Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

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Transgender Character Representation and the Gender Binary: Theorizing a Philosophy for Transgender Character Construction in Video Games.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Bowler, Keagan Benjamin; Cloete, Stephen
Transgender characters in video games are often met with negative opinions by the largely heteronormative playerbase which, like in other media, results in a wider negative opinion on transgender people and subjects in reality. In exploring a personal identification with Celeste, I formulate a philosophy concerning the gender binary norm and its role in perpetuating harmful ideas. This philosophy manifests as both an ideology and platformer video game questioning what gender means to story and character. Through exploring gender, metaphor, queerness and game design, a philosophy is constructed to create a transgender character and video game story in a positive light.
The impact of childhood trauma on intimacy: A literature review exploring Drama Therapy techniques for intimacy recovery in adult relationships.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Magee, Kathryn; Thibedi, Linda (Mdena)
This research paper explores how Drama Therapy techniques may be used for intimacy recovery in adult relationships in the context of childhood trauma. The immediate and long term consequences of childhood trauma are multifaceted and vary significantly. However, studies indicate that exposure to trauma during childhood adversely impacts brain development, which may disrupt other developmental processes as well as an individual’s capacity to form and maintain intimate relationships in adulthood. Intimacy is a vital element of relationships in that it provides a framework for communication and connection on various levels. Despite correlations between the two notions, research pertaining to the treatment of trauma with the intention of fostering intimacy is limited. Similarly, in the Drama Therapy field, there is little evidence indicating how the discipline could be adapted with the specific intention of fostering intimacy in relationships. Through an integrative literature review method, research pertaining to the impacts of childhood trauma, how childhood trauma influences intimacy, and predominant trauma treatment approaches and their effects, were explored. This informed an analysis of various Drama Therapy approaches, which may be useful in dealing with childhood trauma and fostering healthy relationships. From the literature examined, Drama Therapy may serve as a versatile tool for emotional regulation, narrative exploration, vulnerability and sharing, and transformation and empowerment, which all have the potential to foster intimacy in relationships
Encountering apartheid publics: an essay film on Hendrik Verwoerd as public symbol 1958-1966 and implications for counter-publics today.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11-10) Effendi, Karima; Louw, Lieza; Kenny, Bridget
The policies of separate development under Verwoerd created the material conditions for apartheid and capitalism to thrive, but it's the hypothesis of this project that the pomp and ceremony, the suit, his speeches and performative statecraft, created the affective conditions for his thinking to make its way from the past into our present-time. This is a discursive inquiry that draws on political theory, psychoanalysis, feminist theory and essayistic film theory to explore how the slipperiness of apartheid discourse makes it impossible to counter it on its own terms. Verwoerd symbolised a pernicious ‘covering over’ of irreconcilable ambiguities in apartheid discourse that was used to construct and stabilise whiteness against ‘other’ constitutive subject formations. The second part of the creative project is an essay film, Verwoerd’s Smile, that uses an ‘apartheid’ and colonial archive to attempt to show up its own discriminatory logic. The film’s failure in doing this has a productive value that is instructive for understanding how the cloak of invisibility that shrouds whiteness from being seen doing its work, also protects it from being dismantled. Understanding this has implications for radical projects concerned with undoing apartheid.
