“Our Mosquitoes are not so Big”: Images and Modernity in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This chapter examines visual images of Zimbabwe in relation to modernity. It discusses African audiences' negative reaction to visual media and imagery circulating during the era of colonial rule. It evaluates these interpretations of local audience relation to visual materials and mass communication in twentieth-century Zimbabwe, with particular attention to early experiments in colonial cinema for African audiences and to the later development of advertisements directed at Africans. It argues that uncertainty about African audiences and their reception of visual materials was caused by uncertainty among whites about their own interpretative skills.