Class Notes. movements. Introduction

class notes, Freedom Movements
January 24, 2005

-SNVC (?)

• we are reading M.L.King and N.Mandela, not because they are everything that their respective movements represented, but in order to get an initial idea of what the main body of texts “representative” in public discourse of the movements is about. That way it is possible to at least talk about some”thing” when directing criticism.
• David Garrow legal research historian.
• Anthony Marx. political scientist trained in Amherst
• Clay Carson. SNIC. Curator of MLK in Struggle

Meyekiso
Krog TRC
Churchill

Frederickson: watch for structures & ideologies

Screening of Mapantsula
What makes black film?

• Spike Lee argues the screenwriter, director, actors, need to be black, etc, etc
• Mapantsula differs

Added today: I still don’t get the difference.
-bg: 1985 state of emergency in SA. the figure of totsi (another word for mapantsula, or the young gangster)

• rapid urbanization after ww2. large scale forced migration of a male workforce. black worker towns. prime example: Soweto.

-hustler, mapantsula outside the cities or the SA version of “ghettoes”
-regarding the social formation of totsis: greater exposure to american-led mass culture -> the big trend of the times was the detectivesque film noir -> young people identify with it to express their anger
-what goes on today is a different matter, where young people of color have started killing other people of color. some social scientists trace the roots back to the 1950’s totsis, whereas the two phenomena deserve differential treatment.
-theoretical framework: infrapolitics. (Will Seidt, Weapons of the Weak – studies resistance in the Phillippines)

• McDonalds, gangster realities of the 90’s: TUPAC, Dona Carey New York [I don’t get this reference] – role in american icons.
• makers of mapantsula told distributors that they were maknig “just another gangsta movie”. when the movie was released, it was banned in south africa.

Mapantsula notes
knowledge -> black body

on the syllabus
“do the right thing” <- smiley character? malcolm & king not as opposites. instead nothing but a man. Mapantsula was filmed in 1988