Tsotsi Morris

Tsotsi follows Morris, studies him, wants to kill him. Get a glimpse of Morris’s past. When Tsotsi decides to head to the city in order to find the next victim he stumbles upon a man named Morris Tshabalala. Morris is a man who has lost his legs and carries himself around all day on his hands. Through the horrific event that took his legs Morris has also lost the love of life, he no longer appreciates life as he used to. Tsotsi and Morris 'Did your mother teach you to drive' Fela's gang to tsotsi 'What shall I call you?' 'His name is David' Miriam to baby, with Tsotsi replying.

• Tsotsi bumps into a handicapped man, Morris (Jerry Mofokeng) at the subway station before meeting his friends and he yells at him. Tsotsi just stares at him when Morris spits on his shoe. The man leaves and Tsotsi follows him all the way to a quiet spot. Tsotsi stops him and tells him to walk, that he is faking his leg injury.
• Why does tsotsi leave Morris alone. Morris values his life. Awards for tsotsi. 2005 Edinburgh film festival 2006 oscar best foreign film of the year.

Summary:

Tsotsi, a gang member living in a township, makes a living mugging and carjacking more affluent people. One day, while hijacking a car, he finds a baby on the back seat and takes him home. Identifying with the baby, he forces a young mother in the township to take care of him. Slowly remembering his own childhood, and his mother who had died from AIDS, he ends up returning the baby to his affluent parents.

Analysis:

A major success in both South Africa and around the world, winner of the 2005 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Tsotsi took some risks: it featured no stars, but for the most part young unknown actors, was shot on location in Soweto, and its dialogue is mostly in tsotistaal, a hybrid of languages, such as Afrikaans, Sotho, Zwana and Zulu, spoken in the townships around Johannesburg. At the same time the film sparked much debate and controversy as far as its politics are concerned.

Tsotsi is based on the novel by the same name written by accomplished South African playwright Athol Fugard. Fugard had started the novel after the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, during which 69 people protesting pass laws restricting the movement of black South Africans were shot by apartheid police. Not published until 1980, four years after the Soweto uprising, during which police shot numerous students protesting the introduction of Afrikaans as the language of instruction, the novel is set in Sophiatown in the 1950s, shortly before this black cultural hub where non-whites could own property was razed to make room for the white suburb Triomf. The film updates the setting: Tsotsi’s mother does not die because of apartheid, but of AIDS, and the baby is not ‘historyless’ (Rijsdijk and Haupt 2007: 38) but has affluent black South African parents, which introduces an entirely new storyline.

Critics have thus rightfully pointed out that in the film economic apartheid has replaced racial apartheid. The affluent black father is comfortable speaking up against the police and making a claim on the State. Within such economic apartheid, the film explores different kinds of violence, domestic, criminal and systemic (Dovey 2007: 155), but does not necessarily offer possible solutions to the violence. Within this context, the film’s ending is important: Hood shot two versions, one in which Tsotsi escapes and another in which he gets shot by the police, but decided to use neither. Instead the film ends with a confrontation between the affluent black father and poor Tsotsi, leaving ‘the final critique of Tsoti’s violence to contemporary viewers’ (Dovey 2007: 160). But a pirated version with the ending in which Tsotsi is shot by the police circulated widely in South Africa, allowing for a very different reading of the film.

It may therefore not be surprising that the film has divided critics: South African critics have generally been much harsher with the film, while foreign commentators tend to defend it. Disagreements concern the film’s (un)willingness to critique the state as well as its representation of class, race and gender. Daniel Lehman, for instance, argues that the film critiques the economic and AIDS policies of then President Thabo Mbeki, who encouraged black economic empowerment for a select few but did little about widespread poverty, and who refused effective HIV treatment, which he saw as an ‘assault on … black male sexuality’ (Mark Gevisser quoted in Lehman 2011a: 97). By contrast, South African critics argue that the film legitimises the State, by having fairly sympathetic white cops, by allowing the AIDS issue to be lost in the background of the plot, and above all by insisting on Tsotsi’s positive, but entirely internal change that leaves all the responsibility up to the protagonist, apparently suggesting that individual initiative is enough and that economic, health and other state policies do not have to be changed (see Dovey 2007; Barnard 2008).

