At the end of the Rainbow: Jerusalema and the South African gangster film
Journal Article
2010
Permanent link to this Item
Authors
Journal Title
Safundi : journal of South African and American studies
Link to Journal
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Publisher
University of Cape Town
Department
Faculty
License
Series
Abstract
Between Oliver Schmitz’s Mapantsula, released in 1988, and Ralph Ziman’s Jerusalema, released twenty years later, lies the history of a country torn apart by systematic racist oppression for half a century. Reborn under the sign of truth and reconciliation, the brave new world carries not only the scars of the old, but has given birth to mutations of poverty, disease, crime and rampant violence. Since the glory days of classic Hollywood, when Cagney, Raft, Robinson and Bogart scowled their way across the screen, the gangster film has been the genre par excellence to engage with these themes of economic inequity and class stratification, and to explore the possibilities of violence both to transform and to destroy.1 The genre emerged as a powerful expression of economic frustration during the Depression, a period that challenged the founding ideals of America as well as the preferred image of American heroic masculinity forged on the frontier. The gangster as self-made man, in search of the pot of gold, has been inscribed into different plots: on the one hand, he (invariably ‘‘he’’) plays the system in order to control it and have the freedom to become legitimate (The Godfather films [1972–1990] are an example). Or he plays the system too recklessly and brings about his own destruction: one thinks of Tony Montana, collapsing into paranoia, snorting a pile of cocaine as bullets rain through his mansion in De Palma’s baroque Scarface (1983). Alternatively, he plays the game too conspicuously, like Frank Lucas in Ridley Scott’s American Gangster (2007): Lucas breaks his rule not to attract attention by his dress, and becomes, literally, a marked man.
Description
Reference:
Marx, L. (2010). At the end of the rainbow: Jerusalema and the South African gangster film. Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 11(3), 261-278.