In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema's South Africa FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the earliest days of cinema, the idea of South Africa - the land of gold, diamonds and Zulus - captured the imagination of film-makers. In Hollywood as much as in Johannesburg, cinema uncritically took over the image of South Africa created by the literature of imperialism. Whites occupied centre frame, with Africans depicted as adjuncts (the faithful servant) or the enemy ('the savage other'). This path-breaking study, based on years of original research, interviews with directors, scriptwriters, actors and historians, analyses and describes the development and history of films on South Africa. It encompasses the racist and the colonial, the subtle and the poignant, the commercial and the politically committed. Relating film-making to broader changes both in South African society and elsewhere, In Darkest Hollywood provides a comprehensive and profusely illustrated history and deconstruction of fiction cinema on South Africa.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This intriguing book, a companion volume to a documentary film of the same name, elaborates how screen views of South Africa, especially of black South Africans, long helped maintain distorted, racist images. Documentary filmmaker Davis selects specific genre films for analysis. In the 1950s, the author shows, the South African government permitted the start of a black-created cinema, with such films as Jim Comes to Jo'burg and Zonk. Ironically, after apartheid intensified in the 1960s, filmmakers both inside and outside South Africa produced black-white "buddy" movies, such as Sidney Poitier's The Wilby Conspiracy. Davis is most scornful toward Jamie Uys's successful but "treacherous" The Gods Must Be Crazy, which misrepresented the black liberation struggle, Davis says, by focusing on the romantic "Noble Savage" figure of Xi rather than his more real South African counterparts. The big films of the 1980s, such as A World Apart and A Dry White Season, pushed white heroes above black ones; Davis notes that Cry Freedom softened the views of Steve Biko, whose black-consciousness philosophy urged independence from whites. The author also surveys a series of films that perpetuate images of warlike Zulus. Unfortunately, it is only in his introduction that Davis acknowledges such recent films as Sarafina! and Friends, which offer new images of South Africa. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Nov.)
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