At the heart of these debates is the question of how important – or how unimportant – the film’s relatively conventional, Hollywood-style narrative is. Gavin Hood himself has said that he filmed a classic story of redemption that he thinks has universal appeal (see Archibald and Hood 2006). His camera movements, he suggests, are minimal, driven by characters (Gunn 2009: 49). In classical Hollywood stories, (usually male, white) protagonists drive the plot. In Tsotsi, Tsotsi (a word meaning thug) starts out as a nameless, expressionless character tortured by flashbacks. In the course of the story, as he identifies with the baby (whom he gives his own name), he remembers more and more of his childhood. Emotionally driven flashbacks tell his traumatising story: after his father – who, misinformed about AIDS, would not let his son near his dying mother (though he probably infected her with the virus) – kicks and paralyzes his dog, David, as he was then called, runs away, becoming a homeless child and a nameless thug. While the film tells the story about how Tsotsi, through the baby and by remembering his traumatic past, finds respect and decency, critics have pointed out that such a transformation is both unlikely and problematic. In the film, Tsotis’s maturation, or Bildung, happens all too easily. By contrast, Rita Barnard argues, the novel is a ‘meditation on the sociopolitical preconditions for a coherent subjectivity and narration’, a meditation, that is, on how the apartheid state makes telling one’s story, and thus one’s maturation and social mobility, difficult if not impossible (Barnard 2008: 549).

More specifically, Tsotsi is part of the gangster film genre. The word tsotsi, possibly derived from the English zoot suit, first emerged in 1930s Sophiatown, and represents an appropriation and transposition of the American gangster into a South African context. Not exactly unlike the American gangsters who often emerged in poor, ethnic environments, the tsotsi stands for mobility, violence, fashion – in short everything poor blacks were not allowed to be under the apartheid regime. As Rosalind Morris has it, the tsotsi ‘invest[s] the township with commodity desire’ (Morris 2010: 99). But while stylishness can sometimes be marshalled for radical politics, as it was for instance in the zoot suit riots of 1943, the connection between stylishness and critique is not always obvious. Barnard complains that ‘gangsterism purely as style … [is] not a real threat to the status quo’ (Barnard 2008: 561). Such stylishness also approaches Tsotsi to film noir, a film movement often noted for its sense of style and fashion, and in this context one could easily look in more detail at the film’s careful use of colours and lighting.

But fashion and stylishness are not everything. Dovey helpfully points out that from the 1950s onward, there were two different kinds of tsotsis, ‘smartly dressed gangsters who tend to operate on big money from whites or Asians (represented in Tsotsi by Fela) … [and] marginalised boys who operate out of the desperation of poverty and who tend to serve the former kind of tsotsi’ (Dovey 2007: 154–4). Tsotsi/David belongs more clearly to the latter kind, and in this context, it would be interesting to think of another of Hood’s stylistic choices: his widescreen images place faces in landscapes, emphasising how much Tsotsi/ David belongs to the township, as well as the gulf that separates the township from the modern city. Tsotsi/David remains embedded in the landscape, unable to escape the township (Dovey 2007: 154).

No discussion of Tsotsi would be complete without a discussion of its soundtrack. Many have noted the marked presence of kwaito music by South African artist Zola who also plays Fela in the film. Many of these tracks were pre-existing hits, and Zola’s celebrity was used to market the film and its music (Rijsdijk and Haupt 2007: 33). Kwaito was first developed by gangsters in 1950s Sophiatown, and has been influenced by gangsta rap. Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk and Adam Haupt have argued that the use of Zola’s kwaito music ‘constantly re-affirms a homogeneous black urban masculinity by not offering musical diversity’ (Rijsdijk and Haupt 2007: 36). But kwaito is not the only music in the film, there are also ‘choral arrangements, and … the combination of low bass notes, rattles and percussion that accompany scenes of action or tension in the film’ (Rijsdijk and Haupt, 2007: 31). In the course of the film, we see a shift from the ‘urban, fast-paced, heterosexist, aggressive and lyrically violent music of Zola to the soulful choral style of Mahlasela and Maphumulo’ (Rijsdijs and Haupt 2007: 31). Tsotsi/David’s emotional transformation gets associated with choral themes.

