological orientation of Raymond Williams, the paper will examine the use or abuse of power at the level of social relationships applicable to the apartheid South African context. Keywords: Uncanny, Pathological, Apartheid, Incarceration
The representation of Zimbabwean identities in the drama Fidelis
Motion picture is among the major media products drawing the attention of many Zimbabweans nowadays. The Broadcasting Services Act (2001) which stipulates that up to 75% of all programming should be local resulted in the rise and proliferation of a local film and music industry in Zimbabwe. The drama Fidelis is a product of this phenomenon. It is salient to point out that it is not the only drama that came out of this epoch but rather it is just a metonym of the whole lot. In the drama impressions and suggestions about the Zimbabwean landscape are made therefore studying the themes as they are raised and interviewing viewers is crucial as Hall (1973) posits that audiences do not passively interact with media text but they have their own interpretations and readings of it. Fidelis ceases to be just a drama but an attempt to retell the Zimbabwean story. The media are active players in the representation of reality; ergo it is crucial to treat all media products with suspicion and with the intention of wanting to uncover the story behind the story, (Jenkins 1996).The guiding notion is that each media product carries polysemous text and can be interpreted in different ways. Most importantly however, in the drama Fidelis, the story of Zimbabwe through the landscape selected and also the roles assigned to the actors is retold. This study interrogates the assumptions raised in the drama about the Zimbabwean culture, way of life and current status. Notably the drama poses religious undertones that need to be carefully analyzed, it exposes certain traditional aspects of the Zimbabwean culture such as rituals (kurova guva), beliefs like witchcraft (defined by the new oxford dictionary as the use of magic powers especially evil ones) and practices such as traditional marriages as well as institutions like the village tribunals. I engaged ordinary Zimbabweans who watched the drama in a bid to give them a voice on the matter so that they become participants in the retelling and representation of their own personalities.
South African Journal of African Languages, 2011
From the early 1990s, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) emphasized social engineering policies such as nation building and neo-liberalist policies in their programming that were in line with South Africa's new political economy. Through a study of two South African drama series, Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, this article will demonstrate how these films drew from the neo-liberal policies and popular culture discourses germane to contemporary creolized cultural processes to construct 'aspirational' narratives (as defined by Vundla and McCarthy, producers of Generations and Gaz' Lam II respectively), that reflect changing economic patterns in post-apartheid African society. Furthermore, the article will demonstrate how these films highlight notions of contemporeinity brought about by the interplay between tradition and modernity, the international world system and the local, and the flow of metropolitan meaning through national culture right up to that of the most remote backwater villages. The change underpinned by the thematic frontiers of these films is read against the traditional cultural frames of inheritance convention, which in both filmic narratives are signalled by the pivotal use of the genres from the oral/popular discourse. Changing dramatic form or the technical apparatus of theatre or other media does not automatically lead to the transformation of society. ... only a full transformation of the social relations that determine who produces, finances and validates the dramatic form-whether in the theatre, radio or film, or in our day, in television, and an array of new media-will amount to a revolution.
'Bustin' Bonaparte': A Post-Apartheid Adaptation of Olive Schreiner's 'The Story of an African Farm'
Adaptation, 2016
This article examines how the South African film Bustin' Bonaparte (2004) presents a post-apartheid adaptation of Victorian colonialism in Olive Schreiner's 1883 English novel The Story of an African Farm. While both narratives utilize the surprising mode of play to unfold competing racial and gender hierarchies in colonial Africa, Lister's comedic film radically revises Schreiner's tragic novel to witness the hopeful post-apartheid nationalism of Africa's children. Keywords Race, Schreiner, Bustin' Bonaparte, The Story of an African Farm, post-apartheid, integrated casting.
2005
In this thesis I analyse representations of identity and nation in two plays. The plays are satires in the "community theatre genre" from Zimbabwe. The background for this work is the understanding of cultural expressions and popular culture as a form of mass media; as such they are utterances which take part in hegemonic battles. The context is the political situation in Zimbabwe in 1999, when the opposition was gaining a foothold and there was a certain silent optimism concerning future development of democracy and strengthening of human rights. The plays I analyse criticise the regime. "The Members" (Amakhosi) criticises corrupt MPs and "Ivhu versus the State" (Rooftop) recounts the intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am interested in how resistance in the plays is expressed and the differences in strategies between the plays which are from different geographical settings. My theoretical position and concepts derive from cultural studies, discourse theory and postcolonial studies. These theories and conceptual framework emphasise how the public sphere consists of conflicting discourses, and that political struggle is also a politics of discourse. A post-colonial reading strategy focuses on hybrid representations which avoid narratives told in polarisations and essential conceptions of identity. These theories are the background for my reading strategies. I analyse the plays in relation to how they recount/narrate actual conflicts in Zimbabwe-which lines of conflicts do they comment on? How is identity represented in the narratives of gender, class and race? How are the powerful/leaders recounted? How do they talk about inequality and the relationship between white and black? Do the plays offer multiple or stereotypical representations of identity? I analyse how they experience and narrate their nation-do they provide space for a multiplicity of national identities? How do they narrate strategies for political change? I demonstrate that both plays anticipate the political and socioeconomic crisis which been developing in Zimbabwe since 2000. I also show that the plays' strategies of resistance are the basis for the present opposition.
The politics of narrating Cinderella in Namibia
Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 2004
This article reports on variations of the Cinderella fairytale as told by two southern Namibian storytellers, Martha Frederik and Katrina Louw. The analysis concentrates on the self-imagery of these storytellers as reflected in their performances. Although their stories are not overtly political they interpret their social environment, the relationships between men and women and employment interactions. In this sense these narratives communicate deeper dimensions of Namibian colonial relationships. Life in the towns of Aranos and Gochas is uninspiring, since these are small agricultural supply stations, settled in the mostly arid, sparse, semi-desert southern region of Namibia, Hardap. These communities are generally dirt poor, inhabited mainly by the unemployed, children, women and pensioners. The article further explores facets of the Frederik and Louw's re-interpretations of Cinderella. A few salient sections in especially the performance of Frederik are selected to demonstra...