Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses "Wakamba Forever" a short Kenyan film that reinterprets a famous 1800s meeting between Chief Masaku and Her Majesty's servant called Macmillan. The paper is interested in how in this short film popular ideas about "wazungu" (white people) and "uzungu" (whiteness) are rehashed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers Wakamba Forever, a short film that was presented with the best film award at the 2018 Machawood Film Festival in Machakos, Kenya, as encompassing conversations about what mzungu (white person) or uzungu (whiteness) means to the everyday, or local, postcolonial Kenyan. It argues that Wakamba Forever parodies Hollywood tropes, especially in its reinterpretation of Marvel Studio’s Black Panther and re-appropriates the “black face” tradition, reposting it in a “white-face” form while toying with the historical event of the meeting between Chief Masaku and Macmillan in a dystopian fashion. Snatches of ideas of what whiteness is or is perceived to love or enjoy are given through a play of form so that there is a gesturing towards National Geographic films in its various channels with its interest on the bushes of Africa and its animals, as well as an embodiment of Victorian mannerism and attitudes in processes of the civilizing mission. Wakamba Forever borrows from popular culture in these conversations so that music, food, football, rumor, are brought into play in the discourse about what uzungu could be and how it could be dealt with. A key problem that runs through the paper is the assumption that because mzungu comes with the pains of domination, colonization, and dispossession of land and water, the typical mkamba, as Chief Masaku and his court are, has nothing positive to think about the empiricist, yet, in Wakamba Forever, contradiction, even confusion seems to be at play when meanings are sought.