Tsotsi Directed by Gavin Hood H Lapedis Popping
Tsotsi Directed by Gavin Hood
H Lapedis, ‘Popping the question: the function and effect of popular music in cinema’, Popular Music 18. 3 (1999): 367 -79 (p. 368) Diegetic sound: sounds that emanate from within the ‘storyworld’ of the narrative’, which are heard either externally or internally by the characters Non-diegetic sound: has ‘no literally source within the image’
Tsotsi: A young black urban criminal Historical: A young black gangster belonging to a group prominent in the 1940 s and 1950 s, affecting a special language and flashy dress. Origin: 1940 s; the word is thought to be a Sesotho corruption of ‘zoot suit’
Zola, ‘Bhambatha’ https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=_36 Nq 62 Lrj. I
Kwaito: an urban South African genre of house music that employs elements of rap. Some kwaito artists focus on house beats and repetitive/catchy vocal ‘hooks’, whilst others offer more lyrical content. Kwaito music has been influenced by gangsta rap to some extent in terms of lyrical content and delivery as well as music video conventions. Zola’s kwaito music also features tsositaal, a vernacular derived from a variety of mixed languages mainly spoken in the townships of Gauteng province (such as Soweto), but also in other agglomerations all over South Africa. Tsotsitaal which largely makes use of non-standard dialects of Zulu, English, Sesotho, and Afrikaans.
Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk and Adam Haupt, ‘Redemption to a kwaito beat: Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi’, Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, 4. 1 (2007), 29 -46 (p. 43) One could also argue that the three scenes with Miriam run the risk of essentialising conventional gender roles in which women are nurturers and men violent plunderers.
Geoffrey Macnab, ‘Review of Tsotsi’, Sight and Sound, 16. 4 (2006), p. 82 The irony is that the film is at its most effective when its protagonist is at his meanest.
Lindiwe Dovey, ’Redeeming features: from Tsotsi (1980) to Tsotsi (2006)’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 19. 2 (2007), 143164 the most powerful sequence in the film: an almost silent series of cuts between the two men – father and Tsotsi – as the father approaches Tsotsi and waits until Tsotsi hands the baby over to him. Rather than assume the conventional aspects of a shot-reverse shot sequence, this series is less interested in forwarding the narrative, it seems, and more invested in establishing a poignant visual counterpoint of the similarities and differences between the two men: they are both young and black; the baby’s father is privileged but has nevertheless been scarred by the violent society in which he lives (since his wife is now paralysed), while Tsotsi has suffered from a background of poverty, the death of his mother due to AIDS, and a father whole violence forced him to run away and live as a street child. This sequence is not so much concerned with reconciliation as it is about hard-hitting, factual juxtaposition: the one man could just have easily been the other. The sequence establishes equivalence between the two men, suggesting that it is only class that divides them
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