A new laager for a "new" South Africa Afrikaans film and the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom
The Afrikaans film industry came into existence in 1916, with the commercial release of De Voortrekkers (Shaw) and, after 1948, flourished under the guardianship of the National Party. South Africa's democratic transition, however, seemed to announce the death of the Afrikaans film. In 1998, the industry entered a nine year slump during which not a single Afrikaans film was released on the commercial circuit. Yet, in 2007, the industry was revived and has been expanding rapidly ever since. This study is an attempt to explain the Afrikaans film industry's recent success and also to consider some of its consequences. To do this, I situate the Afrikaans film industry within a larger and equally flourishing Afrikaans culture industry. I argue that the Afrikaans language's uncoupling from the state has shifted the preservation and promotion of the language into market driven domains. I show that Afrikaans language media and cultural commodities like film are mostly tailored to and consumed by white Afrikaans speakers. And I ask: if a "distinct" Afrikaner identity was first forged within the cultural sphere, through cultural rituals and through the consumption of Afrikaans media forms, what kind of subjectivities are, in the present moment, being produced by the Afrikaans culture industry? Specifically, I consider the ways in which the Afrikaans culture industry is reifying social life, how it is reaffirming the imagined boundaries of Afrikanerdom, and how, through the consumption of its products, Afrikaners can imagine or re imagine themselves as members of the same collectivity or laager. Stellenbosch University https:/scholar.sun.ac.za