Locality Shaping the Institution: Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia, Riverlea, Johannesburg
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Pather, Jodie; Ntombela, Nontobeko; Khan, Sharlene
Following the rich history that community art centres have had in South Africa, this research questions how locality may ideologically shape community-based arts institutions and have a bearing on how they operate and what they have access to. Specifically, this study looks at the community-based arts organisation, Genesis Connection Youth Skills Multimedia (Genesis), in Riverlea, Johannesburg. This research report is carried out to ascertain the extent to which Genesis and the work that they do is influenced by their home community of Riverlea, and how this locality may affect or determine their curriculum, programming, and access to funding. Through episodic interviews, I explore the significance of locality to community-based art centres as is experienced directly by facilitators of different initiatives. The first chapter in this report deals with an overview of scholarship on community art centres; defining and contextualising them, including a historical overview of community art centres that have existed in Johannesburg. Locality, as a concept and its associated literature as related to community art centres is discussed and incorporates perspectives from facilitators working in the field. The second chapter presents a historical overview of the area of Riverlea and builds on the description from Chris Van Wyk’s autobiographical work Shirley, Goodness and Mercy (2004), as a way of complementing, enriching and humanising the academic perspectives on the area of Riverlea. These upfront chapters provide the context for the birth of Genesis, and the terrain that it operates in. Lastly, the third chapter looks at the funding landscape that has sustained community-based arts in South Africa, with specific attention paid to government-funded community-based arts centres, alongside a discussion of how Genesis is funded. The purpose of this is to establish an understanding of the accessibility of funds for arts organisations, what their unique challenges may be, as well as to highlight the sustainability of government-funded organisations in comparison to that of self funded organisations, such as Genesis
The affordances of Narradrama as a tool for psychological adjustment among Traumatic Brain Injury survivors in South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-03) Bekker, Jané-Desire; Clarke, Lucy Draper
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an acquired disability that can easily be overlooked, and there is a need for innovative, accessible and more effective therapeutic models for neuropsychological rehabilitation in the South African context. This practice-based research aimed to explore how Narradrama may assist TBI survivors in identifying and adjusting psychologically to their own identity, exploring ways to expand this identity and uncovering the affordances of familial witnessing. The practical application was conducted with a group of six to twelve adult TBI survivors in Johannesburg more than three years after their injury. Data was collected from interviews, six Narradrama sessions, and creative expressions made by participants. The findings in this study document two case studies and determined four sub-categories of witnessing that made an impact. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed the main themes of shame to empathy and disconnection to connection. For this sample group, a Narradrama approach proved effective for psychological adjustment to changes in identity and provided ways to expand confidence, meaning, agency and a sense of belonging.
A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, Margie
Abortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.
A transpersonal approach to drama therapy techniques for embodied grief work with women who experience loss and distress from an abortion
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brollo, Gillian Susan; Pankhurst, Margie
Abortion as a lived experience is not often explored in research or therapy, particularly when women are distressed as a result of an abortion. This research addresses the scarcity of such explorations through developing and testing a workshop model based on transpersonal drama therapy in order to examine how women who are distressed after an abortion express and manage their experience, and also how women can integrate an abortion into their life story in order to find healing. The two key questions are concerned with firstly, how embodied activities can bring unconscious feelings to the surface, and secondly how narrative can work to integrate a distressing experience into a life story so that its emotional impact is managed and the individual finds ways to move forward from the traumatic event. Chapter One is an introduction to the context, one in which women who experience a sense of loss or grief after an abortion find few places for support, healing and most importantly, for expressions of distress. The introduction touches briefly on the hyper-politicised nature of abortion as a phenomenon and how difficult it is to communicate nuance within such a polarised context. Chapter Two is a description of the theoretical framework of the transpersonal approach which also serves a literature review. The literature drawn on includes models of drama therapy, griefwork, embodied grief activities such as rituals, transpersonal philosophies which present a world where the material and the immaterial are connected and draws these theories together within an Afrocentric paradigm. Chapter Three describes the methodology and explains how the workshop was designed and its aims. Chapters Four and Five are concerned with how data was obtained and a data analysis and discussion flowing from that analysis. The final chapter looks at findings including a deep sense of relief and healing in being offered a space to explore their personal experiences of abortion, and in the affirmation iv provided by witnessing other women’s stories and telling of their own; and recommendations for future research such as trying the model with a rural cohort, and extending the process in combining individual and group work in order to dive deeper into individual stories.
Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Msutu, Bongisa; Valley, Greer
Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive is a study that explores the archiving of township (black) architecture, space and geography. The township, as a residential area originally and currently designed for the occupation of impoverished black people, has become a geography of appropriation, and an extension of radical self-care onto space – a spatial care. Bophelong, a township in the Vaal, is the subject of this study because its history – similar to the history of most South African townships - and lack of architectural archives present an opportunity for this exploration. This study provides a decolonial approach to archiving and curating black architecture, space and geography, considered ‘unarchivable’ by the traditional architectural archive that collects and curates in accordance with scientific empiricism. It is this colonial knowledge-producing tradition that renders township geographies epistemically worthless. Through qualitative re-search methods, this study provides and explores strategies of archiving and curating township architecture and space in such a way that it is politically and epistemically valuable to both its people and the architectural fraternity. It is the hope of this re-search that these strategies may lead to the valuing of such an archive, and to the interrogation of traditional architectural knowledge production and its politics of value.
Who do i think i am? Autoethnographic and zoomorphic comics and the expression of coloured identity.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Alexander, Ashleigh Jesse; RANDLE, LUWAROTIMI; REID, KIRSTEN
This thesis presents my investigation into what I term my "Coloured Experience," my examination of zoomorphic imagery, and my approach to portraying this research through a comic book. This aims to produce an artifact that talks about being Coloured in a creative and personal way, which is a response to a significant gap in the portrayal of Coloured people, highlighting a tendency towards oversimplified, sensationalized, and politicised narratives. I employ autoethnographic reflection as my method of inquiry and use zoomorphism as a technique for representation, the outcome of which is a comic book. Zoomorphism in graphic narratives, works as a visually stimulating tool for representing the concept of race, by drawing on visual metaphor, animal association and allegory, in combination with the comics medium, and an engagement with guided autoethnographic journaling, this research produced a comic book where I was able to host a discussion on my experience as a Coloured person in a safe and creative way. This research does not extensively explore my origins, nor does it delve into the formation of Coloured people as a distinct racial group to establish a definitive common ancestor or construct a narrative to define the essence of being Coloured.
Catch and release: A Practice-based analysis using interviews from healthcare workers, to explore the impact on self-care, using 5 Drama Therapy core principles and practices.
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) ADLAM, ANTONE; Thibedi, Linda (Mdena)
This is a Practice-based Research study analysing the impact of five core principles from Phil Jones’s nine core principles in drama therapy. Data was collected from interviews with healthcare workers within a private hospital in Johannesburg. This research aimed to find the most suitable core principle for each interviewee, in order for them to practice self-care in an explorative and creative manner. While the research identified the importance of drama therapy and the core processes used within the researcher's rehearsals and solo performance based on the answers from interviews with the healthcare workers, the researcher identified the unique approaches and impact drama therapy holds to practice self-care. The integration of the core principles (as named by Jones, 1996) are embodiment, play, dramatic projection, interactive audience and witnessing, as well as drama therapeutic empathy and distancing.
Short Cut: A Feminist Reflection on the Postcolonial Uncanny
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) MILLS, ANGELITA VIOLA; Sakota, Tanja
This research-led praxis Masters interrogates and explores Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on the uncanny to realise a short film text, entitled Short Cut. Specific attributes of the uncanny are applied in the film’s attempt to produce a sensibility of the uncanny, in order to convey the anxiety and fear of femicide experienced by women in South Africa on a daily basis. The film is effectively created through the theoretical considerations of the research. Drawing on primary texts from Sigmund Freud, Homi Bhabha and Teresa De Lauretis, the research deliberates on how the uncanny is a critical register through which to articulate conditions of dread and horror shaping the lives of women navigating the spectre of femicide in South Africa. The uncanny is marshalled as an aesthetic-conceptual tool consciously and intentionally used by filmmakers and as an aesthetic and conceptual tool for filmmakers interested in exploring the experiences and traumas of postcolonial women. In so doing, it seeks to provide new possibilities, insights and expressions of representation on film, through the intersectional conceptual lenses of gender, postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis.
