Hollywood and Africa

Opio Dokotum

Description

Hollywood and Africa - recycling the �Dark Continent� myth from 1908�2020 is a study of over a century of stereotypical Hollywood film productions about Africa. It argues that the myth of the Dark Continent continues to influence Western cultural productions about Africa as a cognitive-based system of knowledge, especially in history, literature and film. Hollywood and Africa identifies the �colonial mastertext� of the Dark Continent mythos by providing a historiographic genealogy and context for the term�s development and consolidation. An array of literary and paraliterary film adaptation theories are employed to analyse the deep genetic strands of Hollywood�Africa film adaptations. The mutations of the Dark Continent mythos across time and space are then tracked through the classical, neoclassical and new wave Hollywood�Africa phases in order to illustrate how Hollywood productions about Africa recycle, revise, reframe, reinforce, transpose, interrogate � and even critique � these tropes of Darkest Africa while sustaining the colonial mastertext and rising cyberactivism against Hollywood�s whitewashing of African history.

Informations

• Publié par: NISC (Pty) Ltd
• Date de parution: 05 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781920033682
• Langue: English

Extrait

HOLLYWOOD AND AFRICA
Recycling the ‘Dark Continent’ Myth,
1908–2020
OKAKA OPIO DOKOTUM
Published in South Africa on behalf of the African Humanities Program
by NISC (Pty) Ltd, PO Box 377, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa.
www.nisc.co.za
First edition, first impression 2020
Publication © African Humanities Program 2020
Text © Okaka Opio Dokotum 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-920033-66-8 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-920033-67-5 (PDF)
ISBN: 978-1-920033-68-2 (ePub)
Manuscript mentor: Prof. Emeritus Dr Robert T. Self
Project manager: Peter Lague
Indexer: Sanet le Roux
Cover design: Advanced Design Group
Cover photographs: front, © Jag_cz-stock.adobe.com; back, © Dominik Stötter/EyeEm/Getty Images
e-book conversion: Wouter Reinders
Plates: p 114, © Warner Bros/Photofest; p 134 © Columbia Pictures/Photofest; p 151 © Sportsphoto/Alamy Stock Photo; p 189, © Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest; p 217, © Sportsphoto/Alamy Stock Photo; p 228, © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photofest; p 255, © Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Some material in this book was first published by the author in the following scholarly publications and is included with the permission of those journals:
Chapter 4: “TIA (This is Africa!): Reproducing Colonial Violence in Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond (2006 ),” Journal of African Cinemas . Special issue: Everyday violence(s) and visualities in Africa . Vol. 6 Issue 2. (2014), pp. 175–183.
Chapter 5: “The Biafran War According to Hollywood: Militainment and Historical Distortion in Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun (2003),” Lagos Historical Review . Vol. 12, (2012), pp. 23–40.
Chapter 6: “Re-membering the Tutsi Genocide in Hotel Rwanda (2004): Implications for Peace and Reconciliation.” ACPR: African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review . 3, Special Issue on Peace Education, Memory and Reconciliation in Africa. Vol. 2. (2013), pp. 129–150.
Chapter 7: “Encountering Mandela on Screen: Transnational Collaboration in Mandela Image Production from 1987–2010.” Sociology Study , Vol. 5: 11, (2013), pp. 794–802.
Chapter 8: “Metatextuality in Kevin McDonald’s Transcultural Cinematic Adaptation of The Last King of Scotland (2006).” Africa Notes . Vol. 40: 1&2, (2016), pp. 33–56.
The author and the publisher have made every effort to obtain permission for and acknowledge the use of copyright material. Should an inadvertent infringement of copyright have occurred, please contact the publisher and we will rectify omissions or errors in any subsequent reprint or edition.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Prof. Emeritus Dr Robert T. Self — teacher, mentor, writing coach and friend, for grounding me in cineliteracy and the grammar of the moving image,
and
to my dear wife Pamela Renee for her gentle encouragement without which this book would probably have become one of many abandoned projects!
About the Series
The African Humanities Series is a partnership between the African Humanities Program (AHP) of the American Council of Learned Societies and academic publishers NISC (Pty) Ltd. The Series covers topics in African histories, languages, literatures, philosophies, politics and cultures. Submissions are solicited from Fellows of the AHP, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and financially supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
The purpose of the AHP is to encourage and enable the production of new knowledge by Africans in the five countries designated by the Carnegie Corporation: Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. AHP fellowships support one year’s work free from teaching and other responsibilities to allow the Fellow to complete the project proposed. Eligibility for the fellowship in the five countries is by domicile, not nationality.
