Apartheid And Socialization: Movie-Going In Cape Town, 1943–1958
2006; Routledge; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01439680500533359
ISSN1465-3451
Autores Tópico(s)African studies and sociopolitical issues
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1. Herbert Blumer, Movies and Behavior (New York, MacMillan, 1933). 2. Garth Jowett, ‘Real men don't sing and dance: growing up with the movie musical’, in Murray Pomerance, ed., Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in the movies (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2001). 3. The interest in movie-going as a personal activity is increasing. However, there is still a lack of such introspective examinations of the role of the movies in individual lives, and the implication for the socializing experience. One notable exception is Richard Schickel, Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip: movies, memory, and World War II (Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 2003). Schickel discusses the very personal impact that going to the movies during these years had on him and his relationship with his family. 4. Thelma Gutsche, The Historical and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895–1940 (Cape Town, Howard Timmins, 1972). See also, Michael Eckardt, Pioneers in South African film history: Thelma Gutsche's tribute to William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, the man who filmed the Boer War, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25(4) (October 2005), 637–646. 5. Ibid., p. 115, fn. 7. 6. A shilling contained 12 pence. The three pence coin in South Africa was known as a ‘tikkie’. It was silver colored, and the smallest coin in the currency. A ‘tikkie’ ice cream was a common and much-loved treat. 7. Ibid., pp. 205, 210, 218, 219, 220. 8. It should be explained that in South Africa, to this very day, especially in Cape Town, the movies, the cinema, the Kinema, or other variations were all subsumed under the name the ‘Bioscope’. There is a lengthy explanation as why this term for a specific type of exhibiting mechanism has persisted in that country found in Ibid., p. 27. 9. The making of this film is the subject of an important book by Lillian Ross, Picture: the making of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ (New York, Rinehart, 1952). Little did I know when I first saw this film, that I would later show it to classes, and use this book when dealing with the subject of ‘film and society’. 10. Gutsche, pp. 221–222. The career and design aesthetic of John Ebberson is discussed in Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seats: the story of the golden age of the movie palace (New York, Bramhall House, 1961), pp. 95–103. 11. Ibid., pp. 221–222. 12. The apartheid government swooped on District Six, Cape Town in 1965, forcibly removing its occupants and declaring the area a ‘whites-only’ zone. Thus the rich fabric of an impoverished but vibrant community was torn to shreds. The area was bulldozed over, and over 60,000 people were wrenched from their homes, livelihoods, community centers and societal networks, and relocated to the bleak plains of the Cape Flats, several miles away. Even today, the scars on the hills below Table Mountain are visible and the land remains largely undeveloped because it is in such legal dispute. 13. Film Fun was a British comic book that ran from (issues dates) January 17, 1920 to September 15, 1962, when it merged with Buster. It had been renamed Film Fun Thrills in 1959. As the title suggests, the comic mainly featured comic strip versions of people from films, including: Abbott and Costello, Bruce Forsyth, Buster Keaton, Frankie Howerd, George Formby, Harold Lloyd, Jackie Coogan, Laurel and Hardy, and Tommy Cooper. Picture Fun merged with Film Fun soon after its launch in 1920, followed by Kinema Comic in 1932, Film Picture Stories in 1935, Illustrated Chips in 1953 and Top Spot in 1960. 14. I had to look this film up in Halliwell's Film and Video Guide (New York; Harper Perennial, 1996) because I had completely forgotten it. Apparently, it was a movie version of a Canadian TV drama, written by Arthur Hailey, about a young boy being locked in a time vault. See p. 783. 15. Of this British film, Pauline Kael said: ‘It's amazing that with all of these talented people nothing happens on the screen.’ Ibid., p. 801. Laurence Harvey, as a fellow South African actor who had made it into the ‘big time’ was a hero of mine at this point. 16. The Jazz Couriers, which featured the tenor saxophones of Tubby Hayes and Ronny Scott, are still considered one of the greatest jazz ensembles in the history of British jazz. I proudly own five of their albums, now available in CD format. 17. For a brilliant evaluation and evocation of this sense of impending doom that permeated all of South African life in the period before the release of Nelson Mandela, see Vincent Crapanzano, Waiting: the whites of South Africa (New York: Random House, 1985). Thankfully, of course, thanks to the astute vision of Mandela, working with the cooperation of the white Prime Minister F. W. De Klerk, the transition was accomplished relatively peacefully. 18. This vote was possible because the electoral authorities, sensitive to the large number of South Africans who had fled the country over the years, had declared that anyone who had ever been a citizen of South Africa, and could prove that fact, was entitled to a vote in this particular election. In Houston, more than 900 people voted in the South African election. Now, of course, one has to be a registered citizen of that country to vote. 19. I once gave a copy of my first book Film: the democratic art (Boston, Little, Brown, 1976) to a psychiatrist friend who was very interested in the role that movies played in the lives of his patients. He surprised me soon thereafter when he wrote me a long, insightful evaluation of the book, the central theme of which was his contention that this book could not have been written by anyone born into American culture. His feeling was that only someone bringing an outsider's perspective could have written what I did in my examination of the impact of movie-going on American society.
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