Hoop It Up, Loop It Back, Repeat: A Decade of Memory and Interconnectivity at a Johannesburg Basketball Court
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Cunningham, Alexandra Dolores; Goliath, Gabrielle; Kreutzfeldt, Dorothee
This research and artwork reflects on my memories of a decade at a public basketball half-court in the Johannesburg inner city. The court has become a home to myself and our larger community: its quotidian, repetitive, cyclical nature has allowed us to form a network and family. In exploring the ways in which our community has intertwined, I also explore the cuts and ruptures that occur. Using loops, hoops and the rhythmic nature of each day, my artwork reflects our communal desire for interconnectivity at the court, which forms a foundational netting. The repetition reflects my experience of family and positionality across dissimilarities, while also resonating with the rhythm of hip hop music: ever present at the court. Through conversations with other court community members, I explore these relationships and memories. In my artmaking, I use crocheted textile, pattern and imagery to reflect our experiences: something strong, durable and able to conduct a sense of warmth and comfort, yet also fragile and easy to unravel.
South African restaurant reviewing: a changing landscape?
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Stiehler-van der Westhuiz, Adele
This study investigates the changes that have taken place in the South African restaurant reviewing landscape between 2000 and 2020. Changes in society’s relationship with food, together with a changing media landscape and the end of apartheid, have combined to create a colourful cocktail of cultural changes in South Africa, which is currently academically underexplored. A historical methodology was followed to track these changes and included the compilation of an archive of 426 reviews published about three restaurants chosen from Eat Out magazine’s 20th-anniversary issue. Through a close reading and content analysis of the archive and by drawing on public sphere and cultural consecration theories the study found that the food reviewing field was neither inclusive, not particularly professional if measured by the guidelines set out by the legendary New York Times reviewer, Craig Claiborne, and that there were two distinct decades in the archive. The first was dominated by positive reviews in traditional media written mainly by professional reviewers. The second decade represented the “democratisation” of online reviewing with a significant increase in reviews (positive and negative) written mainly by amateurs on rating sites. The fact that white females dominated the reviewing space throughout the 20 years under study is evidence of the legacy of apartheid and confirms that privilege and power still shaped the foodscape. This study also tracked the tensions between players in the restaurant reviewing field and confirmed that amateur reviewers did not reject culinary capital but rather reinforced it, and professional reviewers embraced rather than avoided the digital media platforms. Amateur reviewers applied different reviewing criteria and wrote consumer assessments focused on lived experiences, rather than cultural assessments, like many professional reviewers. This study therefore suggests that their reviews are complementary to professional reviews, not competing. The arrival of Web 2.0 and mobile phones also changed the form of reviews radically during the 20 years, with commenting and sharing functionalities turning some reviews into vibrant conversations and photographs and videos becoming the new way to review.
An Ecofeminist Reading of Hadestown: The Myth, The Muscial
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Vos, Abigail; Somma, Donato
Hadestown: The Myth, the Musical has merged two ancient love stories and has presented these stories within a world riddled with environmental damage. The four main characters (Orpheus, Eurydice, Persephone, and Hades) are influenced by the environment in various ways. Persephone acts as the goddess of the natural world and therefore is nature’s ambassador. Hades, the king of the Underworld, has become an industrial mogul and has inadvertently damaged the earth with his industrial kingdom. As a result, Eurydice is left to suffer these consequences and faces poverty and hunger because of the environmental imbalance that engulfs her. Orpheus, in response, attempts to write a song that will bring balance to the world once more. Our characters are situated within an environmentalist fable; therefore, the musical’s narrative centres around how these characters interact with the environment. The music of Hadestown has been carefully selected in an eclectic way. Jazz, folk, musical theatre, and opera have all had various influences on the musical world of the show. This influence is not simply limited to the score, but the histories of these genres bleed into the work. Folk and jazz both carry profound messages of struggle and protest with them, and therefore the use of these genres aids in the environmentalist activism presented in the musical. These genres and their social and geographical histories are layered into Hadestown. The musical allows for deep character analysis and textual analysis through the writing of Anaïs Mitchell. In this research, I will present an analysis of the lyrics of Hadestown to present the embedded themes of environmentalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-industrialism. My analysis will present how the pained Earth and Her inhabitants reflect the pain endured by the Global South, specifically by women. Impoverished women in third-world countries face most environmental consequences accompanying the Global North’s incessant need for more. This effect is portrayed in the lives of Eurydice and Persephone. An ecofeminist framework will be applied to the work as Persephone exhibits inherent ecofeminist traits. Hadestown presents its audience with a mirror of the world they live in and ask its audience what it will do about it.
