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Scene 5. Film as Instrumental and Interpretive Lens

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Naked Agency
This chapter is in the book Naked Agency
scene 5Film as Instrumental and Interpretive LensFilminginAfricameansformanyofusColorfulimages,nakedbreastwomen,exoticdances,andfearfulrites.Theunusual.NuditydoesnotrevealThehiddenItisitsabsence— TrinhT.Min-ha, ReassemblageAs Trinh T. Min-ha noted in 1982, the relationship between Africa and film-ing is one of strife. The cinematic genre’s obsession with “naked breast women, exotic dances, and fearful rites” from Africa answers the need to reveal, to un-derstand, and to control that which is supposedly unfamiliar, hidden, and threatening. If that is the relationship between film, visual art, and a suppos-edly naked Africa, how should we read the dynamics between cinema and pu-rifying rituals in the postcolonial context? How do other visual productions on protest nudity participate in this problematic debate? These are the overarching questions that this scene seeks to answer. I argue that Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s fea-ture film Les Saignantes (2005) mobilizes women’s images of purifying rituals to heal the diseased postcolonial nation-state—an appropriation of the women’s society that is not the direct political co-optation of their organizations by poli-ticians and other power brokers, as I have laid out in the previous scenes. Like three other films on assaultive nakedness—Uku Hamba ’Ze (To Walk Naked) by Jacqueline Maingard, Sheila Meintjes, and Heather Thompson (1995), which
© 2020 Duke University Press, Durham, USA

scene 5Film as Instrumental and Interpretive LensFilminginAfricameansformanyofusColorfulimages,nakedbreastwomen,exoticdances,andfearfulrites.Theunusual.NuditydoesnotrevealThehiddenItisitsabsence— TrinhT.Min-ha, ReassemblageAs Trinh T. Min-ha noted in 1982, the relationship between Africa and film-ing is one of strife. The cinematic genre’s obsession with “naked breast women, exotic dances, and fearful rites” from Africa answers the need to reveal, to un-derstand, and to control that which is supposedly unfamiliar, hidden, and threatening. If that is the relationship between film, visual art, and a suppos-edly naked Africa, how should we read the dynamics between cinema and pu-rifying rituals in the postcolonial context? How do other visual productions on protest nudity participate in this problematic debate? These are the overarching questions that this scene seeks to answer. I argue that Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s fea-ture film Les Saignantes (2005) mobilizes women’s images of purifying rituals to heal the diseased postcolonial nation-state—an appropriation of the women’s society that is not the direct political co-optation of their organizations by poli-ticians and other power brokers, as I have laid out in the previous scenes. Like three other films on assaultive nakedness—Uku Hamba ’Ze (To Walk Naked) by Jacqueline Maingard, Sheila Meintjes, and Heather Thompson (1995), which
© 2020 Duke University Press, Durham, USA

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Acknowledgments ix
  4. Introduction: Exceptional Nakedness 1
  5. Section I. Restriction
  6. Scene 1. Exceptional Conditions and Darker Shades of Biopolitics 29
  7. Scene 2. Dobsonville and the Question of Autonomy 43
  8. Section II. Co-optation
  9. Scene 3. Africanizing Nakedness as (Self-) Instrumentalization 65
  10. Scene 4. In the Name of National Interest 89
  11. Scene 5. Film as Instrumental and Interpretive Lens 107
  12. Section III. Repression
  13. Scene 6. Secularizing Genital Cursing and Rhetorical Backlash 131
  14. Scene 7. Epistemic Ignorance and Menstrual Rags in Paris 149
  15. Scene 8. (Mis)Reading Murderous Reactions 175
  16. Epilogue: Defiant Disrobing Going Viral 191
  17. Notes 197
  18. References 219
  19. Index 251
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478007579-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Acknowledgments ix
  4. Introduction: Exceptional Nakedness 1
  5. Section I. Restriction
  6. Scene 1. Exceptional Conditions and Darker Shades of Biopolitics 29
  7. Scene 2. Dobsonville and the Question of Autonomy 43
  8. Section II. Co-optation
  9. Scene 3. Africanizing Nakedness as (Self-) Instrumentalization 65
  10. Scene 4. In the Name of National Interest 89
  11. Scene 5. Film as Instrumental and Interpretive Lens 107
  12. Section III. Repression
  13. Scene 6. Secularizing Genital Cursing and Rhetorical Backlash 131
  14. Scene 7. Epistemic Ignorance and Menstrual Rags in Paris 149
  15. Scene 8. (Mis)Reading Murderous Reactions 175
  16. Epilogue: Defiant Disrobing Going Viral 191
  17. Notes 197
  18. References 219
  19. Index 251
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