Playing cowboys and Africans: Hollywood and the cultural politics of African identity

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Glenn Reynolds is currently completing his PhD dissertation at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He teaches at New School University in New York and Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven. Notes Yekutiel Gershoni, Africans on African-Americans (New York, 1997), p. 5. Jonathan Haynes, Nigerian cinema: structural adjustments, in Jonathan Haynes & Onookome Okome (eds) Cinema and Social Change in West Africa (Plateau State, 1997), p. 8. South Africa and the Rhodesias are notable examples. An exception to the norm was the Belgian Congo's early embrace of a stabilization policy for the Katanga region. Apparently fearful of the power of the image to undermine colonial authority, however, viewing opportunities for the Congolese were highly circumscribed prior to World War II. For a rare exception in the historical record, see Hortense Powdermaker, Copper Town: Changing Africa (New York, 1962), p. 261, where a woman on the Copperbelt announces that ‘I like the cowboy films best because I like to see how to throw good blows, so that I can kick anybody who interferes with my business; for example, if my husband interferes.’ James Burns, Flickering Shadows (Athens, 2002), p. 157. Bell hooks, The oppositional gaze: black female spectators, in John Belton (ed.) Movies and Mass Culture (New Brunswick, 1996), pp. 247–264. Manthia Diawara, Black spectatorship: problems of identification and resistance, Screen 29(4) (Autumn 1988), pp. 66–76. Homi Bhabha, Of mimicry and man, in Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York, 1995), p. 86. In a 1922 article for a popular French cinema fanzine, French film critic Rene Jeanne claimed that white Americans held ‘Redskins’ in higher regard than African-Americans, but because the latter were ‘dying out’, the genre would soon flounder as well. Cited in David Henry Slavin, Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919–1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths (Baltimore, 2001), p. 76. Yale University, International Missionary Council archives (hereafter IMC), 26.31.30, W.E. Tabb to John Merle Davis, 1 September 1935. Godfrey and Monica Wilson, The Analysis of Social Change (London, 1945), p. 38. Cited in Neil Smith, In the Beginning … , Cinema 4(4) (Winter 1964), 33. See also Thelma Gutsche, How the cinema came to South Africa, University of Cape Town archives (hereafter UCT), Gutsche papers, BC703, C28, unpublished mss, n.d. [1945?]. For the emergence of a white South African market for cinema exhibition, see Thelma Gutsche, The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895–1940 (Cape Town, 1972), especially Chapters I–VIII. See also Thelma Gutsche, How the cinema came to South Africa. Although few studies have charted the rise of mass black spectatorship in southern Africa, even fewer have looked at the expansion of white film-viewing opportunities. For a limited study with a decidedly settler bias, see C.T.C. Taylor, The History of Rhodesian Entertainment, 1890–1930 (Salisbury, 1968). Motion pictures commonly went by the name ‘bioscope’ in South and Central Africa up until roughly 1970. Absalom Vilakazi, Zulu Transformations (Pietermaritzburg, 1965), p. 76. See also Clive Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Cape Town, 2000), pp. 48–49. Ibid. Es’kia Mphalele, Down Second Avenue (Berlin, 1962), p. 95. Paul Landau, Introduction: an amazing distance: pictures and people in Africa, in Paul S. Landau & Deborah D. Kaspin (eds) Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley, 2002), p. 24. James Hirsch, Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and its Legacy (New York, 2002), p. 186. Motion picture venues were, most importantly, a new arena for social congregation in the public sphere: Richard Abel, The perils of Pathe, or the Americanization of early American cinema, in Leo Charney & Vanessa Schwartz (eds) Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley, 1984). Hence, much of the dialogue by vice crusaders, religious leaders and Progressives concerning cinema's place in modern society dealt with the triangulated spacial dynamics between the Church, Saloon and Cinema. See Les & Barbara Keyser, Hollywood and the Catholic Church (Chicago, 1984). Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle Class Reform (London, 1978), especially Chapter 12. Bridgman, for example, argued that the city ‘registers a novel mental environment’ for the Bantu as they crowded from the ‘free, open country to the cramped and sordid quarters of the town.’ Frederick Bridgman, Social conditions in Johannesburg, International Review of Missions 15 (1926), pp. 569–570. News from Filmland, The (Johannesburg) Star, 12 July 1922. See also Ray Phillips, The Bantu Are Coming: Phases of South Africa's Race Problem (London, 1930), pp. 141–152. Ray Phillips, The Bantu in the City: A Study of Cultural Adjustment on the Witwatersrand (South Africa, n.d. [1938]), pp. 315–327. Eventually the program expanded to include leper houses, reformatories, jails, police barracks, hospitals, orphanages, and the like. Films were transported via rail to Natal to be shown in African Reserves and sugar mills. Mark Beittel, ‘Mapantsula’: cinema, crime and politics on the Witwatersrand, Journal of Southern African Studies 16(4) (December 1990), 754. Phillips went on sabbatical at this time to finish his PhD dissertation, published as The Bantu in the City. Phillips, The Bantu in the City, p. 424. The popularity of cowboy films throughout the African diaspora has itself been made the subject of cinematic narratives. In more than one film, African director Aiaisone includes scenes of young migrant workers returning to their villages and sharing with friends the experiences of watching westerns. See Elyseo Taylor, Film and social change in Africa south of the Sahara, American Behavioral Scientist 17(3) (January–February 1974), 437. Also, in The Harder They Come, Perry Henzell's 1971 film starring reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, there are scenes of Jamaican ghetto youth attending Wild West films and cheering the white protagonist. Archie Crawford, Riding Into the African Sunset with Lo-Jack, TEBA Times 5(3) (1985), p. 4. Zambian National Archives (hereafter ZNA), RC85, #14, Hamilton (N. Rhodesian Police) to Honourable Acting Secretary in Livingstone, 3 May 1927. See also Charles van Onselen, Chibaro (London, 1976), pp. 192–193, who attributes the initiation of film showings solely to the social control aspirations of the mining industry. This argument, while failing to explain fully the proliferation of film, must be given due consideration given the fact that in Southern Rhodesia, as in South Africa, officials reported that weekend showings during peak drinking hours tended to reduce Monday morning hangovers among mining employees. In South Africa, Randlords were concerned enough about African consumption that a blanket prohibition was put into place by the British administration between 1902 and 1907. Keyan Tomaselli, The Cinema of Apartheid (New York, 1988), p. 54. Chamber of Mines archives (hereafter CM), Box 224: American Board of Missions, Folder: American Board of Missions, J.D. Morton, Secretary, to the Rhodesia Chamber of Mines, Bulawayo, 17 September 1935. The exact chronology of the introduction of film into Central Africa as regular fare for black viewers is difficult to trace with precision. The basis for my dating here is the 3 May 1927 letter from Hamilton to Livingstone's Acting Chief Secretary (ZNA), which states that the Mines’ circuit films had been imported ‘four years earlier’. By 1932, 85% of all workers had been with Wankie for more than three years of continuous service, and 30% for more than 10 years. See John Merle Davis, Modern Industry and the African (London, 1933), p. 72. For Broken Hill, see Richard Hall, Zambia (New York, 1967), p. 252. Davis, Modern Industry and the African, p. 72. David Kerr, The best of both worlds? Colonial film policy and practice in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Critical Arts 7(1–2) (1993). Rosaleen Smyth, The development of government propaganda in Northern Rhodesia, PhD