As becomes evident in this discussion of the film’s music, questions of gender have lurked everywhere in the critical debate surrounding Tsotsi. Rijsdijk and Haupt conclude that the film runs the risk of ‘essentialising conventional gender roles in which women are nurturers and men are violent plunderers’ (Rijsdijk and Haupt 2007: 41). As noted earlier, the upper-middle-class couple is an addition in the film; in the novel, Tsotsi does not hijack a car but encounters a frightened, black woman in a grove and comes close to raping her. The topic of rape has disappeared from the film, although, Dovey reminds us, there was a 400 per cent increase in child rape in South Africa from 1988 to 2003, and that in 2003 children under 12 made up 40 per cent of South Africa’s annual 1 million rape victims, in part because of the myth that raping a virgin would cure HIV/AIDS (Dovey 2007: 157). By contrast, Lehman focuses on the character of Miriam who takes on ‘an increasingly proactive function’, whose encounters with Tsotsi suggest that Hood does not avoid the topic of potential sexual violence (Lehman 2011b: 118). Along with the baby, she nudges Tsotsi toward a less aggressive masculinity, an alternative to the masculine violence also embodied by his father. Not coincidentally, when the film came out, real tsotis objected that Tsotis/David looked too soft and sloppy (Dovey 2007: 153).

Tsotsi can be located in the context of the postapartheid flourishing of South African films, which often have high production values and run the risk of being ‘Hollywoodised’. The NFVF (National Film and Video Foundation) specifically allocates funding to films that are adaptations of South African literature, which tends to privilege texts by white South Africans. Likewise, white directors have been more enamoured by the themes of reconciliation and redemptions than black or coloured directors. At the same time, Tsotsi also participates in a wave of internationally acclaimed films about gangsters and hoods, including the Brazilian film, City of God (2002) and the AngloIndian film, Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Like these other films, Tsotsi toys with the tradition of neorealism, famous from films such as Bicycle Thieves (1948), which employed non-professional actors, yet, at the same time, the film’s production values and narrative resemble Hollywood melodrama. These different legacies certainly help explain some of the contradictions of the film, which have generated so much debate.

Sabine Haenni

Cast & Crew:

[Country: South Africa, UK. Production Company: The UK Film and TV Production Company PLC, Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa, The National Film and Video Foundation of SA, Moviworld. Director: Gavin Hood. Producer: Peter Fudakowski. Screenwriter: Gavin Hood (based on the novel by Athol Fugard). Cinematographer: Lance Gewer. Music: Paul Hepker, Mark Kilian. Editor: Megan Gill. Cast: Presley Chweneyagae (Tsotsi), Terry Pheto (Miriam), Kenneth Nkosi (Aap), Mothusi Magano (Boston), Zenzo Ngqobe (Butcher), Zola (Fela), Rapulana Seiphemo (John Dube), Nambitha Mpumlwana (Pumla Dube), Ian Roberts (Captain Smit), Jerry Mofokeng (Morris).]

Further Reading

Tsotsi Morris Tshabalala

David Archibald and Gavin Hood, ‘Violence and Redemption: An Interview with Gavin Hood’, Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 2, Spring 2006, pp. 44–47.

Rita Barnard, ‘Tsotsis: On Law, the Outlaw, and the Postcolonial State’, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 49, No. 4, Winter 2008, pp. 541–72.

Lindiwe Dovey, ‘Redeeming Features: From “Tsotsi” (1980) to “Tsotsi” (2006)’, in Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, December 2007, pp. 143–64.

Judith Gunn, Studying Tsotsi, Leighton Buzzard, Auteur, 2009.

Daniel W. Lehman, ‘Tsotsi Transformed: Retooling Athol Fugard for the Thabo Mbeki Era’, in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2011a, pp. 87–101.

Daniel W. Lehman, ‘When We Remembered Zion: The Oscar, the Tsotsi, and the Contender’, English in Africa, Vol. 38, No. 3, October 2011b, pp. 113–29.

Rosalind C. Morris, ‘Style, Tsotsi-Style, and Tsotistaal: The Histories, Aesthetics and Politics of a South African Figure’, Social Text, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 2010, pp. 85–112.

Tsotsi And Morris Scene

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk and Adam Haupt, ‘Redemption to a kwaito beat: Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi’, in Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2007, pp. 29–46.

Source Credits:

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films, Edited by Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White, first published in 2015.

Tsotsi decides they will head to the train station where their unsuspecting victim, Gumboot Ghalimini, begins to head home to his wife. Boston hears the church bell and the reverend contemplates his faith in god… Tsotsi finds ants on the baby, and instead of running away because of the emergency, he stays and rescues the baby.

