Hierdie woorde en sinne het ek iewers geërf : reflecting on Afrikaner identity through intertextuality in Johnny is nie dood nie (Olwagen 2017) and Kanarie (Olwagen 2018)

Abstract

The research study focuses on configurations of filmic intertextuality in Christiaan Lugones’s feature films Johnny is nie dood nie (2017) and Kanarie (2018), and examines how they enable audiences of the films to reflect on an Afrikaner cultural identity. In this pursuit, the study examines the concept of a cultural identity by considering it as informed through socio-anthropological processes of cultural memory. The study describes cultural memory as operating within a network of culturally significant texts, which a community uses to recall and stabilise their cultural identity. Consequently, the study is able to describe intertextuality as a process through which texts interact within a cultural memory and inform a cultural identity. By establishing cultural memory as the functional link between intertextuality and cultural identity, the study creates a conceptual framework with which to describe the filmic intertextuality that Christiaan Olwagen uses in his films Johnny is nie dood nie and Kanarie. The study then applies this conceptual framework for intertextuality in a textual analysis of Johnny is nie dood nie and Kanarie, with a specific focus on scenes that utilise the formal filmic techniques of tableaux vivant compositions, filmic music, and direct address as techniques of intertextuality. Informed by the textual analysis of the films, the study then illustrates how Olwagen uses intertextuality to draw from a cultural memory of apartheid and thus reflect on the evolution of an Afrikaner cultural identity.