Abstract
Abstract Safe House (Espinosa, 2012) is, in almost all respects, a conventional Hollywood espionage thriller. What is unconventional about Safe House is the setting: the narrative’s ‘remote outpost’ is Cape Town, South Africa. And, in a refreshing change (at least for South African viewers), Cape Town appears as itself, not as a mock-up of another city in the world. Drawing on Edward Soja and Gilles Deleuze, I critique the ‘apparently innocent spatiality’ of urban settings by examining the identity of Cape Town within the globalized image economy of transnational cinema. The article shows the complicated ways in which media cities are marketed, and the tension between how they are perceived and how they are promoted as filmmaking destinations. The versatility of the ‘flexible city’ as a location masks the process through which places become globally interchangeable and exploitable spaces.
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