Wow! eBook
Trash: African Cinema from Below
Author(s): Kenneth W. Harrow (Author)
- Publisher: Indiana University Press
- Publication Date: 9 April 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 344 pages
- ISBN-10: 0253007445
- ISBN-13: 9780253007445
Book Description
Highlighting what is melodramatic, flashy, low, and gritty in the characters, images, and plots of African cinema, Kenneth W. Harrow uses trash as the unlikely metaphor to show how these films have depicted the globalized world. Rather than focusing on topics such as national liberation and post-colonialism, he employs the disruptive notion of trash to propose a destabilizing aesthetics of African cinema. Harrow argues that the spread of commodity capitalism has bred a culture of materiality and waste that now pervades African film. He posits that a view from below permits a way to understand the tropes of trash present in African cinematic imagery.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Reading these films in this manner becomes a metaphor of how one must understand African nations in a global context… highly original and deeply historicized.” Frieda Ekotto, University of Michigan
About the Author
Kenneth W. Harrow is Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University. He is author of Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (IUP, 2007).
Kenneth W. Harrow is Distinguished Professor of English at Michigan State University.He is author of Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (IUP,2007).
