Archive for April, 2008
Britz: Muslims and Postmodern Media after 9/11
Ashwani Sharma, University of East London — April 16th, 2008|
The clip is the trailer for the television drama Britz which was shown on Channel 4 in the UK at the end of 2007. It was a well publicised drama with the burning of the Union Jack flag and the refrain 'Whose side are you on?' splashed across public billboards, as well as regularly aired on television prior to broadcast. Britz effectively brings together the two main modes of (liberal) representation of Muslims in the west post 9/11 - one as a social realist documentary-style drama about Muslim l [...]
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British Bhangra Album Sleeves as Artwork
Rajinder Dudrah, University of Manchester, UK — April 16th, 2008|
This is a clip from BBC 2's Desi DNA programme originally telecast on 5 March 2008 in the UK. The show itself is a magazine format aimed at second, third and fourth generation Brit-Asians and wider culture vultures. In its earlier series Desi DNA was aired at an accessible 7-8pm slot in the evening. Its latest series, of which this report is a part of, was shown around 11pm – a kind of ghetto slot one wonders?
To watch the current series again after its original transmission on the Beeb ( [...]
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Africa is mine, the diaspora is mine
Robert Tynes, University at Albany — April 15th, 2008|
In February 2008, President Bush went on a five country tour of Africa. The six-day trip/media event was reproduced as a home-style, slide show, assembled and narrated by the president himself. President Bush spoke to members of the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation while flipping through the visuals of his experience. The Sullivan Foundation works with the African diaspora, friends of Africa, and international corporations to empower Africa.
Bush’s slide show has a personal, “I’m-just-tellin [...]
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Show me the Money: Desi TV in the US Marketplace
Madhavi Mallapragada, University of Texas at Austin — April 13th, 2008|
The featured video clip is from 2007 when Simply Desi, a 3 and ½ hour block of South Asian programming was officially launched on ImaginAsian TV, an Asian American cable television network. Simply Desi’s programming line up for the most part relies on syndicated content such as Koffee with Karan, a celebrity talk show from India’s Star TV, news from South Asia, and a weekly show on cricket. Pulse- the Desi Beat is the only original programming that is produced by ImaginAsian TV and focuses [...]
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Colonial migrations in Sembene’s La Noire de…
Sada Niang, University of Victoria — April 11th, 2008|
Movements and spaces figure prominently in the works filmmakers such as Med Hondo, Oumarou Ganda and Djibril Diop Mambéty, but perhaps nowhere as starkly described as in this clip. Diouana’s migration to France spells out an innocent journey into stifling carceral spaces and eventually death. She moves from the nurturing yet compartmentalized space of her native medina, a place with “sandy lanes”, wooden fences, lowly houses, a milieu drenched in familiarity to the closed (claustrophobic) [...]
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Generational Clashes in the Retold Epic Story of “Keita! The Heritage of the Griot” (1995) by Dani Kouyaté
Ibrahim Amidou, University of Cincinnati — April 10th, 2008|
Although the film recounts the epic story of Sundiata Keita the miraculous child who did not walk until several years after his birth, the Director Dani Kouyate stresses the dichotomy between the world of African ancestors and that of the modern Africa inherited from colonization.
One of the clashes between the two views of the world is symbolized by the Griot Djeliba (Praise singer and depository of African Traditions) and the school teacher Fofana with regards to Mabou’s education. In [...]
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Charade, Masquerade and Hollywood’s Africa
Jude Akudinobi, University of California, Santa Barbara — April 9th, 2008|
Once upon a time in Diaspora, a sincere African, whom nobody, except an ideologue, would call a cultural nationalist, saw an item on the BBC website he visits, almost religiously, for news about ‘home’. All day, the piece, Hollywood Gets Africa Reality Check, bothered him like a recalcitrant itch. On his drive home from work, a Hugh Masekela song, In the Jungle, from the album, The Boys Doin’ It, became a soothing accompaniment to his freckled thoughts. That album was the first he bought [...]
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Projecting Nigeria
Brian Larkin, Barnard College — April 8th, 2008|
In 2005 a controversy broke out on the internet over a song “I Go Chop Your Dollar” by the Nigerian comedian and film star Nkem Oweh. Taken from his hit film The Master (2005 Dir. Uzodinma Okpechi), the song, sung in pidgin English, (whose lyrics and translations can be found here) tells the story of a Nigerian 419er (conman) threatening to con an ‘oyinbo’ (white man) by selling him the national airport or an oil refinery contract. The song, described by some bloggers as “the spamme [...]
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Bamako
Olivier Tchouaffe, University of Texas at Austin — April 7th, 2008|
In a courtyard of a neighborhood of Bamako (Mali), The IMF and the World Bank are put being put on trial for its grand extortion and theft of Africa’s resources. In Bamako’s narrative strategy, there is none of Hollywood “you cannot handle the truth!” trick. Bamako is neither a representation nor a spectacle of the law. As a soothing contrast from the trial, life goes on in and out of the courtyard as if the trial taking place is of modest importance. The movie’s insight is that, for A [...]
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No place for cultural taboo in Cyberspace
Ola Ogunyemi, Lincoln School of Journalism, University of Lincoln, UK — April 17th, 2008