Where Did Things Go Wrong? An Investigation of the Adoption of the Creative Industry and Creative Economy Concepts in the Malawi National Cultural Policy
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Phiri, Yotam Alston Maweya; Joffe, Avril
The enactment in 2015 of Malawi’s National Cultural Policy was heralded as providing the formalised guidelines that would bring together stakeholders in the arts and culture sector towards the attainment of a common set of goals and a unified vision. However, in the eight (8) years that have followed there is a perception amongst non-state actors that the National Cultural Policy contains a vision and goals that do not meet the realities on the ground, nor the needs of its intended beneficiaries. This research challenges the assumption that the failure of the National Cultural Policy is the result of the failure to reconcile the transition of Malawi’s arts and culture from the margins during the Single-Party era to its alignment more centrally in national development agendas in Democratic Malawi. The central argument of this study is that the failed attempt of the government to mimic the application of the creative industry and creative economy concepts utilised with much success in the Global North, in Malawi’s arts and culture sector is at the heart of the National Cultural Policy’s failure. This research study investigates the failure to mimic these Global North concepts without recontextualizing them to the Malawian arts and culture landscape in the early stages of the policy’s development as being the root cause for its subsequent failure. The study utilises a qualitative methodology in order to analyse the various disconnects within the National Cultural Policy and the impacts these have on the policy’s implementation.
The Intersection of Systemic Racism and Technology and the Consequences for Video Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Flusk, Timothy; Reid, Kieran
The paper documents and reviews the process by which consequences of systemic racism is found in video games through the medium of technology. The principal idea of technology is used broadly to accommodate all media produced by society as tools for wielding and enforcing capitalist ideology. This is used as a means of revealing and mapping the cultural epistemic domain that dominates the West and its former colonies. The principal methodology is drawn from D. Fox Harrel’s Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation and Expression. The process focuses on using the idea of the phantasmal generation within media, by individuals within systems. As such the process of these phantasm expressing or revealing themselves in various media is tracked and studied from both sides of the process: where they come from and how they are expressed. The principal approach situates the discussion of developing video games within the West, specifically the United States of America. The case studies used to illustrate and apply the methodology include Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and NBA2K17. These are placed in context along side their appropriate phantasmal sibling and representation. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is interrogated through the lens of capitalism and the representation of Black criminals in media. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is placed in context of fantasy genre and colonialism. NBA2k17 is placed in context of traditional racist perspectives of Black, athleticism and sport. All case studies utilise the principal twin approach of separating phantasms into hegemonic teleological expectation and ontological racist assertions. This allows the encapsulation of ludic systems as well narrative and character representation within the games.
A Happier Life Through Sad Mode - Designing Automated Players for Single Player Games
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Chola, Saili; Reid, Kieran; Du Preez, Kirsten
Solo games are a keystone of tabletop board gaming for players and designers alike. While they are numerous and enjoyed by many members of the community, there is a noticeable lack of clarity and exploration of what principles make these games uniquely interactive and enjoyable experiences for players. This project responds to this inadequacy through the development of a playable game and a research report. The game demonstrates and tests the virtues of solo game play mechanics while the report expands and discusses the interpretable results and qualities of said solo game mechanics.
