ABSTRACT

This article focuses on three black South African romantic comedies: Akin Omotoso’s Tell Me Sweet Something (2015), Adze Ugah’s Mrs Right Guy (2016) and Thabang Moleya’s Happiness Is a Four-Letter Word (2016). All of them did well at the box office, which led directors and commentators to argue that the time had come for commercially successful black South African films. In my discussion, I want to look at how different versions of urban black middle- and upper-class lifestyles and aspirations are cinematically construed in these romantic comedies. In particular, I want to explore what these films reveal about contemporary Johannesburg class formations: about how distinctions of taste are embedded in relations of cultural power and become the basis for both aesthetic and social judgements. I also argue that these films’ representation of global urbanism and challenge to discourses of African backwardness are part of a broader trend in cinemas from the global south.

摘要

本文重点介绍三部南非黑人浪漫喜剧：Akin Omotoso 的《告诉我甜蜜的事》（2015 年）、Adze Ugah 的《Mrs Right Guy》（2016 年）和 Thabang Moleya 的幸福是一个四字母词(2016)。他们都在票房上表现出色，这导致导演和评论员争辩说，南非黑人电影在商业上取得成功的时机已经成熟。在我的讨论中，我想看看在这些浪漫喜剧中，城市黑人中上层阶级的生活方式和愿望的不同版本是如何电影化的。特别是，我想探索这些电影揭示了当代约翰内斯堡的阶级形成：关于品味的差异如何嵌入文化权力的关系中，并成为审美和社会判断的基础。我还认为，这些电影对全球都市主义的表现和对非洲落后话语的挑战是全球南方电影更广泛趋势的一部分。