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African History Final Revised

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Running Head: AFRICAN HISTORY 1

African History

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AFRICAN HISTORY 2

Colonial State and Capital Harnessing African Leisure

During the inter-war era in Africa, going to the cinema grew into a vital leisure activity,

especially for the urban male population. This is significantly accurate for Southern Africa

because of the development of cinema theatres that happened afterward in West Africa. As stated

by Erlmann (2000), the phrase global imagination elaborates on how people change the context

of their knowledge and grant phenomena with meaning past their direct realm of personal

experience.

During that period, cinemas turned out to be an essential site of stress between the

audience, who wanted to view a vast array of films, and the colonial authorities, which focused

on supervising the screens. When watching foreign movies, mostly American detectives or

westerns, the audience could convey their criticism and feelings, which led to censorship.

Censorship was a result of the spectators’ response towards a film and not a preventive

action as the authority did not have the methods to ensure the control they wanted to put in place.

Censorship relies on the mutually agreed codes by elaborating not only on the meaning of the

films but also on their understanding. Colonial administrators instilled their cultural systems and

often did not question their changing cultural influence and the various methods of interpreting

images.

At a meeting to discuss the role of cinema in Africa, Kane Aziz, a participant of the

Senegal Censorship Board, stated that most of the films viewed in Africa had an uncertain

outcome. To guide Africans into perversion, he is kept at the same level and denied of any

improvement that would guide him to a higher group of human civilization. Based on this view,

France intentionally chose films that would pervert Africans and not educate them.

It was not shocking to discover the same perspectives in colonial Africa, as depicted in

British Africa (Burns, 2002). The portrayal of the white people was the critical concern for

colonial powers as cinema, especially the many gangster and Western films, did not display

positive images but frequently images which opposed the alleged civilizing rules. The film

African Jim (1948), romance, and glamour are used to mask vital social inequalities.

Therefore, the actual root of colonization was intimidation by images of Western people

acting in an immoral or unlawful manner. There are various examples of such films that were

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Running Head: AFRICAN HISTORY 1 African History Name Institution Course Code AFRICAN HISTORY 2 Colonial State and Capital Harnessing African Leisure During the inter-war era in Africa, going to the cinema grew into a vital leisure activity, especially for the urban male population. This is significantly accurate for Southern Africa because of the development of cinema theatres that happened afterward in West Africa. As stated by Erlmann (2000), the phrase global imagination elaborates on how people change the context of their knowledge and grant phenomena with meaning past their direct realm of personal experience. During that period, cinemas turned out to be an essential site of stress between the audience, who wanted to view a vast array of films, and the colonial authorities, which focused on supervising the screens. When watching foreign movies, mostly American detectives or westerns, the audience could convey their criticism and feelings, which led to censorship. Censorship was a result of the spectators’ response towards a film and not a preventive action as the authority did not have the methods to ensure the control they wanted to put in place. Censorship relies on ...
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