The Influence of Fandom on the Creative Producers
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Moodley, Seyurie; Whitcher, Raymond
What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine, this is the world of fandom. Looking at the ways in which fandoms have had an influence on storytelling; do stories really belong to the original content producer once they have developed a big enough fandom or, are they trying to fulfil the needs of the consumers? Once a fandom has become large enough there is a possibility of malcontent within audience members that can eventually lead to the rise of toxic fandom. The aim of this research is to look at the ways in which creators have tailored and filtered their own original ideas to please audiences, specifically toxic fans and how they have potentially compromised authenticity so that they could franchise a certain story and its respective universe. This paper will investigate the following televisual/ filmic icons of popular culture: Harry Potter (2001-2011), Game of Thrones (2011-2019) and finally Rick and Morty (2013-present). They will be analysed to determine the ways in which fandoms possibly become toxic and lose the ownership of the creative producers/authors/show runners/directors. By analysing these three case studies and their respective fandoms the research will attempt to verify whether a story still belongs to the creative producers or whether they have been appropriated by fans, by forcibly adapting the core story to fit the consumers’ needs. All three fandoms will be looked at by taking different approaches, as they could be said to have very different fanbases and therefore it will give this research a better understanding as to how these fandoms work and the ways in which they adapt a story to make it popular or in turn change the story to create shock value. This research will approach a six-phase framework of fan appropriation which will attempt to prove the thesis statement. These phases were created in order to look at and therefore demonstrate how once a story has a big enough fandom, they no longer belong to the original producer but are rather made in the form of participatory culture, as theorised by Henry Jenkins.
Techno-Orientalism in Science Fiction: A Resistant Reading of Ex Machina
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Schoeman, Samantha; Duncan, Catherine
Techno-Orientalism is a prominent issue in science fiction media. It perpetuates and propagates negative stereotypes about Asians across a broad audience, tangibly affecting and shaping society’s perceptions. This research focuses on challenging and resisting the dominant portrayal of Asians in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015). I interrogate Ex Machina in a way that centres the female Asian character, Kyoko, using methods of resistant readings and implementing the ‘oppositional gaze’ strategy put forth by bell hooks. My analysis shows how the cinematic apparatus of the film constructs the problematic techno-Orientalist stereotypes, and how viewers can use an oppositional gaze, cyborg theory, and feminist film theory in a resistant reading. In reading the film against the grain, I found that the spectatorial experience changes, allowing for the emergence of different pleasures and compensations not offered through traditional looking relations between film and viewer. I argue that these strategies empower the marginalised characters, affording spectators of the film to glean different and more defiant impressions without detaching from the film’s canon. I further suggest that resistant readings and employment of the oppositional gaze offer an opportunity for more diverse voices and opinions to document and share their critiques and experiences with problematic media representation. This opens the door for further discourse challenging harmful, stereotypical characterisations, thereby growing the field of film studies.
Lil_ith- A love story for South Africa’s queer, misfit youth
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) de Jager, Robin Claude; Wessels, Christopher
This project takes the form of an explorative filmic investigation into and reflection on the archetype of the queer misfit in South African cinema. The film and research take the standpoint of the South African misfit archetype being a post-queer-theory subject in relation to the country’s historical, socio-economic, sexual, traditional and technological landscape. I will compare the appearance of the queer misfit through the arrival of the neon and caustic characters of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s to South Africa’s contemporary emergence of this archetype, positioning Queer Theory and the New Queer Cinema movement of the early as the primary emergence of a ‘true’ queer voice. I will engage with the influence of socio-economic, political and technological stimuli as well as the emergence of post-Queer Theory in the West and South Africa and its contribution to the evolution of the queer and misfit in post-colonial South African cinema. Through a practice-led, autoethnographic approach I combined these findings with core theoretical frameworks on post-modern sexuality by Queen and Schimel to inform and fuel the development of the film Lil_ith. The film stands as a creative execution expanding on the South African Misfit archetype in relation to the global history of Queer Misfit representation as well as its relationship with South Africa as a nation in the process of de-lonialisation within a digitised and globalised world.

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