Dancing in Liminal Space: Youth, Waithood, and Transformation in the South African Documentary The African Cypher (2012).
This article explores representations of youth in The African Cypher (2012), a South African documentary film that focuses on street dances practiced by youths who have grown up in townships. It proposes that The African Cypher depicts the young dancers as situated within what Alcinda Honwana has ca...
| Published in: | Film Criticism Vol. 43; no. 2; pp. 41 - 57 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Film Criticism
Sep2019
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=139712869&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 139712869 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01635069 53B jtl: Film Criticism issn: 01635069 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2019 vid: 43 iid: 2 pid: 8220 pub: Film Criticism artinfo: ui: 139712869 10.3998/fc.13761232.0043.207 ppf: 41 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 2MB tig: atl: Dancing in Liminal Space: Youth, Waithood, and Transformation in the South African Documentary The African Cypher (2012). aug: au: Singer, Christine affil: Research Affiliate in the Department of Culture, Media, and Creative Industries (CMCI) at King’s College London. PhD in Media Studies from SOAS University of London. su: African Cypher, The (Film) Documentary films Dance & youth Social marginality Popular culture Youth culture sug: subj: African Cypher, The (Film) Documentary films Dance & youth Social marginality Popular culture Youth culture ab: This article explores representations of youth in The African Cypher (2012), a South African documentary film that focuses on street dances practiced by youths who have grown up in townships. It proposes that The African Cypher depicts the young dancers as situated within what Alcinda Honwana has called a state of “waithood”, unable to obtain social and financial independence due to the socio-economic constraints that have continued after the formal end of apartheid in 1994. Simultaneously, the film’s focus on individual redemption, embodied by young Black men, circumscribes its potential for a wider, postcolonial critique of the predicament of disenfranchised youth in contemporary South Africa. Street dance, in turn, is represented as a liminal space where marginalized South African youth engage in “carnivalesque” performances that transform, subvert, and resist the experiences of spatial and social marginalization that characterize waithood. As the article suggests, liminality and the carnivalesque are depicted in the film as distinctively masculine experiences that preclude female perspectives to a significant extent pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Film Criticism is the property of Film Criticism and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Film Criticism holder: Film Criticism dt: @attributes: year: 2019 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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