Confronting Schuster race-to-face: post-apartheid blackface in Mama Jack
Date
2017
Authors
Kgongoane, Obakeng Omolem
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Abstract
In blackface colonial history, “amusing” white blackface performances that depicted black people as the “natural born fool” were popular with white audiences during a time when whites perceived their racial superiority to be threatened. In Post-1994 South Africa, white supremacy is no longer an uncontested “fact”. As a result, white identities that are premised on “old” legislated notions of racial superiority are made insecure by perceived threats posed against whiteness. The previously disenfranchised and excluded black is now the central focus of South African power and politics and the loss of white centrality creates the “victim” perception that all post-apartheid societal pressures and changes are put on, and against whites. Their power has been “confiscated” and thereby no longer unique to white identity. Blackface is utilised by Leon Schuster in the post-apartheid film, Mama Jack (2005) to reproduce old ideologies of whiteness that remind viewers of its presence, privilege and power. As in the colonial past, it is through the principle white character Jack Theron and his mobilisation of blackface that white supremacy remains intact throughout the film.
Description
A research report submitted to the faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Wits University, Johannesburg, 2017
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Citation
Kgongoane, Obakeng Omolem (2017) Confronting Schuster race-to-face: post-apartheid blackface in Mama Jack, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, <https://hdl.handle.net/10539/24475>