Full text loading...
-
Nommer 37: Power and the gaze in South African cinema
- Source: Journal of African Cinemas, Volume 15, Issue 1, Mar 2023, p. 13 - 35
-
- 05 May 2023
- 20 Nov 2023
- 19 Apr 2024
Abstract
A wealth of scholarship exists around looking relations in cinema, but there is a paucity of research into looking relations in South African cinema. With this article we show that the examination of looking relations in South African cinema offers valuable insights and suggest that similar analyses of other South African films can only be fruitful. Through a close textual analysis of Nosipho Dumisa’s Nommer 37 (2018), we interrogate the nature of the gaze directed at Pam, the woman protagonist. The works of María Lugones, Elaine Salo, Azille Coetzee and Louise Du Toit, and Pumla Dineo Gqola allow us to interpret and apply Laura Mulvey’s male gaze within the raced and gendered South African context shaped by colonialism. We show that even though Dumisa displays an awareness of the power relations in looking, and even though she problematizes male looking, the way she uses the camera to frame the look continues to centre the gaze of the men in the film.
Funding
- University of Cape Town