Hollywood, predictably, has dominated this month’s interest in world affairs. Hundreds of people might have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the course of the continuing military occupation of those countries by the United States and Britain, contrary to the perception that colonialism and the Cold War were things of the past. Bombs might have gone off in India and Pakistan, and the so-called Muslim world might be in continuing turmoil, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters on to the streets to respond to how the West sees the inscrutable East, fuelled by the mass media. Drought, famine and disease might continue to dog the wretched of the Earth. But the Oscars have managed to put these all on to the back burner, while the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown have taken centre-stage once again.
Conspiracy theory? Yeah, right.
I guess it would be unpatriotic not to give a Halala to the winning foreign language film, unofficially submitted by South Africa. Excuse me, but I didn’t think the movie was about national pride. I thought it was about artistic excellence. But I guess I’m old fashioned.
Anyway, our own Gavin Hood, director of the winning foreign-language entry Tsotsi, rose to the occasion by opening his acceptance speech with the words penned by Nelson Mandela himself during the treason trial of the 1950s: “Nkosi sikelela,” he cried, to rousing applause from the black masses who had been specially bussed in by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (no pun intended), from Watts and the impoverished surrounding black neighbourhoods to give some sense of reality to the occasion. “God bless Africa,” Hood continued, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Tsotsi is a bit of a tsotsi in its own right. It takes chances with time, space and reality. Are we in the 1950s, as the opening sequence suggests, or in 2006? What kind of mishmash township is this where most of the action unfolds, where there is a carefully, beautifully filmed sense of seething poverty mixed with unexpected acts of dignity, but no real idea of the earthy smell of the horror of daily reality?
Secondly, what relation does this bear to Athol Fugard’s novel, from which the screenplay was culled? The novel ain’t no masterpiece, but it at least gives a sense of urgency and direction to the life of the so-called tsotsi at the centre of the story. He’s an unsympathetic thug, but there is some kind of compassionate heart beating in his breast, in its own way, according to its own logic. But Holly-wood don’t dig reality.
Anyway, no sooner had the panic around the Oscars died down than we were smacked across the chops with some seriously bad news: Superman’s wife had died from lung cancer.
Yes, folks, Dana Reeve, selfless, loving and indefatigably giving wife of Christopher Reeve, the one-shot wonder who personified everyone’s wet dream of a Superman who could defeat communism, Al Capone, black people and the taxman all at the same time, had passed away. (Christopher Reeve himself died of his injuries a long time after falling off a horse, in case anyone forgot the plot.)
A powerful Turkish movie about America’s war on the world didn’t rate a mention. Nor did the chief contender in the foreign language section about Palestine get anywhere close. Not that politics is important. We are, after all, living in the post-politics world. It’s all about Batman, Catwoman and Superman, like it was supposed to be.
How refreshing, though, that the best picture Oscar went to Crash — the very same Los Angeles, life on the outskirts of Tinseltown, with the spotlight turned on its underbelly. The gay white cowboy movie that was supposed to have got all the gongs (white guys falling off horses and having important, transcendental, philosophical moments of revelation between themselves as a result) was outvoted in favour of a multiracial, multicultural stew of post-911 US stories interwoven into one of the best movies I’ve seen in years.
This must mean that there is hope out there, after all.
For the South African film industry, however, such as it is, I have to stare into my bellybutton (the way you do), and wonder when we’re going to get to that interesting, complex place and tell the stories that we are really about. There were certainly gay white cowboys in the Karoo (and there still are.) There were, and are, social intrigues that would rival Casablanca in Charlize Theron’s native Benoni. There are crashing sensibilities of unresolved racial hatred each day as you drive into downtown Johannesburg. There are personal stories of unrequited and misunderstood love and passion in every tiny hamlet that was cajoled into going out and voting, against its better judgement, in the recent municipal elections.
It’s just that we’re not seeing them on SABC1, 2, 3 or in our local Ster-Kinekor or Nu Metro outlet.
Instead, we wait for what the Oscars tell us we should go out and see. Which, with a knife against your throat, is a bit of a tsotsi situation.