Playing Sun City: The Politics of Entertainment at a South African Mega-Resort.

详细信息   

• 作者：Sannar ; Torsten Thomas.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2011
• 导师：McMahon, Christina,eadvisorBloom, Peter J.ecommittee memberCabranes-Grant, Leoecommittee memberCole, Catherine M.ecommittee member
• 毕业院校：University of California
• Department：Theater Studies
• ISBN：9781267020475
• CBH：3482025
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：3374623
• Pages：374

文摘

My dissertation, "Playing Sun City: The Politics of Entertainment at a South African Mega-Resort," expands the field of performance theory by arguing for the political function of spectacle. This is a performance mode that is particularly relevant to white-dominated South African institutions as it masks complex negotiations over power and cultural meaning. I investigate the history of performance in Sun City, South Africa, a major tourist destination that both reflected and resisted the volatile racial and political vicissitudes of the nation in its staged spectaculars. Fusing a postcolonial reading of South Africa with revelatory archival materials, I argue that Sun City, through the performances of internationally-renowned entertainers, local performers, and celebrity-hungry tourists, functioned as a location of global cultural exchange during the 1980s and 90s in spite of the strictures of apartheid. Archival research in South Africa revealed who appeared on Sun City stages during the cultural boycott, who refused to perform, and how these performances and absences contributed to the mutually formed cultural identities of Bophuthatswana, South Africa, and the United States. Positing a fundamental connection between the nation and its popular entertainment, I demonstrate how the branding of South Africa as a pariah state impacted the staged productions in Sun City. Despite producers' claims that the Sun City shows were vapid spectacles, the depictions of race and ethnicity travelled globally and resonated locally.