Afrikaans Film As a Cinema of Political Impotence, 1994 – 2014
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Absences, exclusivities and utopias: Afrikaans film as a cinema of political impotence, 1994 – 2014. by Chris Willem Broodryk Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Film Studies. UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN University of Cape Town September 2015 Supervisor: Associate Professor Martin Botha i The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town 1. “Images, properly speaking, are the things of the world. It follows logically from this that cinema is not the name of an art: it is the name of the world” Jacques Ranciere, Film Fables (2006:109). 2. “[T]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” Audre Lorde (quoted in Rodness 2014:64) 3. “The objects of the commodity world of capitalism … shed their independent ‘being’ and intrinsic qualities and come to be so many instruments of commodity satisfaction” Fredric Jameson (1979:131) ii ABSTRACT This thesis develops a conceptual and theoretical framework within which to position contemporary Afrikaans cinema as a cinema of political impotence. Afrikaans cinema is first located within the tensions of democratic post-transitional South African society and linked to the identity politics of being identified as ‘Afrikaner’ or ‘Afrikaans speaking’. The thesis provides a critical overview of film scholar Thomas Elsaesser’s studies of (New) German Cinema and Hollywood, identifying key notions such as double occupancy to inform the study’s vocabulary, and discussing how certain cultures have responded to traumatic events in which they were complicit. The thesis then links Elsaesser’s studies to Fredric Jameson’s views on political cinema and the political failures of postmodernism. This conceptual and theoretical framework identifies and problematises the neoliberal structures that guide much of Afrikaans filmmaking, and offers a historical overview of key moments and figures in South African (primarily Afrikaans) filmmaking in order to demonstrate that there is precedent for political potency in Afrikaans cinema. The study positions the comedy Hoofmeisie as the current nadir of neoliberal Afrikaans filmmaking. The study proceeds to critically discuss two major figurations of political impotence: the vulgar cinema of Willie Esterhuizen and the Volkstaat film. In their respective ways, both figurations are conservative iterations of an aesthetically impoverished cinema that aims to preserve a sense of Afrikaans white male agency and ethnic exclusivity in a socially dynamic South African landscape. Esterhuizen’s films emphasise Afrikaans males’ claims to victimhood as an appropriate response to political change and promoting the patriarchal legacy of Afrikaans cinema in its focus on the visibility of the penis. The Volkstaat film, with its emphasis on the pastoral rural idyll inhabited by Afrikaans speaking characters, and privileging trajectories of white male actualisation, serve as a cinematic formation of Afrikaans siege-culture. In this regard, a minority’s political idea of self-governance is constellated as fantasy in films such as Prêtville. In light of the above, the thesis finds that contemporary Afrikaans cinema’s attempts at representing a multicultural South Africa only highlight the cultural exclusivity in most of these films, and that these films are often contemporary instances of the conservative Afrikaans cinema developed by Hans Rompel in the 1940s. As framed within the vocabulary developed through this study, contemporary Afrikaans cinema is a cinema of forgetting that sustains socio-cultural binaries and places market output above aesthetic value. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank: My supervisor, Prof Martin Botha, a most gracious study leader, who offered constant critical engagement about all forms of cinema, and whose constructive criticism, knowledge and ideas only ever benefitted this study. My Head of Department, Prof Marie-Heleen Coetzee, for her constant administrative and logistical support. I also acknowledge the University of Pretoria for partially funding my studies and for facilitating some teaching relief. My colleague, student and intellectual comrade Micia de Wet, who at short notice stepped in with enthusiasm and expertise to take over a great deal of my teaching. My short term research assistant, Danielle Britz, who assisted me ably in the logistical completion of the study. My friends, especially Yvonne Rabie, for her wisdom and guidance. Additionally, Anjo-mari Gouws and Zandeli Opperman’s conversations about Afrikaans vulgarity paved the way for Chapter Four. My mother and sister, for their support and for understanding that a study of this nature requires a measure of social isolation. Finally, but crucially, I thank my wife Amelia and son James for their perseverance and endurance, for understanding the pursuit of this challenge, and for tolerating the long working hours. It was not in vain. I owe both of you more than you know. This study is dedicated to the memory of my father, Sydney James Broodryk. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures iv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Chapter introduction 1 1.2 Background and rationale 2 1.3 Research question and aims 13 1.4 Introduction to the conceptual theoretical framework 15 1.5 Research design 24 1.6 Chapter outline 25 CHAPTER TWO: AN ELSAESSERIAN FRAMEWORK FOR FILM 28 2.1 Chapter introduction 28 2.2 Thomas Elsaesser and cinema: an introduction 29 2.3 Hollywood, history, cinema, experience, or: what is cinema? 38 2.4 Elsaesser on visual language 43 2.5 Elsaesser and political cinema 49 2.6 A political allegiance: Elsaesser and Jameson 55 CHAPTER THREE: AFRIKAANS CINEMA BEFORE AND AFTER POLITICAL 63 TRANSITION: CONTEXTUALISING AFRIKAANS CINEMA AND POLITICAL CINEMA 3.1 Chapter introduction 63 3.2 A matter of history 67 3.3 Cultural complexities, complications and controversies in post-apartheid South Africa 80 3.4 Political cinema: towards a conception of cinematic political impotence 91 3.4.1 Film and politics 91 3.4.2 Film, forgetting and impotence 107 i 3.5 A selection of political filmmaking in apartheid South Africa 111 3.6 Afrikaans political cinema in apartheid South Africa 122 3.6.1 Manie Van Rensburg’s cinema of Afrikaner fallibility 122 3.6.2 Jans Rautenbach: the Afrikaans auteur as politically conscious artist 125 3.7 Towards a political economy of contemporary Afrikaans cinema 129 CHAPTER FOUR: THE CINEMA OF WILLIE ESTERHUIZEN AND ITS COMIC CONTEMPORARIES 144 4.1 Chapter introduction 144 4.2 Measuring masculinity in Esterhuizen’s comedies 148 4.3 The failure of white male actualisation in selected films of Willie Esterhuizen 152 4.3.1 Humiliation and erection in Poena is Koning (2007) 154 4.3.2 Domesticated masculinity and anality in Vaatjie Sien Sy Gat (2008) 158 4.3.3 Masculinity at the intersection of pleasure and pain: Stoute Boudjies (2010) 162 4.4 The political impotence of the cinema of Willie Esterhuizen 166 4.5 Post-Esterhuizen Afrikaans comedy 168 CHAPTER FIVE: THE VOLKSTAAT FILM 178 5.1 Chapter introduction 178 5.2 Forms of verstrooiingsvermaak 179 5.3 Landscape, space and Volkstaat film 187 5.4 Some Afrikaans films reconsidered 193 5.5 Prêtville, space and exclusivity 196 5.6 Conclusion 202 ii CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 204 6.1 Chapter introduction 204 6.2 Summary of the study 205 6.3 Afrikaans cinematic political impotence 208 6.4 Strengths and limitations of the study 210 6.5 Suggestions for further research 212 6.6 Conclusion 216 SOURCES CONSULTED 219 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Screen capture shot of Angelique Pretorius and Chris de Clerq in 189 the Stilte (Roodt, 2012) trailer Figure 2: Prêtville (Korsten, 2012) DVD cover 197 iv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Chapter introduction This study aims to position Afrikaans cinema between 1994 and 2014 as a cinema of political impotence, a cinema devoid of a political voice. I argue that contemporary Afrikaans cinema (Afrikaans films released between 1994 and 31 December 2014) reads as a cinematic body of work devoid of political potency in two ways: its content, both manifest and thematic; and its aesthetic, the visual configuration of its content. These two ways speak to the Godardian dictum that while one may have political film (in its content, in what is manifestly represented in dialogue, setting and theme), the film is not necessarily political (aesthetically, in its visual language) (Elsaesser 1985:95).1 As Thomas Elsaesser already stated in 1985, “[i]t would take more than one article to list the many divergent uses of the term ‘political cinema’ since Godard first urged his profession not to make political films but to make films politically” (1985:95), that is, to make films that are not simply political in content – socially conscious filmmaking; films that overtly address notions of struggle and resistance – but to make films that additionally speak a political visual language by way of its opposition to convention and established aesthetic norms. Given that film style is ideologically determined (Gabriel 1982:54), Rodowick (1988:287) sensibly argues that Cahiers du Cinema’s statement that “all films are political” should be restated, rather, as “all films are ideological”. As such, Afrikaans cinema has the capacity to shape and inform cultural memory of both past and present, acknowledging how social and cultural processes interact with memory and perception (Green 2008:116). This chapter presents the background and rationale to the study of the political impotence of contemporary Afrikaans cinema. It also introduces the conceptual and theoretical framework (expanded in Chapters Two and Three) and outlines its research aims, research design and chapters.