dissertation, University of London, 1983. See also Powdermaker, Copper Town, p. 255. F. Spearpoint, The African native and the Rhodesian copper mines, Supplement to the Journal of the Royal African Society XXXVI (No. CXLIV) (July 1937), 42–43. Cited in Burns, Flickering Shadows, p. 158. Ray Phillips, A survey of the situation on the Witwatersrand, University of the Witwatersrand archives (hereafter Wits), South African Institute of Race Relations papers (hereafter SAIRR), Part I, Box B56, 1–7, Folder: Military Affairs & Others, 56.4.2, n.d. CM, Box 224: American Board of Missions; Folder: American Board of Missions, Phillips to Gemmill, 22 September 1935. Colin Beale, The commercial entertainment film and its effect on colonial peoples, in The Film in Colonial Development: A Report of a Conference (London, 1948), p. 17. This perspective had other adherents. One reporter declared that, for the African cinema-goer, ‘the hero is the answer to is own daydreams and the picture a world which causes the realities around him to dissolve for a while. The films, in other words, are his release from the frustrations of a trying day.’ Woody S. Manqupu, Non-Europeans are flocking to cinemas, The (Johannesburg) Star, 23 March 1962. Wits, J.D. Rheinnalt-Jones papers, J.D. Rheinnalt-Jones, A study of leisure-time activities for native mine workers, G2/16, Box G1-G2, ‘Printed Items’, p. 12. Ibid, p. 17. Harry Franklin, The Central African screen, Colonial Cinema (December 1950), p. 85. The cinema in Northern Rhodesia, Colonial Cinema (June 1944), p. 22. Spearpoint, The African native and the Rhodesian copper mines, p. 42. Franklin, The Central African screen, p. 85. Examples include Gold (1932, as Jack Tarrant), A Six Shootin’ Romance (1926, as ‘Lightning’ Jack), Bustin’ Thru (1925, as Jack Savage): <http://us.imdb.com/Name?Hoxie,+Jack> Charles Ambler, Popular films and colonial audiences: the movies in Northern Rhodesia, American Historical Review 106(1) (February 2001), p. 96. I would like to thank Professor Charles Ambler for his assistance with the research for this paper. Richard Slotkin, Buffalo Bill's ‘Wild West’ and the mythologization of the American Empire, in Amy Kaplan & Donald Pease (eds) Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, 1993), pp. 164–181. Will Wright, The Wild West (London, 2001), especially The Popular Cowboy, pp. 8–11. Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity (New York, 1993). Paul Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories (New York, 1995). Graham Huggan, (Post)Colonialism, anthropology, and the magic of mimesis, Culture Critique 38 (Winter 1997–1998). Fritz Kramer, The Red Fez: Art and Spirit Possession in Africa (New York, 1993). Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity. See also Herbert Cole, Mbari (Bloomington, 1982). See Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories, especially pp. 21–22, in which he critiques how the textual readings of discourse analysis, which favor a cognitive approach to human understanding, obscure the more primal senses of touch, smell and taste. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories, p. 76. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories, p. 133. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, pp. 47–48. It is worth noting here that reverse representation and the empowerment it implies for the colonized was suggested as far back as the 1930s, with the publication of Julius Lips, The Savage Hits Back (New York, 1966). Lips collected a wealth of first contact examples of ‘primitive’ art, which depicted whites, thereby inverting the direction of the colonial ‘gaze’. ZNA, Sec 5/16, vol. 1, no. 8, Allanson to Director of Department of Information, Lusaka, 27 January 1956. Allanson, it should be noted, framed this ‘insolence’ not explicitly in terms of race, but rather as another unfortunate manifestation of the deleterious effects of the mass media. This ‘sub-culture’ thesis was reiterated throughout the Atlantic world and reached it apogee in the 1950s ‘delinquency’ scares in England and America. Vilakazi, Zulu Transformations, p. 76. For a similar discussion of the way the body is imbricated within social collectivities and constellations of power, see Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago, 1985), especially pp. 6–9. Eric Gable, Bad copies: the Colonial aesthetic and the Manjaco-Portuguese encounter, in Landau & Kaspin, Images and Empires, p. 319, note 39. Huggan, (Post)Colonialism, anthropology, and the magic of mimesis, pp. 94–95. Stoller, Embodying Colonial Memories, pp. 195–196, my emphasis. Monica Hunter, Reaction to Conquest (London, 1961), p. 435. Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (St. Louis, 1981), p. 49. The Natal Mercury, 31 October 1947, Letter to the Editor (‘Daily Forum’ column). ZNA, Sec 5/16, vol. 1, #44/1: F.S. Beyes, Welfare Officer of Luanshya; Municipal Board to Chairman of African Censorship Board, 6 November 1953. Burns, Flickering Shadows, p. 151. ZNA, Sec 2/1280, #249 A-B, Extract from African Provincial Council, Western Province, 6th Meeting at Luanshya, 9–10 July 1947. ZNA, Sec 2/1121, no. 346/1, Rex vs. John Kanda and Five Other Africans, Mufulira Monthly Police Report, 1947. The punishment meted out to the defendants was 12 lashes. Historian Charles Ambler, in Popular films and colonial audiences, p. 101, observes that this defense was, of course, a clever ploy to receive a reduced sentence. Beittel, Mapantsula, 755. Likewise, in 1955 the Senior Welfare Officer of the Livingstone Municipality, Northern Rhodesia, declared that ‘I have on a number of occasions complained to African Consolidated Films, Ltd. about the poor quality of films supplied to African audiences. I have myself received complaints from a number of Africans who feel as I do that the continual showing of ‘Westerns’ only is detrimental and that some attempt should be made, by the introduction of better-class films, to educate the African's taste in films.’ ZNA, Sec 5/16, vol. 1, 10/25/55, Senior Welfare Officer of Livingstone to the Secretary, African Censorship Board. Onookome Okome, The context of film productions in Nigeria: the Colonial heritage, in Onookome Okome & Jonathan Haynes (eds) Cinema and Social Change in West Africa, p. 39, note 3. Ibid, p. 33. Upper Volta did, however, develop a state-sponsored film industry. In 1969, Ouagadougou hosted the first biennial ‘Festival Panafrican du Cinema de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), which has been dubbed the ‘Cannes of Africa’. Elliot P. Skinner, African Urban Life: The Transformation of Ouagadougou (Princeton, 1974), pp. 285–286. Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (New York, 1965), p. 246. For history of the Colonial Film Unit (CFU), see Rosaleen Smyth, The British Colonial Film Unit and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1939–45, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 8(3) (1988), pp. 285–298. Okome, pp. 33–34. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Black African Cinema (Berkeley, 1994), p. 31. Cited in Robert Stam & Louise Spence, Colonialism, racism, and representation—an introduction, Screen 24(2) (March 1983), p. 12. Diawara, Black spectatorship, passim. For an interesting account of the power of the gaze in the formation of ethnography and European travel writing, see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, 1992). Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood (New York, 1994), p. 35. Anthony Sampson, Drum: A Venture into the New Africa (London, 1956), pp. 106–107. Sampson, Drum, p. 81. See also Mac Fenwick, ‘Tough guy, eh?’: the gangster-figure in Drum, Journal of Southern Africa Studies 22(4) (December 1996), especially pp. 621, 629. Fenwick, ‘Tough guy, eh?’, p. 629. Crawford, Riding into the African sunset with ‘Lo-Jack’, p. 5. Wits, Rheinnalt-Jones, A study of leisure time activities for native workers, p. 12. Projectionists tended to agree Rheinnalt-Jones: William Orr declared that ‘Cowboy films were always the most popular [among miners]:’ William Orr—Teba's Movie Man’, Times [Teba Quarterly] 7(1) (First quarter 1987), 5. Lewis Nkosi, cited in Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood, p. 35. See also James Burns, Flickering Shadows, p. 157. Burns mistakenly attributes the quote to Bloke Modisane. See Tehar Cheriaa, Weapons of Resistance, in June Givanni (ed.) Symbolic Narrative/African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image (London, 2000), p. 238: ‘[…] This war has simultaneously changed in an astonishing manner in its weapons and military tactics, and multiple strategies of weakening, subordinating and exploiting entire human societies which are methodically reduced to markets of consumption […]. It has really become a war of images.’ Powdermaker, Copper Town, p. 262. Stuart Hall, Cultural identity and cinematic representation, Framework 36 (1989), 68. Elihu Katz & Tamar Liebes, Mutual aid in the decoding of Dallas: preliminary notes from a cross-cultural study, in Phillip Drummond & Richard Paterson (eds) Television in Transition: Papers from the 1st International Television Studies Conference (London, 1985), p. 189. Ibid, p. 188. Powdermaker, Copper Town, p. 258. Powdermaker, Copper Town, p. 263. Africans were overheard in conversation saying, ‘Eh, the cowboy has medicines [witchcraft] to make him invisible. His enemies have failed to see him hiding in the bush. Jack knows he is younger than Chibale (older cowboy who plays the part of a clown). So Jack has to respect him. Cowboys show respect. And Jack is also the son of a big man.’ J.A.K. Leslie, A Survey of Dar Es Salaam (London, 1963), p. 109. Tribal Dancing on the Gold Mines (Johannesburg, n.d. [1970?]), p. 13. A.L. Epstein, Politics in an Urban African Community (Manchester, 1958), p.10. ZNA, Sec 5/16, vol. 1, #52, P.G.D. Clark, Acting Chief Information Officer to Films Officer, Lusaka, 7 February 1954. ZNA, Sec 5/16, vol. 1, #77, J.G. Phillips, Acting Chief Information Officer to Provincial Commissioner, Kasama, 17 October 1955. Franklin, The Central African Screen, p. 85. The quote is paraphrased by Franklin, who claims it represents the ‘general tenor of complaints made in African Urban Councils.’ Okome, The context of film production in Nigeria: the colonial heritage, p. 27. Virginia Wright Wexman, The Family on the Land, in Daniel Bernardi (ed.) The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of US Cinema (New Brunswick, 1996), pp. 129–169. E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (New York, 1975), p. 140. One is tempted to say that this was only true only for white Americans, yet early Westerns did well in black-owned ‘race theaters’ as well. One projectionist in a black-owned cinema hall in Jackson, Mississippi stated that ‘when you go back, William S. Hart was one of the big men … All you had to do was just put his name out there.’ Cited in Pearl Bowser & Louise Spence, Micheaux's biographical legend’ in Bernardi (ed.) The Birth of Whiteness, p. 62. Cited in Louise Bourgault, Mass Media in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bloomington, 1995), p. 13. Powdermaker, Copper Town, pp. 261–262. Phillips, The Bantu in the City, p. 424. Cited in Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (New York, 2003), p. 1. Avtar Brah & Annie E. Coombs (eds) Introduction to Hybridity and its Discontents (New York, 2000), p. 1. Cited in Aletta J. Norval, Rethinking ethnicity: identification, hybridity and democracy in Paris Yeros, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Africa (New York, 1999), p. 89. Cited in Bernard Magubane, Introduction to Don Mattera, Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa (Boston, 1987), p. xvii. Mattera, Sophiatown, p. 64. Homi Bhabha, The other question, in Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, p. 70. Ibid, p. 69. Contrary to the early Western film, blacks were present on the American frontier as well. Sara R. Massey (ed.) Black Cowboys of Texas (College Park Station, 2000). Monroe L. Billington & Roger D. Hardaway, African Americans on the Western Frontier (Boulder, 2001). Frederick Jackson Turner presented his now-famous ‘The significance of the frontier in American History’ at the 1893 Chicago AHA meeting: Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington, DC, 1894). Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (Chicago, 1968), p. 84. The Star, 12 June 1922.