Hortense Powdermaker - Copper Town: Changing Africa

Copper Town: Changing Africa

This work was published in 1962 in the United States. This book discusses the direct implication that the cinema, or the “bioscope” as it was called by Northern Rhodesians, had on the people who went to it. The cinema was introduce to Africa by colonial governments in the mid twentieth century and was perceived to have different influences on the African population depending on the group writing about it. There were many studies on the effects of the cinema on African people, and Powdermaker was one among many who published works about it. Copper Town: Changing Africa was an ethnographic study of the effects on Northern Rhodesia specifically. One of the main points of her work was to explain the confusion many Africans experienced when viewing Western films. One of these was understanding the concept of acting. Some who attended were confused by the concept of a film being fictional. Powdermaker describes that the concept of acting was not understood for the most part, and as a result whenever an actor “died” in one film and reappeared in another, the lack of continuity was upsetting. This was part of a deeper issue of censorship in African film. Colonial governments at the time were beginning to censor the films Africans were seeing in the cinema out of fear that certain contents would inspire Africans to challenge the colonial governments. Powdermaker looks into the content of the films and explains how some of the content was often critiqued by Africans as the difference in culture and misunderstandings of this difference led to a lack of respect for European officials. For example such things as kissing and the use of guns. These issues created a lack of respect amongst Africans towards the White officials due to differences in culture. This conflict, in turn, threatened the Colonial order who then began censoring the films as a means of keeping Africans from rising against them. One of the main conclusions that Powdermaker draws from this conflict of culture between colonial governments and African people is that as long as the European and African relationship was non existent “the resulting ignorance bound to distort communication from movies”