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Intertextuality and memory in Yizo Yizo

PHD Thesis - Arts / Intertextuality is used to engage with the ‘already said’, which according to
Umberto Eco is the hallmark of postmodernism. African popular culture in 2005 is

frequently created through a dialogue between multiple partners. It is

heteroglossic in expression, is capable of withstanding multifocal scrutiny and is

fluent in the conventions of the form it chooses. It expresses itself by allusion to

the ‘already said’ and through inclusion of increasingly sophisticated popular

audiences. Intertextuality is generally used as a smart tool to express and

comment upon hidden narratives relating to, for example, African identities, class

relations, corruption and the taboo: abuse, incest, Aids, archaic traditional law

practices as well as the not-so-hidden topics of necropower, global capitalism

and so on. This study looks at the various uses of intertextuality, including the

way it is used as a mechanism to access political memory, in the South African

youth TV drama Yizo Yizo.

It is argued that a text must be read in relation to the dynamic and interaction

between the producer of the text, the text and the audiences of the text. To

understand what producers bring to the text, one must understand the universe

of the producers. In trying to understand why Yizo Yizo appears to depict

“violence”, one needs to understand the experiences and ideologies of the

producers in the physical space known as South Africa and reproduced as

memory in the chronotope occupied by Yizo Yizo. In analysing the term

“violence”, it becomes clear the word is inadequate if it is used in the singular

only. What is explored here is rather, a hierarchy of violences. Violence is

embedded in the very construct of the rainbow nation and returned as the

political memory of violence in representation. The pecking order of these

violences is identified as political violence, the relations of abuse, sexual

violence, violence silence, dialogic violence, violence towards the self, traumatic

violence revisited, lifestyle violence, criminal violence and retributive and

restorative violence. Yizo Yizo works with the consequences of the apartheid

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past in the present and forces one male character after another to take a stand

against the continuing violences of their present. Two characters (Papa Action

and Chester) become the archetypes of criminal violence. Another two (Thulani

and Gunman) answer reactionary and victimising and criminal violence with

violence intended to free those it oppresses.

But the proof of the pudding is in the audience tasting. We know from Henry

Jenkins that fans rewrite texts in ten different ways—by recontextualisation,

expanding the series timeline, refocalisation, moral realignment, genre shifting,

cross overs, character dislocation, personalisation, emotional intensification and

eroticisation. Using comments by fans, focus group results and media reports,

the research looks at the way these rewrites take place in relation to Yizo Yizo.

Ultimately it is suggested that the producers of this particular text are able to

reach their audiences because they are also fans of movie and TV and of African

popular culture. Moreover, they share a country in which a multitude of violences

are experienced but invisible, hence the need for the development of a language

and aesthetic of violence.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/155
Date02 February 2006
CreatorsAndersson, F. B.
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format2000689 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf

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