Ageing is taboo in the world of the rich and the famous and it is represented as something terrible. Since when did looking old become something to laugh at?
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Arts, Culture + Society – Articles, Analysis, Comment
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It gets us nowhere to distinguish between page and stage poetry, except as terms in an analysis. There is bad and good on both sides. Both forms need to be kept alive and to flourish.
Is there value in reviving Western classics in post-colonial (South) Africa? Is this not perpetuating Western cultural imperialism?
It may seem that in Africa, oral culture has the upper hand over literacy. But this is not the case.
Depictions of Africa used to be the relentless negative image of suffering and impoverished victims. but now there is a new narrative, ‘Africa Rising’.
For decades, media representations of African poverty have been of disease, disaster, conflict, and poverty and have coloured how the rest of the world views Africa.
Traditionally, African women wore their hair in different ways to signify class or marriage status. Now with globalisation, hair is becoming less traditionalised and more politicised.
The psyche of defeat is linked to various things: the team’s maturity, captaincy, level of preparedness, confidence in coaching staff and personality characteristics of individual team members.
From stories about cult and witchcraft to heartbreak and sorrow, Nigeria’s Nollywood has developed into Africa’s giant in filmmaking.
African women have had to explain themselves to a world that does not seem to understand them.
In the past few years, many South Africans have come to associate Heritage Day with a good opportunity to have a barbeque, known locally as a braai. But the day is meant for so much more than that.
Jazz represents a minority audience in an already relatively small music market and to cover costs, the aggregation of fans must be across genres to maximise numbers.
When South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995 the country felt invincible and united. Twenty years later it is going through a tumultuous time which is even affecting its attitude to the Springboks.
In contrast to a decade ago, there are currently more than 150 craft breweries in South Africa, many shipping their products around the country.
Musicians and performers have long been considered to influence young people in negative ways.
To achieve science becoming part of everyday entertainment, one needs to take science out of its usual academic context.
Framing younger writers’ work within the footsteps of giants is always fraught with risk; the risk of shadowing the merits and faults of the former in an attempt to assess the legacy of the latter.
The Marikana tragedy has dominated recent South African memory and produced many different aesthetic responses.
It seems that different races listen to different music, but it is actually culture and value that determines this, not skin colour.
The journey of South African film has been a tumultuous one, with a disjointed history and an uncertain future.
While the debate seems not to be solvable, three academics look at the question of whether artists should provide entertainment or write for their own pleasure.
Concert organisers began to compete for government contracts. Often these contracts came with conditions as to who, among musicians, was desirable at government events.
The Oppikoppi Music Festival, one of the biggest and most popular in South Africa, holds on to the musical memories of the past and provides a musical map to the future.
The film ‘Blood Lions’ is contributing to the debate over canned hunting by delving into a sensationalised yet comprehensive true story.
Cape Town’s screening of the Africa World Documentary Film Festival provides a platform for debate, and shows how documentary films clarify and complicate the answers.