South African queer sons challenging the white father’s legacy: forging new Afrikaner male identities in Etienne Kallos’s Die Stropers (The Harvesters)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The figure of the patriarchal white Afrikaner male was central to conceptualising and maintaining the system of apartheid in South Africa, and lingers in the imaginary of white identities in the country. Idealised white masculinity, embodied by the patriarch, is marked by strict gender roles and the rejection of same-sex sexualities, as these sexualities are seen as threatening to institutions like the heteronormative family and conservative Christianity. The 2018 South African film Die Stropers (The Harvesters) by Etienne Kallos represents queer sons in the rural farm setting. The film offers possibilities for disentangling white masculinities from heterosexist ideologies. Mirrors, mirroring and recognition/misrecognition are analysed as devices that represent the reproduction of ideology in the film, but queer sons are able to challenge these forms of mirroring and ultimately disrupt hegemonic masculinities that would stifle their identities, desires and forms of gender expression.