Joburg without Joburg: the black South African romcom

This article focuses on three black South African romantic comedies: Akin Omotoso’s Tell Me Sweet Something (2015), Adze Ugah’s Mrs Right Guy (2016) and Thabang Moleya’s Happiness Is a Four-Letter Word (2016). All of them did well at the box office, which led directors and commentators to argue that the time had come for commercially successful black South African films. In my discussion, I want to look at how different versions of urban black middle- and upper-class lifestyles and aspirations are cinematically construed in these romantic comedies. In particular, I want to explore what these films reveal about contemporary Johannesburg class formations: about how distinctions of taste are embedded in relations of cultural power and become the basis for both aesthetic and social judgements. I also argue that these films’ representation of global urbanism and challenge to discourses of African backwardness are part of a broader trend in cinemas from the global south.