African Appropriations (ebook)

Argumento de African Appropriations (ebook)

Why would a Hollywood film become a Nigerian video remake, a Tanzanian comic book, or a Congolese music video? Matthias Krings explores the myriad ways Africans respond to the relentless onslaught of global culture. He seeks out places where they have adapted pervasive cultural forms to their own purposes as photo novels, comic books, songs, posters, and even scam letters. These African appropriations reveal the broad scope of cultural mediation that is characteristic of our hyperlinked age. Krings argues that there is no longer an "original" or "faithful copy," but only endless transformations that thrive in the fertile ground of African popular culture.

"Overall, African Appropriations is an engaging, readable, creative, and well-researched piece of scholarship." ?H-Material-Culture

"An original, stimulating, and convincing discussion of mimetic behaviors in the fields of cultural production and artistic expression." ?Peter Probst, Tufts University

"The text is jargon free, a pleasure to read, remarkably well researched, and enriched by 40 illustrations.... Highly recommended." ?Choice

"Matthias Krings has brilliantly fused together vignettes of contemporary African visual mediascapes that cause us to revise our perceptions of eddies and translocations of transnational mediated popular culture to Africa and within Africa." ?Adballa Uba Adamu, Bayero University, Kano

Matthias Krings is Professor of Anthropology and African Popular Culture at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. He is editor (with Onookome Okome) of Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry (IUP, 2013).0Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Major Wicked: Embodying Cultural Difference

2. Lance Spearman: An African James Bond

3. Black Titanic: Pirating the White Star Liner

4. Vice and Videos: Kanywood under Duress

5. Dar 2 Lagos: Nollywood in Tanzania

6. Branding bin Laden: The Global "War on Terror" on a Local Stage

7. Master and Mugu: Orientalist Mimicry and Cybercrime

8. "Crazy White Men": Un/doing Difference in African Popular Music

Coda: Mimesis and Media in Africa

Notes

References

Films

Index