Book proposals are submitted to the AHP editorial board which manages the peer review process and selects manuscripts for publication by NISC. In some cases, the AHP board will commission a manuscript mentor to undertake substantive editing and to work with the author on refining the final manuscript.
The African Humanities Series aims to publish works of the highest quality that will foreground the best research being done by emerging scholars in the five Carnegie designated countries. The rigorous selection process before the fellowship award, as well as AHP editorial vetting of manuscripts, assures attention to quality. Books in the series are intended to speak to scholars in Africa as well as in other areas of the world.
The AHP is also committed to providing a copy of each publication in the series to university libraries in Africa.
AHP Editorial Board Members as at November 2018
AHP Series Editors:
Professor Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Professor Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa
Consultant:
Professor Emeritus Sandra Barnes, University of Pennsylvania, USA (Anthropology)
Board Members:
1 Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Institute of African Studies, Ghana (Gender Studies & Advocacy) (Vice President, African Studies Association of Africa)
2 Professor Kofi Anyidoho, University of Ghana, Ghana (African Studies & Literature) (Director, Codesria African Humanities Institute Program)
3 Professor Ibrahim Bello-Kano, Bayero University, Nigeria (Dept of English and French Studies)
4 Professor Sati Fwatshak, University of Jos, Nigeria (Dept of History & International Studies)
5 Professor Patricia Hayes, University of the Western Cape, South Africa (African History, Gender Studies and Visuality) (SARChI Chair in Visual History and Theory)
6 Associate Professor Wilfred Lajul, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda (Dept of Philosophy)
7 Professor Yusufu Lawi, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of History)
8 Professor Bertram Mapunda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Archaeology & Heritage Studies)
9 Professor Innocent Pikirayi, University of Pretoria, South Africa (Chair & Head, Dept of Anthropology & Archaeology)
10 Professor Josephat Rugemalira, University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (Dept of Foreign Languages & Linguistics)
11 Professor Idayat Bola Udegbe, University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Dept of Psychology)
Published in this series
Dominica Dipio, Gender terrains in African cinema , 2014
Ayo Adeduntan, What the forest told me: Yoruba hunter, culture and narrative performance, 2014
Sule E. Egya, Nation, power and dissidence in third-generation Nigerian poetry in English , 2014
Irikidzayi Manase, White narratives: The depiction of post-2000 land invasions in Zimbabwe , 2016
Pascah Mungwini, Indigenous Shona Philosophy: Reconstructive insights , 2017
Sylvia Bruinders, Parading Respectability: The Cultural and Moral Aesthetics of the Christmas Bands Movement in the Western Cape, South Africa , 2017
Michael Andindilile, The Anglophone literary-linguistic continuum: English and indigenous languages in African literary discourse , 2018
Jeremiah Arowosegbe, Claude E Ake: The making of an organic intellectual , 2018
Romanus Aboh, Language and the construction of multiple identities in the Nigerian novel , 2018
Bernard Matolino, Consensus as Democracy in Africa , 2018
Babajide Ololajulo, Unshared Identity: Posthumous paternity in a contemporary Yoruba community , 2018
De-Valera NYM Botchway, Boxing is no cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the social history of Ghanaian boxing, 2019
Dina Ligaga, Women, visibility and morality in Kenyan popular media, 2020.
Acknowledgements
Many people and organisations helped to make this book a reality in over a decade of research and writing. While it is not possible to mention all of them, I acknowledge them and am deeply appreciative of their contributions.
The manuscript for this publication was prepared with the support of the African Humanities Fellowship Program established by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) with a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. I would like to thank Dr Andrzej Tymowski, International Program Director at ACLS; Prof. Kwesi Yankah, Minister of State for Tertiary Education, Ghana for the African Humanities Program (AHP) fellowship that resulted in this book; the Series Editors, Prof. Emeritus Fred Hendricks, Rhodes University, South Africa and Prof. Adigun Agbaje, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, who encouraged me to reach the finishing line at a time when I was greatly fatigued. My thanks, too, to Prof. Adam Haupt, University of Cape Town, who gave me the first valuable critique on how to improve the manuscript, and all the anonymous reviewers over the years who contributed to the evolution of this manuscript directly or through the earlier published articles. My gratitude to Barbara van der Merwe, African Humanities Program (AHP) Secretariat in South Africa who encouraged me greatly to finish the manuscript and to Lindsey Morton, independent consultant (formerly UNISA Press Managing Editor: Books). Thank you, team! I cannot forget my 2010 AHP colleagues in residence at the University of the Western Cape, for all the fun we had together, for braving the biting cold and for cheering me on: Prof. Susan Kiguli, Dr Okot Benge, Dr Jemimah Andersen Akosu