Tsotsi, a movie that won best foreign film Oscar in 2006. This shows that not every thug is… Summary: Tsotsi, a gang member living in a township, makes a living mugging and carjacking more affluent people.

Eventually the flashback leads him to the events that happened on the day that his mother was taken to jail.

Tsotsi Morris Nj

He is understood to be the most civilized of the group.

When his mother was taken from him he was left alone to witness his father come home and upon realizing the house was empty, he lashed out on the dog, paralyzing its back legs and killing the litter. Ebert's coverage of 'Yesterday' and other South African films at the Toronto Film Festival can be found here and elsewhere in the Toronto festival section of the site. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. When they get to terminal place Tsotsi steps on Morris Tshabalala’s – a crippled man who lost his legs in a work accident – hand and decides that he will be his target tonight. We realize the violence in the film has slowed. At the start of the novel Tsotsi knows very little about himself and endeavours to keep it that way. ( Log Out /

When the others leave Boston begins to question Tsotsi about what he feels. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. We learn about Isaiah and how he works for God. Tsotsi isn’t afraid to put the grimy lifestyle of shantytown gangsters on full display. After he tells Tsotsi all the reasons he wants to live he confronts him about why Tsotsi has to kill him. Then later Butcher and Die Aap went outside and raped Rosie. Many individuals spend countless hours pondering the meaning behind the author’s words. Analysis of the Movie Tsotsi. As he heads back to the ruins he hears bulldozers taking down the walls, he runs into the building only focused on one thing, finding the baby. Such areas in Joburg are usually gated communities, each house surrounded by a security wall, every gate promising 'armed response.' ( Log Out / We know Tsotsi as a street thug in Johannesburg, South Africa during apartheid. Tsotsi just broke one of his three rules: never ask questions about the past. Tsotsi is the leader of the group. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Tsotsi then realizes that he doesn’t have to kill him and that it’s he is able to choose to let him live.

( Log Out / Die Aap leaves after him and Tsotsi hear the baby cry. He arrives at the dark section and drops his money within a pool of light but Tsotsi kicks it away and continues after Morris. Tsotsi is the leader of the group. Chapter 4 Die Aap visits Tsotsi to ask about the next job, Tsotsi tells him that the gang has been disbanded and that he would no longer be doing the jobs that they used to. Boston is telling stories and talking nonstop. The movie, which just won the Oscar for best foreign film, is set in Soweto, the township outside Johannesburg where neat little houses built by the new government are overwhelmed by square miles of shacks.

Tsotsi Morris Plains

This is the second year in a row (after 'Yesterday') that a South African film has been nominated for the foreign film Oscar. Tsotsi also realizes mothers love their children. “His second rule which operated then on through every other moment of the day was never to disturb his inward darkness with the light of a thought about himself or the attempt at a memory” (36). After hiding the baby in the ruins Tsotsi begins to remember the “yellow bitch,” the dog that he had when he was a kid. Now that he is a young man between adolescence …

Miriam feeds and cleans off the baby. Tsotsi begins to get irritated by all the questions about Tsotsi’s personal life. One way in which the message is shown, is through the use of imagery. “ ‘Feed it’ she showed no understanding of his words and because he had no others he put out his hands and with one wrench tore open her blouse, exposing her breast… ‘Feed it’ He said again” (Pg.

Just after they comitted the crime, Tsotsi and his gang all head over to a place called Soekie’s.

Boston awakes to the sound of church bells begins to think about his faith in God. Boston awakes from his state of unconsciousness and moves for the first time in almost a day. Six days in the violent life of a young Johannesburg gang leader.

Film analysis Tsotsi is a nineteen year old teenager who lives in the poor periphery of Johannesburg. How the story develops is for you to discover. David runs away after his father leaves and witnesses the dog giving birth to a stillborn litter, he is taken in by the river gang and learns many harsh lessons that turns him into a thug. It is a rule of his to not think about his past or raise any questions about it. How strange, a movie where a bad man becomes better, instead of the other way around. Furthermore this quote allows the reader to understand that Tsotsi uses a front in order to seem more acceptable to society. they walked down the street looking for a victim to strike. The effect that this baby has on him is life changing, because rather than abandoning it he cares for it. Tsotsi is not a ‘worthy’ film – it is a compelling and exciting piece of movie making and as such is entirely deserving of study as a media/film text. 1109 Words 5 Pages. Analysis of Tsotsi by Athol Fugard Essay. But he had to ask questions, which Tsotsi didn’t like because he couldn’t answer them. At the end of the chapter, Tsotsi goes to rape and kill a woman in the bluegum trees, but doesn’t because of the cry of a baby. Butcher was drinking the fastest and getting drunk the fastest because he kept asking Soekie;for more; she kept telling him to slow down; also a woman, a friend of Soekie, was sitting in the corner passed out and her name was Rosie. Boston is telling stories and talking nonstop. Babies are single-minded. Miriam: Miriam is a random girl that Tsotsi meets but he forces her to come help take care of the baby. Boston tells him we are all sick of life and to seek for God. ( Log Out / Boston’s life is revealed by Fugard how he was expelled from college, sold passbooks, and became part of the gang.

He then decides to abandon his identity and start his life under the new name Tsotsi.

Tsotsi eventually finds Boston passed out of the floor of a bar.

We see the burial of Gumboot Dhlamini and how the pastor is losing his faith because he is burying another nameless man. As Tsotsi followed Morris he began to realize that he crawls like the “yellow bitch” used to, dragging his body around since he doesn’t have any legs. What a simple and yet profound story this is.

As he studied her more he began to recognize the symptoms of fear and sees that she was carrying a small parcel and kept checking over her shoulder. On a crowded train, they stab a man,- and he dies without anyone noticing; they hold his body up with their own, take his wallet, flee when the doors open. ‘When he dropped that big one tonight it was like that inside me.

This breaks one of Tsotsi’s rules: never ask questions. Tsotsi does not acknowledge the fact that Petah recognized him and just continues his game of dice. When Tsotsi kicks the money and continues walking towards Morris he begins to throw rocks and shout insults in order to defend himself. Slowly remembering his own childhood, and his mother who had died from AIDS, he ends up returning the … He stops in the Bantu House. Die Aap and Butcher listen to Boston as they drink their beers… The character going through this journey, who the novel is named after, is a young man who is part of the lowest level of society in a poor shanty town in South Africa. Tsotsi shoots her and steals her car.

Tsotsi Morrison

She makes reasonable decisions. I was surprised to find that it leads toward hope instead of despair; why does fiction so often assume defeat is our destiny? Boston then leaves in search of his mother. This can be seen through multiple scenarios, which unfold throughout the book. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Tsotsi begins to remember his past, he begins to see his old home and how happy he was living with his mother. Tsotsi’s gang, Boston, Die Aap, and Butcher, all wait around in silence, waiting with no words left to say for the right time of night when Tsotsi would tell them what crime they would commit. ( Log Out /

Tsotsi knows this but he is sometimes frightened by Die Aap.

Tsotsi Morris Biography

Tsotsi becomes David Mondondo (himself as a kid). Fugard then talks about Waterworks Square, the townships only water tap, and Miriam Ngidi, how her husband left her and now she is left to raise 6 month old Simon by herself. It is in this mind state that he discovers a catalyst in his life. This essay will gather information to prove, what it believes the authors is trying to convey. He became conscious of the fact that he does not know very much about himself. This memory has a powerful effect on Tsotsi and for once he found that “he was curious” (59) about his, Essay on Head Injuries in High School Football, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a Portrait of Evil Essay, Deceitful Clytemnestra of Euripides' Electra Essay, The U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War Was Justified Essay, Essay on Evaluation of a Strategy for Increase in Car Production, Essay on The Consequences of the Failure of the League in the 1930s. We can guess that he will not abandon the boy because he has been abandoned himself, and projects upon the infant all of his own self-pity. Tsotsi is the leader of the group. I’m telling you I bled.’ ‘Decency’ ‘call it what you like…’ ‘You called it that’ ‘Ja I did, Two Totalitarian Regimes: Communism and Nazism Essay, How the Teachers Body Lanuage Effects the Class Essay, Interaction between Communism and Nazism and Their Societies Different Beliefs. After beating Boston, Tsotsi leaves the she been and takes a walk through the street. We then are taken to Waterworks square where a young mother by the name of Miriam Ngidi waits in the long line to get to the tap. In the novel Tsotsi, by Athol Fugard, lack of family and illiteracy are problematic aspects to this culture.

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